Harry Miller in Conference

'Om Suite Ohm' is the first CD from Harry to feature his 'Bollywood style' electric slide techniques. Harry is joined by a fantastic group of musicians playing on Indian, African and western instruments. Produced by Harry Manx, Hans Christian (Daniel Lanois, Robbie Robertson) and Wynn Gogo,l recording began in Wisconsin in 2011. From there Harry went to Victoria, Australia to record then back to Vancouver Island Canada to finish the record. Guest musicians include Australian Didjeridoo player Ganga Giri (Peter Gabriel); African inspired musician Yeshe on co-writes, N'goni and vocals and Hans Christian on co-writes, bass, strings, percussion, nickelharp, sarangim cello and sitara. Harry sings and plays electric and acoustic slide, national steel, Mohan Veena, banjo and guitar. There are two covers on the record, the traditional "Reuben's Train" and the John Coltrane penned "Love Supreme" with additional lyrics by Harry. 'Om Suite Ohm' is Harry's 9th solo record.

To call Harry Manx a wizard of slide guitar is perfectly true, but not the whole story. Add banjo, harmonica, and the Indian veena to that, and you're approaching the real story. On Wise and Otherwise he demonstrates the full range of his talents, which are firmly based in the blues, but extend far beyond – all the way to Indian music, with his own "Raga Nat Bhariav," a short, but beautiful journey for the veena. As a writer he continues to improve by leaps and bounds, making songs like "Roses Given" fit well with his version of "Death Have Mercy" or his covers of "Crazy Love" and "Foxy Lady" (where his acoustic playing has all the intensity of an electric Hendrix).

After 30 years, this is the reissue of the classic Columbia Masterworks recording from January 1969. It was one of the first commercially produced tapes of a Harry Partch tape performance, and the first opportunity most listeners ever had to hear a large-scale Partch music drama in fine sound.

Harry Nilsson worked at a bank and wrote songs on the side, mostly jingles and pop tunes in the mid-1960s. Under contract with RCA, his first record was a flop, but it yielded hits for The Monkees and Three Dog Night. In the late 1960s Nilsson was everywhere: pal to the Beatles (especially John and Ringo); singer of "Everybody's Talkin'," the theme to the movie Midnight Cowboy (1969); singer of the theme to the TV show The Courtship of Eddie's Father; composer of the soundtrack to the animated movie The Point (with its hit single "Me and My Arrow"); and singer of the number one hit, "Without You." …

A trawl through the wonderful career of the hugely underrated Harry Nilsson takes a chronological look at his back catalogue. Pretty much every classic you would ever need is here - Everybody's Talkin', Me and My Arrow, Without Her, Without You, One… the list goes on. Naturally there is a concentration on Harry's most successful work Nilsson Schmilsson with all but one track of the entire album included. There are some delightful hidden classics too with hard to find tracks included, but perhaps too little concentration on his later career. Nevertheless, this is a superb retrospective.

Obscurus is an exploration of the obscured, in a programme which showcases some of the most incredible trumpet writing of the 20th and 21st century, as well as several reimaginings of older, more mainstream works for other instruments, arranged for trumpet by Lucy Humphris.

Dudu Pukwana - In The Townships (1973) {Earthworks CDEWV 5 rel 1987}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 223 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 84 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 12 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1973, 1987 Earthworks / Virgin | CDEWV 5
Jazz / African Jazz / World Fusion / African Traditions / Southern African / Saxophone

This glorious, ferocious recording is one of the pinnacles of the music created by the South African expatriates who settled in England in the '60s and melded with the free jazz community therein. Leader and alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana and trumpeter Mongezi Feza were twin fountainheads of this movement and are in rare form here, both instrumentally and as composers. The pieces here are largely riff-based, but what incredibly infectious and funky riffs these are. South African music emphasized the importance of various thematic materials by how often it was repeated in a song, and these guys iterate the melodies with a vengeance.

Harry Chapin’s brother Steve and his drummer Howard Fields remember: “On April 11th 1977, Harry Chapin and his band, near the end of their first tour overseas, performed a concert broadcast over German radio at a small auditorium in the city of Bremen in front of 400 people."