Kevin Aiyers June

Following the release of his solo debut, Joy of a Toy, Kevin Ayers created the Whole World to take the album on the road. In retrospect, the band was a kind of Brit supergroup, comprised of young Mike Oldfield (bass/guitar), Lol Coxhill (sax), Mick Fincher (drums, occasionally subbed by Robert Wyatt), and David Bedford (keys/arrangements). Following the tour, the band found itself in the studio, and in October 1970 Ayers introduced the world to the Whole World with the release of his follow-up, Shooting at the Moon. A snapshot of the era, the album is saturated with original ideas, experimentation, and lunacy, all powered by the bottled grape. It is this very "headiness" that propels and simultaneously hinders the work, resulting in a project overflowing with potential, much of which remained underdeveloped…

Following the release of his solo debut, Joy of a Toy, Kevin Ayers created the Whole World to take the album on the road. In retrospect, the band was a kind of Brit supergroup, comprised of young Mike Oldfield (bass/guitar), Lol Coxhill (sax), Mick Fincher (drums, occasionally subbed by Robert Wyatt), and David Bedford (keys/arrangements). Following the tour, the band found itself in the studio, and in October 1970 Ayers introduced the world to the Whole World with the release of his follow-up, Shooting at the Moon. A snapshot of the era, the album is saturated with original ideas, experimentation, and lunacy, all powered by the bottled grape. It is this very "headiness" that propels and simultaneously hinders the work, resulting in a project overflowing with potential, much of which remained underdeveloped…

Kevin Borich is a New Zealand born Australian guitarist and singer-songwriter who was a founding member of The La De Das, the leader of The Kevin Borich Express, and a founding member of The Party Boys, as well as a session musician for numerous acts. He recorded two albums for the Image Group in 1977 at the beginning of his solo career, after he disbanded the La De Das in 1975. “Celebration” was credited to The Kevin Borich Express, while the follow up .”Lonely One”, was credited as simply Kevin Borich. The best of those two albums have been distilled into this Avenue CD.

The Flute Concertos of C.P.E. Bach are among the most dramatic and engrossing of this important composer's works. This Bach was a major influence on Haydn and Mozart, but the music is worth hearing in its own right, and the Concerto in A Minor, which opens this set, is one of the masterpieces of its era. Gallois and the Toronto Camerata use modern instruments, but their performances are permeated by the sensibility of Bach's era. They are clear and forceful, responding beautifully to the pre-romantic elements in the music, and Gallois even adds appropriate embellishments to his playing.

By the late '70s, Ayers was faced not only with the problem of increasingly redundant material, but also with the fact that the audience for his brand of weirdo progressive rock was shrinking precipitously, making him sound not just repetitious, but dated. There are still some good moments on this album - the chamber music arrangement of "Strange Song," the brief burst of singalong nonsense called "Hat Song." But it's one of his more faceless efforts, with anonymously laidback arrangements that are more prone to swirling keyboards than much of his previous output. And a song like "Beware of the Dog" is so meandering in its attempt to be likably weird that it's virtually meaningless.

Western Spaces is a collaborative album by the American ambient musicians Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny and Richard Burmer. This album is the first of Steve Roach’s many musical tributes to the Southwestern Desert. This recording conjures up the desert vistas and the vast stark beauty of the American southwest through a collection of pieces that play like a soundtrack to a road trip through the Mojave Desert, Death Valley and Joshua Tree, California. All of these locales were the inspiration for the musicians during the creation of the music.