Killer Horns

In this innovative series, Bill Oddie takes great joy in comparing dinosaurs with their closest living relatives – crocodiles and birds. He joins forces with a team of experts to scientifically analyse fossilised dinosaur bones and tracks.

On 2003's Long Time Coming, Jonny Lang made the first turn from his rap as an itinerant blues-rocker to being a spiritually inspired rock and pop songwriter. Producer Marti Frederiksen took Lang's tunes and glossed them to the breaking point, leaving the album an unfocused gobbledygook set of songs that had no center. Three years later, Lang returns with Turn Around. And the title does not refer to him turning back to his blues guitar slinger roots. Instead, the title refers to the biblical term that is the definition of the word "repent." (No mistake.) Lang's overt spirituality comes ringing through the mix created by Drew Ramsey Lang and Shannon Sanders. Turn Around is funkier, dressed in contemporary gospel, gritty rock and yes, the blues. Lang's still got a way to go as a songwriter, but the material here is infinitely better than it was on his last outing.

DJs like Gilles Petersen have been hip to the seven-piece wonder band Demon Fuzz for years, and as of the 21st century - now that everybody's put away their James Brown records for sampling - other club jocks are getting into the act of sampling this incredibly rare LP. Afreaka! was the only release by Demon Fuzz. Released in 1970, Afreaka! is a wild mash of Afro-Latin funk, breakbeats, tripped-out soul, jazz fusion, and psychedelic journeying. These seven black musicians took on everything that was happening, and were musicians enough to make it work for them. Most tracks run in the eight- and nine-minute range and get down with tough drums at the core, with rhythmic shifts happening on a grooved dime…

El-P, aka El Producto, is one of hip-hop's most obstinate and adventurous pioneers, combining a lo-fi old-school aesthetic with a progressive rock musician's inclination to push boundaries. He has never succumbed to the demands of corporate rap, instead choosing to pursue his own decidedly non-commercial direction. In the mid-'90s, he developed a strong reputation with the groundbreaking trio Company Flow, a band whose achievements include El-P-produced LP Funcrusher Plus on Rawkus Records, a label considered by many one of the best for intelligent hip-hop. Over the group's auspicious stint together, he proved he was himself capable of intense lyricism as well as sonic production so powerful it could stand on its own.

A varied double live set, where Magma speaks and sings in Kobaïan of course, but also in French and English ; so it can be a good introduction for those who are willing to discover them. The presence of a horn section make them sound much more funky and soulful than usual, and "Otis" is a tribute to Otis Redding…

With songs like "On Your Knees", "Runaway","Storming The Gates Of Hell" or the striking "Killer" (with vocalist Tony Moore singing a duet with none other than the mighty Joe Lynn Turner) "Riot Archives Vol.4" contains the original demo versions of a lot of material which later ended up on "The Privilege Of Power" album (from 1990)…

Kenny Wayne Shepherd arrived on the scene as a blues guitar hero at 18 to an overload of media hoopla and pressure. At 40, he has evolved from the blues-guitar-slinger ghetto and become a mature musician whose wide-angle vision embraces American roots music – blues, rock, country, and soul/R&B – as an inseparable whole. While it's true that most of his albums have charted, his last two, Goin’ Home and Lay It on Down, have done better than all the others, placing well inside the Top 40. The Traveler is a direct aesthetic follow-up to Lay It on Down. Co-produced once more with Marshall Altman, it utilizes the same band (including uber-drummer Chris Layton and singer Noah Hunt). Recorded in Los Angeles over ten days, it offers eight new originals and two excellent covers.