L'altroquotidiano 24.08.2010

Matthias Bamert’s Contemporaries of Mozart project is one of Chandos’ longest-running and most successful recording series. Mozart’s unquestionable genius has tended to eclipse the work of many otherwise excellent composers who were writing at the same time as he. Often successful in their day, many of these composers fell into neglect over subsequent decades and were in some cases almost forgotten.

Epic/Legacy expanded Stevie Ray Vaughan’s second album Couldn’t Stand the Weather in 1999, adding four outtakes and an interview excerpt to the eight-track original, but the 2010 Legacy Edition expands it further still, retaining those four cuts, adding four songs from the posthumous compilation The Sky Is Crying (“Empty Arms,” “Wham!,” “Close to You,” “Little Wing”) along with three previously unreleased alternate takes (“The Sky Is Crying,” “Stang’s Swang,” “Boot Hill”), and a full, unreleased concert SRV & Double Trouble gave at the Spectrum in Montreal on August 17, 1984. Apart from “Empty Arms” and “Stang’s Swang,” every studio outtake is a cover, underscoring how Vaughan spent much of Couldn’t Stand the Weather drawing from his influences and synthesizing them into his own voice, and their addition actually strengthens the album considerably. With that in mind, the lively concert on the second disc is a bonus treat, evidence that SRV & Double Trouble were flying very high during 1984 and one of the better complete live sets in Vaughan’s discography.

Much more than a usual "Best Of" album, on these double CD-sets the musicians themselves picked out 24 pieces, which they feel represent the most important, significant and personal selections from their repertoire. Remastered and given the best possible post-production. An excellent introduction for established fans as well as newcomers, who have yet to discover the musicians and their art.
Nguyên Lê opens his Signature Edition with a kind of prelude: the previously unreleased track "Magic Constant" introduces the listener to his incomparable musical kingdom, full of very different landscapes. There are pure classic adaptations (for instance on the traditional "Lo Rossinyol") as well as abstract clusters of contemporary music; many pieces are defined by Vietnamese music traditions…

If you are looking for a collection of romantic songs to be played while having a drive or a walk with your romantic interest or even by yourself, this is the one to have: issued by the European Sony/Bravo label, it focuses on the songs who were on the radio in the 80's. If you are a "son of the 80's" and enjoy music to awaken your contemplative and quietest side, buy it! While hard to find outside the US, it is worth having.

Lakefront (2010). M. Ostermeier’s solo debut "Percolate" (2010) featured fragile Rhodes and acoustic piano melodies atop minimal downtempo electronics and Labradford-esque guitar tones. Here on the seven-track mini-album "Lakefront" (2010), the skeletal acoustic piano remains, but the minimal beats have evaporated and we are left with something more organic, more haunting. Harold Budd is still an apt reference for the piano fragments, but the infusion of acoustic recordings and darker guitar and electronics bring to mind Deaf Center and Library Tapes. The melancholic mood that builds throughout Lakefront evokes feelings of nostalgia and regret. The songs remind us that the passing of time necessarily brings uncertainty to one’s recollection of the past - an uncertainty that has its own poignancy…

The conventional view of Niccolò Paganini's 24 Caprices puts them among the encores and etudes violinists use to hone their skills and show off their prowess. But Julia Fischer regards them primarily as expressive works that are as rich in lyricism and emotional color as they are in advanced techniques, and her 2010 Decca album shows her considered approach to the music. There's no doubt about Fischer's impressive abilities, which are apparent from hearing the first Caprice, and all the trickiest double- and triple-stops, bowing styles, and various means of articulation that are included in this fantastic work reveal her phenomenal gifts. But as amazing as Fischer's performance is for sheer technique, it is highly pleasurable because of her polished musicality and firm control of every nuance that is either overt or suggested in the music. The notoriously difficult Caprice No. 6, which Fischer plays con sordino, has a special ghostly quality that makes it much more ethereal and Romantic in character than an exercise in playing trills. Even the ever-popular Caprice No. 9, and that favorite of composers of variations, the Caprice No. 24, have a freshness and vitality that come directly from Fischer's genuine feelings, not merely her dazzling skills. Decca's sound is crisp and clean, so the full range of the violin's timbres and dynamics come through without studio boosting. Highly recommended.

It's not the first time guitarist Alex Machacek has composed around drum improvisation—he did that with three tracks on [sic], his 2006 breakout record and first for Abstract Logix—but he's taken the concept even farther on 24 Tales. It's also not the only release to use, as its basis, a 51-minute drum improvisation by Marco Minneman—Machacek's band mate in keyboardist/violinist Eddie Jobson's Ukz, which debuted in 2009 with the Radiation (Globe Music) EP. Guitarist Mike Keneally, touch guitarist Trey Gunn, and Mars Hollow bassist/guitarist Kerry Chicoine were all given Minneman's metrically and polyrhythmically challenging solo as part of the drummer's Normalizer 2 project as well, but 24 Tales sets the bar incredibly high for everyone else; a true fusion masterpiece that actually surpasses [sic]'s remarkably deep composition and stunning performance.

Sade’s longest absence yet did not prevent their return from being an event. It at least seemed eventful whenever “Soldier of Love,” released to radio a couple months prior to the album of the same title, was heard over the airwaves. Even with its brilliantly placed lyrical allusions to hip-hop past and present and its mature sound, the single stuck out on stations aimed at teens and twentysomethings, as well as points on the dial that court an older audience. It was the most musical and organic, while also the most dramatic yet least bombastic, song in rotation. Crisp snare rolls, cold guitar stabs, and at least a dozen other elements were deployed with tremendous economy, suspensefully ricocheting off one another as Sade Adu rewrote “Love Is a Battlefield” with scarred, assured defiance.

Fronted by former model Doro Pesch, the German metal band Warlock consisted of guitarists Rudy Graf and Peter Szigeti, bassist Frank Rittel, and drummer Michael "Micha" Eurich. Originally formed in 1983, the group was heavily influenced by such fellow European metal outfits as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Accept, both musically and with their lyric/subject matter. The quintet issued their debut album in 1984, Burning the Witches, following it up with 1985's Hellbound, 1986's True As Steel (the same year Warlock played at England's annual mammoth metal festival, Castle Donnington), and 1987's Triumph and Agony. Warlock called it quits by 1988, as Pesch launched a solo career.