Having lent their esoteric funk-folk stylings to Prince & The Revolution during the late legend’s purple reign of the early-80s, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman left the band to pursue their own maverick musical path in 1986. Fan-favourite Eroica, their third and final album for Virgin Records, saw the duo hit a new creative peak – drawing on influences ranging from Sly Stone to Joni Mitchell to create a vibrant psychedelic-funk- folk sound that was uniquely their own.
I Get A Kick: Cole Porter Reimagined presents adventurous new takes on 10 classic tunes written by Cole Porter for stage and screen, performed by jazz singer and award-winning poet Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) on her sixth record and first for Jazzed Media. This distinctive homage appeals to fans of vocal music, jazz, and the Great American Songbook, as well as anyone seeking a lush and witty background to a cozy night at home or a sophisticated gathering. It was co-produced and engineered by James Gardiner, who boasts two Grammy nominations and 42 gold and platinum records, and features internationally known, Bay Area-based jazz players Mike Zilber, John Santos, Ben Flint, Frank Martin, Fred Randolph, Troy Lampkins, Jeff Marrs, Alan Hall, and Paul Van Wageningen.
Complete Collection is a six-disc, U.K.-only set celebrating the breadth and depth of Lisa Stansfield's extensive and impressive career. It includes her five studio albums – Affection; Real Love; So Natural; Lisa Stansfield; and Face Up – as well as an exclusive sixth disc, with recordings from a 1992 Wembley date, club mixes (including a great Massive Attack version of "Live Together"), B-sides, and three songs from Stansfield's Blue Zone days. Not enough? Each studio album is augmented with at least two bonus tracks. Complete Collection is definitely the most comprehensive Lisa Stansfield retrospective; it borders on overkill. But since it's only available in the U.K. – and is also quite pricey – the single-disc Biography is perfectly acceptable for the casual Stansfield fan.
Rare manuscripts from the library of an Italian abbey, rediscovered and recorded for the first time.
Immortal Memory is a collaboration between vocalist Lisa Gerrard and Irish composer Patrick Cassidy. Billed as a cycle of life and death and rebirth, Immortal Memory is better described as an orphaned film score. Cassidy's warm arrangements allow the former Dead Can Dance singer to step out of the dark medieval world that she's called home for nearly 20 years – though there is much of that world within these castle walls – and focus on the simplicity of love, faith, and loss with a grace that's bereft of the icy perfection of her previous work. Gerrard, whose voice has aged like the finest oak, displays an almost supernatural mastery of the material. Her effortless contralto wraps itself around the ten Gaelic, Latin, and Aramaic spirituals like an evening prayer, making each stunning entrance the equivalent of audio comfort food.
Scarcely three decades old, the enduring appeal of novelist Stephen King's horror oeuvre has already begun to foster remakes of the films and TV productions already based on his most popular works. This cable TV redux of King's 1975 tale of a small hamlet beset by vampires features an ominous, brooding orchestral and choral score that's a winning collaboration between newcomer Christopher Gordon and former Dead Can Dance mainstay cum film scorer Lisa Gerrard. The gothic seasoning she imparted to her previous collaborations with Hans Zimmer (most notably Gladiator) comes to the forefront on this score's haunting title aria (composed by Gerrard and partner Patrick Cassidy) and tracks like "Bloody Pirates" and "Free in Spirit." But it's the music of newcomer Gordon (Master and Commander) whose sheer scale and ambition belie the small screen format it was written for at nearly every turn.
Like Seven, released four years earlier, Lisa Stansfield's eighth album bounces from style to style with the singer's deeply impassioned, life-embracing approach a constant feature. Sophisticated pop, Motown/Philadelphia International-styled retro-soul, a few flavors of house, and even muted go-go and elegant drum'n'bass factor into the material. Most unforeseen is "Hercules," not an update of the Allen Toussaint classic but a fiery hero's theme that incorporates the Bo Diddley beat, a triumphant horn arrangement from master Jerry Hey, and the main riff from John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13." A few cuts rate with Stansfield's best. The title song sounds like it was designed to fit with smooth early-'80s R&B grooves like the Mary Jane Girls' "All Night Long" and Keni Burke's "Risin' to the Top."