Soul jazz supergroup Something Else!, led by alto sax master Vincent Herring, revisits the vital, funky grooves of an unforgettable era. The all-star band’s groove-driven debut features Jeremy Pelt, Wayne Escoffery, Paul Bollenback, David Kikoski, Essiet Essiet and Otis Brown III.
Soul jazz supergroup Something Else!, led by alto sax master Vincent Herring, revisits the vital, funky grooves of an unforgettable era. The all-star band’s groove-driven debut features Jeremy Pelt, Wayne Escoffery, Paul Bollenback, David Kikoski, Essiet Essiet and Otis Brown III.
Based out of the town Zutphen, Netherlands, one man artist Boele Gerkes produces old-school synthesizer music inspired by Klaus Schulze,Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk and Vangelis.
By the late 1980's, Emerson, Lake & Palmer were more than a decade away from the period of their greatest success. They had released a few albums in the late 1970's, and although they still sold reasonably well, neither the critics nor the public were especially thrilled by them. After taking a break for half a decade or so, in the mid-'80s, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake were ready to reunite. Carl Palmer, however, was busy drumming with Asia. So Emerson and Lake hooked up with Rainbow drummer Cozy Powell for one album as Emerson, Lake & Powell, and broke up shortly thereafter…
Nothing Has Changed is a bit of a cheeky title for a career retrospective from an artist who is known as a chameleon, and this triple-disc compilation has other tricks up its sleeve. Chief among these is sequencing the SuperDeluxe 59-track set in reverse chronological order, so it opens with the brand-new, jazz-inflected "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and concludes with David Bowie's debut single, "Liza Jane." On paper, this seems a bit like a stunt, but in actuality it's a sly way to revisit and recontextualize a career that has been compiled many, many times before.
When Procol Harum's ninth studio album, Something Magic, was released in March 1977, it sold poorly and was largely dismissed, with the group breaking up at the end of the promotional tour for it. With this reissue more than 30 years later, annotator Roland Clare argues it is "in need of outright reappraisal." He doesn't actually make that case, but he does explain the circumstances that led to the debacle. After its previous album, Procol's Ninth, produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Procol Harum might have been expected to go back to a more conventional approach; instead, the group hired the hot studio of the day, Criteria in Miami, and its hot resident producers, Ron and Howie Albert.