Michael Green

Always one of the most in demand bassist and session men. He does not have a large body of work as a featured artist, but here you can catch him in a rare environment. This time he gets to lead and pick the tracks. A great find.This needs to be added to a serious jazz library, as the important jazz figure he is.

Michael Head, former frontman of the Pale Fountains and current co-leader along with his brother John – who is also a Strand – of Brit pop outfit Shack, turns in a stellar chamber pop performance with Magical World of the Strands. Head, who is no stranger to either classy, baroque pop or neo-psychedelia, has composed an album of gorgeously illustrated songs that are lushly orchestrated by a standard rock quartet augmented by a flutist (Leslie Roberts) and a string quartet. The result is an album that, while little known, is a classic, a masterpiece of modern chamber pop.

Limited Card Wallet CD Edition featuring 6 extra live tracks. 62 years of music, loves, losses, long summer days and longer, darker nights are vividly recalled by ‘our greatest living songwriter’, Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band as he plays out flickering scenes from his life on new album, Loophole, set for release on 17th May 2024 on Modern Sky. 12 evocative and autobiographical songs to be accompanied by the written word as Michael Head prepares his memoirs for release with an autobiography with Nine Eight Books. UK Tour dates announced for May and December, ending the year with a career-spanning, home city set at Liverpool Philharmonic.

Heinz Sauer is presented here in a brilliantly exciting juxtaposition, with two partners with very distinctive profiles. On the one hand you have Wollny who subtlety combines universal piano nuances ranging from romantic gloom to the brusquely clanging new sound world. On the other, you have Kühn - full of energy, the eternal "Sturm und Drang" musician, expressing strong emotions and a master of the explosive turbulence and heartfelt beauty of sound.
In their unwillingness to compromise and the intensity of their expression, both pianists join separately but amiably with the saxophonist. Sauer is a musician who is able to change the tonal nuances of his tenor saxophone in a split second. His sound flows like lava - glowing red, then cold, forming craggy formations…

Limited Card Wallet CD Edition featuring 6 extra live tracks. 62 years of music, loves, losses, long summer days and longer, darker nights are vividly recalled by ‘our greatest living songwriter’, Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band as he plays out flickering scenes from his life on new album, Loophole, set for release on 17th May 2024 on Modern Sky. 12 evocative and autobiographical songs to be accompanied by the written word as Michael Head prepares his memoirs for release with an autobiography with Nine Eight Books. UK Tour dates announced for May and December, ending the year with a career-spanning, home city set at Liverpool Philharmonic.

CeeLo Green has never made a bad album, and isn’t about to change his ways with Heart Blanche, which overflows with positive energy. The key track is “Est. 1980s”, a euphoric celebration of his musical influences, set to the kind of flanged guitar groove popular in an era when “Michael Jackson was king, Aaron Neville was God, and Run DMC looked just like me”. The period influence is confirmed by the sampled Taxi theme used for “Sign of the Times”, and by the departed comics (Belushi, Pryor, Williams) eulogised in “Robin Williams”, his tribute to the late comedian. Elsewhere, “Mother May I” suggests the teenage CeeLo straining at the parental leash, while “Music to My Soul” offers uplift to those “living in darkness”. The standard dips slightly in the later stages, but the grooves throughout are sleek and snappy, and CeeLo himself has rarely sounded better.