From the opening four notes of Michael Henderson's hypnotically minimal bass that open the unedited master of "On the Corner," answered a few seconds later by the swirl of color, texture, and above all rhythm, it becomes a immediately apparent that Miles Davis had left the jazz world he helped to invent – forever. The 19-minute-and-25-second track has never been issued in full until now. It is one of the 31 tracks in The Complete On the Corner Sessions, a six-disc box recorded between 1972 and 1975 that centers on the albums On the Corner, Get Up with It, and the hodgepodge leftovers collection Big Fun. It is also the final of eight boxes in the series of Columbia's studio sessions with Davis from the 1950s through 1975, when he retired from music before his return in the 1980s. Previously issued have been Davis' historic sessions with John Coltrane in the first quintet, the Gil Evans collaborations, the Seven Steps to Heaven recordings, the complete second quintet recordings, and the complete In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and Jack Johnson sessions. There have been a number of live sets as well; the most closely related one to this is the live Cellar Door Sessions 1970, issued in 2005.
Karl Böhm's Vienna Philharmonic Beethoven cycle is Deutsche Grammophon's best kept secret. Not only is it the finest complete set of Beethoven symphonies in their catalog, it's also far and away the best recorded, and to make matters even more irresistible, it's also the least expensive (it's available on three "twofer" sets). These performances are typical: weighty, intense, powerful, and magnificently played. Listen especially to the (comparatively) neglected Fourth Symphony: if Böhm doesn't convince you that this is major Beethoven, then no one can.
Tips Zum Selbstmord (1972). With a title that means "How to Commit Suicide," Necronomicon's one album, from 1972, featured bleak progressive garage rock with long instrumental passages. With wailing acid guitar solos, dark organ swirls, and angst-ridden singing in German, Necronomicon has created a dark and powerful vision that blends psychedelic and progressive music with a proto-punk garage band sensibility. They throw in some operatic vocals on several of the tracks; these are most effective in a couple places on "Requiem der Natur" to make the music sound almost like the Slovenian band Laibach. The same piece also offers an industrial droning beginning, some great walking bass soloing, bass and keyboard dueling, and a couple of melancholic folksy interludes…