The world has changed a lot since 1992, when Don Breithaupt first collected an album's worth of his irresistibly hooky and jazzy pop songs and formed Monkey House. Since then, the talented and prolific Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and producer has stamped the band's Kurt Vonnegut-inspired moniker on five albums of original material, including Headquarters (2012), Left (2016) and Friday (2019), the latter a blazing tour de force which topped the iTunes jazz chart and went to #11 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Albums chart. Now, to mark their thirtieth anniversary, Monkey House presents their most accomplished and exciting set yet, Remember The Audio, on which Breithaupt is joined by his A-List wrecking crew of Mark Kelso on drums, Pat Kilbride on bass, Justin Abedin on guitar, and guests including trumpeters Randy Brecker, Guido Basso and Michael Leonhart, guitarist Drew Zingg, and singers Lucy Woodward and David Blamires. After years of fluid lineups, Breithaupt says he had an epiphany back in 2011 while rounding up the usual suspects to make Headquarters: Hey, wouldn't it be nice if this coalesced into a steady band?
Chillout Sessions is a series of compilations released by Ministry of Sound that focus on songs from the chillout genre. Songs on Chillout Sessions compilations vary in style from lounge to electronica and are released by many different artists. The Chillout Out genre of compilations started in the UK and since 2003 Ministry of Sound has released them under different tropes such as "Chilled", "After Hours", "The Morning After…" which has shown MOS to have seemingly ended its branding of the genre as Chillout Sessions.
The fifth installment of the Rewritten Histories series focuses on remixes and alternative mixes of Banco tunes recorded between 2017 and 2022. It features: remixes created for the 20th anniversary editions of "Big Men Cry", "The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia" and "Igizeh"; the stunning re-works of "Heliopolos" and "Obsidian" by Framewerk and their Capital Heaven crew; plus two brand new remixes of "Fake it til you make it" by long-time collaborator Andy Guthrie under his 100th Monkey guise.
Arranged by Craig DeGraff, who claims, hopefully with tongue placed somewhat injuriously in cheek, "Not since the KLF has there been such a rock & roll swindle," Future Retro is a compilation from Rhino that sets up WEA-distributed hits of the early '80s (most of them new wave) with remixers…