Old Man Birthday

Ordinarily, 20 years of making records puts you in a category with dinosaurs. However, since these are blues records we're talking about, it's more likely that Mike Goudreau & The Boppin' Blues Band could still be considered youths by the genres standards. The disc contains thirteen original tracks of what Mike calls "songs that range from swing to funk, from New Orleans to blues rock, with some southern soul and gospel thrown in for good measure". Special guest on this is Pierre Lacocque of the band Mississippi Heat from Chicago.

The highly gifted Swiss clarinettist Reto Bieri makes his ECM New Series debut with ‘Contrechant’, a brilliant recital for solo clarinet that looks at new developmental possibilities in the ‘language’ of the instrument in modern music. A wonderful panorama of contemporary music for clarinet by giants of new music – Elliott Carter (the grand old man of US music who celebrates his 103rd birthday in December), Heinz Holliger, Luciano Berio, Peter Eötvös and Salvatore Sciarrino plus an intriguing work by much discussed young Hungarian composer Gergely Vajda.

The legacy of the Krautrock primeval rock, which is still active as one of the oldest German bands. On the occasion of the 50th birthday of the German cult herb rock band Bröselmaschine, MIG-Music put together a sensational box with five CDs and two DVDs that fully documents the history of this unique group from 1968 to 2017.
The anthology contains the four studio albums from 1971, 1976, 1978 and 1984 as well as a concert recording of the Burg Herzberg Festival in 2006. The concert and a performance at the Rockpalast (2005) can be found on the two DVDs. An impressive 48-page booklet with detailed liner notes and many photos make this carefully remastered compilation a special gem. It is exciting and entertaining to accompany this extraordinary band over the decades in different formations.