Outer Range

This is one of the most original Japanese progrock bands, they were active in the Eighties and made a serie of interesting albums.
"A Scene of Pale Blue" demonstrates a certain progression from "Misty Moon" of a few years earlier, but essentially the sound is intact: violin led progressive rock with lots of Crimson-esque rhythms and guitars, but with rich keyboard touches not seen in King Crimson since their earliest days…

New album! Shortly before their 20th anniversary, the Viennese cult band unleash 15 new songs on the crowd that has been hungry for two years. The wide corset of their current stylistic range has little in common with the gloomy Psychobilly of the early days: The avowed horror, B-movie and trash fans play extremely accomplished hard and atmospheric dark rock, which adapts to punk, rock with playful ease. nRoll, Hard Rock and Gothic elements served. The quintet naturally draws richly from historical and fictional horror stories, but also likes to pack snappy systemic criticism into the lyrics ("Off With Their Heads!"). The songs always remain catchy and are crowned by hymn-like choruses - the Misfits school unites perfectly with shock rock legends such as Alice Cooper or W.A.S.P. The perfect soundtrack for a foggy walk at Vienna's central cemetery!

Outer Dark displays Bill Laswell's penchant for working out compositional ideas at great length, breaking the 20-minute barrier on both of the album's instrumental pieces. Entirely a studio creation, the music is the result of Laswell's (sounds) collaboration with Robert Musso (engineering, treatments) at Brooklyn, NY's Greenpoint Studios. The duo attempts to shape a composition out of the dark ether on the opening "Chakra." It begins with a buzzing sitar drone (providing the Eastern flavor common in Laswell's music) and strummed guitar emerging from the murk. Disappearing and returning throughout, the elements take on a sort of dizzying paranoia at song's end through their repetition. As for the ether itself, the musical backdrop is a drift of throbbing, amorphous ambience comprised of mildly chilling keyboard washes and tube-like breezes…

Sparks' 12th album got off to the best possible start when the first single, "Cool Places," a breakneckedly breezy duet with the Go-Go's' Jane Wiedlin, spun off to become the Mael brothers' first ever Top 50 hit in their American homeland. It would also be their last, but an entire generation of new fans arose regardless to pursue the siblings through both their future convolutions and their past ones too. In Outer Space's almost ruthless distillation of all that had gone before was, then, an ideal place for them to start. Like the duo's Giorgio Moroder era, In Outer Space represented a creative rejuvenation that its immediate predecessors had scarcely dared hint at.

Despite being renowned in certain parts of the world (especially in Italy and their hometown of Paris), the space-age outfit Rockets remains largely obscure - even though they arrived on the scene at almost he same exact time as Kraftwerk and prefaced Devo by several years. The multi-membered outfit originally formed in 1972, under the name Crystal, performing on-stage in their regular street clothes. But by 1974, Crystal had evolved into Rocket Men, issuing a debut self-titled single, while its members began to assume the identities of aliens; complete with silver makeup covering their skin, grey contact lenses, space suits, and bald heads…

"Brian Eno made Music For Airports but, by the sound of it, Outer Space Alliance make music for spaceports." - Stephen Lawson, Future Music magazine.
After over five years of silence, Outer Space Alliance returns to your soundsystem with a completely reworked and remastered (24-bit and all that) version of their 1999 debut release, the "O.S.A. Promo-CDR"! Much work has been poured into reworking all the material: Starting from setting up the old gear that was used to make the original TO transferring and rebuilding all the material piece by piece to a modern digital audio workstation TO recording completely new takes TO tedious mixing and mastering sessions, Outer Space Alliance's journey to remaster-land has taken approximately four months to complete all in all…

Outer Limits is one of the major acts of the so-called Eighties' Japanese School of Progressive rock. Famous for its exceptional melodic refinement, the band was also keen on a romantism that can be linked with the Italian School. The group displayed a brand of sophisticated art-rock, with delicate and precious sounds, enlightened by lyrical violin parts, Mellotron layers and fine guitar arpeggios. Considered as the best and most inspired Japanese band, Outer Limits could have been of of the masters of Progressive rock, somewhere between King Crimson and U.K., if only it has been British.

George Russell - The Outer View (1962) {Riverside OJCCD-616-2 rel 1991} (featuring Don Ellis)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (image)+CUE+LOG -> 275 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 123 Mb
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© 1962, 1991 Riverside Records / Fantasy | OJCCD-616-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Piano / Trumpet

Composer George Russell's early-'60s Riverside recordings are among his most accessible. For this set (the CD reissue adds an alternate take of the title cut to the original program), Russell and his very impressive sextet (which is comprised of trumpeter Don Ellis, trombonist Garnett Brown, Paul Plummer on tenor, bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Pete La Roca) are challenged by the complex material; even Charlie Parker's blues "Au Privave" is transformed into something new. It is particularly interesting to hear Don Ellis this early in his career. The most famous selection, a very haunting version of "You Are My Sunshine," was singer Sheila Jordan's debut on records.