Featuring Ultravox, Duran Duran, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Devo, Yello, Peter Baumann, Richard Bone, Japan and many others.
Following 2020’s ‘Musik Music Musique’ set, we present the sequel, this time looking at the electronic pop scene as it evolved from curio and novelty into a major movement and began to dominate the airwaves. Featuring a plethora of acts who would quickly become household names (many of which endure today) and exploring the wide variety of directions electronic instruments took both the mainstream and independent music in. ‘Musik Music Musique 2.0’ embraces both the pure pop aesthetic of a new generation of aspirational, defiantly polished artists and those who embraced electronic music in the aftermath of the post-punk explosion…
The artist known as Grabbitz was born in Buffalo, New York as Nick Chiari. This talent musician can play a myriad of instruments such as the piano, cello, violin, and guitar. He signed on with Monstercat in 2014 and debuted with a drum step piece called “Here With You Now” and has worked with deadmau5 and Pegboard Nerds, featured as a vocalist on their tracks. Two years later, Grabbitz has released his first full-length album, Things Change. This album features Grabbitz’s own vocals, lyrics, and song compositions. Grabbitz created an album for listeners to get inside to the soul of an artist, who is not interested in making music for the fame or the money. His songs are not created for mass EDM public consumption but for those looking for something different to listen to.
The R&B elements get stronger, the sound and mix are more attuned to the dancefloor, yet this brings out the best in George Benson's funky side. Thanks in part to the more rigid beat, Benson pares down his style to its rhythmic essentials, refusing to spray notes all over the place at random, and as a result, the record cooks and dances. His treatment of Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," hugely complemented by Joe Farrell's wistfully prancing flute, is a mini-masterpiece in the use of space, of hitting exactly the right stabbing note right in the pocket.
Martin Lang returns for his second album for what Lang and his producer and liner notes writer Dick Shurman both call this an “ensemble album.” There is a team behind the effort, with Oscar Wilson fronting the band with his sublime vocal style on five tracks, Rusty Zinn singing on two tracks and Martin singing on the first and last tracks. Five of the cuts are instrumentals and showcase Lang on harp and Billy Flynn and Zinn as guitarists. Illinois Slim and Jimmy Upstairs share the bass duties and Dean Haas is on drums throughout. Dave Waldman also tinkles the keys on a couple of tracks.
The Roberta Martin Singers were an African-American gospel group based in the United States. The group was founded in 1933 by Roberta Martin, who in that same year had just become acquainted with gospels music, which was different from the traditional spirituals which were popular at the time. Theodore Frye and Thomas A. Dorsey were directing a junior choir at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois, and asked Martin to serve as the accompanist. From this junior choir, Martin selected six young men at random to form a group, Eugene Smith, Norsalus McKissick, Robert Anderson, Willie Webb, James Lawrence, and W.C. Herman. This group was named the Martin and Frye Singers, and in 1936, the group adopted the name of The Roberta Martin Singers. The Roberta Martin Singers (RMS) contained no traditional bass. For a brief period of time, the group was known as the Martin and Martin Singers, when Sallie Martin joined Roberta's group.
Originally released on 12th March 1993, the album hit the No.1 spot in both the UK and Ireland and sold over 6 million copies worldwide. The four disc box set contains the album on the first CD and bonus material spread over three further discs. Of course all of those previous bonus tracks are included, but so too are unreleased early demos, a live performance from 31 July 1994 at the Féile Festival in Ireland and a series of radio sessions from 1992-1993. The box includes a poster and four postcards.
French pianist Alexandre Tharaud is known for programs that hold together only marginally, and so it is here: Mozart's French piano student who went by the name of Mademoiselle Jeunehomme (or Jenamy or Jénomé) is associated with only one of these works, and possibly not even with that one: she is said to have given the premiere of the sprawling Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271, but the work has all the hallmarks of music Mozart wrote for himself.