Rick Ross Richer Than i Ever Been

While it isn't a gutsy rock & roll record like Your Arsenal, Vauxhall and I is equally impressive. Filled with carefully constructed guitar pop gems, the album contains some of Morrissey's best material since the Smiths. Out of all of his solo albums, Vauxhall and I sounds the most like his former band, yet the textured, ringing guitar on this record is an extension of his past, not a replication of it. In fact, with songs like "Now My Heart Is Full" and "Hold on to Your Friends," Morrissey sounds more comfortable and peaceful than he ever has. And "The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get," "Speedway," and "Spring-Heeled Jim" prove that he hasn't lost his vicious wit.

Matthias Pintscher - Figura I-V & Other Works - Teodoro Anzellotti, Arditti Quartet (2004) {Winter & Winter 910 097-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 306 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 188 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 189 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2004 Winter & Winter | 910 097-2
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Chamber Music

2004 marks the 30th Anniversary of the Arditti String Quartet, which once again demonstrates its commitment to the advancement of New Music–this time by the young German Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971). For the discerning listener of New Music, this disc offers both substance and style. Winter & Winter's packaging is exquisite and attractive (although I haven't figured out why the booklet offers nine blank pages followed by two pages of track and publisher information, when brief liner notes or at least some biographical information–especially in the case of a young composer–would be helpful not only in giving context to the works performed but also in establishing a base listenership).

Eddie Bo - Baby I'm Wise: The Complete Ric Singles 1959-1962 (2015) {Ace Records CDCHD 1429}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 180 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 115 Mb
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© 1959-62, 2015 Ace Records | CDCHD 1429
Rhythm and Blues / Deep Funk / New Orleans R&B / Boogie-Woogie

All nine of Eddie’s Ric 45s plus several originally unissued masters making their CD debut. The years 1959 to 1962 were a musically fertile period in Eddie’s career, yet his Ric recordings are often overlooked in favour of his later funk classics. The tracks here show just what a great singer and songwriter Eddie was in his youthful prime, and how unlucky he was not to have made it as big as, say, his Crescent City compatriot Lee Dorsey.

The follow-up to 1975's Use Your Imagination, It's Better Than Working caught Mud continuing to pursue the twin directions laid out by their most recent hits – one eye on a distinctly Showaddywaddy-shaped brand of rock & roll revivalism, and the other firmly grasping the soft rock softball that had served former stablemates Smokey so well. Neither was it an altogether desultory decision – "Night on the Tiles" handed the band one more in the long sequence of hit singles that had sustained them since 1973, while a taste of Mud's eye for the unusual was delivered by an unlikely cover of Alex Harvey's "Vambo Rools." "Beating Round the Bush" and the amusingly titled "Blagging Boogie Blues," too, captured more than a soupçon of the quartet's early endearing goofiness, rendering It's Better Than Working a stronger album than might have been expected – even if it still can't hold a candle to a decent, career-length hits collection.

John Rutter’s glorious stream of Christmas miniatures has made him, for many, an essential ingredient in the festive season. The composer and conductor wrote what is probably his most popular piece, “Shepherd’s Pipe Carol,” while still an 18-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge—and he has never looked back. “Once I started writing carols, somehow it seemed difficult to stop,” Rutter tells Apple Music. “I’ve been doing it ever since.” Realizing that he had a “backlog” of them led him to I Sing of a Maiden, an EP of five new pieces recorded in July 2021. “I’m asked, ‘Do you still enjoy Christmas?’ And actually, I sincerely do,” says Rutter. “Christmas carols are a resilient form of art—folk art, as I’ve often suggested—that have attracted some extraordinarily fine composers. They were adding their little tile to a centuries-old mosaic of devotion, praise, joy, prayer, and celebration. It all makes up that extraordinary season of the year that we call Christmas.”

In February 2010, the late, legendary musician, poet and author Gil Scott-Heron released his thirteenth, and last, studio album. First conceptualised in 2005, and ultimately produced by XL Recordings head Richard Russell during New York recording sessions that commenced in January 2008, I'm New Here was Scott-Heron's first album in thirteen years and found him sounding as vital, boundary-pushing and insightful as ever before.