Shades

Shades Of Orion (1993). Tetsu Inoue's second full-length collaboration with Pete Namlook splits evenly between beatless and beat-oriented ambient, with spacey, immersive textures and subtle arrangements. High production values and the wealth of creative territory covered make for one of the finest early Fax releases.
Shades Of Orion 2 (1994). One of the better long-form releases in the Fax stable. This second Shades of Orion project is quite different from the first… a single relaxing, drifty, ethereal piece that will slow your body down and put you to sleep if you need it to. Meditative and very gentle, this recording is free of spoken word samples and sonic distractions, which makes it ideal for just chilling out to.

Known for his solo hits in the 1980s as well as his hits with the band Smokie in the '70s, Chris Norman is a British soft rock singer with an international following whose career spans several decades. As Smokie's popularity trailed off around the turn of the decade, Norman split from the band and made his solo album debut in 1982 with Rock Away Your Teardrops. While his debut album was fairly unsuccessful, his second full-length effort, Some Hearts Are Diamonds (1986), was another story, spawning the international Top Ten smash hit single "Midnight Lady." Norman's popularity was greatest in Germany, where he racked up several additional hits during the late '80s, among them "No Arms Can Ever Hold You," "Sarah (You Take My Breath Away)," and "Broken Heroes."

This is a well produced disc with a sharp rhythm section accented by horns on almost every track and sweet backup vocals from the ladies that contrast nicely with Blues Boy's gravelly voice. His vocals are one of the highlights of the album, he often sounds remarkably like B.B. King. The lyrics are on the humorous side, and the opening track "I'm gonna marry my mother-in-law" is quite racy.

They don't make 'em like this anymore. Oliver Nelson, one of the great composer/arrangers of his generation, brings 20 or so guys with invincible swing in their DNA into a studio with some killer charts to play, and Johnny Hodges stands in front of them and does what Johnny Hodges does. The result was a classic album that's given me great pleasure…

In an all too small discography, Freddie Redd's Shades of Redd is without a doubt his crowning achievement. Completed after a successful stint composing music for the stage play The Connection, Redd wrote music specifically geared for his two formidable front line saxophonists - emerging alto giant Jackie McLean and the unsung hero of the tenor, Tina Brooks. Redd, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Louis Hayes, fresh out of the Detroit scene, took New York City by storm playing clubs and working with Redd when he was not doing production music. All of these tracks, originals by Redd, are brimming with the hope, optimism, and fresh ideas of the early '60s, music perfectly rendered and representative of the time period…