Skin Shape

Beat Avenue is 60-year-old Eric Andersen's most ambitious album, a 90-minute tour de force that encapsulates his musical and lyrical concerns over a lifetime. The music is often-dense rock dominated by a rhythm section led by guitarist Eric Bazilian of the Hooters. Equally dense is Andersen's highly poetic versifying, which he sings in his gruff baritone. Andersen is world-weary in these songs, roaming the globe haunted by the past and fearful of the future. He confesses to a reckless youth, but acknowledges that he can no longer afford such license. "What once was Charles Bukowski," he sings in "Before Everything Changed," referring to the free-living beat poet, "is now Emily Dickinson." The ballads and love songs "Song of You and Me," "Shape of a Broken Heart," "Under the Shadows," and "Still Looking for You" are rendered tenderly, but they are also full of regret and loss, past-tense reflections that recount memories of love long gone. The first disc of Beat Avenue is complete and formidable unto itself, but there is a second CD consisting of two lengthy songs. The title track, running more than 26 minutes, is a beat poem with jazzy accompaniment by Robert Aaron in which Andersen recalls a poetry reading he attended as a 20-year-old on the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

This is England, the day after the 60s. It’s a time of flux. On the cusp of progressive rock but without a rule book, many groups hold fast to psychedelia’s adventurousness and melodic delights, while they are also happy to venture deep into the jazz and folk scenes. The result is some wonderful, atmospheric, rain-flecked music.

Frontiers Music Srl is thrilled to announce the upcoming release of a long-awaited new studio album, "Get It Right" from Philadelphia hard rockers Heavens Edge. This will be their first official release since 1998, when the demos and other rarities,considered the band’s second album, "Some Other Place, Some Other Time" was put out. Original members Reggie Wu (guitars, keyboards), Mark Evans (vocals), David Rath (drums), and Steven Parry (guitars) are joined by newest member, bassist Jaron Gulino (Tantric, Mach 22), who joined the band after the tragic passing of original bassist George G.G. Guidott.

Babajack incorporates elements of music gathered in from Africa, Blues, Folk, Rock and beyond and then blends and distills with artful precision to create a unique sound that excites the audience as they are swept up into the whirlwind of emotions unfolding through the words and music. This is the album that capturing the very essence of the band, Babajack Live the full band plus the atmospheric cello courtesy of Julia Palmer-Price and the skillful live recording and production from Paul Long you have a live sound captured forever. The track list is a mix of songs from previous albums, the must have tracks in a Babajack set and some glimpses of future work and the promise of another studio album.

The guitar can cross musical boundaries like no other instrument, its shape-shifting qualities conveying it instantly, from biting twang to gentle iridescence. A guitar quartet performing Australian contemporary works may seem one-dimensional on paper, but this is a truly thrilling and beautiful album. It helps, of course, that Guitar Trek’s skill and musicianship on each of their myriad instruments is staggering—Nigel Westlake’s cinematic 6 Fish shimmers on the group’s steel-stringed instruments, while Richard Charlton’s Guitar Quartet No. 8 “Five Tails in Cold Blood” inspires ensemble work of mesmerizing precision with fizzing, jazz-inspired licks. Phillip Houghton’s kaleidoscopic, emotive Opal explores every inch of the guitars’ musical potential. Ending the album, Elena Kats-Chernin’s “Bleached Memories” pays a lighthearted, ragtime homage to the guitar’s Baroque heritage.