On their 2012 debut Boys & Girls, Alabama Shakes never hid that they were creatures of the New South – a band with old-fashioned blues, soul, gospel, and country in their blood but raised on modern rock. On their 2015 follow-up, Sound & Color, they free themselves from the vestiges of the past, let loose, and push themselves further in either direction. This could've resulted in a disjointed record pulling itself in two opposing directions, but the mess of Sound & Color is invigorating, likely because the album uses its title as a creed. Where Boys & Girls sometimes seemed a shade austere – the band took pains to color within the lines, almost as if to convey their good taste – Sound & Color bursts with oversaturated hues so vivid they seem almost tangible.
Steve Mackey (b. 1956) is a composer who can be counted on to produce music that crosses genres without inhibition and that's immediately appealing, and So Percussion's performances are consistently imaginative in their choice of repertoire and their eagerness to stretch the parameters of traditional concert music. The result of their collaboration, It Is Time, is everything that this combination of talents promises to be: a dynamic and unconventional but thoroughly engaging new work that doesn't sound quite like anything else.
Gong slowly came together in the late '60s when Australian guitarist Daevid Allen (ex-Soft Machine) began making music with his wife, singer Gilli Smyth, along with a shifting lineup of supporting musicians. Albums from this period include Magick Brother, Mystic Sister (1969) and the impromptu jam session Bananamoon (1971) featuring Robert Wyatt from the Soft Machine, Gary Wright from Spooky Tooth, and Maggie Bell…
Legend is a greatest hits collection of Bob Marley & The Wailers songs, released by Island Records on May 8, 1984. It is the best selling reggae album of all time (13.5 million platinum in the United States), with sales of 25 million copies. An entry in the Universal Music Entertainment (UME) Deluxe Sound+Vision series of CD/DVD combos, this repackaging unites two releases that were themselves reissues when they first appeared in 2002 and 2003: a two-CD "Deluxe Edition" of the compilation Legend: The Best of Bob Marley and the Wailers, and a DVD reissue of the 52-and-1/2-minute home video of the same name, which added as a bonus the 85-minute documentary Time Will Tell.