Takanaka Rainbow Sacd

A beautiful and wonderfully textured album full of life and color. The album follows the narrative of a storybook of the same name, which tells the adventures of a group of goblins. Takanaka, uses only spoken word bits in the beginning of most tracks to tell the story, and then lets the music do the rest, with most of it surprisingly sounding very in-theme with the actual plot of the book. He incorporates elements of traditional Japanese music, synthpop, rock, and plunderphonics as well, manipulating samples and other instruments to create sounds that were previously unheard of. Even though the album could be cut down a good ten minutes, and the song lengths are pretty inconsistent, The Rainbow Goblins is such a fun and playful interpretation of the book that it's hard to believe that the goblins themselves would hear anything else but this in their place.

Rainbow (also known as Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow or Blackmore's Rainbow) are a British rock band led by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, active from 1975 until 1984, 1993 until 1997, and 2015 until present. They were originally established with Ronnie James Dio's American rock band Elf, but after their first album, Blackmore fired the backing members and continued with Dio until 1979. The band's early work primarily featured mystical lyrics with a neoclassical metal style, then went in a more pop-rock oriented direction following Dio's departure from the group.

Album release from Masayoshi Takanaka to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his career. Contains ukulele covers of all the tracks from his solo debut album "SEYCHELLES," which is originally released in 1976.

This album is pretty sofisticated compared to his fomer ones and one of my favorite Takanaka albums. Although they are all good, his other albums before this one are of more rock-taste and energetic like kids in their teens. However this one, Saudade came out as one that's oriented more for adults. As you can imagine for its title, famous Brasilian phrase meaning the feeling of slight saddness from missing something, this album is full of "saudade". Just lower the light and sit in a comportable sofa with a glass of wine in your hand and listen to the CD. I can guarantee that you won't regret buying this CD, if you like guitar instrumentals.

"Rainbow People" means more than just an LP. It's Eric Bibb's debut album, gathering of friends and musical ideas that go together and express one thing above all; the joy of knowing each other. Hearing the sounds of jazz, blues, African, Latin-American and classical music on the same album is a naturally good thing - a kind of rainbow.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow is an album by American Jazz pianist Harold Mabern. It was recorded in 2005 and released by Venus Records. All of the compositions are by Harold Arlen. Mabern commented that, "I've always studied him because his music is very bluesy. And you don't really have to do anything to his music but just go ahead and play it". Jones uses brushes on most of the tracks. "A Sleeping Bee" gets a "gospel-inflected soul-jazz treatment". "This Time the Dream's on Me" has "a hip Latin vamp to introduce a soul-jazz-infused arrangement". Mabern's arrangement of "Savannah" begins as a calypso and then shifts into hard bop.

Keyboardist Will Boulware and company strike again with another dose of to-die-for contemporary jazz. His first Eighty-Eight's label effort, "Over Crystal Green", won Swing Journal's Golden Disk award and helped to launch a label that has now received extensive acclaim from jazz and audiophile press. Boulware pulls out some heavy artillery on "Harmony", including a very special appearance by Phoebe Snow, who sings on three tracks. Will & Rainbow is rounded out by Peter Bernstein on guitar, Michael Brecker on tenor saxophone, Philippe Saisse on synthesizers, Steve Gadd on drums, and Anthony Jackson on bass.