The Pop up Pitch

This session with Elysian Collective and Chris Vatalaro was recorded at Evolution Studios in Oxford, where I recorded the bulk of Strange Dance and also my soundtrack work. It took place at the end of April ’23, just before I went out to do my UK and European dates. I originally brought this ensemble together to play at the launch event for Strange Dance back in February, as I felt this combination of string quartet and percussion, together with my vocals, piano and guitar would be a compact way to capture the scope of the varied musical textures on the album. I was so made up with how it sounded and how it reframed the songs, that I wanted to capture this dynamic in a recording. As well as songs from Strange Dance, there is also a version of one of my soundtrack pieces, ‘People Of The Sea’ (the original is on Liminal, the bonus album) and a track called ‘Song For Us’. This one was written as a pitch piece for a TV show. I didn’t get the gig, but I was delighted with how this song turned out. It’s how I sound as a one man band and it felt as though it rounded off the record nicely. I’ve worked extensively with Elysian Collective and Chris Vatalaro since my second solo album, Weatherhouse.

It may be far too obvious to even mention that Norah Jones' follow-up to her 18-million-unit-selling, eight-Grammy-winning, genre-bending, super-smash album Come Away with Me has perhaps a bit too much to live up to. But that's probably the biggest conundrum for Jones: having to follow up the phenomenal success of an album that was never designed to be so hugely popular in the first place. Come Away with Me was a little album by an unknown pianist/vocalist who attempted to mix jazz, country, and folk in an acoustic setting – who knew? Feels Like Home could be seen as "Come Away with Me Again" if not for that fact that it's actually better.

Berlin-dwelling Dane Agnes Obel has been racking up the accolades throughout mainland Europe since her platinum-selling 2011 debut, Philharmonics. With the beguiling Citizen of Glass, her third studio long-player, she looks poised to enchant the rest of the world with her dark charms. A classically trained pianist with an elegant and elastic voice, Obel's melancholic chamber pop invokes names like Goldfrapp, Bat for Lashes, and Anna Calvi, but with a succinct aura of Scandinavian refinery. Where her relatively austere prior outings relied largely on piano and strings, Citizen of Glass revels in ghostly electronics and voice modulation, even going so far as to bring in a temperamental, late-'20s monophonic synthesizer called a Trautonium. The string arrangements are more ambitious and the composition style is a bit more opaque, but the ten-track set is unequivocally Obel-esque. Taking its name from the German concept of the gläserner berger, which translates roughly to the glass citizen, Obel explores the idea of transparency in the overshare-heavy digital age.

Nat King Cole - The Complete Capitol Recordings Of The Nat King Cole Trio (1942-1961) {18CD Box Set Mosaic MD18-138 rel 1991}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.87 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.10 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 186 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1942-61, 1991 Capitol / Mosaic Records | MD18-138
Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Swing / Traditional Pop

This collection contains 349 songs recorded at 91 separate recording sessions between October 11, 1942 and March 23, 1961. Two-thirds of the selection on this 18-disc anthology have either been out out of print since the 1940s, or have never been released in any form. Cole's 1956 album, AFTER MIDNIGHT, is included here in its entirety, along with all of the trio's more familiar songs. Included in this set are 104 tracks previously unavailable on US LPs. Sixty-six of the tracks were previously unavailable anywhere. Fifty-six rare Capitol radio transcriptions appear commercially for the first time. Dozens of the tracks appear at the correct speed for the first time ever.