Tim Story

This anthology covers Tim Story's work between 1979 and 1986, serving up 18 pieces. Because there is no attempt to provide the pieces in chronological order (though the notes do indicate which album each piece comes from), there is no sense of Story's development as a composer - a later piece focusing on piano may well be followed by a more electronic piece. "Abridged" is a collection of small, floating still-life pieces, absorbing by dint of their lack of drama. Story's work draws the listener in, somehow capturing the attention by refusing to demand it - it's as easy to let the music fall into the background as to concentrate on it as a foreground element.

At 73, it's tempting to call Roedelius the 'grand old man of ambient' or some such nonsense. To be sure, as a member of both Cluster and Harmonia his keyboard skills have been central in shaping the more 'new age' (for want of a better term) end of krautrock's sonic dna. Yet, despite his age Inlandish, finds Roedelius still supremely able to fire off beguilingly simple melodic piano lines, seemingly at will. His work on the album was completed in days, leaving electronica artist Tim Story to tinker and tweak them for several months afterwards. The results are stunning. In the same way that HJR's work with Eno remains strangely timeless, this album exists in a parallel universe where it's still possible to spend an hour in quiet contemplation. To call it 'ambient' is to do it a disservice. For these are tunes that wiggle and shimmer into the ears, gently refusing to melt into background noise.

This 20-track CD includes all of the songs from Rose's 1970 album Love, a Kind of Hate Story and his self-titled 1972 Playboy album Tim Rose, which is an entirely different record than the self-titled album he made for CBS in 1967. Note that this reissue, sequenced by Rose himself, does not follow the original running orders of the two albums, or even present one after the other, but mixes tracks from the two together. The effect of that strategy is questionable, but if you find it jarring, it's easy enough to reprogram the albums in their original running order (which is given in the liner notes). Love, a Kind of Hate Story is a middling album, produced by Shel Talmy, and a little heavier on the "rock" in folk-rock than Rose's 1960s recordings were…

'The Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box,' a very special box set that features expansions of the 13 original scores that Elfman has composed for Burton's iconic films. This is a newly-produced library of 17 CDs each packaged with artwork by Burton, adding up to more than 19 hours of music, including 7 hours of previously-unreleased Masters, demos, work tapes and other rarities.

This story begins with just one sound, originating in the place which Berlin jazz people think of as their living room, the A-Trane. Back in December 2019, the club was host to four leading figures in today’s improvised music scene, who turned this cozy space into their blank canvas, their research lab. In eight sets over four nights, piano phenomenon Michael Wollny, re-inventor of the soprano saxophone Emile Parisien, electric bass icon Tim Lefebvre, and that free spirit of the drum kit Christian Lillinger were given free rein.