Dutch Trio (keyboards, bass & drums) led by ex-Ekseption keyboards player Rick Van Der Linden, Trace was considered as the most famous super-group of its country. Its music includes virtuoso, researched, complicated, ever evolving themes, full of breaks and instrumental developments where the keyboards player could show his talent on Hammond organ, synthesizers, harpsichord, piano and Mellotron. By the profusion of its themes and the numerous melodies which compose it, Trace's music is close to ELP. and Yes.

This excellent companion volume to Founder of the Delta Blues pulls together 23 more Patton tracks (including some alternate takes that were for years thought to be lost) to give a much more complete look at this amazing artist. It's interesting here to compare the tracks from his final session to his halcyon output from 1929. Highlights include "Mean Black Cat Blues," Patton's adaption of "Sitting on Top of the World" ("Some Summer Day") and both parts of "Prayer of Death," originally issued under the non de plume of "Elder J.J. Hadley." The sound on this collection is vastly superior, from a noise-reduction standpoint, to its companion volume.

This was the band's comeback album after a fairly dire patch in the mid-'70s. The fact is, Back and Fourth (originally issued by Polygram) isn't really that good a record, lacking the imagination and spirit of experimentation that highlighted their early albums for Charisma. But at its best, it was smoothly commercial, standing next to those earlier albums roughly where the Bee Gees' early disco stuff stood next to material like Odessa. And it was a success, mostly thanks to the presence of Alan Hull's best song to date, the Springsteen-like "Run for Home." With its original lineup back together, Lindisfarne went for the gold this time, building their music on folk-like melodies (and a distinctly American sound, at that), country-type hooks ("King's Cross Blues"), and pleasing harmonies, exemplified by "Warm Feeling," where the group sounds like an earthier, edgier Firefall…

In the midst of his tenure with the Oscar Peterson Trio, Herb Ellis had the chance to turn the tables on his boss and employ him as a sideman, though the keyboard virtuoso strangely reigns in his chops and pretty much stays in the background. This pair of sessions was first issued on a Norgran LP and finally reissued as a Verve CD in early 2006. The first four tracks add Jimmy Giuffre (alternating between baritone sax, tenor sax, and clarinet) and trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison, along with fellow Peterson sideman Ray Brown and drummer Alvin Stoller. Ellis' originals include the easygoing "Sweetheart Blues" and the cooking bop vehicle "Pogo," where both the leader and Edison eclipse Giuffre's efforts on sax. "It Could Happen to You" focuses exclusively on Ellis, with Peterson and Edison sitting out and Giuffre adding some background color on clarinet…

Those who love rather complex and dynamic sequencer music with an acoustic edge and an occasional high-tech feel should check out the music Paul Ellis' has put down on his amazing album "Last Hiding Place of Beauty". The CD contains four long tracks, all making a powerful, straightforward statement, keenly melting vibrating sequencer patterns, fx's, and a wide range of vintage flavored synthesizer textures such as Mellotron flute. As said previously, the overall structure is rather complex, although lots of space is found within the core of every piece of music. The great interplay between bass grooves, drums, electronic and acoustic instruments is quite mind blowing, especially on the 16-minute title track. The overall outcome is simply breathing the joy of honest electronics more than once.

The ersatz blues story of the film gives Ry Cooder leeway to turn in an impressive blues-derived soundtrack featuring Sonny Terry along with his usual collaborators Van Dyke Parks, Jim Keltner, Nathan East, and others. But it's Cooder's guitar playing that highlights the album.

Long May You Run is not a Neil Young solo album. It is credited to "The Stills-Young Band," which is to say, Stephen Stills and his band with Young added, and the two divide up the songwriting and lead vocals, five for Young, four for Stills. The pairing, though it proved short-lived and had, in fact, ended before this album was released, must have seemed commercially logical. Like Young, Stills had seen his record sales decline after a successful period following the 1970 breakup of CSNY. So had erstwhile partners David Crosby and Graham Nash, but they had returned to Top Ten, gold-selling status in the fall of 1975 with their Wind on the Water duo album. Why couldn't Stills and Young do the same thing? Maybe they could have (and, actually, this was the first gold album for either in two years) if they had made a better record together…

You don't have to imagine any image of the mellow and full voices of Jazz divas. Just open your ears and enjoy it with ease. The four-dimensional floatation of electronic particles insinuates and creates the vivid appearances for the improvisation sound in modern times. Nu-Jazz Divas takes perfect interpretation of voices and extraordinary recording quality as main considerations and displays the absorption and remake of traditional Jazz in electronic generation. The two CDs contain the nuances between "Happy Hour" and "After Hour". The Cha Cha beats mixed with Funk, the inseparable House and Soul, even the blood linkage of Fusion and Urban, they all exquisitely express the variable characteristics of Jazz, which can be uplifting and exultant or soothing and enchanting. Artists include Alice Russell, Parov Stelar, Dephazz, P-Jay, Mo'Horizons, Nils Krogh, the Quantic Soul Orchestra and many others.

From the huge amount of bands participating in the rebirth of UK prog rock in early-80's, Abel Ganz can place themselves among the best ones. Formed in 1980 in Glascow, Scotland, under the forces of bassist Hugh Carter and keyboardist Hew Montgomery, they started playing live around Glascow, having Malky McNiven on guitars and Kenny Weir on drums. The growing fame brought singer Alan Reed on the band, a bit later to be found on Pallas line-up. The quintet recorded their debut ''Gratuitous flash'' in 1983, originally released on cassette in 1984. The 70's feeling ofGenesis blended with the new digital technology is the main characteristic of this album. Most of the compositions have an evident symphonic approach, not far from what IQ were creating around the same time. McNiven's style includes lots of Steve Hackett-inspired guitar hooks mixed with some intricate melodies in the typical British prog style of the 80's…

Hendrix had gone so long between albums, seemingly adrift stylistically at various times, that there's no telling exactly what direction he was finally going to end up working toward. This is a superb album, and a worthy if very different, earthier successor to Electric Ladyland's psychedelic excursions - the later tracks, ironically enough, cut at that album's long promised and long-delayed studio namesake - and also show him working in some genuinely new directions. For starters, Hendrix's voice emerges here as a genuinely powerful instrument in its own right - his voice was never as exposed in the mix of his songs as it is here; partly this is because Hendrix and engineer Eddie Kramer never finished embellishing the songs, or completed the final mixes…

The second ECM album from this Polish-Swedish-British edition of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet follows the critically-heralded Matka Joanna. As Jazz Journal wrote, 'Trumpeter Stanko's vibrant breadth of tone and poetic feeling for cross-rhythmic drama are second to none.' Leosia marks a further progression, incorporating six first-rate Stanko compositions in his brooding 'Slavic' style, darker than the darkest Miles (and incorporating a tribute to Lautréamont, literature's Count of Darkness), as well as bracing and exploratory duo and trio improvisations, and solos of the higherst calibre by all concerned. The group has an unusual claim on idiomatic completeness; it seems to summarize, in highly original manner, many of the important developments of jazz of the last 30 years…

On this recording, Burnside presents the blues in its original and purest form. His music is not very different from the Southern blues of the 1900s. Five songs from this recording, ‘Jumper hanging on the line’, ‘Long-Haired Doney’, ‘Poor Black Mattie’, ‘Catfish Blues’ and ‘Rolling and Tumbling’, are versions of traditional blues pieces that are known to everyone in the State of Mississippi. These songs date from before the blues structures with standardised texts and harmonies; they are close to the ‘hollers’ and the vocal line is supported by the repetition of the musical phrase on the guitar. The other songs are adaptations, by Burnside himself, of hits of the 1950s. Other blues artists from Mississippi and Texas perform these songs: Robert Nighthawk, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Elmore James and John Lee Hooker. After immersing himself in these versions, Burnside gives his own, very personal interpretation: the result is almost traditional…

10th album for an incredible deep ambient-electronic trip by Ralf Knappe-Heinbockel and Thorsten Reinhardt. Their music is so various and intense, warm and rich of atmosphere, that the listener is among different realities of sounds and effects… Passages so dark and slow, for then to show a track full of rhythm and magic. Their imaginations goes ahead from "Point One" to "Point Fourteen", giving deep vibrations in the air, and continues even when music is finished. In all these tracks Hemisphere show their different faces. An album really great, all to discover till the last note. Composed between 1995 and 2001, it was recorded in 2002.

Dirk Mont Campbell is a composer and performer with skills in a variety of non-Western ethnic traditions acquired after his time in pioneering progressive rock bands such as Uriel/Arzachel, Egg, National Health, as well as a large number of collaborations on different albums and audiovisual projects.
So, thirteen pieces of music in non-Western ethnic traditions which are, quite simply, an adventure and intellectually and culturally stimulating… An exceptional album, a modern classic by an experienced musician whose notes accompanying this album shine with the warmth of the best of humanity.

Veteran Spanish label, Margen/áMARXE, returns after its outstanding releases of recent years with the first album by an incredible French duo called Fulguromatic. Deeply fascinating, creating unique spaces between the sounds of Canterbury, jazz-rock and incorporating a light, playful and somewhat mischievous touch from the planet Zeuhl that is tremendously addictive. Absolutely captivating, both musically and timbrally, thanks to the use of invented instruments that give it a French flavor "naïve", far from any false transcendence, that ends up creating a singular album that is a breath of fresh air in the progressive scene and an almost magical experience from the first sound to the last.