This dynamic quartet, strongly influential during the cool jazz period, performed as a group from 1951 to 1967. Since the 1930s, leader Dave Brubeck received high praise and critical acclaim for his role as bandleader and for his stirring arrangements. At the piano, Brubeck plays along with the accompaniment of Paul Desmond, another timeless jazz legend in his own right. Joe Morello drives the rhythm of the group on drums and percussion with the help of Gene Wright, who shares his talent and pulsating beats on standup bass. Desmond is featured on this collection of standards, jamming along on the alto sax to tunes such as "Swanee River," "That Lonesome Road," and "Basin Street Blues." Brubeck shimmers with radiance and phenomenal craftiness in his piano improvisation at the end of "Georgia on My Mind." Morello gives it his creative all with a rich flair for rhythm during his strong solo performance on the tune "Short'nin' Bread"…

UK four CD collection from the British Prog Rock band that rounds up all of their Chrysalis albums with bonus tracks including John Peel sessions, 7" mixes, live tracks, 'B' sides and more. Gentle Giant was born out of the ashes of Simon Dupree & the Big Sound, a successful UK rock and R&B-based outfit led by the Shulman Brothers. In 1970, the brothers founded Gentle Giant. Derek was lead vocalist and played alto sax and bass, Ray sang and played bass and violin, and Phil handled the saxophone and added vocals. Kerry Minnear, on keyboards, came straight from the Royal Academy of Music, and Gary Green became guitarist. John Weathers joined the band in 1972 and was the drummer for two albums. Gentle Giant's utilization of complex classical chord and time patterns, together with hard rock, blues, jazz and even medieval melodies, set them apart from other "progressive" groups of their time or since.

This collaboration with Yello mastermind Boris Blank displays the dark timbred voice of Malia in a set of pop titles created by the glitzy synths and sultry dancable rhythms of Blank, who uses the singer's voice like a solo instrument in the very front of a mix made by his tasteful synthetic soundscapes.
Convergence is one of the most sensual and elegant album we have heard in a long time. Its almost timeless aesthetics avoid clichés mostly associated with electronic soul music and seamlessly bring together two artists with a unique approach to their work - but most important of all: it’s got soul and sensuality, both in a very elegant and airy way but still has enough artistic weight to carry the promise of becoming a long term companion.

Genesis (1968). The Gods' debut album was the sound of a band capturing the transition of British psychedelia into more ostentatious progressive hard rock. Ken Hensley's heavy Hammond organ was the center of their sound, and both that and the sometimes overbearing vibrato vocals pointed toward the less psychedelic sounds he and drummer Lee Kerslake would pursue in Uriah Heep. Genesis is undoubtedly lighter than Uriah Heep, though, often employing characteristically late-'60s British vocal harmonies. Some tunes, like "Candles Getting Shorter" and "Radio Show," even skirt a pop-soul sensibility. But the songs weren't terribly memorable, though they were segued together by brief odd'n'goofy instrumental bits at the end of tracks in keeping with the modus operandi of the psychedelic era…

On this competent White-guy bar-band sort-of blues, four cuts feature Paul Butterfield on harp (believed to be his last recordings). Other guests are Ronnie Earl, Pinetop Perkins, Big Daddy Kinsey, and Hubert Sumlin.

Debut Hungarian album of Omega is a curious early release of the band where they acted as Hungary's answer to The Beatles. Mixing psychedelic and beat pop with hints of folk, this album only shows the bits of what would later follow.
The most successful Hungarian rock band in history, Omega is one of the rare bands to have been known outside in his country. The legend has it that as albums were released in other countries it became necessary to brake the language barrier. Their music is a combination of Eastern European prog with a bit of symphonic and a bit of psyche prog. The result is a dark orchestrated sound combined with extended improvisation. Their discography actually starts in the early 60's, and goes in till today in a more modern register.

This reissue combines two of Simone's Colpix albums, Folksy Nina (1964) and Nina with Strings (1966), onto a single CD. Though it was taken from the same performance as 1963's Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall, Folksy Nina duplicates little of the material found on that prior album. It isn't just unworthy leftovers, but a strong set in its own right, concentrating on material that could be seen as traditional or folk in orientation. It's not exactly strictly folk music, in repertoire or arrangement. However, there was an uptempo piano blues (Leadbelly's "Silver City Bound") and covers of the Israeli "Erets Zavat Chalav" and "Vanetihu" which served as further proof that Simone's eclecticism knew no bounds. There are also the kind of stark, moody, spiritually shaded ballads at which she excelled, like "When I Was a Young Girl," "Hush Little Baby," and "Lass of the Low Country," the last of which is as exquisitely sad-yet-beautiful as it gets…

Selections from "Trilogy", "Down to the Moon", "Dancing with the Lion", "The Book of Roses" and "Eolian Minstrel", performed live by Vollenweider and his collaborators in concert tours from 1992 through 1994. This 2-CD set also includes an additional nine tracks of previously unreleased material done in a similar style to the cuts on the aforementioned albums - a wonderful bonus for fans of vintage Vollenweider. It's nice to hear the in-concert variations and improvisations of old favorites, and how gratifying also to hear all the live cheers and applause for this truly amazing artist and his repertoire of uniquely fascinating compositions.

After the heavily distorted bass and doomsday church organ of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's debut album, the exhilarating prog rock of epic proportions on Tarkus, and the violent removal of the sacred aura of classical tunes on Pictures at an Exhibition, Trilogy, ELP's fourth album, features the trio settling down in more crowd-pleasing pastures. Actually, the group was gaining in maturity what they lost in raw energy. Every track on this album has been carefully thought, arranged, and performed to perfection, a process that also included some form of sterilization. Greg Lake's acoustic ballad "From the Beginning" put the group on the charts for a second time. The adaptation of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown" also yielded a crowd-pleaser…

By their third long-player (and second since the traumatizing defection of original singer Anders Fridén), The Mind's I, Dark Tranquility were making very positive strides, gaining in confidence, but still playing serious catch-up to In Flames and At the Gates in the battle of the Gothenburg extreme metal bands. Yes, their dated and overly laborious early-'90s Swedish death metal habits had by now largely and wisely been replaced by more economical (read: shorter) songwriting, their melodies were ever more evident within the ruling metallic mayhem, and former guitarist Mikael Stanne had fully come into his own as a lead vocalist, but that didn't mean that speedy new offerings like "Scythe, Rage and Roses" and "Dissolution Factor Red" were inspired enough to fully stand out from the pack…

Avid Jazz here presents four classic Milt Jackson albums, including original LP liner notes on a finely re-mastered double CD.
‘The Jazz Skyline’, ‘Milt Jackson Quartet’, ‘Telefunken Blues’, ‘Plenty Plenty Soul’ plus three tracks with the Thelonious Monk Quartet. ‘The Jazz Skyline’ finds Milt in 1957 in a relaxing blowing session, perhaps a thousand miles away from the more structured and complex music he was making with his other ‘day’ band, John Lewis and The Modern Jazz Quartet. For the ‘Quartet’ sessions two years earlier in 1955 Jackson is joined by Horace Silver, Percy Heath and Connie Kay in a set comprising mostly standard material, but none the less intriguing for that…

Curated by the band’s current label, Cherry Red Records, this three disc box set was released in 2008 to herald a complete overhaul of the band’s catalogue from 1976 to 1997. Cherry Red acquired the rights to these albums, and rolled out a reissue programme that saw each album get a dramatic upgrade in sound quality, accompanied by bonus discs of previously unreleased songs or live takes. However, while Hawkwind’s legacy is impressive, it’s fair to say that not every album is a winner, and certainly in the later years the albums suffered from a lot of filler, and leader Dave Brock tended to recycle and re-record older tracks and simply badge them with new titles. This set manages to filter out a lot of the weaker material, and concentrates on the tracks that define Hawkwind at their best…

Another leap in musical sophistication made Yello's second album another high point in the development of synth pop. The future of Euro-disco and dance-pop are easily audible from the opening "Daily Disco" and other tracks like "Pinball Cha Cha," "The Evening's Young," and "Cuad el Habib." Though Claro Que Si is slightly more pop-oriented than the group's debut, with Boris Blank's electronics just as innovative and obtuse as before, that's hardly a step backward.

Universal’s 2011 Deluxe Edition of the Kinks’ second album, Kinda Kinks, finds the 12-track album supported by a 23-track collection of non-LP cuts, including both sides of the “Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy,” “Set Me Free,” “See My Friends,” and “Never Met a Girl Like You Before” singles; the Kwyet Kinks EP, which includes “A Well Respected Man”; no less than six demos, many of which are unreleased Ray Davies originals (“I Go to Sleep” saw the light of day on a previous CD reissue); alternate takes of “See My Friends” and “Come on Now”; and BBC sessions including the songs “This Strange Effect” and “Hide and Seek,” which never popped up on a Kinks LP…

Another fine effort from Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers, Alphabet Blues alternates between first-rate slow blues and cooking uptempo boogies and shuffles, both of which showcase their versatile, many-sided talents. There are a few weak songs, but the album on the whole is quite entertaining.