Royal Blue is the first Alligator release from Koko Taylor since 1993's Grammy nominated Force of Nature. This is a mainly up-tempo set with excellent support from several guest appearances by B.B. King, Johnny Johnson, Ken Saydak, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd who contributes some scorching guitar on the Melissa Ethridge-penned hit "Bring Me Some Water." Taylor not only co-produced this release but wrote four of the 12 tracks, including the acoustic "The Man Next Door." On this track, the combination of Koko's passionate voice with Keb Mo's gritty Delta slide guitar makes you wish she would move further in this direction on future releases. Royal Blue proves Koko Taylor is still the undisputed queen of the blues.

Bernd Kistenmacher is a German producer and musician specialised in spherical "kosmische" synthscapes. He started his career in the 80's with a handful of sonic, epic synthezised electronic efforts taking inspiration from Klaus Schulze and the Berlin electronic school. His musical releases deliver complex, achieved floating dreamy-like melodies floating throw deep cerebral spaces.
"Romantic Times" was the third and last production, which was recorded and sold on music cassette audiotapes before Bernd Kistenmacher started to publish his music on vinyl and CDs from autumn 1986 on. "Romantic Times" was released for the first time on CD in 1999.

Remasrered edition with Bonus tracks.
Cinderella returned from their self-imposed exile in late 1994 with Still Climbing, a gritty record that shows them building upon the bluesy hard rock of Heartbreak Station. Arguably, it boasts a more consistent song selection and tougher sound than Heartbreak, yet radio and MTV were resistant to the band's classic good-times-and-hard-rockin' attitude and the record disappeared soon after its release.
Hard rock band Cinderella gained success in the mid-'80s, turning out a series of million-selling albums and hit singles while placing music videos in heavy rotation on MTV. By the mid-'90s, the group's mass popularity had subsided due to professional setbacks and perceived changes in taste…

One strange thing about Eric Clapton's '90s success is that it relied almost entirely on covers and new versions of classic hits; he released no albums of new material between 1989's Journeyman and 1998's Pilgrim. In the decade between the two albums, he had two new hits - his moving elegy to his deceased son, "Tears in Heaven," and the slick contemporary soul of the Babyface-written "Change the World" - and Pilgrim tries to reach a middle ground between these two extremes, balancing tortured lyrics with smooth sonic surfaces. Working with producer Simon Climie, his collaborator on the TDF side project, Clapton has created a numbingly calm record that, for all of its lyrical torment, displays no emotion whatsoever…

Cosmic Circus Music from Goettingen in Lower Saxony played some extremely long spacey improvisations in the manner of the early Ash Ra Tempel without, however, trying to copy them. Although it is completely instrumental it never becomes boring. As they didn’t release any records back then - one MC on Andromeda Press had been planned for 1973 which then, however, didn’t appear - they have hardly been known to the public as yet. There has only been one longer report on them, namely in “Sounds” issue 55 from September 1973. The CD at hand is full to the brim and includes a gig taking place in a Wiesbaden hall called Wartburg on July 14th, 1973. The stereo sound is not perfect but acceptable. During the second part of their gig, the band was joined by guest musician Tim Belbe from Xhol (Caravan), playing the transverse flute.

This live 1990 set makes clear that Cassandra Wilson had fully arrived. In the live setting, she calls on greater reserves of vim than mark her predominantly lolling, brooding studio dates. All to great effect. One senses Betty Carter-like showmanship, Peggy Lee-like swagger, and, of course, Nina Simone's otherworldly drone. Just as formative was Wilson's Joni Mitchell-inspired apprenticeship in the coffeehouses of Jackson, Mississippi, and other southern cities. She breathes fresh life into standards like "'Round Midnight." Her anthem of black resilience, "Don't Look Back," receives driving treatment. A telling selection is Wilson's own composition, "My Corner of the Sky," because its lyrics and delivery transport her to a distinctly personal space of the kind she was coming to inhabit so regally.

Less Is More marks a kind of evolutionary milestone for Marillion. They may have emerged in the early ‘80s as the front-runners of the British neo-progressive movement (alongside the likes of Pendragon, IQ, et al.), but these days it's hard to imagine that the prefix "neo" was ever attached to this longstanding band. Four out of five current members have been on board since the second Marillion album, 1984's Fugazi, and singer Steve Hogarth became a 20-year man the year of Less Is More's release. They've come so far from their over the top, Genesis/Van der Graaf Generator-indebted beginnings that it's difficult to believe they're even the same group. Of course, in many ways, they aren't; that's the whole point of Less Is More, which finds Marillion revisiting songs from all across the last 20 years of their discography in new acoustic-based arrangements…

For this album, multi-instrumentalist Gandalf was on his own again (except for some fleeting wordless vocals by Pippa Armstrong). This album is noteworthy in bringing in many elements of what might be called World-Music and New-Age respectively. This bright and colourful music is mostly soft and dreamy and Gandalf concentrates here on atmospheres and moods more so than on creating melodies, yet he still manages to make varied and pleasant instrumental music.

Germany’s Warfield has come to break necks and breathe new life into the thrash genre, echoing the legacy of Kreator, Sodom and Destruction! With their devotion to idols like Tom Angelripper, the three know how to play tight with brutal, shredding riffs and rapid, speeding beats. Witness their new release, the unstoppable inferno With The Old Breed! With their latest record, Warfield explores the unembellished and emotional depiction of societal, historical, social and internal wars - expressing criticism of the bitter part of reality. “Soul Conqueror" explores the dark aftermath of conflict, where departed souls wander, while songs like "Appetitive Aggression" dive deep into the primal instinct of humanity with light-speed riffs and relentless energy. It's time for new thrash metal legends from Germany to arise, bonded by blood with the heroes from the past. Battle awaits…

Although a touch underrated, Jazz at Oberlin is one of the early Dave Brubeck classic recordings. The interplay between the pianist-leader and altoist Paul Desmond on "Perdido" borders on the miraculous, and their renditions of "The Way You Look Tonight," "How High the Moon" and "Stardust" are quite memorable. Brubeck's piano playing on "These Foolish Things" is so percussive and atonal in one spot as to sound like Cecil Taylor, who would not emerge for another two years. With bassist Ron Crotty and drummer Lloyd Davis giving the Quartet quiet and steady support, Brubeck and Desmond were free to play at their most adventurous.

Robert Wyatt continues to follow his singular musical path with the lovely Shleep, delivering another album of considerable quirky charm and understated beauty; a less melancholy affair than much of his recent work, the record is informed by a hazy, dreamlike quality perfectly in keeping with the elements of subconsciousness implicit in the title.

This is one of the best examples of timeless music. Environmental ambience with slow intense beats and liquid melodies including a lot of "Berliner Schule" sequencing is the best way to describe this rich music. The only exception to this is the track "Aura" that sends you into slow meandering dreamscapes with its Tetsu-typical pure, positive, floating sound of ambience.

Released in 1970 during the stopgap between Stand! and There's a Riot Goin' On, Greatest Hits inadvertently arrived at precisely the right moment, summarizing Sly & the Family Stone's joyous hit-making run on the pop and R&B charts. Technically, only four songs here reached the Top Ten, with only two others hitting the Top 40, but judging this solely on charts is misleading, since this is simply a peerless singles collection. This summarizes their first four albums perfectly (almost all of Stand! outside of the two jams and "Somebody's Watching You" is here), adding the non-LP singles "Hot Fun in the Summertime," "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," and "Everybody Is a Star," possibly the loveliest thing they ever recorded…

Keith Moon's (The Who) 1975 solo album Two Sides of the Moon has been described as "the most expensive karaoke album in history," and even as that, it was a colossal failure, the perfect expression of drunken self-indulgence, and it was so fascinatingly bad that it has assumed a certain cult status. But make no mistake, it was a horrible album on all counts made by a brilliant drummer who chose barely to play drums on it (he appears behind the kit on only three tracks) but instead chose to sing, even though he was tone deaf by his own admission. The presence of seemingly every musician then in L.A. at the sessions, an impressive list that included Dick Dale, Spencer Davis, Bobby Keys, Rick Nelson, Harry Nilsson, John Sebastian, Ringo Starr, Joe Walsh, and countless rumored others, failed to redeem Two Sides of the Moon. Even taken as kitsch, it sucked.

Guitar-slinging progeny of the great Chicago bluesman Luther Allison, Bernard Allison has proved that great music runs in the blood with a series of high power urban blues albums. Beginning with the viciously funky title track, Chills & Thrills immediately kicks the party into overdrive, briefly letting up only to get a bit jammy (“So Devine”) or momentarily reflective (“Compromising for Your Needs”).