This CD represents a great live recording of this classic Southern boogie band. ARS always showed a level of sophistication and musical taste above and beyond the typical good ole boy bands, and the material here shows that off well. The range of music goes from balladic cuts to bluesy/jazzy jams and classic Southern rock all the way to mainstream AOR performances. Of course, the highlights of the disc are the band's most well-known numbers, "Spooky" and "So Into You". Their cover of "Long Tall Sally" is a great album closer.

The sound and band that served Sergio Mendes well on Fool on the Hill remain intact on Crystal Illusions, with few modifications. Dave Grusin is right there with a lush, haunting orchestral chart when needed; Lani Hall is thrust further into the vocal spotlight, as cool and alluring as ever in Portuguese or English. Mendes remained on the lookout for fresh Brazilian tunes, and he came up with a coup, one of the earliest covers of a Milton Nascimento tune to reach North America, "Vera Cruz" (with Hall's English lyrics, it became "Empty Faces"), as well as Dori Caymmi's "Dois Dias."

Bucharest Madrigal Chamber Chorus / Marin Constantin - Documents of Vocal Culture in Wallachia, Moldova and Transylvania
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 284 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Electrochord # ELCD 100 | Country/Year: Romania 1990
Genre: Classical, Medieval, Folk | Style: Vocal Music

…These 17 hymns and chants, dating from the 14th through the early-18th centuries, are sung in Greek, Romanian, Latin, and Italian, and are beautiful examples of early vocal music, sung as closely as possible to the way they were historically. The beauty of these pieces is powerful and striking, and the growing complexity of the melodies as the pieces move chronologically through the centuries is fascinating to follow…

Swedish extreme tech-metal pioneers MESHUGGAH will release their eighth album, "The Violent Sleep Of Reason", on October 7 via Nuclear Blast. The effort was inspired by a Goya painting called "The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters". "The Violent Sleep Of Reason" was produced by the band and was engineered by Tue Madsen of Puk Studios in Kaerby, Denmark. For the cover, the band once again enlisted Keerych Luminokaya who created the artwork for "Koloss" and "The Ophidian Trek" as well as the new images for each of the seven albums and three EPs featured in the "25 Years Of Musical Deviance" box set.

new album for 2010, this is an album of newly recorded tracks from the past, all our hits and songs we enjoy playing live. There is a completely new version of ‘more than I can bear’ and a great version of ‘ half a minute’ featuring Hazel Sim on vocals and re-mixed by Joey Negro which is catching lots of attention.

Finnish melodic metal quintet SONATA ARCTICA will release its ninth album, titled "The Ninth Hour", on October 7 via Nuclear Blast. Once again, the CD was produced by SONATA ARCTICA themselves and mixed by Pasi Kauppinen to create a typical yet refreshing sound that defines the spirit of the band in the year 2016.