Jumping With the Big Swing Bands collects various swing-era tracks by such popular dance band leaders as Louis Prima, Jimmie Lunceford, and Harry James. Included here are such rare cuts as Lunceford's "Sit Back and Ree-Lax" and "Shut Out."

What a nice surprise to get a new album from this Finnish band, already five years since their second album Behind the Curtains. But as the extended title suggests, this is a special project. Some background information first: in April 2015 the core members of Paidarion (drummer Kimmo Pörsti and bassist Jan-Olof Strandberg) invited several friends from various countries to join them on a small tour in southern Finland. These friends were the US vocalist Jenny Darren, British hard-rock bassist Kev Moore, Hungarian guitarist Ákos Bogáti-Bokor (leader of the bands Yesterdays and Tabula Smaragdina), Finnish electronic music -oriented musician Otso Pakarinen, and Robert Webb (best known as the frontman of the 70's band ENGLAND)…

When your debut album is released on the taste-making underground label Stones Throw and declared fantastic by both John Mayer and Kanye West, you’re unbelievably cool and completely under the microscope. Such is the story of Mayer Hawthorne, the Ann Arbor, Michigan resident who early on did a lot of hip-hop things and such, but for the purposes of his second album and debut for the major label Universal, he’s the neo-soul singer with a gifted voice who uncannily sounds like a ‘60s-era Temptation given the 2011 ability to drop an F-bomb. That may sound like Cee Lo Green, and there’s no doubt that How Do You Do stands in the shadow the Goodie Mob member who got there first, but this particular bespectacled singer looks like a Wall Street intern, making his Motown jones all the more unexpected, and for some, suspect. On top of it, he retains a crate-crawling nerd’s love of nostalgic soul that’s very Stones Throw, so expect some overly authentic numbers where the adherence to an aesthetic is an arguable obstacle.

The constant and destructive waves of noise make this decisively a Merzbow record, but its cosmic mood and rhythms prove that Sun Ra lives in its DNA.

Randle Chowning and Larry Michael Lee, both of which were original founding members of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, along with multi-instrumentalist David Wilson are creating music that can best be described as a pop/folk/americana blend…

Through his extensive work with artists including Carole King and James Taylor, ace session guitarist Danny Kortchmar helped create the signature sound of the singer/songwriter era. A native of New York City, he first emerged during the mid-'60s in local bands including the Kingbees and the Flying Machine, the latter featuring a then-unknown Taylor. In 1967 Kortchmar joined the Fugs, appearing on their Tenderness Junction LP before following bassist Charles Larkey to California, where they teamed with King in the short-lived trio the City…

Along with Furtwangler's Scala Ring, this is my favorite one. And since the sound is better, this one is easier to listen to. Krauss'"Siegfried" is my favorite. I will never understand why so many people consider Solti's Ring as benchmark. To me his is the least exciting. Karajan is too "precious." The characters never come alive in either of those, at least not like they do for Krauss and Furtwangler.