TRIX was formed in 2004, led by drummer Noriaki Kumagai (ex-Casiopea), with bassist Mitsuru Sutoh (ex-T-Square) and now guitarist Yuya Komoguchi and keyboardist AYAKI has joined the group. Their very ear-catcy music with thrilling techniques, and entertaining stage performance have been widely accepted among fans. Some of their songs are featured as the main theme of TV programs.

He's Coming captures Roy Ayers at the absolute top of his game, masterminding jazz-funk grooves as taut as a tightrope. Profoundly inspired by the Broadway musical Jesus Christ Superstar (and including a reading of the soundtrack's "I Don't Know How to Love Him"), the album is a deeply felt exploration of Ayers' spiritual and social beliefs, celebrating the life and rebirth of Jesus with "He's a Superstar" and its follow-up title cut before delivering the equally impassioned political manifesto "Ain't Got Time to Be Tired," a wake-up call for slumbering revolutionaries. Aided by an exemplary backing unit featuring saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist John Williams, keyboardist Harry Whitaker, and drummer Billy Cobham, Ayers channels the intensity of his message into his music, creating the most vibrant and textured music of his career to date.

For the sake of both vocal and family well-being, Anne Sofie von Otter has always followed the wise course of self-rationing in opera. This disc, an entirely personal selection of arias from the Viennese Classical period, means all the more to her including, as it does, arias sung by dramatic and passionate women 'most of whom', she admits in the accompanying notes, 'I have never performed on stage and, alas, probably never will'.

Monteverdi - Madrigali Guerrieri Ed Amorosi - Concerto Vocale, René Jacobs (2002) {2CD Set Harmonia Mundi HMC 901736.37}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 701 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 369 Mb
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© 2001 Harmonia Mundi | HMC 901736.37
Classical / Baroque / Vocal Music

Monteverdi was seventy-one when he published his Eighth Book of madrigals. This collection, a monumental work of remarkable beauty, is a synthesis of all Monteverdi's experience in the realm of secular music. It is the culmination of a genre, the Italian madrigal, which here achieves a rare state of perfection. INDISPENSABLE!

Friedemann - Echoes Of A Shattered Sky (2012) {Biber 76841 Digital Download}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 285 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 108 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2012 Biber Records / in-akustik | Biber 76841
Jazz / Contemporary Instrumental Music / Nu-Jazz / Guitar

In the beginning there was the shattered sky. A window – slammed shut. The glass – broken. The view outside – obscured. Inside: destruction. The end. While scenes like these evoke some terrible drama, they are part of our lives. They occur in our individual biographies as well as in the world as a whole. Everywhere. All the time. Guitarist / composer Friedemann Witecka found an impressive account of sky-shattering on a national scale while reading »Stasiland« by the Australian writer Anna Funder. In this book, published 2003, he discovered the phrase: »pieces of a shattered sky«. The collaps of his own sky occurred in 2010. It was the end which marked the beginning of a new album entitled »Echoes Of A Shattered Sky«.

Shirley Scott - Superstition (1973) {2013 Soul Brother Records CD SBCS 58}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 276 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 94 Mb
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© 1973, 2013 Soul Brother Records / Passion Music / Verve / Cadet | CD SBCS 58
Jazz / Soul Jazz / Funk Jazz / Organ Hammond B-3

One of the coolest, grooviest albums ever from Hammond giant Shirley Scott – a set that's got a fair bit of funk in the mix, and a really rich array of inventive lines on the keyboards too! The tracks are longer than usual, and really step past the more familiar Shirley Scott modes of the 60s – opening up into more righteous 70s territory in the company of Chess/Cadet Records – with arrangements from Richard Evans that are as sophisticated as they are funky!

This 2016 release followed on an immensely successful 2014 performance of the Fauré Requiem, Op. 48, and in many ways it's a partner to the earlier recording. The Fauré had a historical-performance aspect, re-creating the 1889 premiere even down to the specific organ stops used. In this case, historical performance is not involved: the version of the Duruflé Requiem performed is not the original, but a 1961 revision for mezzo-soprano, chorus, organ, and chamber orchestra. But the forces bring the music close to the overall effect of the Fauré, with boy sopranos of the Choir of King's College connecting the two performances. In both recordings, the organ is brought to the foreground and issues almost electronic-like sounds that shoot beams of mystic light through the small Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. It's gorgeous, and it might easily result in a revival for this version of the work. Conductor Stephen Cleobury does wonderfully with his mezzo-soprano soloist: for sampling, you could luxuriate in the "Pie Jesu," with its restrained instrumental backing making the music less operatic and more cantata-like. You also get a pair of little-known Duruflé works, the Quatre Motets sur des thèmes Grégoriens, Op. 10, and the Messe "Cum jubilo," Op. 11, with chorus, organ, and one soloist; each of these could challenge the conception of Duruflé as a one-hit wonder. Yet the biggest news here is the Duruflé Requiem itself, and the way the work retains its slightly otherworldly quality in this intimate version.

“BCUC will come correct with their energetic, unique and magic formula; the voices of their ancestors, mixed with funk, punk-rock vibrations, hip-hop, Fela-inflections and much more in between.”