Smooth jazz trumpeter Patches Stewart teams up with bassist/producer Marcus Miller on Blow. Sounding like a total blend of mid-'60s and early-'90s Miles Davis, Stewart deftly mixes modal trumpet lines and punchy muted asides with funky processed beats. Taken as a whole, the album brings to mind Davis' Doo-Bop more than Kind of Blue, and in that sense it is a pleasingly adventurous post-bop/funk-jazz meets instrumental pop outing.

BIG PICTURE were a five piece band from Chicago, Illinois, who produced just one self-titled album in 1993. The line up consisted of Scott PIEPER (lead vocals, guitar), Steve MOZDEN (guitar), Mark PIEPER (keyboards, vocals), Paul BIVANS (drums, percussion), and Norm GRIFFIN (bass). Mark had previously founded Genesis cover band Harlequin, and indeed the music of BIG PICTURE certainly suggests Genesis as an influence. But there are also hints of Yes, Rush and Saga here too, and Scott's vocals are not unlike those of Supertramp's Roger Hodgson in places. The album was well produced, and the songs are structured, highly melodic Neo-Prog, with excellent musicianship evident in all departments. A second album was planned, but sadly the band stalled during its recording.

"Continuum" is one of the top albums of the '80s and a leading contender for best ECM release of that decade. The sound is extraordinary as is typical with many other Manfred Eicher produced ECM recordings. Bruninghaus' compositions are catchy and his keyboard work is exquisitely tasteful.

Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles, set in Sri Lanka, is known above all for its unforgettable duet for tenor and baritone, but it its score is full of delightful and dramatic music. When recently staged at the Metropolitan Opera in New York it proved a major success, both for the production by Penny Woolcock and the musical performance, conducted by Paolo Noseda, with (once again) Diana Damrau as the priestess Leïla and, as the two men competing for love, the tenor Matthew Polenzani (Nadir) and the baritone Mariusz Kwiecien (Zurga). Woolcock’s concept brought the production up to date, with photographic and video references to the 2004 tsunami, and offered a superb ‘aquatic’ spectacle during the overture: the whole stage appeared to be beneath the Indian Ocean and acrobatic divers ‘swam’ down from the surface (located in the flies of the theatre).

Stay on it! This is the future! This is the spectral dreaming, the reshaped soundwaves of post-Katrina, post-Osage Avenue, post-Obamacare that we borrow from to do this work, so stay on it.

Sightless Pit brings together three of the most ambitious and prolific minds in heavy music today. The trio, comprised of Lee Buford of The Body, Kristin Hayter of Lingua Ignota and Dylan Walker of Full of Hell, combine their profound talents and eclectic tastes to make music that is defiantly original and emotionally sublime. Grave of a Dog was crafted without any clear rules or guidelines beyond their desire to work with one another. The central pillar to what coheres the three into a unified voice throughout the album is a shared bleak vision of existence and a willingness to follow each other into bold new territory. While their collaboration borrows keystones from each members’ musical arsenal, from Buford’s singular percussion and production to Walker’s venomous howl to Hayter’s virtuosic voice, in tandem the trio carve out a path all their own for a wildly dynamic and exhilarating experience.

Limited release of a gorgeous compilation of 15 songs from the precious catalog of 70's Soul Production ROADSHOW, which is famous for Seoul fans due to the nationwide hit of BT Express! The best and rare enthusiasts from beginners and enthusiasts, from troupes from Detroit who are popular with soul and vocalist fans in Japan, from entrants and don downings that are re-evaluated, from touch of class to precious singles. collection! 2017 latest remaster / new Japanese commentary included!

One could easily make the case for designating the Masters Apprentices as the best Australian rock band of the '60s. Featuring singer Jim Keays and songwriter/rhythm guitarist Mick Bower, the band's earliest recordings combined the gritty R&B/rock of Brits like the Pretty Things with the minor-key melodies of the Yardbirds…

Andreya Triana owes the existence of this album to a chance meeting with Simon Green, aka Bonobo, who featured her on his Black Sands album and then offered to produce her first full-length effort. The result is a debut album of impressive beauty and maturity, one that documents a long musical and personal voyage fraught with heartbreak, but never succumbs to self-indulgent sentiment or confessional mawkishness. Part of what keeps things tight is Green's production style. The setting he creates for "Draw the Stars" is both completely unique (marimbas, strings, unidentifiable percussion) and straightforwardly beautiful, hinting at funkiness without stating it explicitly. He gets much more outspokenly funky on the horn-driven "Up in Fire," and torchy on "Daydreamers," and jazzy on "Far Closer," and his arrangements are almost invariably brilliant…

Teenage Shutdown: Jump, Jive and Harmonize, subtitled 'Pounding, Pulverizing, All-Out Punk Dance Ravers,' was the very first Teenage Shutdown collection to be compiled by Crypt Records' Tim Warren from mid-'60s garage rock/garage punk singles owned by collector Mike 'Moptop' Markesich. As with the other compilations in this series, this one is lovingly prepared and features good mastering. There aren't too many band photos to be found in the foldout insert booklet; there are colorful scans of the single labels, but only a few black-and-white photos of the groups involved. The liner notes - penned by Markesich - go into a little bit of detail about the groups involved, many of which are more well-known, overall, than most of the groups which can be found included on CDs in this series…

He might have had a hand in some 19 albums, but Andrew Weatherall rarely works alone. From Keith Tenniswood (in Two Loneswordsmen) to Gary Burns and Jagz Koone (as Sabres of Paradise), the best chapters in this auteur's proud discography are results of collaborative partnerships. As The Asphodells, he pairs off with Timothy J Fairplay, a cohort from the near mythical Scrutton Street studio where the likes of fellow analogue alchemists Death in Vegas and Daniel Avery also do their dirty do. The resulting partnership gives rise to music that is a gauzy, coal-stained mesh of various guitar genres all married to a chugging electronic beat and dub-wise swagger…