Hifi Pig

Well, Pink Floyd’s The Endless River has certainly been a long time coming… in fact it’s some twenty years since we were treated to a studio album from the Floyd, the last was 1994’s Division Bell. It’s no surprise then that this record was eagerly anticipated by the band’s legion of followers. This copy comes from HIRESAUDIO on Parlophone and warner Bros as a FLAC file, but there are standard CD, double vinyl and deluxe box sets available.

Floyd’s keyboardist, Rick Wright died of cancer in 2008 but this record is made from concepts and recordings made during the making of Division Bell and can be taken as very much a tribute to Wright… and he is indeed there on the record. The Endless River has taken two years of adding new parts and rerecording others and can be described as an ambient record with just one track (the final track)having a proper lyric…but still it is very much a Pink Floyd record – listen to it and it could be no other band. Production duties, are taken up by  Gilmour, Youth, Andy Jackson and  Phil Manzanera and the album was completed in Gilmour’s studios the Astoria and Medina Studios in Hove (UK). It is widely accepted that there will be no further releases from Pink Floyd after this. More »

The Pop Ambient series of albums from Uber label Kompakt has been delivering the chilled goods since 2001 and never fails to deliver. As the title suggests the style of music herein is accessible ambience and it works very well indeed.

Label boss Wolfgang Voigt is the guy that puts the collection together and he does a damned good job at bringing together new names as well as some that will be recognisable to many. More »

Released in mid-September on Interscope records and Columbia Records and downloaded here from HIRESAUDIO this one was a bit of a surprise for me not least because it’s not that often you get a record put together by an eighty eight year old crooner and someone famed as much for her outrageous dress sense (take the infamous meat dress as an example) as her music. This one has “Approach With Care” written all over it and I did just that, expecting it to get a quick flick through then forever to be relegated to the dustiest and seldom ventured to virtual shelf. More »

In 2011 Chicago resident Sarah Marie Young won the Shure Montreux Vocal competition judged by Quincy Jones and used the prize, a week at the Balik farm Studio in Switzerland, to record her first album of original material, but now she’s signed to Dutch label SnipRecords and has just released her new album Little Candy Heart. More »

I must confess that I missed out on the first wave of punk, but I do distinctly remember seeing a copy of the Sniffin’ Glue fanzine, for which Alternative TVs Mark P was the founding editor, brought into school by one of the cool kids. I also had a couple of Sex Pistol records. Mark P (Perry) left Sniffin’ Glue on the cusp of it possibly going mega to concentrate on his own band and had he followed the herd down the tried and somewhat tested punk formula he’d have made it big. As it was he went down a different path. More »

There’s a fantastic amount of great electronic music coming out of South America at the moment and here we’ve got Brazilian Gui Boratto, once a member of the band Sect, adding to that output with his album Abaporu.

The opening lines of the first track immediately put me in mind of William Orbit and this is no bad thing, but the tune soon becomes its own distinctive groove which sets the scene for the rest of the record. More »

The Turn by Jerome Sabbagh was recorded live by James Farber at Sear Sound, New York City on June 6th 2013 to analogue tape and on this Bee Jazz release from HIGHRESAUDIO it really shows. This is a really fantastic recording in the true tradition of jazz music. There is spontaneity and freedom within the constraints of the song structure and the musicians are laid bare. More »

This album arrived a good while ago and I was really excited when it did as I was a bit of a fan of the Hippy Slags back in the festival days and as readers will know a huge fan of Hawkwind with who Bridget Wishart performed on Space Bandits, Palace Springs, California Brainstorm and Take Me To Your Future.

Look at the line up on Make Believe It Real and it reads like a who’s who in space rock: Daevid Allen of Gong (wishing you a speedy recovery!!!), Harvey Bainbridge, Richard Chadwick, Alan Davey, Simon House, Keith The Bass, Nick May, Twink…the list goes on and on and on. More »

Bob James is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the smooth Jazz sound and has been heavily sampled in more recent years ( NWA, Run DMC, Soul II Soul, Missy Elliot and many more). He began his professional music career at age 8 playing piano for a tap dance class but also plays trumpet, timpani and percussion.

His association with smooth jazz began in 1972 whilst working with Stanley Turpentine and Milt Jackson on the album Cherry and is closely associated with Grover Washington Jr and arranged several of Washington’s albums. If you’ve not heard of James then you may well have heard his music as his tune Angela, from his breakthrough album Touchdown, was used as the theme (he also supplied incidental music) to the US sitcom Taxi which starred Danny Devito More »

él (via Cherry Red) are an interesting label that are putting out some pretty out there and unusual recordings.

One flick through the titles of the tracks on Les Baxter’s Original Quiet Village album will give you a good indication that this is exotica as colourful as it comes; Shanghai Rickshaw, Deep Night and Gardens of the Moon are just random selection. More »

The Brazilian Scene is a collection of tunes from Antonio Carlos Jobim with Herbie Mann (“One Note Samba”), Baden Powell with Herbie Mann (“Consolacao”), Zé Maria with George Ben, Gilberto Gil, Luiz Bonfa (“Murmurio”), Radamés Gnattali and Heitor Villa-Lobos all with a laid-back Brazilian theme which is just perfect for the long awaited summer.

Brazilian Scene opens with the wonderfully infectious “One Note Samba” by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Herbie Mann and is closely followed by “Consolacao”… I’m a bit of a fan of the virtuoso guitar style of Baden Powell anyway and this is as good a starting place as any to become acquainted with his style…though I’d have liked to have had more than just the one tune. More »

“Fresh as the moment when the pod went pop”. Patsy Kensit first entered the UK’s collective consciousness at the age of 4 when she fronted the well loved and iconic Birds Eye peas television advert…I still remember it and I’m sure many others do too!

Eight Wonder were formed by Kensit’s brother Jamie who put her at the front of the band and by all accounts they caused quite a stir with London’s A&R departments before finally signing a deal with CBS. All this was in the heady days of 1985! The band had success in Italy and Japan but in the UK the record buying audience were slower to respond. There was an album – “Fearless” which was released in ’88 but then the band split in ’89! More »

Born in 1955 in Boston but growing up in Hamburg, Richard Schumacher first began to make a name for himself as a session player in the 70s with the likes of Udo Lindenberg and Carsten Bohn’s Bandstand. In the 80’s he studied jazz composition and arrangement at the Berkley School of Music whilst in the 90’s he formed (in Berlin) Vibe Tribe and released the albums “Cool Shoes” and “Foreign Affairs And Views”. More »

Stuart Listening to More Classical Music Shocker… and again quite enjoys it!

Now I don’t know if it’s my impending birthday (I’ll be 47 nurse tells me) or what, but the last two classical music albums I’ve listened to I’ve really enjoyed a great deal indeed.

Alexander Chapman Campbell is a solo pianist who decided that a university life wasn’t for him and so he moved to the North coast of Scotland where he worked as a chef and the rest of the time composed music at his piano. More »

“A crack squad of the finest British early music singers” Early Music Today said about Ensemble Plus Ultra, but as regular readers of my reviews will know I’m no fan of classical music, but only a few weeks ago I was mentioning to Linette that I really quite liked the odd bit of choral music…and then this dropped into my virtual postbox via HIGHRESAUDIO and on the Archiv Produktion label.

Historian, Richard Kagan says that “El Greco and Toledo are one” as this Spanish city was Cretan born Domenikos Theotokopoulos’ home for almost 40 years and it is sacred music intrinsically bound to this city that From Spain to Eternity pays tribute.

All the music is choral and the work of just three composers: Alonso Lobo (1555 – 1617), Cristobel De Morales (1500 -1553) and Francisco Guerrero (1528 – 1599) and it really is quite beautiful.

Ensemble Plus Ultra were formed in 2001 and aim to “promote historically-aware performances of liturgical marvels from the Renaissance” and they do sound glorious on this recording.

I confess to knowing nothing about the music herein but doubt that those more in the know will be in any way disappointed by what they find on “From Spain to Eternity.

The record has certainly whetted my appetite to explore this particular musical niche a little further.