The music media in the early to mid-sixties were alive with talk of a « folk boom » in the UK and indeed there was a burgeoning number of folk clubs open every night of the week, to the point that pretty much every town of any size had one. I remember as late as the early […]
14 covers (10 on the normal version) and two original tunes, one penned in partnership with Jim Vallance and the other with Gretchen Peters ( this only on the Deluxe Edition) on this, the twelfth studio album from Canadian rocker Bryan Adams has tracks from writers such as Lennon and McCartney (Any Time At All), […]
Caroll Vanwelden is a Belgian singer and a graduate of the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but only after having passed her engineering degree in Brussels. Shakespeare Sonnets 2 is, needless to say, the second album of Vanweldens where she puts the bard’s sonnets to music. It’s out now on Jazznarts and my […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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 […]