Month: May 2019

The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin (2005) [DVD-Audio ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 23, 2019 · Comments off

So where does a band go after releasing the most defiantly experimental record of its career? If you’re the Flaming Lips, you keep rushing headlong into the unknown — The Soft Bulletin, their follow-up to the four-disc gambit Zaireeka, is in many ways their most daring work yet, a plaintively emotional, lushly symphonic pop masterpiece eons removed from the mind-warping noise of their past efforts. Though more conventional in concept and scope than Zaireeka, The Soft Bulletin clearly reflects its predecessor’s expansive sonic palette. Its multidimensional sound is positively celestial, a shape-shifting pastiche of blissful melodies, heavenly harmonies, and orchestral flourishes; but for all its headphone-friendly innovations, the music is still amazingly accessible, never sacrificing popcraft in the name of radical experimentation. (Its aims are so perversely commercial, in fact, that hit R&B remixer Peter Mokran tinkered with the cuts “Race for the Prize” and “Waitin’ for a Superman” in the hopes of earning mainstream radio attention.) But what’s most remarkable about The Soft Bulletin is its humanity — these are Wayne Coyne’s most personal and deeply felt songs, as well as the warmest and most giving. No longer hiding behind surreal vignettes about Jesus, zoo animals, and outer space, Coyne pours his heart and soul into each one of these tracks, poignantly exploring love, loss, and the fate of all mankind; highlights like “The Spiderbite Song” and “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” are so nakedly emotional and transcendentally spiritual that it’s impossible not to be moved by their beauty. There’s no telling where the Lips will go from here, but it’s almost beside the point — not just the best album of 1999, The Soft Bulletin might be the best record of the entire decade. (more…)

The Doobie Brothers – The Captain and Me (2001) [DVD-Audio ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 23, 2019 · Comments off

The Doobie Brothers’ third long-player was the charm, their most substantial and consistent album to date, and one that rode the charts for a year. It was also a study in contrasts, Tom Johnston’s harder-edged, bolder rocking numbers balanced by Patrick Simmons’ more laid-back country-rock ballad style. The leadoff track, Johnston’s “Natural Thing,” melded the two, opening with interlocking guitars and showcasing the band’s exquisite soaring harmonies around a beautiful melody, all wrapped up in a midtempo beat — the result was somewhere midway between Allman Brothers-style virtuosity and Eagles/Crosby & Nash-type lyricism, which defined this period in the Doobies’ history and gave them a well-deserved lock on the top of the charts. Next up was the punchy, catchy “Long Train Runnin’,” a piece they’d been playing for years as an instrumental — a reluctant Johnston was persuaded by producer Ted Templeman to write lyrics to it and record the song, and the resulting track became the group’s next hit. The slashing, fast-tempo “China Grove” and “Without You” represented the harder side of the Doobies’ sound, and were juxtaposed with Simmons’ romantic country-rock ballads “Clear as the Driven Snow,” and “South City Midnight Lady.” Simmons also showed off his louder side with “Evil Woman,” while Johnston showed his more reflective side with “Dark Eyed Cajun Woman,” “Ukiah” and “The Captain and Me” — the latter, a soaring rocker clocking in at nearly five minutes, features radiant guitars and harmonies, soaring ever higher and faster to a triumphant finish. (more…)

The Crystal Method – Legion of Boom (2004) [DVD-Audio ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 23, 2019 · Comments off

By late 2003, the bombastic sonic signature of big beat had finally been fully co-opted by the advertising and extreme sports industries. The style’s roots had never run much deeper than a few adventurous breakbeats anyway, but attached to everything from pricey spots for cell phones and sports cars to hyper-edited snowboarding highlight reels, big beat inevitably plateaued. When it did, the formula established by the Crystal Method with their 1997 debut became the accepted template. Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland have remained busy children since Vegas, issuing a sophomore full-length and a well-received mix record. They’ve returned with Legion of Boom, an album that breaks little new ground, but further entrenches the Method as America’s finest producers of dance music made for rock & roll people. “Born Too Slow” chops up a slick and dirty Wes Borland guitar riff over thumping bass beats and the decidedly rock yowl of John Garcia (ex-Kyuss); Borland’s discordant mayhem later resurfaces for “Weapons of Mass Distortion,” which breaks exactly where you expect it to but is nevertheless the kind of throbbing, hedonistic track expensive nightclub sound systems were invented for. The Method tap DJ Swamp for an assist on “The American Way,” which establishes a methodical, percussive groove for Rahzel to rap over, and manipulate the moans of Milla Jovovich for the moody “I Know It’s You,” which glints and flashes like pink neon off the tinted windows of a speeding limo. This is ultimately what separates Jordan and Kirkland’s music from the tinfoil beats and breaks of the average advertisement clamoring for hip. Legion of Boom is definitely a product of formula, but it packs the promise of afterhours hanky panky. It causes nocturnal groove instead of shilling for green shaving cream. In short, the Crystal Method’s tracks deliver on the escapism their followers can only suggest. Legion of Boom: coming soon to a late-night lounge near you. (more…)

The Carl Verheyen Band – Take One Step (2006) [DVD-AUDIO ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 23, 2019 · Comments off

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The Count Basie Big Band – Basie Swings (2002) [DVD-AUDIO ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 23, 2019 · Comments off

This audio DVD features the Count Basie big band performing various songs from his career. While these performances are available elsewhere, collectors may be interested in the remastered sound. (more…)

Konstantin Scherbakov, Dmitry Yablonsky, Russian Philharmonic Orekstra – Tchaikovsky: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 3 (2004) [DVD-AUDIO ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 22, 2019 · Comments off

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Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – Mojo (2010) [DVD-AUDIO ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 22, 2019 · Comments off

Tom Petty has been fronting the Heartbreakers off and on (mostly on) for over 30 years now, and he and his band have been delivering a high level of no-frills, classy, and reconstituted American garage rock through all of it. Petty often gets lumped in with artists like Bruce Springsteen, whose careful and worked-over lyrics carry a kind of instant nostalgia, but Petty’s songwriting at its best cleverly bounces off of romance clichés, often with a desperate, lustful drawl and sneer, and he’s usually been more concerned with the here and now than he is about musing about what’s been abused and lost in contemporary America, although he’s certainly not blind to it. Petty has always been more immediate than that — until now, that is. Mojo is Petty’s umpteenth album, and technically the first he’s done with the Heartbreakers since 2002’s sly The Last DJ. This time out he’s tackling the blues, trying to graft the Heartbreakers’ (Mike Campbell on guitar, Scott Thurston on guitar and harmonica, Benmont Tench on keyboards, Ron Blair on bass, and Steve Ferrone on drums) patented 1960s garage sound to the Chicago blues sound of Chess Records in the 1950s. Sonically it certainly works, mostly because this is a wonderful band, but then it all seems a little tired, worn, and exhausted, too, and not a single song here has that certain desperate, determined defiance that Petty has always delivered in the past with a knowing sneer and a little leering wink. The opener, “Jefferson Jericho Blues,” is a case in point. It starts by being a song about Thomas Jefferson’s dalliance with one of his black maids, and it could have been a scathing indictment of an out-of-date Southern attitude, contemporary racism, and so much more. Instead, it tumbles unfocused into, well, a song about missing a girl and how time moves slow, and one can’t help but wonder why Petty dragged Thomas Jefferson and his maid into any of it in the first place. Petty has never sounded so emotionally drained and detached as a vocalist as he does on this album, and while it’s nice to hear the Heartbreakers flirt with the blues — and to hear Campbell’s clear, precise slide guitar playing — there’s no excuse for not having solid songs to scaffold it. There’s a worn-out, regretful, and boringly meditative tone to so many tracks here — this is not what one expects from a band that rocks as fine as this one can. Again, the playing is solid, but one wishes Petty & the Heartbreakers had simply covered some of those old Chess classics rather than trying half-heartedly to write their own — it would have made for an album closer to intent. (more…)

Toby Keith – Shock’n Y’all (2005) [DVD-AUDIO ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 22, 2019 · Comments off

Since Toby Keith not only can come across as a loudmouth redneck but seems to enjoy being a loudmouth redneck, it’s easy for some listeners to dismiss him as a backwoods right-wing crank — particularly when he succumbs to such easy impulses as mocking Dixie Chick Natalie Maines in concert and naming his 2003 album Shock’n Y’All, not so cleverly spinning the military catch phrase from the second Iraq war into a bad pun. Those listeners aren’t entirely wrong, since he can succumb to reactionary politics, as on swill like “Beer for My Horses,” but Keith isn’t coming from a didactic right-wing standpoint. He’s an old-fashioned, cantankerous outlaw who’s eager to be as oversized and larger than life as legends like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson, who bucked conventions and spoke their minds. Sure, Keith enjoys pandering to the Fox News Republicans “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” won him, and his jingoistic ventures don’t have the humanity and humor of Haggard’s protest songs (although to Keith’s credit they display far more humanity than Sean Hannity and are much more genuine than Steve Earle’s post-9/11 songs), but that doesn’t mean Keith doesn’t have a big, warm heart. In fact, on every album prior to Shock’n Y’All he’s displayed a taste for mawkish sentiment, but what makes this album work is that he’s turned that sentiment into warmth while making the record into the hardest, toughest set of songs he’s yet made. Unleashed gave him the clout to make any kind of music he wanted, and left to his own devices, he’s lonesome, on’ry, and mean, a cheerful advocate of redneck libertarianism with a sly sense of humor. All of which wouldn’t mean much if he wasn’t a strong songwriter, and more than any of his previous works, Shock’n Y’All proves that he’s a steady-handed journeyman, crafting songs in the tradition of classic outlaw country. It’s a deliberately hard-driving, hard-drinking, gutsy country album, yet it doesn’t shy away from modernism, best illustrated on “Sweet,” with its funky rhythms and use of “babelicious” (which rhymes with “delicious,” btw). Even with these modern flourishes, the album is firmly within the hard country tradition, with lots of barroom humor, propulsive rhythms, hearty humor, and a humanity that contradicts the rabble-rousing of Unleashed. And if Keith is more of a party-hearty hound than a profound singer — even when he imagines “If I Was Jesus,” it’s only so he can turn water into wine at parties — that’s now an attribute, not a deficiency, since it gives him focus and sensibility. Keith is happy to be a dirty old SOB, cracking jokes, drinking beer, and flirting with the ladies, and that makes Shock’n Y’All a fun, rough, rowdy album that wins you over despite your better impulses. It’s not polite, but Shock’n Y’All is pure Toby Keith, and the best album he’s done to date. (more…)

T-Bone Walker – Back On The Scene (2003) [DVD-Audio ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 22, 2019 · Comments off

Guitarist T-Bone Walker is one of the links–if not THE link–between the suave, intricate jazz styles of Charlie Christian and Lonnie Johnson and the crackling electricity of Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix. Not only is he massively influential as a guitarist, but he was a dynamic showman (played that guitar behind his head way before Hendrix did) and his original songs have become standards (“Stormy Monday Blues”). Originally entitled HOME COOKING, this 1966 album from blues wizard T-Bone Walker, where he’s accompanied by only three other musicians (with no drummer), proves the blues can be mellow without losing the sting or the zing. (more…)

Jonathan Faralli – Percussion XX (1999) [ADVD] {FLAC 24bit/96khz}

DVD-A By admin · May 20, 2019 · Comments off

Jonathan Faralli – Percussion XX (1999)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 76:49 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
DAD to Hi-Res FLAC – Source: ARTS Music 47558-6 | Artwork

Percussion XX showcases the talents of Italian percussionist Jonathan Faralli with a selection of compositions for percussion from the 20th Century. Featuring compositions by Hans Werner Henze, Elliott Carter, John Cage, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, this disc is a welcome addition to our small collection of percussion recordings. (more…)

Studio Voodoo – Studio Voodoo (2002) [DVD-Audio ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 20, 2019 · Comments off

A conceptual “sound experience,” STUDIO VOODOO (Gary Mraz & Ted Price) mixes elements of world music, jazz, flamenco, opera, techno, tribal drumming, and electronica. Impossible to describe in words, this inventive experiment has been acclaimed by musicians across all genres (from Nine Inch Nails’s Chris Vrenna to Mike Simpson of the Dust Brothers.) This aural celebration is a marvel of innovation and intensity. (more…)

George Strait – Honkytonkville (2003) [DVD-Audio ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 20, 2019 · Comments off

The release of Honkytonkville should make anyone who harbored insane thoughts about George Strait having his best years behind him certifiable. While it may be his 27th album — not counting greatest-hits and Christmas records — Strait sounds hungrier than ever here. Produced by Strait and Tony Brown, the tough barroom ballads and breakneck dance tracks are back with a vengeance, and the material, written by the more imaginative tunesmiths in Nash Vegas, is his strongest in a decade. A quick for-instance is the jukebox-breaking opener, “She Used to Say That to Me,” penned by Jim Lauderdale and John Scott Sherrill. Done is a slick 4/4 with a Wynn Stewart-esque melody line and a lyric that’s as tender as it is tough, Strait wraps that voice of his around all the pain in it and comes out still standing. The title track, written by Buddy Brock, Dean Dillon (who is well represented here), and Kim Williams, is a fiddle-laden traditionalist anthem to the ghosts of people and places gone yet ever present. “Look Who’s Back in Town,” with its gorgeous piano lines (reminiscent of a Billy Sherrill production) sounds like a country version of Johnny Rivers’ “Poor Side of Town,” while everybody had better watch it because “Cowboys Like Us” could signal a return to outlaw country. The weepers work too, such as “Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa,” the Guy Clark-inspired “Desperately” by Bruce Robison and Monte Warden, and the soul-country of “Heaven Is Missing an Angel.” But the barnburner on this one is “I Found Jesus on the Jailhouse Floor.” It may be a gospel song, but it’ll have the honky tonky line dancers pounding the beer before sweating it out on the dancefloor on the Saturday night before Sunday morning. It is completely conceivable to hear this song being done by Merle Haggard’s Strangers in 1967 or by Buck Owens in 1969. “Honk if You Honky Tonk,” another Dillon joint, is harder rocking than anybody but Montgomery Gentry — and they will kick themselves for not recording it first. If the DJs at country radio can hear, they’ll be playing the hell out of this one — it’s got five or six singles if it has one. Not that Strait was ever anything but country; this is the first hard country album of 2003, and he’s got the torch burning bright for the tradition while not giving up an inch of his modernity. (more…)

Sting – Brand New Day (2003) [DVD-Audio ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 20, 2019 · Comments off

By the late ’90s, Sting had reached a point where he didn’t have to prove his worth every time out; he had so ingrained himself in pop culture, he really had the freedom to do whatever he wanted. He had that attitude on Mercury Falling, but it was too somber and serious, everything that its successor, Brand New Day, is not. Light, even effervescent, Brand New Day feels like little else in Sting’s catalog. Not that it represents a new beginning, contrary to what the title may promise. The album is not only firmly within his tradition, it sounds out of time — it’s odd how close Brand New Day comes to feeling like a sequel to Nothing Like the Sun. Musically, that is. The sparkling, meticulous production and the very tone of the music — ranging from light funk to mellow ballads to the Lyle Lovett tribute “Fill Her Up” — are of a piece with Sting’s late-’80s work. That’s the main thing separating it from Ten Summoner’s Tales, his other straight pop album — well, that, and the levity. There are no overarching themes, no political messages on Brand New Day — only love songs, story songs, and, for lack of a better term, inspirational exhortations. This is all a good thing, since by keeping things light he’s managed to craft an appealing, engaging record. It may not ask as much from its audience as Sting’s other ’90s efforts, but it’s immediately enjoyable, which isn’t the case for its cousins. Brand New Day doesn’t boast any new classics, and it does sound a little dated, but it’s well-crafted, melodic, and has a good sense of humor — exactly the kind of record Sting should be making as he embarks on the third decade of his career. (more…)

Steven Wilson – Grace for Drowning (2011) [DVD-Audio ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 20, 2019 · Comments off

For prolific British progressive rocker Steven Wilson, the two-CD set Grace for Drowning is his second official solo album, following 2008’s Insurgentes. Recording under his own name, Wilson tends to fall somewhere between his popular Porcupine Tree group project and his ambient recordings as Bass Communion. Grace for Drowning’s two discs are divided into one called Deform to Form a Star and another called Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye, both named after tracks on them. In the relatively sparse lyrics that Wilson sings with a calm, British-accented tenor, he seems melancholy at first, apparently suffering from the aftermath of a romantic breakup. “There’s nothing left for me to say or do,” he declares in “Postcard.” By the second disc, he has become angrier about the situation, but the closing title track finds him reaching resolution and moving on. The words are spread out over music that builds and ebbs in a manner that allows for different styles and soloing by Wilson and a few musical guests. He is not abashed about evoking his prog predecessors. The obvious antecedent is Pink Floyd, particularly recalled in the space rock of “No Part of Me.” The 23-minute “Raider II,” coming toward the end, allows room for a flute-and-piano section that could have been excerpted from a Traffic album as well as guitar-bass-drum sections in rapid 6/4 time suggestive of Yes. By the end, Wilson has subsided into an ambient coda on “Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye,” as if readying himself for the next Bass Communion album. Grace for Drowning has a particular conception in terms of its emotional journey from sadness through anger to acceptance, but it is also just another in a lengthy discography of albums by Wilson under various names in relatively similar styles. (more…)

Squackett – A Life Within A Day (2012) [DVD-AUDIO ISO]

DVD-A By admin · May 20, 2019 · Comments off

In the history of popular music, supergroups have a spotty track record. For every winner, the landscape is littered with many more typically short-lived projects of varying degrees of quality and success. Arguably, they are weighed down by their egos, pedigree, and the high, and often unrealistic, expectations of absolute perfection — every album must be an utter masterpiece. But it usually doesn’t worked out that way. Progressive rock in particular is rather notorious for its attempts at supergroups. Emerson Lake & Palmer rightfully took off, and the original Asia justifiably burned brightly for a short time, but others like GTR and Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe (four-fifths of Yes’ classic Fragile lineup) fizzled after one wildly uneven (at best) album. With that in mind, it’s certainly heartening to hear 2012’s excellent A Life Within a Day by Squackett, the project from Yes bass guitarist Chris Squire and former Genesis and GTR guitarist Steve Hackett. A Life Within a Day leans toward highly melodic pop-flavored sounds but with plenty of the intricate twists and turns and occasional heaviness expected of progressive rock musicians. The liner notes cite the obvious Yes and Genesis influences, as well as that of Led Zeppelin and the Beatles. This music also radiates the sophisticated dreaminess of the Alan Parsons Project. Squire and Hackett share vocals, often with lots of harmonies; Squire’s harmony backing vocals are a crucial but rarely acknowledged component of the Yes sound. Producer/keyboardist Roger King (a longtime member of Hackett’s solo band), drummer Jeremy Stacey, and backing vocalist Amanda Lehmann round out the core of the Squackett band. The ever-changing arrangement of the dramatic and engaging opener “A Life Within a Day” gives the listener a taste of things to come. The hypnotic “Tall Ships,” which originated as Squire was trying out a new bass guitar, gives Hackett the opportunity to stretch out on both classical and electric guitar runs. “Aliens” is a smoothly flowing hybrid of progressive rock and pop. A quirky arrangement drives “Sea of Smiles,” but the catchy chorus and Hackett’s brightly distorted guitar tie it all together. The outstanding “Stormchaser” — definitely the most Led Zeppelin-influenced song on the album — hammers home a steady midtempo rumble with rigid guitar riffs and ghostly keyboards. The ethereal “Can’t Stop the Rain” is highlighted by Lehmann’s backing vocals. As indispensable members of the mightiest titanic groups in progressive rock, expectations were bound to be high; simply put, Squackett’s A Life Within a Day exceeds expectations and is a worthy addition to the legacies of Squire and Hackett. (more…)