Fumito Nunoya – Concertos on Marimba (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:35 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Oehms Classics
Fumito Nunoya is considered the custodian of the marimba. In the preface to this album, the Japanese musician explains why the marimba is still not a main instrument in the classical music scene. But with an exciting programme ranging from the Baroque to Modernism, he impressively proves the opposite, at least for the inclined listener to this recording.
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Fumio Yasuda – My Choice (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:03:00 minutes | 576 MB | Genre: Classical, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Winter & Winter
The poet among contemporary composers. Magical arrangements of the world successes of Verdi, Satie and children’s songs from the Mother Goose collection. Fumio Yasuda describes his music succinctly with the attempt to invent something new. He names the late romantic compositions of Franz Schmidt as decisive influences, but also John Cage’s transgressions of boundaries. Nobuyoshi Araki brought Yasuda together with Stefan Winter 20 years ago. Over ten albums were created. For the anniversary of Winter & Winter, Yasuda meets his selection: My Choice. The FAZ writes: If you get involved in your music – which is not a question of free will: once … put it on, you will want to hear it again and again.
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Fumio Yasuda – Forest (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:27 minutes | 989 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Winter & Winter
Once the Western World and Japan were completely foreign to each other, today in the 21st century we discover new forms of culture, ways of life, nature, images and sounds. Fumi Yasuda’s music comes from modern japan; time, space and eternity play an important role in this music. In the score there are no pauses, but spaces of silence between lyrical, deeply poetic tones and sounds which tell us about Japanese landscapes. Yasuda works in a deep musical understanding with Joachim Badenhorst, Nobuyoshi Ino and Akimuse.
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Fumi Tomita – Celebrating Bird: A Tribute to Charlie Parker (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:15 minutes | 460 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Outside in Music
Celebrating Bird: A Tribute to Charlie Parker is the latest release from Fumi Tomita which features David Detweiler. Joining them are two of the leading voices in jazz, Art Hirahara on piano and Jimmy MacBride on drums. Detweiler and Tomita each contribute four compositions written to pay tribute to some of Charlie Parker’s most notable compositions.
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Full Blast – Risc (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 59:42 minutes | 702 MB | Genre: Free Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © trost records
With all the projects Peter Brötzmann is currently working on, Full Blast – with the precise and dynamic Swiss rhythm section of Marino Pliakas and Michael Wertmüller – is the most consistent and the longest-running. Their fifth album finds the band in a studio again, with time and the desire to try something new. Seven compositions in the distinctive, strong Full Blast nature get an exciting electronic treatment by Michael Wertmüller (with electronics by Gerd Rische, recorded months before his death in October 2015) during and after the recording. For mixing the band decided to work with Gareth Jones (well-known for his work with Einstürzende Neubauten and Depeche Mode), whom they have used with Pliakas’s band Steamboat Switzerland before. Full Blast have created an album that in its nonconformity and richness in variety stands on his own in contemporary jazz.
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Fulanno – Nadie está a salvo del mal (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:56 minutes | 341 MB | Genre: Metal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Helter Skelter Productions
Argentina’s FULANNO are back on Forbidden Place spewing evil, occult doom! Expanding on the sound of their first album “Velas Negras” with more fuzz, more, filth, more psychedelic madness!
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Fruit Bats – The Pet Parade (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:20 minutes | 477 MB | Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records
The Pet Parade marks a milestone for Johnson, who celebrates 20 years of Fruit Bats in 2021. In some ways still a cult band, in other ways a time-tested act, Fruit Bats has consistently earned enough small victories to carve out a career in a notoriously fickle scene.
While many of the songs on The Pet Parade were actually written before the pandemic, it’s impossible to disassociate the record from the times. As an example, producer Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, Bob Weir, The National, and Bonny Light Horseman, in which he plays with Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell) was brought in for his deep emotional touch and bandleading abilities. However, Johnson, Kaufman, and the other musicians on The Pet Parade—drummers Joe Russo and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Fleet Foxes, Muzz), singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, pianist Thomas Bartlett (Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens), and fiddler Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine)—were forced to self-record their parts in bedrooms and home studios across America.
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Fruit Bats – Siamese Dream (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 44:27 minutes | 499 MB | Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records
Last year, Fruit Bats covered The Smashing Pumpkins’ seminal sophomore album, Siamese Dream, in its entirety for the Sounds Delicious series. What was originally a physical-only release by the Eric D. Johnson-led outfit is now available across streaming services.
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Frozen Planet….1969 – The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:28 minutes | 524 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Pepper Shaker Records
The sixth album by Frozen Planet….1969 is another improvised heavy-psyched-out instrumental adventure. A concept album about a travelling medicine show. Parts i through vi of the title-track serve as the acts of the show. The band takes twists and turns to help guide you through the story, while Doctor Berner, with the help of some colourful characters, is on a quest to sell bottles of his glowing green elixir (which will apparently cure any pain or deliver anyone from evil!).
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Ring Around Quartet & Consort – Frottole: Popular Songs of Renaissance Italy (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:04 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Set to vernacular texts dealing mainly with the theme of love, frottole were short, improvisatory polyphonic songs with instrumental accompaniment that flourished in the Renaissance courts of Italy for some forty years between c. 1480 and 1520. Despite its apparent simplicity, this completely new genre of song inspired some of Europe’s greatest vocal and instrumental musicians. The recent invention of movable type added further to its popularity. This recording explores a representative selection, including work published by the historically pivotal figure of Ottaviano Petrucci.
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Frost – Day And Age (Deluxe Edition) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:51:05 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © InsideOutMusic
Frost* are back in action once more, with their fourth studio album ‘Day And Age’. Formed in 2004 by keyboard player Jem Godfrey, the band have so far released 3 studio albums, and most recently the career-spanning ’13 Winters’ collection. Now the band have returned as the 3-piece of Godfrey alongside longtime collaborators John Mitchell & Nathan King. “We were quite energised by the change to be honest”, says Godfrey, “it gave us a much broader palette of options in compositional terms, we would write a song and say, “Let’s imagine drummer x has joined the band, what would he do here? It led us off in some interesting new directions”. In the end, three drummers became part of the recording project : Kaz Rodriguez (Chaka Khan, Josh Groban), Darby Todd (The Darkness, Martin Barre) and Pat Mastelotto (Mister Mister, King Crimson). “Each musician brought a very different style of playing to the music,” says John Mitchell, “and we tailored the songs to suit them.” In January 2020, the band setup a new temporary studio for a week in a converted coastguard tower at Dungeness in East Sussex, UK. “We were 30 feet by the sea, next to a nuclear power station and a lighthouse, in midwinter! So there was hardly any daylight and the weather was dreadful”, laughs bassist Nathan King, “We wrote “Terrestrial” and “Repeat To Fade” there and in my head you can absolutely hear the bleak isolated oppression having an effect on us. The songs we wrote were far darker – the wind howling round the building at night, the power station generating crackles on the audio, a huge lighthouse next door sweeping a vast light into the fog every 30 seconds and John screaming “ENJOY YOURSELVES YOU SCUM” into a microphone. It was absolutely brilliant!”.’Day And Age’ will be released as a Limited 2CD (including the album as instrumentals), Gatefold 2LP + CD (incl. etching on Side D), and as Deluxe Digital Album.
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Ensemble Plus Ultra – From Spain to Eternity – The Sacred Polyphony of El Greco’s Toledo (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:37 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archiv Produktion
In 2011 DG released a spectacular 10-CD anthology on Archiv Produktion with Ensemble Plus Ultra (EPU), “the finest British early music singers” (Early Music Today), commemorating the 400th anniversary of Tomas de Victoria’s death. This box sold about 6.100 units worldwide and won a Gramophone award.
Now the award winning ensemble is back with a major recording project to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of El Greco in 2014 – composers including Cristobal de Morales, Alonso Lobo and Alonso de Tejeda were prolific in Toledo during the 37 years El Greco lived and worked there, and much of this music certainly inspired his painting.
Morales is THE Spanish composer of the Renaissance. Morales – Kapellmeister at the cathedral in Toledo, but also in Italian cities – is generally considered to be the most influential Spanish composer before Victoria. Almost all of his music is sacred, and all of it is vocal.
Pieces by Lobo and Tejeda make a wonderful conclusion to the disc – all in all a varied program, and encompassing three composers from Toledo during the time of El Greco.
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Frode Kjekstad – In Essence (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:57 minutes | 546 MB | Genre: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Losen Records
The internationally recognized and critically acclaimed jazz guitarist Frode Kjekstad from Norway is out with a new CD! This time in the legendary trio format. This time only with original material. And: this time with Norwegian musicians! After previously having recorded with living jazz legends as Dr. Lonnie Smith, Eric Alexander and Byron Landham in his recordings done in New York, he now has brought his childhood friend and superb bass player Frode Berg, and the amazing drummer Magnus Sefaniassen Eide to a studio in Sandvika, Norway.
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Frode Haltli, Arditti Quartet & Trondheim Soloists – Air (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:51 minutes | 744 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Frode Haltli, the uniquely expressive Norwegian accordionist, is heard here with chamber orchestra, with string quartet and solo, performing music by Danish composers Bent Sørensen (b. 1958) and Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952). Haltli plays Sørensen’s It is Pain Flowing Down Softly on a White Wall with the Trondheim Soloists, as well as the solo piece Sigrid’s Lullaby. Hans Abrahamsen’s Three Little Nocturnes find the accordionist in the company of the redoubtable Arditti Quartet, “a vital institution in contemporary music” as Haltli says. For the title composition Air, Hans Abrahamsen returned, at Frode Haltli’s suggestion, to the early solo work Canzona, revising it until it became a new piece. Of Abrahamsen’s music, Frode Haltli writes that “not one note is accidental, nor are any of the other specifications. Sometimes, this results in very complex music, while a moment later it is so simple that it seems a child could perform it. He writes music that can be on the verge of being discomforting, while at the same time it is indescribably lovely.”
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Fritz Kreisler – Kreisler: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 10 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:26:08 minutes | 849 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Fritz Kreisler was in his early 50s during the two years covered by these recordings – consolidating his status as the world’s most beloved violinist, touring Italy and elsewhere in Europe, as well as giving notable concerts in Carnegie Hall and throughout the US. The Great Depression and the premature death of his brother Hugo added to personal stresses in 1929, but these recordings, many of which are unpublished tests, reveal Kreisler at his best.
In the Sonatina mouvement written in New York by Dvořák and renamed Indian Lament by Kreisler, we hear the composer’s yearning for his homeland, enhanced by beautiful double-stops. In Ravel’s Habanera, Kreisler’s seductive rhythm is to the fore, while Godowsky’s Nocturnal Tangier is full of North African promise.
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