Author: jerobear
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Pet Shop Boys: Discovery (Live in Rio 1994)
The album opens with a brief and tender Tonight Is Forever before Ab Fab’s Edina Monsoon cries: “Lights! Models! Guest list! Just do your best, darling!” and they launch into I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing. The album then trawls through the hits, Domino Dancing early on, and Rent, Suburbia and King’s Cross…
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Hafliði Hallgrímsson: Offerto
Hafliði Hallgrímsson is regarded as Iceland’s pre-eminent composer, as well as a highly accomplished cellist. You prog rockers might have heard him, too: in 1970, he played the (uncredited) cello solo on Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd. This new album follows a request in 2005 from violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved, who asked Hallgrímsson to…
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Bacao Rhythm and Steel Band: Expansions
The Bacao Rhythm and Steel Band is a German funk music ensemble (founded by members of the Mighty Mocambos says Wikipedia). Bandleader Björn Wagner lived in Trinidad and Tobago for a time, where he studied steel drums and had one custom made. He then came up with the idea of covering famous tunes with a…
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Kilian Kemmer Trio: Und Zarathustra Tanzte
The album is inspired by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (Dr Kemmer has a PhD in philosophy), with Thus Spake Zarathustra a philosophical novel penned by Herr Nietzsche, containing ideas about the Übermensch, the death of God, the will to power, and eternal recurrence. Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, was an ancient Iranian prophet who founded what…
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Benedetto Boccuzzi: À Claude
The Claude in question is Mr Debussy but if you’re expecting an album of Clair de Lune delicacy you’d be mistaken, as Boccuzzi’s album takes off from where Debussy leads, moving from the dreamy to the avante garde, the idea being to show the link between Debussy and composers old and new, including Boccuzzi himself.…
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Zeynep Ucbasaran: 1847, Liszt in Istanbul
This lively and more-ish album of piano music consists of a selection of works from the 1847 Istanbul recitals of Franz Liszt.Lizst had arrived to entertain and was given a seven-octave piano by craftsman Sébastien Pierre Erard to play on while he was in what was then Constantinople. He played at the Royal Palace, the…
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The Mono LPs: Shuffle/Play
This is a really good album ad we’d have said you should buy it even before we realised it referenced one of our favourite films, Being There. (A 1979 satire, based on a novel by Jerzy Kosinski and starring Peter Sellers as Chance the gardener, a simple man who knows only about gardening and the…
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Saturday night: South African discopop hits
A review we found – probably just rewriting the Press release – said this focused on the period of fluctuation between the popularity of mbaqanga and the rise of bubblegum pop, with the sounds of disco, pop, boogie, and fusion. We don’t know about that. What we do know is that if you think early…
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El Michels Affair meets Liam Bailey: Ekundayo Inversions
This new album from singer Liam Bailey takes us back to John Peel shows, listening to music that led you to discover new bands and genres; it’s got that home-made feel that Peely liked, although everyone involved is a skilled musician. This follows, as the album title suggests, Bailey’s 2020 studio album Ekundayo, and the…
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