Tag: jazz
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Aylish Kerrigan and Dearhbla Collins: Schoenberg Vocal Works
All those hours spent listening to experimental, modern classical music have paid off: we dipped our toes into the waters of Arnold Schoenberg and came up smiling, to mix metaphors. A couple of reviews said it was not for the faint-hearted; it’s true that it’s not for someone expecting the Cliff Adams Singers singing something…
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Various: Music from The American Epic Sessions
We thought Old Crow Medicine Show doing Blonde on Blonde live in Nashville was pretty cool but this is even better. The backstory is that it’s a television documentary on the early days of music. In the 1920s, as radio took over the pop music business, record companies took to the road to find new…
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Enzo Bellomo: Legacy and R-Evolution
“Modern” classical music can be vexing at times, interesting ideas and experimentation not always making for the easiest of listens. This debut album by Italian composer Enzo Bellomo aims to be (as it says on the tin) a modern classical record but drawing on the legacy of past greats. It’s less r-evolution than comfort food,…
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Giacomo Scinardo: Mussorgsky, Complete Piano Works
There’s something refreshing about piano transcriptions of well-known orchestral pieces (we had some Elgar the other week), reducing all that clutter down to a single instrument, and the intro of Mussorgsky’s most famous work suits this pared-down performance. Except of course: Modest Mussorgsky wrote Pictures At An Exhibition in 1874 for the piano, and it…
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Katalina Kicks: Vices
Just as there are people who like non-league football because of its grassroots nature (people playing for love not money) we’re pretty sure bands like Katalina Kicks have a ready audience for their no-nonsense rock. It’s a step above garage, and not quite as frenetic as Jim Jones (reviewed recently), just simple and direct rock.…
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Linkin Park: One More Light
We’ve been fans of Linkin Park since their debut and even enjoyed their more generic and derivative outings. At least they were loud. This new one opens like a mass-market RnB act and doesn’t really go anywhere else. There’s no loud. We said a couple of albums ago that LP sounded as if they were…
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Alvarez Kings: Somewhere Between
After the recent review of the harmless-but-fan-friendly Scouting For Girls’ re-issue of their debut after a decade-long career, we’ll be more charitable to formulaic pop bands for a while. Alvarez Kings make a sound that’s somewhere between Coldplay/U2 (stadium-filling Marr-ish guitar and muscular ambient synths) and poppier fare, and sing songs about love, and the…
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Will Joseph Cook: Sweet Dreamer
We can see young Will (he looks about 12) carving out a nice career among people who like well-crafted tunes from cool singer-songwriters; the kind of act that fills Manchester Apollo without bothering the charts much. A nice living if you can do it. The songs are all neat and crisp, well produced but not…
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Van Morrison: The Authorised Bang Collection
Yet another three-CD re-issue for Van fans, and this is pretty good. Although some tracks have knocked around as bootlegs, and Morrison clearly had issues with Bang at the time, he writes the sleeve notes and says Bang owner Bert Berns (who wrote Here Comes The Night) was a genius with soul. Berns met Morrison…
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Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind: Super Natural
We’re not sure whether to hail this the finest rock n roll album of the year (including the ones yet to come) or a cult classic. While there’s melody aplenty, Jones makes Motörhead sound like Abba (“Motörhead will make your lawn thrive”), and early Dr Feelgood as gentle as softly falling snow. It comes howling…
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