Live at Smoke is the last of the living birthday celebrations for the late, great drummer, Al Foster. These celebrations had been ongoing for more than a decade, and fortunately, the 2025 session was recorded on January 18 and 19, 2025. Foster passed away on May 28, 2025, before the music could be released, but Foster did hear the final mixes. Foster leads a top-shelf quartet for this last celebration. Saxophonist Chris Potter, who was very close to Foster, was a regular at these celebrations. Joining him were the acclaimed pianist Brad Mehldau and renowned bassist Joe Martin.
Foster has a history with many of the greats, from Sonny Rollins to Miles Davis. Accordingly, the set list includes compositions from Rollins and Wayne Shorter as well as a piece each…
Category: *editions*
The new live album from MC50, capturing the unrelenting energy of the 2018 world tour that reignited the spirit of MC5 – one of rock’s most radical and influential bands.
10 MORE extends MC5’s legacy with a high-voltage document of the MC50 lineup led by MC5 founding member Wayne Kramer and featuring an all‑star ensemble of rock innovators: Kim Thayil (Soundgarden), Brendan Canty (Fugazi), Billy Gould (Faith No More), Matt Cameron (Pearl Jam) and Marcus Durant (Zen Guerrilla).
Recorded live in Seattle, WA, Cincinnati, OH, and Hamburg, Germany, 10 MORE roars through MC5’s most iconic songs — including ‘The American Ruse,’ ‘Call Me Animal,’ ‘Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa‑Fa‑Fa),’ ‘Looking at You’…
The 2012-2013 Wrecking Ball tour marked the start of the current incarnation of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It was the first without late, great founding members Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, and the tour served in part as a eulogy to those fallen heroes.
The passing of Phantom Dan and the Big Man also triggered major changes on stage: Wrecking Ball featured an exponential expansion of the E Street Band, ushering in a horn section, backing singers, and a percussionist — a blueprint still in use when Springsteen returned to the road in 2023 and retained through the last concert in Milan this past July.
Given how many new musicians were involved, it’s remarkable that the 2012-13 tour…
From a very early source tape, “Apparition” has been given the sonic overload it desperately deserved and even boasts a couple of bonus tracks from the time.
The Legendary Pink Dots are an influential, staggeringly prolific group led by enigmatic frontman Edward Ka-Spel. Emerging from the early-’80s post-punk underground and sometimes categorized as industrial due to associations with bands like Skinny Puppy, the group’s music is nearly impossible to pin down, drawing from Krautrock, ambient, folk, synth pop, and numerous other styles.
Apparition originally came out in 1982, the same year as their album Brighter Now. The first edition was a cassette only on the band’s own…
“An integral factor behind the production of Abacab was Hugh Padgham, an engineer responsible for the ‘gated reverb’ drum sound that defined the 1980s. As a result, Phil Collins’ drums have incredible definition across this entire pressing. Tony Banks’ keyboards often reside upfront in the mix, occasionally creeping in and out three-dimensionally during the title track or lush chords filling up the soundstage on ‘Keep It Dark.’ A massive highlight is ‘Dodo/Lurker,’ where Mike Rutherford’s bass is at its deepest, and the varying tonality of Collins’ vocals gives the different parts of the track a distinguishable characterization.”
Certified multi-platinum-selling in several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, Genesis’ album Abacab…
“Nothng but manna from analog heaven can be found within the balance of Analogue Productions’ year-long-plus Atlantic 75 anniversary reissue series … but to my ears, the crème de la crème of the lot are all the reissuances culled from the prime, more progressive-leaning ’70s era of the Genesis catalog. … A few highlights to whet your aural whistle: 1) Mike Rutherford’s high-pitched, 12-string acoustic guitarwork and the overall rise/fall drama of “The Musical Box” (LP1, Side 1, Track 1, November 1971’s Nursery Cryme). 2) The full majesty of Tony Banks’ lengthy piano intro (and outro!) and Steve Hackett’s career-defining guitar solo on “Firth of Fifth” (LP1, Side 2, Track 1, September 1973’s Selling England by the Pound). 3) Peter Gabriel’s pleading lead vocals…
…deluxe 3CD set include 19 extra tracks – focusing on lesser-known B-sides, late ’80s and early ’90s albums, and even material that Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie released in the ’90s under the name Babble – along with the premiere CD release of ‘Into the Gap Live’, the audio of a longform video release from 1984 that was recently issued on vinyl for Record Store Day.
The 1980s were heady times for synthesizers and drum machines. Ushering out the distorted three-chord guitars and traditional drum/bass/guitar lineups of the punk and stadium era rock of the decade that preceded it.
New Wave bands like OMD, Human League, and The Pet Shop Boys created a dance-friendly genre that was light on sneers and anger but…
Formed in North London, Madness have grown into one of Britain’s most successful and best-loved bands, selling millions of records worldwide and inspiring generations of artists. More than four decades on, their music, spirit, and style are woven into the fabric of British culture.
Madness released their latest record Theatre of the Absurd Presents C’est La Vie in 2023, which was the band’s first ever No.1 studio album in their 45 year career. The band have also had two No.1 compilation albums, 10 UK Top 10 albums, 15 Top 10 singles and have won a multitude of awards including a prestigious Ivor Novello.
Hit Parade celebrates that remarkable legacy, a career-spanning anthology, the band have chosen 45 singles from 45 years from…
The ongoing retrospective of the late John Wetton’s live recordings lands in the 1990s, during the time he was plying his trade as a solo artist. This 10-disc set, which presents eight shows from that decade in either remastered or revised form, is a treasure trove of material recorded in Japan, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands.
While there are inevitably repeated songs across such a wide-ranging set of shows – especially the most crucial pieces from his work with Asia, King Crimson and UK – there are plenty of variations in performance and arrangement, and Wetton is in fine voice throughout.
Asia’s ‘Heat of the Moment’ pops up in every show, of course; but often in rearranged form, while Crimson’s ‘Easy Money’ regularly…
…featuring new interpretations, rare B sides and unreleased archival gems.
Rivers of the Red Planet, the new LP from Berlin upstart Max Graef, hearkens back to an era when the album served the fundamental statement of a musician’s aesthetic. This is in no small part due to the young producer’s diverse ear. Graef has been making waves in the underground house world, but as he recently told, he spends most of his money on old records he can’t play in clubs. Rivers, meanwhile, was originally conceived as an instrumental hip-hop album. It has a loose, smoky feel that owes as much to beatmakers like Madlib or J Dilla as it does to any house producer. A casual synthesis of dusty jazz, hip-hop and house, Rivers speaks to Graef’s formidable talent.
This time, the performances took place during 2024-2025 and recorded at venues across Europe, United States, Canada and on Cruise To The Edge, which explains the post-fixed ‘Live Around The World‘ part on the new album, Are We Nearly There Yet?. BBT aficionados will recognise the title as it is a line from the song Last Eleven, which also gave its name to the band’s latest successful studio album, The Likes of Us – the first with the new line-up, featuring vocalist Alberto Bravin (PFM) and keyboardist Oskar Holldorff (Dim Gray). The resultant series of shows included the Zoetermeer Boerderij, with the two shows scheduled featuring: on Saturday, the band played almost the entire new studio album, while on Sunday, they played iconic songs from the band’s rich history.
Legendary French industrial pioneers Vox Populi! arrive on Dark Entries with a reissue of Sucre De Pastèque. Vox Populi! was founded in Paris in 1981 by Axel Kyrou, a multi-instrumentalist of Greek, French, and Palestinian roots. He soon recruited his future partner, Mitra, and her brother Arash Khalatbari, who were born in Iran and came to Paris in their teens, as well as bassist Fr6 Man (Francis Manne).
Their sound was motley, combining elements of musique concrete and early industrial with horns, flutes, and traditional Persian instrumentation. Improbably prolific and ceaselessly divergent, Vox Populi! found their way onto dozens of cassette compilations during the heyday of the 1980s DIY tape music scene, including releases…
Recorded live in Spain during Loreena McKennitt’s summer 2024 tour of Europe, Live in Madrid is an audio vérité soundboard recording of a complete 20-song show from that tour, captured in stereo directly from the mixing desk located in the venue front-of-house. Other than the mastering and editing work needed in order for us to offer the listeners an optimum listening experience, this album comes as close as you can get to the live performance as it sounded at the “Noches del Botánico” festival on that balmy Mediterranean night.
Live In Madrid contains the entirety of 1994’s The Mask and Mirror performed in sequence, plus over an hour of fan favourites drawn from across the range of Loreena’s catalogue of studio recordings.
…two audio CDs of “This Is What You Wanted” Live In Mexico City & bonus track edition of the studio album “Never Let Me Go” with “Shout”.
An intimate exploration of Placebo’s evolution, charting their journey through lyrics and songs that delve into the human experience.
Placebo’s second feature-length documentary called This Search for Meaning. This intimate and enlightening film explores the ideas that inhabit the lyrics and subject matter of Placebo’s songs, whilst charting their evolution as a group and as human beings. It is a fearless, truthful and forthright exploration of the creative process and the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, along with its inevitable consequences.
Since emerging from obscurity in the 1990s with provocative songs such as “Nancy Boy” and “Bruise Pristine”, Placebo forged a decidedly unfashionable path through the brazenly macho ‘Britpop’ scene to explore subjects such as the body politic and the continued erosion of our human rights…
The new Jason Isbell album, Foxes in the Snow, offers an opportunity to appreciate his considerable gifts as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist in a fresh way. It’s his first solo acoustic album and his first that he recorded in New York — in just five days no less at Electric Lady Studios in the West Village.
In February, Isbell played two sold-out shows at the Beacon Theatre, blending the new material with fan favorites from his years with The 400 Unit and the Drive-By Truckers. Each night ended with a carefully chosen cover: a haunting rendition of Bon Iver’s “Best/Rest” on Friday and a tender take on John Prine’s “Storm Windows” on Saturday.
A few days later, during a conversation with WFUV radio, Isbell opened up about the making of the album and the beautiful old guitar that…
The saxophonist Pharoah Sanders was often described as an enigma of jazz, once famously characterized as “a mad wind screeching through the root-cellars of Hell.” That “mad wind” is absent on Love Is Here: The Complete Paris 1975 ORTF Recordings, but the enigma remains. This pivotal album captures Sanders stretching out, away from his Impulse! Records contract, exploring a sound that moves beyond late-stage John Coltrane and places a greater emphasis on tone, melody, and lyrical expression.
Recorded live at Maison de la Radio’s Studio 104 in Paris on November 17, 1975, this set is a crucial document that bridges the gap between his turbulent free-jazz explorations and the meditative tranquility of his later work.