Ghalia Volt’s sixth album, Burn the House Down, was recorded in Nashville as Volt expanded her sound from her previous one-woman band style. Returning to the raw blues sound that first brought her attention, Volt sings with fire and plays with confidence on the satisfying record.
Working with producer JD Simo, the album is focused on capturing the emotional essence of Volt’s 11 blues-based songs, not necessarily aiming for perfection. Simo also plays guitar with Volt (both credited with slide and electric) while drummer Chris Powell and bassist Brian Allen hold down the low end. Songs were recorded mostly live in the studio after one or two takes to keep the energy high.
The crackling sound starts with the opener…
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Appearing like a flash, Jimi Hendrix burst onto the international music scene of the mid 1960’s like nothing ever seen before or since. Born in Seattle in 1942, early life experiences both in the United States Army and as a backing musician for the likes of the Isley Brothers and Little Richard on the Chitlin’ Circuit helped serve as formative groundwork for what was to come.
With the release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first single in December 1966, a never-ceasing whirlwind would envelop Jimi and his music until his untimely death in September of 1970. What’s still fascinating, more than five decades on, is how prolific a creator he managed to be through his not even four years in the spotlight.
Of particular interest is Jimi Hendrix’s…
Ain’t nothin’ like it. Full blast and top down. Less than six years after changing the music landscape with its diamond-platinum-certified self-titled debut, Van Halen repeated the creative and commercial feats. Featuring groundbreaking performances, infectious chemistry, and four enormous singles, 1984 witnesses the band incorporating synthesizer elements that guitarist Eddie Van Halen had been championing — as well as seamlessly bridging pop and metal sensibilities into a cohesive melodic whole. A landmark that’s never aged a day, 1984 feels as fresh, fun, and innovative as it did in the Reagan Era.
Sourced from the original analog tapes and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition…
Alice Cooper’s 1975 Album Welcome to My Nightmare Reissued as Part of the Atlantic Records 75th Anniversary Series on Hybrid Stereo SACD. Mastered Directly to DSD From the Original Master Tape by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
With the 1974 disintegration of the original Alice Cooper group, Alice was free to launch a solo career. He wisely decided to re-enlist the services of Bob Ezrin for his solo debut, Welcome to My Nightmare, which was a concept album tied into the story line of the highly theatrical concert tour he launched soon after the album’s release. While the music lost most of the gritty edge of the original AC lineup, Welcome to My Nightmare remains Alice’s best solo effort – while some tracks…
Sometimes you might hear an artist described as a force of nature. It’s a figure of speech usually reserved for big or eccentric personalities, people whose artistic vision is put forward so confidently and with such power that it brooks no argument. This could be applied to the Swedish singer and musician Sara Parkman, whose fourth solo album Aster, atlas tackles the biggest themes: life, death, faith, grief, and the passage of time. But Parkman is a force of nature in another way. Her music has an inherent intensity that seems to be drawn from elemental sources. Listening to her singing and her highly original arrangements, we are constantly reminded of wild and unknown landscapes, and of our smallness within them, but also of our gardens, the things we cultivate,…
Who is music for? Listener – or musician? Is a perfect record what matters, or the journey to make it? These are questions Dutch DJ/producer Martyn stirs in his latest album Music for Existing, released via his record label 3024. Described as “a love letter to the communal act of making music together”, the record features a sprawl of collaborators and friends including Duval Timothy, Dan Only, Lucinda Chua, Mark Cisneros, Mischa Porte, Cees Bruinsma andMusa Okwonga.
Music for Existing is a record dedicated to re-establishing connection in an increasingly insular world, whilst simultaneously demonstrating Martyn’s “profound love and appreciation for jazz, both in sound and approach.” While not inherently new, the fusion of the regimented,…
On Su Shaw’s self-titled debut as SHHE, the sea seemed to flood into her songwriting unbidden, imagined as it was by the water at her home in Dundee. When Shaw moved on to the ambient suite of DÝRA, set around the fjords in Iceland, she welcomed the water in.
At the same time, Shaw picked up a somewhat nomadic existence as an artist, moving from place to place, capturing field recordings and establishing environmental installations that flowed with the very currents and tides of the water itself, finally ending up in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, where THALASSA took shape.
Its six movements chart an ambient seascape that is heightened and alarmed. Processed voices mimic breathless gasps and sharp intakes,…
Radioactivity was Kraftwerk’s fifth full-lenght release and their first fully electronic album. It is a concept album centered around radioactive decay and radio communications. As such it boasts a few big theme anthems surrounded by shorter variations of those themes with interconnecting shorter pieces of electronic music, sounds, and digitized voices.
“Kraftwerk built upon the international success of Autobahn by expanding their conceptual concepts to an album-length exploration of radio waves (and the band’s other favorite wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum). Musically, the album represents a quantum leap of pop sensibility; though still distinctly a “prog” soundscape, its brilliant melodic hooks (best represented by the title track and Airwaves) are organized in more traditional – read shorter – form.
He has a rock voice that’s a little sweeter than most – a Rick Springfield (“My Father’s Chair”), a little Todd Rundgren, Nils Lofgren & Kenny Loggins (“Somebody Knows”). While this showcase doesn’t have the vocal depth of a singer as commandeering as a Bruce Springsteen, Dion DiMucci, Elton John, or Billy Joel, Steve Louw (acoustic guitarist/vocals) has a fine musical underpinning that’s well played & he never fails to deliver. This isn’t criticism – any one of these artists on a good day is great on some of their songs.
Louw, who has released 11 studio albums, succeeds nicely on ballads (“Tumbling Down”), which is a little grander than Traces of the Flood. He has good tonality & sings well. Another good ballad, “Echo Dream,” has music…
This record was a quick work. Kelman came from his home in LA to the center of the dirty winter in MTL December 13, left on the 19th, and by February the record was done. Neither SUUNS nor Kelman had prepared anything, no idea what to expect. We showed up as musicians should – prepared only with the thousands of hours logged at our instruments, agnostic to outcome, only curious about what could happen in the room that day, that moment. Possibilities. We spent most of that time improvising and exploring while tape ran: different versions, getting closer to the idea each time, stripping away, playing less, fewer layers. The less you play, the more possibilities you hear.
Ben sat at a makeshift desk, writing lyrics, sounding it out through The Vocalist, a ghosty old vocoder.
Seelie Court – the world’s premier label for rare and previously unreleased archive recordings of underground folk, rock, proto-metal, and psychedelic music presents Too Many Late Nights.
Showcasing The Great Crash’s more experimental and progressive side, these studio sessions emphasise long-form, intelligent art rock compositions, pairing shifting structures with witty, 10CC-like subject matter and a distinctly British sense of irony.
The material impressed John Peel, leading to a BBC Peel Session and placing The Great Crash among the more adventurous voices of the early-1970s UK underground. Formed around the songwriting of drummer and lyricist Piers Geddes, the group blended piano-led…
After finding fame with the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, expatriate Englishman turned West Coast rock icon Graham Nash made an auspicious solo debut on this 1971 disc. It’s an exemplary singer-songwriter effort, striking a vital balance between graceful introspection and political fervor — and while it’s deeply personal, it still carries the harmonies, heart and politics that made CSN(Y) so essential.
With assistance from the likes of David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, and Dave Mason, highlights include the sensitive internal explorations “I Used to Be a King” and “Man in the Mirror” and the impassioned protest anthems “Chicago” and “Military Madness.” If Déjà Vu was a wild canyon party with four competing egos, Songs for Beginners…
Tuareg guitarist and vocalist Moussa T was born in Chirozerine (Tchirozérine), about 45 kilometers from Agadez, Niger, a major center for Tuareg guitar music. He began learning electric guitar at 11, initially in secret, before developing his style within a musical family. Early on, Moussa also drew inspiration from musicians close to home, including Gountou Taflawiste and Bombino, whom he watched perform at weddings in Agadez.
With Tartite, Moussa delivers familiar desert blues closely associated with Tuareg music. The album was recorded in summer 2024 at ROP Studio in Agadez. Later, it was mixed in the United States after fellow Tuareg musician Bombino connected Moussa with Mixto Records founder Oz McGuire.
…His music fits neatly within the template…
Drummer Peter Erskine, who began his productive career with the Stan Kenton Orchestra in the last century, is a master craftsman who is comfortably at home in groups large or small.
Along the way, he has recorded more than forty-five albums as leader or co-leader of various ensembles, always embracing his assignment with proficiency and taste.
On Peregrine, Erskine is in a trio setting with a pair of gifted colleagues, pianist Alan Pasqua and bassist Scott Colley, performing what Erskine describes as “a collection of tributes.” There are eleven in all, including four written by Pasqua and three by Erskine. Keith Jarrett wrote “Bop Be,” Brian Wilson and Tony Ascher penned “God Only Knows,” Phoebe Snow ‘s contribution…
Perhaps all-star Boston-based band Reckoners can cheer up these frustrated Beantown sports fans with their sophomore release, Where the Hell Am I? The collaborative made a splash with their 2024 eponymous debut that featured Susan Tedeschi on vocals on some tracks. Tedeschi is not aboard this time, but Alan Evans of Soulive returns to co-produce, and the quasi supergroup lineup remains intact.
Upon first listen (not having heard the debut), the timeless rock and soul harked back to that glorious period of rock n’ roll when Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Springsteen, Mellencamp, and blues rockers like the J. Geils Band ruled the radio. We could literally set the Reckoners sound back to that period. Yet, their effect is refreshing…
Looking back on her career in the early 90s, Stevie Nicks described the first track of Rock a Little as “the most exciting song that I had ever heard.” This coming from a superstar who was already closely affiliated with several bajillion-selling Fleetwood Mac albums – to say nothing of her own benchmark solo debut. Her remarks attest to the enthusiasm and effort she invested in her third record, a 1985 work that quickly furthered Nicks’ profile and cemented itself as a piece of 80s pop lore.
Mastered at MoFi’s California studio, strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity’s hybrid SACD presents Rock a Little in audiophile sound for its 40th anniversary. Helmed by a cadre of producers and engineers, and recorded…
In 1981 a teenage Martin Kennedy watched Steve Kilbey and The Church play at a strange hippie festival in Australia. They were outliers at this festival and he fell in love with their look and sound. He recorded their set on a walkman, and the songs helped spark the beginning of his music career.
Just a year before, an equally fresh-faced Steve Kilbey formed The Church in Sydney, the very beginning of their public life as accidental hit makers. Forty five years later Martin and Steve find themselves working together on their ninth (add a bunch side projects to this epic side project and they’re about 20 albums in) studio album Things We Did On Earth. It’s always so simple: Steve calls Martin: hey we’re touring…
Has Axel Wilner changed, or has the world changed? The artist who built an impressive career on making the same album over and over-and making every single one compelling-sounds a little different on his new EP Now You Exist, his first record in eight years. Maybe it’s because it’s on Studio Barnhus instead of his usual home of Kompakt, but it comes off loose and relaxed, unmoored from the clinical techno beats of his most revered work; it sets off on the wide-open path Infinite Moment laid out in 2018 and then veers ruggedly off road. With its over-the-top emotions and genuine hooks, Now You Exist recalls a more unhurried, washed-out version of his debut album, From Here We Go Sublime, sprawled out in the sun and left to bake for a while.
The follow-up to their show-stopping UK Top 20 album ‘Promised Land’, The Karma Effect arrive with their third record, Cruel Intentions the most complete, crystal-clear realisation of their ambitions yet: leaner, louder, heavier, and joyously larger-than-life.
Exploring love, lust, and danger with dark passion and flashes of cheekiness, the songs balance swagger and wit. The band’s modus operandi is “modern vintage”, a desire to polish up the retro sounds they were raised on into a gleaming, modern product. Although some line-up changes occurred in the background (which sees Nathan Keevil join them on bass, Alan Taylor on drums, and Tom Pitt on keys), a turn of events that could have left them on shaky…
Since leaving Public Image Ltd, Jah Wobble has been a remarkably prolific artist. He has recently teamed up with Jon Klein, former Siouxsie and The Banshees and Specimen guitarist, for their second collaborative effort. This album is more post-punk than dub. In fact, although Jah Wobble is famous for his dub records, with Automated Paradise, he is returning to his punk roots for a brilliant album.
The title track is the closest thing to dub on the album, and it is a nice short reminder of what Wobble does and does extremely well. But with Klein in the picture, he, for the first time in years, returns to post-punk and punk. He does it with ease, with the perfect vocals and lyrics. Klein provides him the musical support, and it is full steam ahead.