The blues have been around nearly as long as America has had music to call its own, but it was when the music went electric in the wake of World War II that it began to attract a real audience outside of the Black community, albeit through a circuitous route. By the ’50s, every major American city had clubs where blues artists played for eager audiences, and small record companies made their music available to take home. It was the twin phenomena of rock & roll (initially a new name for blues and R&B tunes good for dancing that were sold to teenagers by radio hosts like Alan Freed and Dewey Phillips) and the obsessive British blues fans who collected the records and formed bands to replicate their sounds that gradually took the blues to a younger pop audience.
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Mastered at MoFi’s California studio, Mobile Fidelity’s hybrid SACD puts the record’s artistic significance in proper perspective. It invites you to hear with stellar clarity the diverse architecture, passionate playing, and fervent emotions that help make ‘Dreamboat Annie’ an all-time classic. This 50th anniversary edition also marks the first time Heart’s opening salvo has been available in audiophile quality on disc in more than a decade.
In the 1980s and ’90s, numerous women recorded blistering rock, but things were quite different in 1976 — when female singers tended to be pigeonholed as soft rockers and singer/songwriters and were encouraged to take after Carly Simon, Melissa Manchester, or Joni Mitchell rather than Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath.
Across the world, cassette tapes have often carried far more than music, serving as tools of defiance, memory, and belonging. In Somalia and Somaliland, songs recorded on battered tapes crossed seas and borders, keeping scattered communities connected through poetry and melody. In Palestine, revolutionary anthems slipped through checkpoints and broadcast the sound of resistance where radio could not reach. In Afghanistan, banned voices lived on in bootleg cassettes passed hand to hand, their melodies vehemently resisting the silence imposed upon them.
In Iran, too, the cassette has been used as both a weapon and a refuge: First used by Khomeini to spread his revolutionary sermons, it was reclaimed by Iranian pop artists fighting to…
Born out of the febrile Basque Country experimental music community and infused with the weirdness of the early 00s New York noise scene, the former solo project of Bilbao’s Alvaro Matilla (now joined by Marta Sainz, Enrique Zaccagnini, and multi-instrumentalist, serial collaborator Mattin) sounds wild and untamed and bursting with possibility.
…Mattin’s output is so prolific that sometimes it becomes impossible to fully grasp for most of us. He’s part of the bands Billy Bao, Regler and Al Karpenter and has over 100 releases on different labels worldwide including recent collaborations with Keith Rowe, Annea Lockwood and Valerio Tricoli. But it is also amazingly diverse, unconventional, rough, uncomfortable,…
…CD version include 4 bonus tracks. The A Side of the original ‘Church of Kidane Mehret’ LP was comprised of four field recordings of the Mahlet chant. These pieces are not composed or performed by Emahoy. They are included for historical accuracy.
Nearly 20 years since the Éthiopiques series introduced nun, pianist, and composer Emahoy Tsege Maryam Gebru [1923-2023] to our ears with a CD of solo piano works, the storied figure has duly attracted cult status to her uniquely evocative music, and a rich life’s tale interwoven with geopolitics and religion, spanning Italian internment camps to the Royal court of Emperor Haile Selassie, and a monastic life in Jerusalem.
Just over two years since Emahoy passed away,…
Back in 2018, Omnivore Recordings collected The Complete Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Recordings of jazz pianist-composer-Peanuts legend Vince Guaraldi. Now, the label is breaking out one of the albums contained in that set for CD and vinyl reissue. 1968’s Oh, Good Grief! was built around his familiar compositions for Charles M. Schulz’s legendary characters, but those tunes were subtly updated as Guaraldi added electric guitar and electric harpsichord to his trio (piano/bass/drums) format. Kevin Gray has remastered these vibrant new editions.
In his first album for Warner Bros., Vince Guaraldi serves up another delightful, though pitifully short (28 minutes) helping of his themes for the Peanuts TV specials. By this time, like…
The Kentucky Headhunters have reissued Big Boss Man, a one-of-a-kind project originally recorded in partnership with Sony/ATV Music Publishing two decades ago.
Long considered a hidden gem within the band’s catalog, Big Boss Man returns as a newly remastered, fully restored project, released on the band’s own Practice House Records label. The origins of the project go back to 2005, when then Sony/ATV President Donna Hilley, compilation supervisor Jack Jackson and creative director of new music Tom Long, approached The Headhunters with an idea to take 12 classics from the Sony/ATV catalog and “Headhunterize” them, infusing each song with the group’s signature energy. The purpose behind the project was to breathe…
If you’re worried that you’re a latecomer to the work of uncategorizable Chicago musician Ben LaMar Gay, take solace in the certainty that you’re not alone. Gay’s new album, Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun, supposedly draws from seven of his previous records, with curious names like Grapes, Benjamim e Edinho, and Confetti in the Sky Like Fireworks. But when you start googling, not one of these albums surface. In this age of Bandcamp and Soundcloud, the cornetist, composer, and vocalist recorded seven albums in seven years but never let anyone outside of his inner circle hear them. Instead, he worked with jazz and experimental artists like Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, Nicole Mitchell, Jaimie Branch and Bitchin Bajas while…
Following between their three studio albums; 2017’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar, 2020’s Flowers of Evil and 2024’s Liminal Animals which showed Ulver’s move into traditional song and production levels, their next album marks a new beginning in the band’s history who have moved from the sounds of black metal, ambient, synth-pop and experimental music, haven taken a dive into the underwater worlds of continuing their electronic sound on their new album, Neverland.
Here, Ulver have taken the biggest step into the world of changing directions by setting foot into the Berlin school of music, video game and film scores combined as if they had created this pattern, revealing a world on the brink of collapse, now in its ghost town, pin-dropping…
…features 9 tracks of unedited live performance, including pieces that became parts of his seminal ‘World of Echo’ album.
It is testament to the astral, prolific talent of Arthur Russell that two decades after the first reissues of his archival material garnered widespread acclaim, crystals of such high quality are still being unearthed. 2023’s Picture of Bunny Rabbit and 2019’s Iowa Dream hinted at the depth and breadth of what remains unheard in the Arthur Russell Archives, but it is perhaps surprising that it has taken so long for a high-quality live recording to see the light of day. 2020’s Sketches for World of Echo: June 25 1984 Live at Ei and 2021’s 24 to 24 Music Live at the Kitchen both went some way to unravelling the enigma,…
A balladeer of bad decisions, Darrin Hacquard is the soundtrack to doing something you’ll regret, and the repercussions you’ve earned. From being in a string band with acclaimed singer-songwriter John R. Miller, to stints in county lock-up and rehab, to grinding his songs out on the Appalachian songwriter circuit Weights & Measures is the culmination of hard-living, harder work, and honest autobiographical songwriting that admits to life experiences many have but are seldom shared.
Hacquard, now based out of Huntington, W.Va, writes with the storytelling of Tom T. Hall, the emotional honesty of Vic Chesnutt, and a sense of place like Breece Pancake.
If you walked into a bar or a hall anywhere in the US and found that Darrin Hacquard and…
Gaelic singer Kim Carnie’s A’ Chailleach is, to quote, “a concept record rooted in female folklore, spell work and hidden histories”. Steeped in tradition but rich in new sounds, it’s a thrilling and inspiring soundscape.
An impressive guest list features here, including Julie Fowlis, Donald Shaw, and Megan Henderson. Jerry Douglas lends his signature touch to the Americana-tinged ‘Clò nan Gillean’, while Innes White adds a layer of magic to the love charm ‘Eòlas Gràdhaich’. One of the standouts is ‘Òran na Bèiste Maoile’, featuring Senegalese musician Seckou Keita, where West African and Gaelic rhythms intertwine to irresistible effect.
At the core of the album are Carnie’s smooth, pure vocals – confident, expressive and…
Originally formed in 1983 as a duo, Australian band Not Drowning, Waving was created by classically-trained keyboardist-composer-producer David Bridie and guitarist John Phillips.
Quickly growing to a sextet, the group’s moody art-school ambience developed a niche national following, with their ’80s albums all receiving high praise. But after travelling to Papua New Guinea in 1989 and meeting PNG star George Telek, NDW changed direction, with 1990’s excellent collaboration Tabaran seeing them becoming part of the then-new genre of ‘World’ music, where the exciting live combination of NDW and Telek – along with percussion-driven PNG/Pacific musicians – proved extremely popular, gaining them many international listeners.
Brighton, England’s Fickle Friends choose pop happiness on their effervescantly hooky 2025 eponymous third album. The album arrives almost five years after Are We Gonna Be Alright?, a period that found singer Natassja Shiner and her bandmates going on a two year hiatus to recoup from touring and reconnect with their passion for making music. The time away seems to have proven fruitful and Fickle Friends once again reveal themselves as one of the sweetest sounding bands you might not have heard of.
Self-produced, the album feels at once lighter than past albums, and yet full of serious emotional weight as Shiner takes a deep look inside herself, unpacking her anxiety and fear in ways that seem nakedly raw. It’s feeling of speaking…
Composer and pianist Max Richter’s album Sleep Circle is the newly recorded and abridged version of Richter’s 2015 project Sleep. Sleep Circle is informed by the experience of his concert performances of the original album.
Today, Sleep has become one of the most streamed classical compositions, heard nightly by millions of people around the world. Over the years, Richter has not only performed the entire 8-hour long Sleep cycle for audiences lying in beds, ready to drift off into slumber, but he also began performing an abridged, 90-minutes long version in selected venues. Inspired by these concert experiences, this new abridged version Sleep Circle focuses on the movements within the composition that are more in the foreground, which makes…
With For a Moment the Sky Knew My Name, Peter Knight extends his fascination with the porous relationship between body, instrument, and environment into one of his most personal and immersive solo works. The album takes its cue from extended fieldwork and improvisations undertaken near Yeerung River on Krowathunkooloong land, where Knight spent much of his early life. Each of the album’s pieces grew organically from direct encounters with that setting — the pulse of wind against brass, the crackle of heat, the buzz of insects — forming a meditation on sound as both a reflection of and response to place. It is a work of quiet fluidity, at once structured and spontaneous, where texture and tone gradually shape entire topographies of listening.
…The slightly delayed 20th Anniversary Edition comes with a second disc of standout remixes from the time, plus a handful of fresh versions.
Banco de Gaia (basically studio wiz Toby Marks and whomever he invites over) get their ethnic-electronic groove on again, but this time with extra vision. Maybe it’s the four years since the last proper Banco de Gaia album, or maybe the troubled globe of 2004, but whatever it is, You Are Here feels better put-together than any other Banco album before and the most direct message to the listener that Marks has ever attempted. You can use the cover art as a representation of the general feel of the album. Marks’ music is elaborate as ever but it’s compact in purpose, like the cover’s red dot and just as vivid. If Banco could…
Tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander delivers a soulful modern tribute to Stanley Turrentine with his album Like Sugar. Recorded at the renowned Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, with longtime collaborators David Hazeltine on piano, Dennis Carroll on bass, and George Fludas on drums, the album reinterprets Turrentine’s spirit rather than simply copying it, resulting in a deeply swinging and cohesive set that blends tradition with contemporary artistry.
Alexander begins this session with one of his originals, “Jave,” and incorporates the shout chorus from Turrentine’s signature tune “Sugar,” using it as a melodic springboard. The outcome is an energetic romp where Hazeltine’s solo bridges classic hard bop with modern harmonic…
Heat On is Lily Finnegan’s debut as a bandleader and composer. In fact, while this CD is credited to a band called Heat On, the quartet played several gigs under the name Lilly Finnegan Quartet before it took on its current moniker.
Finnegan is an emerging presence on the Chicago scene. Since moving back here after school in 2022, she has drummed with every iteration of Ken Vandermark’s Edition band, and has participated in other combos with locals Katie Ernst and Sarah Clausen, among others. She’s also curated concerts for the Option Series, a schedule of salon-style concerts hosted by Experimental Sound Studio, is a member of the musician’s collective, Catalytic Sound.
If that combination of playing and organizing…
This month’s covermount CD is the amazing ‘Power to the People’ – an exclusive sampler of John Lennon tracks from the new box set. Features killer versions of ‘Come Together’, ‘Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)’, ‘Cold Turkey’, ‘Well Well Well’, previously unreleased Lennon and more!
1. Come Together
2. Well Well Well
3. Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)
4. Cold Turkey
5. Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking…
6. New York City (Ultimate Mix)
7. Sunday Bloody Sunday (Ultimate Mix)
8. Attica State (Evolution Documentary)
9. Send Me Some Lovin’ (Home Jam)