The second live album by Italian soul/jazz vocalist Mario Biondi, recorded during his 2010 Spazio Tempo Italian tour, featured two jazz bands facing each other. In this double set, Biondi performs his most recent studio effort, If (2009), in its entirety, and adds a medley, a cover of "Nature Boy," three songs featuring acid jazz combo Incognito, and a studio version of the previously unreleased title track.

A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter.

Scratch the surface of early-seventies progressive rock and underneath all the classic albums and famous musicians you will find a series of lesser-known bands and artists who failed to hit the big-time but still managed to create all manner of excellent prog. Dig a little deeper and you'll find Mainhorse, a little-known European prog-rock group who produced one excellent album and introduced the world to the enigmatic swiss-born keyboardist Patrick Moraz, who would later on find fame with both Yes and The Moody Blues. The eponymously-titled Mainhorse debut was released to little fanfare in 1971 after the group had signed with Polydor Records 12-months previous, but dis-banded soon after the completion of their one-and-only album…

On the first album they’ve released together since they were partners in The Jayhawks in 1995, singer/songwriters Mark Olson and Gary Louris reconvene for a recording that's unlikely to disappoint fans of their old band. But while they mine a thoughtful country-folk vein that’s not far removed from Jayhawks territory, Olson and Louris take a somewhat softer, more acoustic-based, balladic approach here than they did in the Jayhawks days, lending Ready for the Flood a warm, honeyed glow.

Dana Gillespie - Box Of Surprises (1969) {Decca– Rev-Ola CRRev245 rel 2008}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 289 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 116 Mb
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© 1969, 2008 Decca / Rev-Ola | CR Rev 245
Blues / Folk-Blues / Blues-Rock / British Blues / Folk-Rock

Although Dana Gillespie is probably best known for her early-'70s spell among David Bowie's most visible cohorts, her own career dates back almost as far as Bowie's himself, with the pair even sharing a record label (Decca) and producer (Mike Vernon) during the late '60s. Whereas Bowie was more intent on aping Anthony Newley and the English music hall traditions, however, Gillespie was turning in an album that stands as the missing link between period Marianne Faithfull and future Elastica.

If you asked a passing stranger who the most famous female jazz singer was, Ella Fitzgerald would almost certainly be the first name to spring to mind. Sometimes called The First Lady Of Song , her record sales testify to the fact that she was the most popular US female jazz singer for over 50 years. In a career that started with her first recording in 1936 and lasted until the early Nineties despite coronary bypass surgery in 1986, she recorded over 200 albums that sold over 40 million copies and won 13 Grammy awards. In 1955 Fitzgerald left Decca Records and joined the newly founded Verve. This 3 disc compilation showcases the wide-ranging vocal capabilities of a legendary singer as she delivers some of the most famous songs from her repertoire, sung at the height of her career.

Sir Cliff Richard is an English singer, musician, actor, and philanthropist who holds both British and Barbadian citizenship. He has sold more than 250 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has total sales of over 21.5 million singles in the United Kingdom and is the third-top-selling artist in UK Singles Chart history, behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley. Richard was originally marketed as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Presley and Little Richard. With his backing group, the Shadows, he dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s to early 1960s. His 1958 hit single "Move It" is often described as Britain's first authentic rock and roll song; John Lennon once said that "before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music".

Fresh Moods is a musical project by the artist and producer Peter Haubfleisch. It started in 1994 based on the idea to do some productions on his own in contrast to the club tracks he did with the djs. His skills of music production are based on styles like electronic Soundtracks, Downbeat, Ambient, Chill Out, Deep House, Future Jazz, Lounge, or Easy Listening.
Fresh Moods (1997). How could you call a musical flavour which is both relaxing and funky, kickass elegant? What about Power Relax Funk? Call it what you want, it's the music of Fresh Moods that counts. Peter Haubfleisch, the man behind Fresh Moods has skills all over the place…

Peggy Lee - Black Coffee (1956) {Verve Master Edition B0003093-02 rel 2004}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 102 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 77 Mb
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© 1953-56, 2004 Decca / Verve / UMG | B0003093-02
Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Torch Songs / Vocal Pop

Peggy Lee left Capitol in 1952 for, among several other reasons, the label's refusal to let her record and release an exotic, tumultuous version of "Lover." Lee was certainly no Mitch Miller songbird, content to loosen her gorgeous pipes on any piece of tripe foisted upon her; she was a superb songwriter with a knowledge of production and arrangement gained from work in big bands and from her husband, Dave Barbour (although the two weren't together at the time). The more open-minded Decca acquiesced to her demand, and watched its investment pay off quickly when the single became her biggest hit in years.

Despite the presence of a pair of ballads – one of them ("New Horizons") by Justin Hayward the latter's most romantic number since "Nights in White Satin" – Seventh Sojourn was notable at the time of its release for showing the hardest-rocking sound this band had ever produced on record. It's all relative, of course, compared to their prior work…

The Soul Cages is the third full-length studio album released by Sting and the first to feature longtime guitarist Dominic Miller. Released in 1991, it became his second No. 1 album in the United Kingdom. It spawned four singles: "All This Time", "Mad About You", "Why Should I Cry for You" and "The Soul Cages". The title track won Sting the first Grammy Award for Best Rock Song in 1992.

J.J. Cale's debut album, Naturally, was recorded after Eric Clapton made "After Midnight" a huge success. Instead of following Slowhand's cue and constructing a slick blues-rock album, Cale recruited a number of his Oklahoma friends and made a laid-back country-rock record that firmly established his distinctive, relaxed style. Cale included a new version of "After Midnight" on the album, but the true meat of the record lay in songs like "Crazy Mama," which became a hit single, and "Call Me the Breeze," which Lynyrd Skynyrd later covered…

Himiko Kikuchi is a Japanese jazz pianist, keyboard player, composer and arranger. Born in Sendai. "Reverse It" is her fifth studio album.

Van Morrison never stopped recording during the 1990s, but for a little while it seemed as if he was disconnected from his muse. It wasn't so much his series of jazz cover albums – he'd return to this vein often in subsequent decades – but his songwriting that showed signs bitterness, particularly on 1995's Days Like This, where he seemed dismissive of the very notion of being a songwriter. In that light, it's hard not to see 1997's The Healing Game as a rejuvenation. Indeed, the album's very title suggests that Morrison is in the process of mending fences and reconnecting with a sense of joy, a process that began during his deep dive into Mose Allison and other bluesy jazz artists in the mid-'90s. Morrison retains that sense of swing on The Healing Game – he also retains keyboardist Georgie Fame, who would become a fixture on Morrison's albums over the next two decades – and it invigorates a set of songs that aren't necessarily all that different from what he's been writing as of late; he's still specializing in ballads, blues, and folk-rock colored by R&B.