This session is valuable for the majestic playing of tenor great Coleman Hawkins, who performs on half of the eight tracks. Released on the Prestige subsidiary Moodsville - a label that specialized in recordings with an intimate, reflective atmosphere - the Moodsville sound doesn't sit comfortably on Hawkins. His playing is brilliantly relaxed, but it's not mood music. Leader Kenny Burrell's playing is much more in line with the Moodsville groove. The guitarist is not amplified as much as he is on his Prestige dates from this time. In fact, he performs on a nylon-string instrument almost as much as he does on his hollow-body electric. Unlike Hawkins, Burrell's subdued contribution is made to measure for this date. Listeners expecting to hear Burrell the hard bopper won't. The key moments come during the interaction between the guitarist and tenor player, especially during their exchanges on Burrell's "Montono Blues"…

The pairing of electric guitarists Bill Frisell and John Scofield had to be one of the most auspicious since John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana. Acoustic bassist Marc Johnson's stroke of genius in bringing the two together on Bass Desires resulted in a sound that demonstrated both compatibility between the guitarists and the distinctiveness of the two when heard in combination. Add drummer Peter Erskine and you had a bona fide supergroup, albeit in retrospect a short-lived one, before Frisell and Scofield would establish their own substantial careers as leaders. The guitarists revealed symmetry, spaciousness, and a soaring stance, buoyed by the simplicity of their rhythm mates. This is immediately achieved on the introductory track, "Samurai Hee-Haw," as hummable, head-swimming, and memorable a melody as there ever has been, and a definite signature sound.

2010 studio release from the original pioneers of Space Rock, their first new album in five years. Produced by the band at state of the art recording facility Earth Studios, Blood Of The Earth takes the listener on a journey through crushing visceral Space Rock, doom driven poetry, whimsical mantras and imagination opera. An example of humans and machines pulsing in harmony out into the void. Limited two CD edition includes a bonus live CD.

Abrazo. Embrace. A close dance perhaps, but also with the hint of a friendly tussle. Could there be a more fitting metaphor for the duo of accordionist Vincent Peirani and soprano saxophonist Émile Parisien? "It's like a marriage," says Peirani. "In the beginning everything’s just great, wonderful, paradise. But of course, after a while, it also becomes challenging, which is quite normal. "Right now, we're just massively happy playing together." There can be very few musicians who have got to know each other as well as Peirani and Parisien have. They have clocked up well over 1000 concerts together in the past decade, of which more than 600 have been as a duo. They first met in 2012 as members of drummer Daniel Humair’s quartet, and their very first appearance as a duo was an impromptu late-night club set while touring in Korea. "Une ca-ta-strophe! An unmitigated disaster".

Montage was Bjorn Lynne’s second CD, self-financed and self-published in January 1994. Stylewise, ”Montage” is a slightly more daring album than the previous ”Hobbits & Spaceships”. Tracks contain a wide mixture of styles and sounds, and although the album was produced entirely on synthesizers and effects, it is easy to hear Bjorn Lynne’s love for symphonic rock starting to shine through, especially on songs like ”Montage” and "Communion”; both of which are long tracks moving through several stages of ever changing moods. There are also some more down-to-earth simply melodic pieces like ”Head Held High” and ”Fantastic Voyage ’94”. And, there are some slightly more experimental pieces like the futuristic and very cyber-oriented ”The Spirit of Mechanica” as well as the symphonically ambient ”Enlightenment Through Fear”.

L.A.’s preeminent indie psych rock institution, The Warlocks, scale the deepest depths and the highest heights on this monumentally transcendent new album! A truly bipolar album that splits its running time between emotionally engrossing, traditionally arranged songs and improv-heavy, loosely structured jams Warlocks fans know and love!

As a film, The Last Waltz was a triumph - one of the first (and still one of the few) rock concert documentaries that was directed by a filmmaker who understood both the look and the sound of rock & roll, and executed with enough technical craft to capture all the nooks and crannies of a great live show. But as an album, The Last Waltz soundtrack had to compete with the Band's earlier live album, Rock of Ages, with which it bears a certain superficial resemblance - both found the group trying to create something grander than the standard-issue live double, and both featured the group beefed up by additional musicians. While Rock of Ages found the Band swinging along with the help of a horn section arranged by Allen Toussaint, The Last Waltz boasts a horn section (using Toussaint's earlier arrangements on a few cuts) and more than a baker's dozen guest stars, ranging from old cohorts Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan to contemporaries Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Van Morrison…

There have been a lot of Sun compilations over the years; this three-CD, 74-song compilation strikes the medium ground between abridged single-disc highlights and overkill ten-album box sets. What this means is that you get virtually all the key sides of this vastly influential blues, country, and rockabilly label, including the biggest Sun hits cut by Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich, and Roy Orbison. There's also a lot of the pioneering electric blues cut by label head Sam Phillips before he made rockabilly Sun's focus, including sides by Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, Junior Parker, and James Cotton. Then there are the interesting small hits and flops by minor rockabilly figures like Warren Smith, Billy Lee Riley, Malcolm Yelvington, Onie Wheeler, and Carl Mann…