What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XIII)
Posted by: Richard Dane on 01 January 2017
2017 has arrived today, so time to start this thread afresh.
Last year's thread can be found here;
Chick Corea - Trilogy
From allmusic.com:
This expansive live release finds Corea working with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade, and the three have an uncanny connection, filling space with gorgeous and subtle phrasings, gliding through all manner of styles with a seemingly effortless elegance, grace, and freshness. The three-disc Trilogy was recorded live at tour stops in Washington, D.C. and Oakland, California, and in Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Turkey, and Japan, by Corea's longtime (since 1975) recording engineer Bernie Kirsh, who has provided the trio with a bright, warm production sound that allows each player's slightest shift and voicing to come through with clear precision. In spite of the various locations, this set has a remarkable sonic coherency. It might be too much to call this set a summation of Corea's legacy, but it does have the slight feel of a retrospective collectio. The band revisits classic Corea compositions like "Spain" and covering several tunes from the Great American Songbook, a couple of Thelonious Monk tunes ("Blue Monk" allows bassist McBride to particularly shine), a previously unissued Corea composition, the half-hour "Piano Sonata: The Moon," where the trio shows its ability to move between scored and improvised sections with breathtaking ease, and even a take on classical Russian composer Alexander Scriabin's "Op. 11, No. 9" that manages to breathe and flow without sounding like a forced fusion of classical and jazz. There are guests on three tracks, flutist Jorge Pardo and guitarist Niño Josele on "My Foolish Heart" and "Spain," and vocalist Gayle Moran Corea, the pianist's wife, on "Someday My Prince Will Come," but it's the three primary musicians who drive everything. Not exactly a holding pattern, and not exactly a career summation, Trilogy will surely please and delight Corea's many fans.
(1997 | 2016 MFSL Remaster)
Tonight is a Tragically Hip night in my house as a tribute to Gordon Downie from The Hip who died today. Wonderful singer and all round nice guy.
1979 - Vinyl - UK first pressing...
ewemon posted:
Tonight is a Tragically Hip night in my house as a tribute to Gordon Downie from The Hip who died today. Wonderful singer and all round nice guy.
Very sad news and unfortunately not unexpected for a while now. I've been playing a few of their albums lately and will give them another good playing tomorrow for sure.
Tried it as well, a bit too dark for me, but a nice call out...
Joe Henderson - The Kicker
Joe Henderson's first recording for Milestone was very much a continuation of the adventurous acoustic music he had recorded previously for Blue Note. For those listeners who do not wish to invest in the tenor saxophonist's "complete" eight-CD Milestone box set, this single-CD is a good place to start in investigating his middle period music. Henderson is featured in a sextet with trumpeter Mike Lawrence, trombonist Grachan Moncur III, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Louis Hayes on a well-rounded set highlighted by "Mamacita," "Chelsea Bridge," "If," "Without a Song" and "Nardis."
Royal Blood - How Did We Get So Dark?
Something smooth and soothing to start the evening ..................... not .................. neighbours are oot, .............so, ............ LOUD!!! 
Deep Purple - Machine Head (25th Anniversary)
Stevee_S posted:
(1997 | 2016 MFSL Remaster)
Played this just last night. By far my favourite Alan Parsons album - I nearly played it to death when I worked in a record shop...but failed. Played it yesterday to convince myself I didn’t need the hi-res download...and succeeded, the recent CD remaster is superb!
Played Tales... straight after. Next favourite.
1980 - Vinyl - UK first pressing...
Original vinyl
Why? A different set of parameters to test. Seems to be working...
steve
Queen Bey - on yellow vinyl
Recorded Feb/March 1992 at Keith Jarrett's Cavelight Studio, New Jersey
The recorders are by Moeck. The harpsichord (double manual) by Carl Fudge 1882, after Taskin.
Despite the Halloweenish cover photo there's fortunately nothing horrifying to hear from this duo : )
Debs
Gary Shaw posted:Stevee_S posted:
(1997 | 2016 MFSL Remaster)
Played this just last night. By far my favourite Alan Parsons album - I nearly played it to death when I worked in a record shop...but failed. Played it yesterday to convince myself I didn’t need the hi-res download...and succeeded, the recent CD remaster is superb!
Played Tales... straight after. Next favourite.
Indeed, a wonderful album. Thanks for the heads-up on the Re-mastered. Must add to the collection.
pj
Gary Shaw posted:Stevee_S posted:
(1997 | 2016 MFSL Remaster)
Played this just last night. By far my favourite Alan Parsons album - I nearly played it to death when I worked in a record shop...but failed. Played it yesterday to convince myself I didn’t need the hi-res download...and succeeded, the recent CD remaster is superb!
Played Tales... straight after. Next favourite.
Hi Nick, pleased you like the new CD remaster, this Hi-Res isn't too shabby and I'm happy with it, not sure if I will spring for your latest remastered CD though...
White Stripes - Elephant.
Continuing the LOUD evening ...................... oh yes. 
Stevee_S posted:Gary Shaw posted:Stevee_S posted:
(1997 | 2016 MFSL Remaster)
Played this just last night. By far my favourite Alan Parsons album - I nearly played it to death when I worked in a record shop...but failed. Played it yesterday to convince myself I didn’t need the hi-res download...and succeeded, the recent CD remaster is superb!
Played Tales... straight after. Next favourite.
Hi Nick, pleased you like the new CD remaster, this Hi-Res isn't too shabby and I'm happy with it, not sure if I will spring for your latest remastered CD though...
What remasters are you referring to? I have all the original CDs ripped, and a set of remasters from a few years back - can’t remember exactly when... 3-5 years back? I prefer the originals. Are there a recent set of remasters?
Steeleye Span - Ten Man Mop - original vinyl
I bought my first LP in Dorchester in 1972 where my wife to be was working as an archivist at County Hall. Maddy Prior was a great vocalist for this popular electric folk group. We went to their Winter 1976 Concert in Bournemouth with a group of friends from Plessey Telecoms Sopers Lane Poole. I can still see Tim and Jane Berners Lee dancing in the front isle. This was a bit before he invented the World Wide Web.
Phil
Well why not...
Yello - Touch
Now playing......
Bjarte Eike and Barokksolistene - The Alehouse Sessions
Some follow-up to the earlier "BJARTE EIKE / THE IMAGE OF MELANCHOLY" album which I enjoyed quite a bit. The Alehouse Sessions completely different but then again I do believe that Bjarte Eike is a bit different, but brilliant! Anyway below is a review from the Guardian which can be found here.
The Alehouse Sessions – the brainchild of Norwegian violinist Bjarte Eike – are informal concerts taking us back to Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, when theatres were closed, church music was banned and pubs were suddenly full of highly trained musicians wanting to perform for money. Eike and his period-performance group, Barokksolistene, aim to recreate the spirit of these gatherings. The Bush Hall concert, which came between performances at the Salisbury and Dresden festivals, came complete with a pop-up craft beer stand at the back of the hall.
Eike’s period-performance credentials are impeccable – the first person to graduate from Bergen’s prestigious Grieg Academy specifically as a baroque violinist, he led Concerto Copenhagen for several years. Barokksolistene’s most recent project was playing for Netia Jones’s new staging of Messiah at the Bergen National Opera. The Alehouse Boys are an ever-evolving offshoot of Barokksolistene, containing a core of nine who all have other irons in the fire. Double bass player Johannes Lundberg is also a jazz musician. Hans Knut Sveen, who plays harmonium, is a faculty dean at Bergen University. Viola player Per Buhre has his own music theatre group. Percussionist Helge Andreas Norbakken brings baroque, jazz and west African Wolof rhythms to the mix. Regular singer Tom Guthrie, one of two UK members, is also a stage director – he was absent from Bush Hall as he was across town overseeing Classical Opera’s new production of Mozart’s Apollo et Hyacinthus.
The authenticity being aimed for is less that of performance style – though the calibre of playing is unimpeachable – and more that of experience. The audience stands, beer in hand, and listens to Eike chat from the platform. Some heckle. Before anyone is more than a pint down, Eike manages to get the crowd chanting a call-and-response number – this is not very classical, certainly not very British. But it is exhilarating. It’s a very theatrical show, thanks largely to the comic stagecraft of Steven Player, a dancer, guitarist and actor who is at first a Baldrick-like fall guy in the group’s interplay but later supplies some serious and even dashing traditional footwork.
The Bush Hall set – which partly follows the group’s recent studio recording, celebrating 10 years since the project took shape – is dominated by folk songs from the UK and Scandinavia and by dance tunes from Playford’s The English Dancing Master, published in 1651; some Purcell slips in too. Ships during this time brought music to London, along with spices and the plague, and it’s striking how many of the songs are about sailors. Even more striking is how differently they can be performed. Take a song such as I Drew My Ship into the Harbour: the late lamented folk band Bellowhead sang it as an upbeat number (lead singer Jon Boden described it as “rather poppy”); the Alehouse Boys, however, make it a moment of focus in an otherwise energetic set, Buhre the gentle but pointed singer. Moreover, on disc, with Guthrie’s voice almost cracking, it is a thing of held-breath beauty, so fragile it might break at any moment.
The idea that musicians can be like-minded, even if they come from vastly differing traditions, and that music might be just as enjoyable in a pub as in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (where Barokksolistene return in October) or the Vienna Konzerthaus – where Eike got 800 concert-goers singing an English drinking song – shouldn’t feel transgressive. The Alehouse Sessions remain an exception, but the balance could be shifting. Think of Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto, a star of last year’s Proms, who has worked with musicians in pretty much every genre and is fond of wryly reminding audiences that “every piece of music you know and love was almost certainly written by a living composer”. Or of the Night Shift concerts, given by members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London pubs. As Barokksolistene’s slogan reminds us, “It’s just old pop music”. Performers like this are unlocking the joy in this music, and that might be the most valuable authenticity of all.
My first play of the first disc from this album and now I see what all the fuss was about. Some superb playing here (although I'm not a fan of long sustained notes on the edge of feedback and there's quite a bit of that). I think this could prove an enjoyable purchase.