This recording was made just about a year before Solti and producer John Culshaw started on their now-legendary "Ring" recording for Decca. On this album, which might easily be regarded as a testing ground for the later project, the formidable Kirsten Flagstad takes the role of Brunnhilde.
- By Michael K. Halloran -

n these days of big boxes, DG really ought to gather together everything Markevitch did and issue it as a set. He was a genius, and his recordings with the Lamoureux Orchestra, especially, combine interpretive brilliance with a classic French instrumental style that no longer exists. They are irreplaceable, and the playing here is amazing. Rimsky-Korsakov’s music demands just the sort of diamond-like precision and clarity that was Markevitch’s stock in trade as a conductor. There are more raucous, more traditionally Russian versions of The Golden Cockerel Suite available (Järvi’s for example), but none that point up the music’s anticipations of Stravinsky so compellingly. Both here and in the May Night Overture, Rimsky-Korsakov becomes a prophetically modern master.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard honours Franz Liszt’s 200th birthday (October 22, 1811) with his most ambitious recording for Deutsche Grammophon to date. In this extensive 2-CD set, Aimard juxtaposes a selection of Liszt’s works with compositions by Liszt’s contemporaries and successors who were inspired by the Hungarian composer. Recorded live in Vienna’s Konzerthaus over two evenings, Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s Liszt project is a pinnacle of the Liszt Year commemorations.

Pianist Chick Corea had a reunion with bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Roy Haynes for this double LP, 13 years after they had recorded Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. The first half of this two-fer consists of duet and trio free improvisations and is sometimes a touch lightweight even with moments of interest; playing free was not as natural to Corea by this time as it had been in the '60s. However, the second album, seven Thelonious Monk compositions, comes across quite well as Corea does justice to the spirit of Monk without losing his own strong musical personality.

British Sea Power - The Decline Of British Sea Power
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 322 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Rough Trade # rtradecd090 | Country/Year: UK 2003
Genre: Rock | Style: Indie Rock

…The Decline of British Sea Power is a conceptual effort that breathes hard in passion. With an unlikely rock blend of classicism and narrative, British Sea Power has composed a brilliant album that's nearly perfect. It's not exactly pop, but it might as well be.

BLOODBOUND don’t pull any punches, and they don’t try to be something they’re not or make their music unnecessarily fancy or twiddly. They’re doing this because they’ve got a passion for Metal, and sometimes, that’s all you need to produce an awesome album.

Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa) is an oratorio by the German composer Hans Werner Henze. It is regarded as a seminal work in the composer's political alignment with left-wing politics.
Henze wrote it as a requiem for Che Guevara, and set it to a text by Ernst Schnabel. It tells the story of the French frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the west coast of Africa in 1816. It marks an undistinguished episode in French political and maritime history, and was later immortalised in the painting of the same name by Théodore Géricault. As Henze's oratorio builds to its climax, the "dead" move from the choir of the living to that of the dead, which is full of both adults and children, creating an imbalance on the stage.

Swedish death metal overlords, AEON, are pleased to unveil the details of their fourth studio offering , Aeons Black. Set to drop via Metal Blade Records on November 16, 2012, the mammoth 15-track Aeons Black was recorded at Empire Studio in Östersund, Sweden, engineered, mixed and mastered by Ronnie Björnström (Garageland Studios) and features cover art by Kristian "Necrolord" Wåhlin (Bathory, At The Gates, Dissection, Emperor et al).

For twenty years electric guitarist Terje Rypdal (and ECM producer Manfred Eicher) have helped define the most sensual, moody, alluring aspects of European jazz and new music. And while Rypdal, the improvising guitarist, may structure his solos and chamber-like accompaniments in the manner of a jazz or classical composer, there's a lyric, rock edge to his guitar playing that will transport anyone who has ever contemplated the vocal cry of a Fender Stratocaster driven into distortion.

This second volume begins with the Three Études. These are among Glazunov's most important works for the piano and stand at the pinnacle of Russian virtuoso piano writing. The main work represented is the Theme and Variations, Op 72, which uses as the theme for fifteen variations the same folk-song as Glazunov's later Finnish Fantasy for orchestra. The work was written in the same year as the first piano sonata and is undoubtedly one of Glazunov's most successful forays into the piano medium. The others pieces ………

Miles Davis - Agharta (1975) [2CD] {1991 Columbia + 1997 Japan Mini LP Master Sound SRCS}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 1.24 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 488 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 60 Mb
© 1991+1997 Sony Music Japan / Columbia | 467897 2 + SRCS 9128~9
Jazz / Fusion / Jazz Funk

Along with its sister recording, Pangaea, Agharta was recorded live in February of 1975 at the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan. Amazingly enough, given that these are arguably Davis' two greatest electric live records, they were recorded the same day. Agharta was performed in the afternoon and Pangaea in the evening. Of the two, Agharta is superior. The band with Davis – saxophonist Sonny Fortune, guitarists Pete Cosey (lead) and Reggie Lucas (rhythm), bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, and percussionist James Mtume – was a group who had their roots in the radically streetwise music recorded on 1972's On the Corner, and they are brought to fruition here.