'Guzo' is Samuel Yirga's debut album, recorded in Addis Ababa and Real World Studios. The album is just the start of Samuel's journey, where he has explored Ethiojazz, soul and funk, American jazz, and Latin and classical music. Whilst there are deeply virtuosic piano solos, there are also more upbeat songs which feature guests vocalists The Creole Choir of Cuba, a Cuban choir whose songs go back to their Haitian roots; Mel Gara, a British singer whose origins are in Iraq; and Nicolette, a Nigerian-British singer, famous for her collaborations with Massive Attack. The album is produced by Dubulah (aka Nick Page), the British musician and producer behind Transglobal Underground, Syriana and Dub Colossus.

MagnaCult is back – angrier than ever, and ready to crush you with their second album, Insua EnVenom. With their signature mix of thrash and death metal, MagnaCult turns up the volume. Get ready to bleed: MagnaCult’s killing season is open.

Hail to the masters of funeral doom! One of the genre’s pioneering bands, Norway’s Funeral were formed in the mists of the early 90s with an apt name to match their distinct style: morbid keyboard melodies, plodding death stalking riffs and melancholic choral harmonies all superbly mix to create an unbelievably sombre atmosphere on songs like ‘From The Orchestral Grave’, ‘Making The World My Tomb’ and ‘Song Of The Knell’. With each song clocking in around 10 mins a piece “Oratorium” really does feel like attending a funeral in every sense – not in the least when you consider how many guys in the band have died since its formation!

Recorded live at the Barbican in London, these recordings represent the first complete CD cycle of Martinu’s symphonies conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek. The critically acclaimed concerts were given to mark the 50th anniversary of Martinu’s death in 1959.

EMI Classics is pleased to release the latest instalment of highlights from the Martha Argerich Project at the Lugano Festival. This is the ninth annual 3-CD set celebrating the musical fruits of a project in which young artists join seasoned performers, including Martha Argerich herself, to explore wide-ranging chamber music and orchestral repertoire, both well known and rarely heard.

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 3 in D minor – Anna Larson, contraalto; Women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale;
The Paulist Boy Choristers of California; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa Pekka Salonen- conductor
Classical | 2 CD | EAC Rip | 378 Mb (3% recovery)| FLAC+LOG+Cue | Complete scans
Publisher: Sony Classical | Recorded: 1997 | Published: 1998

Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the few indisputably great masters of his trade… The orchestra has never sounded better - in fact, the playing on this disc is so staggeringly fine that you're simply not conscious of it at all. Salonen's interpretation is equally persuasive. It's so natural that it actually makes the work - the longest symphony in the repertoire - seem short… Check out the end of the first movement for the most exciting and passionate five minutes of music you're ever likely to hear. Greatness, folks, pure and simple. - Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com, David Hurwitz

Frank Zappa - Broadway The Hard Way (1988) {2012 UMe Remaster}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (image)+CUE+LOG -> 479 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 163 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 26 Mb
© 2012 UMe / ZFT | ZR 3879
Rock / Experimental Rock

The first live album compiled from various performances on Frank Zappa's 1988 world tour (his final outing), Broadway the Hard Way is composed mostly of new, vocal-oriented material. The tone throughout is highly political, with Zappa taking potshots at such targets as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson and other televangelists, Jesse Jackson, C. Everett Koop, and so on. Despite Zappa's well-deserved reputation as an acute satirist, his sarcasm is often surprisingly humorless here, leaning toward didacticism; his choice to name names and address his subjects explicitly, rather than through metaphor, also renders the album instantly dated, almost like a late-'80s standup comedy routine.

Gal's (1890-1987) Serenade in D, written in 1932, is a witty, sardonic and often beautiful score, which adopts the mannerisms of the Classical style while simultaneously sending them up with love and zest. ...Krasa's (1899-1944) Passacaglia and Fugue is a brilliant revelation, a savage takedown of artistic ideals in which order and luxuriance devolve into chaos. It's a compact, unforgettable masterpiece, and the Ensemble Epomeo - which includes [cellist Kenneth] Woods along with violinist Caroline Chin and violist David Yang - gives it a superb performance.

L'elisir d'amore is a melodrama giocoso in two acts by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel-François Esprit Auber's Le philtre (1831). The premiere was at the Teatro della Canobbiana, Milan on May 12, 1832. L'elisir d'amore is one of the most frequently performed of all Donizetti's operas. It appears as number twenty on Opera America's list of the 20 most-performed operas in North America. It contains the popular aria 'Una furtiva lagrima,' one of the most famous and often-recited arias in all of opera.