During the 2014 promo campaign for Pono, his high-end digital audio device, Neil Young called his forthcoming album A Letter Home "an art project," which is an appropriate term for this curious collection of covers from his contemporaries…

Bucky says, "This is the best record I've ever recorded". Coffee, doughnuts and a lot of music books is all Bucky and Frank need to create great music together. This was recorded in NYC (DB Plus) in Sept 2006 by the great grammy award winning engineer, Gene Paul (Les' Son) and is sure to become a classic both musically and sonically.

This CD places Ella Fitzgerald (then 60) in an unusual setting. Joined only by organist Jackie Davis and drummer Louie Bellson, she tackles a wide variety of material that ranges from "I'm Walkin'" and "I Cried for You" to "Mack the Knife" (which did not need to be remade) and "And the Angels Sing." Not one of her more essential releases, Lady Time does show that even at this fairly late stage in her career, Ella Fitzgerald could outswing just about anyone…

The uncle of the great Giovanni Gabrieli, Andrea Gabrieli is often overshadowed by his nephew, yet he was one of the greatest and most approachable composers of the High Renaissance. Late in his life Andrea composed a Mass for four choirs, but most of his music requires only relatively modest forces; yet it has all the colour, imagination and emotional immediacy that we associate with the best Venetian art of the 16th century. In 1562 Andrea formed a lasting friendship with Lassus while visiting Germany, and the music of Lassus can be seen to be an important influence on his own.

The Choir of Royal Holloway have proved themselves as inspirational performers of contemporary Baltic music through their previous recordings. The main work on this fascinating album is based on Estonian folk hymns, an unusual variant of folk melodies, collected in the early twentieth century for the first time by Cyrillus Kreek, who was the Estonian equivalent of Bartók or Grainger. Most of these religious folk songs were originally eighteenth-century Lutheran hymns which have been passed across generations and embellished with elements of secular folk-singing. During the Soviet regime, the singing of these religious songs was forbidden and this cultural genre was all but forgotten. By the end of the twentieth century fresh light could be shone on these folk collections, and Tõnu Kõrvits (born 1969) was particularly struck by the fresh possibilities and newly discovered meanings of folk hymns. In writing Kreek’s Notebook Kõrvits pays homage to Cyrillus Kreek while presenting a contemporary view of folk hymns. Although there is a dramatic unity to this eight-movement work, there is much diversity in timbre and scoring. The effect is improvisatory in the creative ornamentation of the vocal lines, and suffused with dreamy textures that bring to mind the great tradition of Eastern European choral writing.

Stars Kill Rock is a collection of largely unreleased material from one of the '90s pre-eminent American indie labels, Kill Rock Stars, operated by Bikini Kill's Tobi Vail. While there are a few clinkers, most of the material is top-shelf; the music generally leans toward punk, and in keeping with the label's riot-grrrl aesthetic, most of the artists involved are female. Among the highlights are contributions from the cuddle-core quartet Tiger Trap, the British sexual terrorists Huggy Bear, and Boston folkie Mary Lou Lord.

This album was released in Europe on the Philips label (#6303 171) in 1976 and never released in the U.S.. This post is a rip I made of a cd that I bought direct from the artist's website. I don't believe this cd has ever been available commercially. On the artist website it is listed as "Lobo CD02"

This is a great collection of Paul Revere & The Raiders on 3 CDs. It would have easily fit on 2 CDs but I guess it was a marketing scheme to make people think they were getting more for their money. Nonetheless, it is still a great collection and features some tracks you will be hard pressed to find anywhere else. The fans of this group will not want to miss this one. I found no listing for this set in AMG or at Amazon.

Unseen Power is the fourteenth release of the Christian rock band, Petra. It was released in November 1991. The album retains a driving edge while veering away from the more commercial pop-metal sound of their previous efforts. Bob Hartman has stated that he and the producers intentionally chose to move in directions they were not instinctively inclined to go.