Ennio Morricone – Morricone Segreto Songbook (1962-1973) (1973/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:46 minutes | 781 MB | Genre: Soundtrack
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca – Sugar – CAM
Following the success of 2020’s ‘Morricone Segreto’, which received unprecedented acclaim from international press as well as support from admirers such as Hans Zimmer, CAM Sugar marks what would have been Morricone’s 95th birthday with a new collection of little-known gems: ‘Morricone Segreto Songbook’. This anthology was born out of a desire to delve into Morricone’s cinematic song production is complimentary to the 2020 release. We hear again the pop-psych, dark-cinematic and avant-garde sounds that characterized the original collection, as well as hints of the folk-rock of the day and poignant ballads and elegant chansons.
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Grails – Anches En Maat (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:04 minutes | 733 MB | Genre: Post-Rock, Progressive Electronic
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Temporary Residence Ltd.
Anches En Maat is the first new album from Grails in over a half-decade following the masterful Chalice Hymnal in 2017 and their first album recorded with all members in the studio together since Doomsdayer’s Holiday in 2008. With every Grails album released since Doomsdayer’s Holiday being a sprawling double-album endeavor, Anches En Maat was conceived as a return to the comparatively efficient single LP runtime. With that, Grails set out to craft the same sonically dense world that their longer albums showcased, while trading singular indulgences for live collaborative interplay.
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French TV – A Ghastly State of Affairs (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 56:15 minutes | 666 MB | Genre: Jazz Rock, Progressive Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Cuneiform Records
French TV’s newest CD, A Ghastly State Of Affairs is their 15th in their long history. It is also their first album not to be self-released. Headed up by charter member bassist/composer Mike Sary, he is joined again by guitarist Kasumi Yoneda (also from the Japanese band TEE), keyboardist Patrick Strawser (best known for his work in the 90’s band Volare), and now by the original drummer from FTV’s first three abums, Fenner Castner. The new album displays their ingenious knack for tricky arrangements, blazing solos, surprising left-turns, and their ability to tell a well-crafted yarn musically without words. Blending elements of progressive rock, fusion, cartoon music, and Rock-in-Opposition, the music of his group can be simultaneously hilarious and highly challenging, making it one of the most original American prog rock outfits and also one of the longest lived, having created numerous albums, toured Europe and the US a few times, and played many festivals.
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Ensemble Diderot & Johannes Pramsohler – J.G. Goldberg & W.F. Bach: Trio Sonatas (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:20 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Audax Records
For the 15th anniversary of Ensemble Diderot, and after forays into concertos and chamber music using larger forces, Johannes Pramsohler and his colleagues go back to the roots with a recording of their core repertoire: trio sonatas. Highly inventive works by Bach pupils Johann Gottlieb Goldberg and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach make for a programme in which the Diderots show their art with their trademark stylish and agile playing.
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Emilie Adolfsson – Över bygden (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:08 minutes | 453 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Emilie Adolfsson
Pianist Emilie Adolfsson brings together a band consisting of Johanna Grüssner (vocal), Esko Grundström (double bass), Andreas Nyberg (violin) and Thomas Törnroos (drums) for Över bygden, a collection of Finnish-Swedish classics in new arrangements!
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Dominik Wagner – Double Bass Rhapsody (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:11:39 minutes | 754 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics
This album hums and growls, it whispers very delicately and causes a pleasant feeling again and again. It is the warm, deep and full tone of the double bass that has taken hold of the young Viennese soloist Dominik Wagner. This is already the fourth album he is releasing on the label Berlin Classics. As on the three previous albums, he has placed the double bass at the center, and yet everything is different on the new album “Double Bass Rhapsody”. Here, the double bass is heard exclusively as a solo instrument, in a quartet and even in a sextet. For this, Dominik Wagner has enlisted the best colleagues he can imagine: Christoph Wimmer and Herbert Mayr, both principal double bassists of the Vienna Philharmonic, who share with him an authentic connection to the Viennese style. And José Trigo, deputy principal double bass of the BR Symphony Orchestra, who, like Dominik Wagner, also studied with Professor Dorin Marc. “In order to bring out the special features of the double bass, there is no need for any other instrument” explains Dominik Wagner.
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David Holmes – Blind On A Galloping Horse (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:14:37 minutes | 883 MB | Genre: Electronic, Pop Rock, Alternative, Female Vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Heavenly Recordings
David Holmes has announced details of his first solo album since 2008’s The Holy Pictures. Blind On A Galloping Horse is due for release on Heavenly Recordings on 10th November 2023. Blind On A Galloping Horse was written , produced and arranged by David Holmes. The album features updated versions of the previously released singles Hope Is The Last Thing To Die and It’s Over If We Run Out Of Love and a recording of an unreleased song by Holmes’ late friend Andrew Weatherall (I Laugh Myself To Sleep).
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Chromb! – Cinq (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 34:05 minutes | 411 MB | Genre: Progressive Rock, Jazz Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Dur et Doux
CHROMB! has been making CHROMB! for ten years, five albums and many concerts. And CHROMB! is music. The band is driven by four heads, propelled by an overflowing imagination, electrically powered and impervious to classification. Sometimes its mother is jazz, since CHROMB! looks like her in photos, sometimes it’s rock, since it’s true that it’s not completely wrong. What defines CHROMB! above all is their elasticity, their devotion to both melody and racket, and their obstinacy in continuing to invent unpredictable pieces of music.
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BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Jonathan Berman – Franz Schmidt: The Symphonies (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:29:55 minutes | 3,63 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Accentus Music
“In conversations about Franz Schmidt the recurring theme emerging for many is that listening to a performance of his music at a young age became the turning point in their lives –the realization of how powerful music can be,” says Jonathan Berman, whose longtime love of Franz Schmidt’s work has its origins in a performance preparation for his Fourth Symphony. Berman’s passion for Schmidt’s work and the composer’s upcoming 150th birthday in 2024 were key reasons for the conductor to approach the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to record all four symphonies together – a major project that also marks Jonathan Berman’s CD debut. The recordings were realized between 2020 and 2022 at BBC Hoddinott Hall, the home of the BBC NOW in Cardiff. In November 2023, Accentus Music releases all four symphonies in a high-quality box set that will also be made available across all digital platforms. BBC Music Magazine wrote about the digital pre-release of the first symphony in March 2021: “Jonathan Berman and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales deliver a terrific performance which provides a fine alternative to the excellent version from Paavo Järvi. […] [W]hat really makes this new recording so enticing is the sheer energy and enthusiasm with which conductor and orchestra communicate the vigour and optimism of the opening movement.
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Antti Lötjönen – Circus/Citadel (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 37:21 minutes | 698 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © We Jazz
Finnish bassist Antti Lötjönen returns in February 2023 with his second Quintet East album on We Jazz Records. With Verneri Pohjola on trumpet, Mikko Innanen and Jussi Kannaste on saxes, and Joonas Riippa on drums, Quintet East is a hard-hitting ensemble of Helsinki scene A-listers. The new release sees the quintet work with Lötjönen’s inspired new music with remarkable spirit, spreading out on a quest for new sounds and ideas, and returning to base with a fresh batch of acoustic creative music, wild to the bone even when sounding completely in control.
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Alexander String Quartet, Paul Yarbrough – Mozart: The String Quintets (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:52:21 minutes | 3,55 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Foghorn Classics
Mozart’s string quintets represent “some of his most sophisticated musical thinking … wonderful music, exhilarating to hear” (from the liner notes by Eric Bromberger). With this three album set, the Alexander String Quartet and Paul Yarbrough complete their Mozart compendium.
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A.K. Yeboah – Nde Yen Da (1985/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 28:01 minutes | 314 MB | Genre: Disco, Boogie, Highlife, Afrobeat
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BBE Africa
AK Yeboah- Antony ‘King’ Yeboah- began his career playing ‘classic’ highlife in the 1950s. Thirty years later, he hit upon the brilliant idea of writing songs in Pidgin, to attract a much wider listenership- especially among neighbouring Nigerians. Yeboah’s pan-African electric guitar style was a shoo-in for the 80s ‘burger’ highlife style, and equally popular with Colombia’s burgeoning ‘picotero’ DJ sound systems. In fact this record is probably the perfect calling card for that innovative sound. To this day, he remains a leading source of inspiration to budding Ghanaian musicians and recording artists the world over.
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Emmet Cohen & Houston Person – Masters Legacy Series, Volume 5: Houston Person (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:22 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bandstand Presents
From its languid beginning, saxophonist Houston Person’s own warmly engaging “Why Not?,” to its closing, Etta James’ slinky seduction “Sunday Kind of Love,” Emmet Cohen’s Master Legacy Series Vol. 5 Featuring Houston Person is a decidedly laid-back affair, unlike much of its predecessors which featured Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, George Coleman, Benny Golson and Albert Tootie Heath.
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Elly Ameling – Bach: Cantata BWV 202 “Wedding Cantata” by Elly Ameling & Eugen Jochum (2023 Remastered, Amsterdam 1973) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 22:58 minutes | 398 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alexandre Bak – Classical Music Reference Recording
Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten (Dissipate, you troublesome shadows), BWV 202, is a secular cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was likely composed for a wedding, but scholars disagree on the dating which could be as early as Bach’s tenure in Weimar, around 1714, while it has traditionally been connected to his wedding to Anna Magdalena on 3 December 1721 in Köthen. It is one of Bach’s frequently recorded cantatas. The aria “Sich üben im Lieben” (“To practice sweet courtship, to joyously cuddle” or “To cultivate love”) is often performed as a concert piece.
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Carl Petter Opsahl – Mystery of Listening (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:18 minutes | 734 MB | Genre: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Visions and Dreams
Opsahl is an award winning clarinetist and composer whose last album Kyrkja – with Oddrun Lilja and Ellen Brekken – received international acclaim and was hot-listed by Europe Jazz Network as one of the best jazz albums of 2022.
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