Llŷr Williams – Schubert – Vol. 8 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:56 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
“In a word I feel myself the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this ever makes things worse and worse instead of better …but I have tried my hand at several instrumental things … in fact, I intend to pave the way towards a grand symphony in this manner.”
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Llyr Williams – Llŷr Williams: Schubert, Vol. 4 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:14 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Classics
Schubert’s two sets of impromptus, the second arguably a sonata in all but name, date from 1827, the year before the composer’s death. These lovely performances were recorded live in Cardiff in 2018.
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Llŷr Williams – Llŷr Williams: Schubert, Vol. 2 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:33 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Schubert’s final piano sonata—D960 in B flat major—and the seminal ‘Wanderer’ fantasy as captured live during Llŷr Williams’ electrifying concert series at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2018/9.
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Llŷr Williams – Llŷr Williams: Schubert, Vol. 7 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:51 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Welsh pianist, Llŷr Williams, is widely admired for his profound musical intelligence, and for the expressive and communicative nature of his interpretations. He has worked with orchestras around the world, including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Sinfonia Cymru, I Pomeriggi Musicali, Meininger Hofkapelle, Berner Kammerorchester, Limburgs Symphony and the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg. He also appears at the BBC Proms in London and has given many remarkable performances at the Edinburgh International Festival, including an astonishing performance of Charles Ives’ ‘Concord’ Sonata in 2010. He is a regular performer in the Wigmore Hall’s main piano series.
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Llŷr Williams – Beethoven Sonatas, Vol. 7 / Diabelli Variations (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:56:17 minutes | 1,86 GB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Llŷr Williams
Welsh pianist, Llŷr Williams, is widely admired for his profound musical intelligence, and for the expressive and communicative nature of his interpretations. He has worked with orchestras around the world, including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Sinfonia Cymru, I Pomeriggi Musicali, Meininger Hofkapelle, Berner Kammerorchester, Limburgs Symphony and the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg. He also appears at the BBC Proms in London and has given many remarkable performances at the Edinburgh International Festival, including an astonishing performance of Charles Ives’ ‘Concord’ Sonata in 2010. He is a regular performer in the Wigmore Hall’s main piano series.
Llŷr Williams is a regular performer at the East Neuk Festival in Scotland, Handelsbeurs Concertzaal Gent, and in the Piano aux Jacobins series in Toulouse. He is also currently artist in residence at Galeri Caernarfon in Wales. 2010 saw the release of a solo CD featuring music by Mussorgsky, Debussy and Liszt, on the Signum Label. In 2012, a second disc was released by Signum, featuring works by Liszt. Both discs were met with critical acclaim. Also available is a live recording from the 2012 East Neuk Festival, containing Beethoven’s Op 109 and Op 110 sonatas. Llŷr Williams is the subject of two films produced for S4C: the first of which won a Welsh BAFTA for Best Music Programme, and the second featured his debut at Carnegie Hall.
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Lloyd Price – Mr. Personality’s Hits! (1960/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:50 minutes | 881 MB | Genre: Soul
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla
Lloyd Price (March 9, 1933 – May 3, 2021) was an American R&B vocalist, known as “Mr. Personality”, after his 1959 million-selling hit, “Personality”. His first recording, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, was a hit for Specialty Records in 1952. He continued to release records, but none were as popular until several years later, when he refined the New Orleans beat and achieved a series of national hits. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
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Lloyd McNeill – Tori (1978/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 46:09 minutes | 368 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Soul Jazz Records
This very rare deep spiritual jazz meets Brazilian and Latin album first released as a private-press album in 1978 on flautist Lloyd McNeill’s own Baobob Record label in Washington, DC. The album has been out-of-print for 43 years and is lovingly remastered by Soul Jazz Records.
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Lloyd Cole – Guesswork (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 44:17 minutes | 472 MB | Genre: Acoustic, Pop Rock, Ambient
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © earMUSIC
Some albums coalesce around a title. Lloyd Cole’s new album is one such record. Guesswork mirrors the uncertainty of the world as you enter your third act. Guesswork is consistent with a record whose protagonists seem reluctant to venture confidently beyond the moment. In terms of minutes, it’s his longest, but in terms of songs, it’s shorter than any of his previous eleven solo albums (fourteen if you count those he made with The Commotions). Guesswork is also his shortest in terms of total words sung. This might come as a surprise to those who primarily remember Lloyd for the precocious literary pop dispatches of 1984’s Rattlesnakes, the debut album which earned him an unlikely place alongside Wham! and Duran Duran in the following year’s Smash Hits/Panini sticker book. However, for other onlookers who have followed his progress in the interim – taking in the muscular urban art-rock of his solo debut X (1990), the delicate digital folk of Music In A Foreign Language (2004) and a succession of electronic albums culminating in 2015’s 1D – that may be less so.
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Llorca – The Garden (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:16 minutes | 505 MB | Genre: Soul, Nu Jazz, Funk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MustHave – Membran
Don’t call it a comeback – sixteen years and a few hundred thousand sold copies after his internationally successful debut album “Newcomer”, Llorca plants exciting new seeds with his soulful sophomore effort “The Garden”. “The French Touch” excited listeners in the late Nineties and early Naughties. Combining influences from Soul, Jazz, Latin or African music with extremely elegant electronics, artists like St. Germain, Laurent Garnier, Daft Punk, or Llorca delivered their deep delights to sophisticated audiences in clubs and at parties around the world. Now, the man christened Lludovic Llorca (also known as Art of Tones) steps back on the scene with a decidedly different sound: gritty grooves matured in Funk, sensational songwriting and production, topped by a host of amazing voices, singers of high and mighty caliber, some known to many like Georg Levin of Berlin based Sonar Kollektiv, Parisian Soul Queen Laetitia Dana, Drum’n’Bass-Crooner Frank H. Carter III from the UK or Brooklynite Halley Hiatt, as well as some newcomers like Mawogani Wood, Stefan Frank, Sapele, and Michael Barthelemy. “The Garden” is a treasure trove of melodic seeds, growing with each listen, blooming from good songs into instant classics – surely this is Llorca’s masterpiece.
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Lizzy Borden – Best of Lizzy Borden, Vol. 2 (1994/2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:01:19 minutes | 770 MB | Genre: Metal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Metal Blade Records
Lizzy Borden returns with a brand new best of album that is sure to excite the senses.
After releasing “My Midnight Things” to critical acclaim in 2018, LIZZY BORDEN has been touring in support of it, joining the likes of DEMONS & WIZARDS and TÝR on the road in North America last year, plus performing at stages around the world. Now, LIZZY BORDEN has announced a new greatest hits collection for fans: “Best Of Lizzy Borden, Vol. 2”.
Additionally, the collection features 2 new cover songs recorded in the summer of 2020 (the first recordings by Lizzy’s latest live show line-up!): Blue Oyster Cult’s “Burnin’ for You” and The Ramones’ “Pet Sematary” – both mixed by Jay Ruston (Anthrax, Steel Panther, Stone Sour). Digitally re-mastered by Tom Baker (David Bowie, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Tom Petty)!
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Lizzo – Cuz I Love You (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 33:18 minutes | 400 MB | Genre: R&B
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nice Life – Atlantic
Lizzo’s third album Cuz I Love You – her first full-length release on a major label – makes tried-and-tested self-empowerment rhetoric feel fresh and sincere.
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Liza Stepanova – E pluribus unum (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:27 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Navona
Pianist Liza Stepanova, praised by The New York Times for her “thoughtful musicality” and “fleet-fingered panache,” announces the August 28, 2020 release of her new album E Pluribus Unum on Navona Records. This collection showcases nine renowned American composers with immigrant backgrounds, including Lera Auerbach, Anna Clyne, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kamran Ince, Reinaldo Moya, Pablo Ortiz, and world premiere recordings of music by Chaya Czernowin, Badie Khaleghian, and Eun Young Lee.
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Liza Ferschtman, Het Gelders Orkest, Kees Bakels – Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto, Op. 64 / String Octet, Op. 20 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 58:17 minutes | 1,80 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Classics
One of the leading Dutch violinists, Liza Ferschtman is especially known for her passionate performances, and here she pairs Mendelssohn’s famous masterpieces – the Violin Concerto and Octet for strings – in lively and highly communicative accounts.
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Liz Phair – Soberish (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 43:48 minutes | 956 MB | Genre: Indie Pop, Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chrysalis Records
What must it even be like, to never live up to the (impossible) expectations set by your debut? Looking back on the criticism that intensified with each album post Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville—building to a fever pitch with 2003’s self-titled LP, her fourth proper release—so much of it now feels like a rejection of a girl growing up and evolving, into marriage, motherhood, divorce, being her own woman. As time went on, she was showing people who she was and they didn’t really like the honesty. It’s as if some fans wanted her to be cooler than she was; instead, she is the kind of cool that ages well. That said, there was a sort of plastic sheen to the production of her later work (and no denying it, Phair’s last album, Funstyle, was pretty dismal) that is, refreshingly, missing on Soberish, her first album in 10 years. Credit Brad Wood, who also worked with her on, yes, Exile in Guyville as well as its follow-up, Whip-Smart. “One of the mistakes I make that Brad corrected on this album is, he likes it when I don’t try hard,” Phair has said of their latest. Cut to the chase: Soberish feels like a true, grown-up companion piece to her early work. Songs like “The Game,” gently pulsing “In There,” and “Good Side,” with its speak-singing verses and woozy horns, would fit neatly on, say, Whip-Smart or whitechocolatespaceegg. Hip-swiveling “Bad Kitty” is as graphic as the legendary “Flower” or “Canary.” “Good things can be too much or not enough,” she sings on “Dosage,” delivering a call-back to Henry the bartender from “Polyester Bride.” On the terrific, lightly galloping title track, Phair’s scared of taking a chance on new beginnings and letting go of old crutches: “I meant to be sober, but the bar’s so inviting.” She has said that “soberish” can refer to anything from substance use—”I struggled with coming to my perfect amount of use and not-use,” she said of California’s legalized marijuana—to using work as avoidance of life, to indulging in fiction, to being a night owl rather than facing the light of day. In other words, anything that blunts reality. (The fact that Phair has said she worked too long on an album with Ryan Adams as producer, despite his inability to focus or finish, before finally abandoning the project, offers some more food for thought here: What kind of mess would that have been?) There’s a nostalgic tribute to Chicago (“Sheridan Road”), a fun ’60s play on 5th Dimension grooviness (“Hey Lou”) and a really lovely slow-build bubbler (“Ba Ba Ba”). Phair, just like she was in 1993, is having sex and affairs, and questioning things, and making mistakes in her 50s, and she can tell you exactly what the difference is: “There’s a pure, unspoiled, unselfconscious beauty to the early work that I can’t capture again,” she has said. “I can’t unknow what I know.” Bless her for it. – Shelly Ridenour
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Liz McComb – BrassLand (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:17:26 minutes | 994 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © GVE
New album from Liz McComb ‘BrassLand’. Liz McComb grew up in Cleveland, Ohio where her mother, one of the few women ever promoted pastor-priestess preached in front of a small Pentecostal community (the Afro-American branch of Protestantism). It’s a particularly frenzied style of Gospel ; in fact the modern version of the old ‘Negro-spirituals’.
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