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Freddy Kempf – Chopin: Etudes Op.10 & 25 (2004)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 / 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 01:04:09 minutes | Full Scans included | 2,91 GB
Genre: Classical | Publisher (label): BIS Records – BISSACD1390
Freddy Kempf’s Chopin Etudes largely eschew the willful mannerisms that pockmarked his accounts of the same composer’s Ballades. Yet some of his rubatos still seem artificial and arch, as in the E-flat Op. 10 No. 11 and Op. 25 Nos. 1 and 3. Knowing Kempf’s fabulous technique first-hand from hearing him in person, I’m surprised that his “Black Key” Etude lacks sparkle and lightness, or how cautiously he treads through the difficult thickets of Op. 25 Nos. 4 and 6. Works that traverse the keyboard in sweeping arcs, however, bring out the best in Kempf. These include Op. 10 No. 1, where the chorale-like bass notes proudly ring out against the taxing right-hand arpeggios, a mighty “Winter Wind” Op. 25 No. 11, and one of the most blazing accounts of the celebrated “Revolutionary” Etude on disc (Op. 10 No. 12). Still, Ashkenazy, Pollini, Perahia, and Juana Zayas (my favorite among modern Chopin Etudes recordings) outdistance Kempf in the realms of varied sonority and musical insight. BIS’ ugly, glassy sound dips below the label’s usual high standard of piano engineering.
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Svetlin Roussev – Frank Martin: Concerto pour violon / Esquisse (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:02 minutes | 891 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Claves Records
A recording dedicated to Frank Martin, an important figure of 20th century music, faithful to the tonal tradition, while experimenting with forms and instrumentation; he was also one of the first “classical” composers to have written for the electric guitar!
In Frank Martin’s youth, Geneva’s musical life was very much oriented towards Germanic music, the works of the great German masters being those that were mainly played. Although Frank Martin, naturally gifted for music, did not follow the official teaching, he studied privately from 1917 onwards with Joseph Lauber (1864-1952), a musician trained at the Zurich Conservatory. Lauber was not indifferent to the novelties brought by French composers at the beginning of the 20th century. He introduced his pupil to the works of César Franck (a Belgian, admittedly!).
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СОЮЗ – II (Remastered) (2019/2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 32:24 minutes | 343 MB | Genre: Jazz, Psychedelic Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MediaCube Music
SOYUZ (СОЮЗ) stole our hearts back in 2022 when we released their album Force Of The Wind to critical acclaim. Here we proudly present the predecessor to that LP, the band’s sophomore long player from 2019 that was previously only available digitally. It captures a pivotal evolving period in the band’s career, the recordings giving a snapshot of what would become their sound on Force Of The Wind, yet with echoes of avant-psychedelic-pop footprints from yester years.
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Zombi – Direct Inject (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:53 minutes | 518 MB | Genre: Progressive Rock, Space Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Relapse Records
ZOMBI make their long awaited return with their new album, Direct Inject! Capturing the spirit of previous albums like Escape Velocity and Surface To Air, while expanding the band’s sonic palette into territory, ranging from 80’s synth rock (“Direct Inject”) to saxophone-heavy slow jams (“Sessuale II”). Direct Inject is essential ZOMBI, and quite possibly their most diverse and engaging record yet. You can’t help but get carried up in the slipstream of tracks like “Bodies in the Flotsam”, the hard rock/synth strut of “Kamichi & Sandy”, the guttural dirge of “The Post-Atomic Horror”, or the heady sonic touches of “Insurmountable Odds”. The spirit of improvisation permeates ZOMBI’s newest opus, opening a door into the compositional world Steve Moore and A.E. Paterra exist within and have existed in since the beginning. Direct Inject is ZOMBI in their finest form; taking improvisations and mining them for gold. The energy behind Direct Inject is palpable; as Steve Moore sums up the band’s ethos perfectly: “I love what can happen when you roll tape and just go for it.” On Direct Inject, ZOMBI indeed go for it.
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Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:52 minutes | 874 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock, Indie Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph
One of the hardest working singer-songwriters in the game is named Katie Crutchfield. She was born in Alabama, grew up near Waxahatchee Creek. Skipped town and struck out on her own as Waxahatchee. That was over a decade ago. Crutchfield says she never knew the road would lead her here, but after six critically acclaimed albums, she’s never felt more confident in herself as an artist. While her sound has evolved from lo-fi folk to lush alt-tinged country, her voice has always remained the same. Honest and close, poetic with Southern lilting. Much like Carson McCullers’s Mick Kelly, determined in her desires and convictions, ready to tell whoever will listen.
And after years of being sober and stable in Kansas City-after years of sacrificing herself to her work and the road-Crutchfield has arrived at her most potent songwriting yet. On her new album, Tigers Blood, Crutchfield emerges as a powerhouse-an ethnologist of the self-forever dedicated to revisiting her wins and losses. But now she’s arriving at revelations and she ain’t holding them back.
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The Bach Choir Of Bethlehem, Christopher Jackson, Bach Festival Orchestra – Mendelssohn & Bach: Matthäus-Passion (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:05:19 minutes | 1,99 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Les Productions Analekta Inc.
For nearly 74 years from the death of J.S. Bach in 1750 to Mendelssohn’s fifteenth birthday in 1824 the Matthäus Passion had all but disappeared. Young Mendelssohn’s prized birthday gift – a bespoke a copy of the Passion – was to change music history when five years later he mounted its first performance in the nineteenth century in Berlin. Today it is inconceivable to imagine music without Bach, but in the 1820s his music had been relegated to no more than the exercise-book for students of counterpoint. Turning often to Bach’s music after 1829, Mendelssohn performed the Passion again in Leipzig in 1841. Now in a romantic era with a symphonic sized orchestra and choir, he remodelled both the role of the Evangelist and soloists, compacting the Passion’s length by some 30 percent. After his death in 1847 Mendelssohn’s ‘edition’ of the Passion lay fallow with his heirs in London, his grandson eventually bequeathing it to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. A first complete reconstruction of Mendelssohn’s material by Malcolm Bruno and Caroline Ritchie is published in December 2023 by Bärenreiter Verlag, and the first recording by the Bach Choir of Bethlehem to be released in March 2024 on the Analekta label.
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T Bear – The Way Of The World (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:01 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Blues, Blues Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Quarto Valley Records
T Bear is a distinctive singer and talented keyboard player who has made his mark as a solo performer and collaborator with many iconic artists – Crosby Stills and Nash, The Blues Brothers, Billy Squier, Cher, as well as Gene Simmons and Peter Criss of Kiss, to name a few.
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Susana Gaspar, Nuno Vieira de Almeida – Lopes-Graça: Songs & Folk Songs, Vol. 3 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:57 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Fernando Lopes-Graça, one of Portugal’s most prolific and innovative 20th-century composers, was steeped in the folk songs of various provenances. In this third instalment (the earlier volumes are on 8.579039 and 8.579082) Lopes-Graça sets some of the greatest of all Portuguese poets. His exploration of harmonic complexity and progressive writing is distantly rooted in Debussy and laced with other subtle French elements. Premiere recordings of the kaleidoscopic Old English and French songs, which run the gamut of emotions, are among his earliest settings of foreign folk songs.
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Simon Mayr Choir, Concerto de Bassus, Franz Hauk – Mayr: Messa solenne in D Minor (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:35:50 minutes | 1,71 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Johann Simon Mayr’s music stands at the interface between the classical and romantic periods. The expressive lyrical qualities in his religious music reflect a career in which he composed almost 70 operas. The Messa solenne is in the Italian tradition of the Messa concertata and contains the full stem movement – a rarity in Mayr’s oeuvre in this genre. The polyphonic sections of the work left a particularly lasting impression on churchgoers of the time, as Mayr’s first biographer Girolamo Calvi attests, who wrote enthusiastically about the “exquisite vocal music” and the “profoundly exciting” virtuosity of this work – qualities that remained hidden for almost 200 years.
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Scooter – Open Your Mind And Your Trousers (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:27 minutes | 523 MB | Genre: Electronic, Dance
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sheffield Tunes
Scooters will release new music in 2024, go on a European tour and celebrate their 30th band anniversary.
OPEN YOUR MIND AND YOUR TROUSERS will be the name of the 16-song new album and will be released on March 22, 2024. For the release, the group led by singer H.P. Baxxter is also releasing T-shirts, boxer shorts and signed silk-screen posters, which can be purchased in a limited bundle with the new record.
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Rudolf Buchbinder – Brahms – Reger: Song Transcriptions (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:04 minutes | 944 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Rudolf Buchbinder presents an album of all Brahms ‘Songs’ in arrangements for solo piano by Max Reger (1873-1916). An admirer of Brahms, Reger also dedicated his first symphony to the composer.
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Rick Vito – Cadillac Man (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 45:50 minutes | 543 MB | Genre: Blues, Blues Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Heart Records
Grammy-nominated guitarist and performer Rick Vito announces his eleventh solo album, ‘Cadillac Man,’ a collection of eleven original tracks and an instrumental version of Sam Cooke’s “Just Another Day.” The album title reflects Vito’s lifelong passion for classic Cadillac cars. “Mr Lucky,” his 1969 Sedan De Ville, is pictured on the cover. Fans of slide and blues guitar will find songs on the album to suit every mood, from rhythmic to rocking, swinging to swampy, and all points in between. One standout is Vito’s original rocking arrangement of “It’s Two A.M.,” previously recorded by Shemekia Copeland and winner of the 2001 W.C. Handy Blues Award for “Song of the Year.”
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