The double album JAPANESE BLUE and HAMAR RAILWAY STATION / HAMAR STASJON is a significant achievement in the career of Silje Nergaard, marking her 30th anniversary as a singer and composer. On it, she has space to reconsider and reframe her hits and best known songs and on the second record, she digs deep with a concept album inspired by her childhood memories of her Norwegian hometown Hamar. It’s an ambitious undertaking from an artist whose restless creativity has kept her at the top of her profession ever since her first release, TELL ME WHERE YOU‘RE GOING — featuring Pat Metheny on guitar — became an international best seller in 1990.

What’s New, Tomboy? is an album that seeks respite in bare minimums and barren revelations: sometimes frail, sometimes affirming, sometimes wry, and usually a threadbare mix of all those sentiments. It could be considered Damien Jurado’s finest collection of music to date, with songs exuding the inviting warmth of a lone porch light gleaming amidst the disorienting darkness. Though more stripped and grounded in their execution, songs like Sandra, Ochoa and Alice Hyatt are generous and candid in their vocabulary, eschewing the sometimes abstruse imagery of Jurado’s previous releases. “There is no hiding on these tracks.” Though What’s New, Tomboy? is the first Damien Jurado record that ends with a question mark, he has never sounded more assured and content in giving up his ghosts: “I’m only living sentences // That were long before I got here.”

This is a wonderful performance, one of the finest in this Tutto Verdi series of the complete operas. Conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti is an unlikely looking gentleman at first glance but at his first wave of the baton one realizes he is a master. His upbeat tempi have a big sweep that gives the opera the brilliance Verdi intended. The tenor, Francesco Meli (Riccardo), is a young fresh voice, powerful and sensitive; the baritone, Vladimir Stoyanov is beginning to take over from the venerable Nucci in the series.

Jerry Williams’—aka Swamp Dogg—first love was country music, listening to it as a Navy family kid growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia. “My granddaddy, he just bought country records out the asshole,” Swamp remembers. “Every Friday when he came home from the Navy yard he’d stop off and get his records, like ‘Mule Train’ by Frankie Laine, or ‘Riders in the Sky’ by Vaughn Monroe.” His first time performing on stage, in fact, was a country song at a talent show when he was six years old: “I did Red Foley’s version of ‘Peace in the Valley.’”

Instrumental rockers MONKEY3 have buckled up for their next interstellar journey: nestled somewhere in between space rock, psych, stoner and progressive, this four piece is infamous for its onstage intensity that has crowned prestigious festivals such as Roadburn, Hellfest and Desertfest. The Swiss act managed to distill and concentrate its cosmic soundwall on seventh longplayer Sphere down to Pink Floyd-esque surfaces that collide with gritty riffing and noisy outbursts. Tunes such as ‘Axis‘ soar with crystal-clear melodies and dreamy jamming that really turn Sphere into an incomparable astral trip.

Various Artists - The Real Music Box: 25 Years of Rounder Records (1995) {9CD Set, Rounder Records ‎CDAN25}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 3.34 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.36 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 351 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1995 Rounder Records | ‎CD AN 25
Blues / Country / Jazz / Folk / Soul / Funk / Bluegrass

Within the discount, ugly-duckling packaging of The Real Music Box: 25 Years of Rounder Records lie nine CD swans worth several hundred times their weight in superficial music-industry gold records. Since 1970, Massachusetts-based Rounder has been a stalwart sanctuary of various musics at the root of what has recently been labeled "Americana." The retrospective is segmented into four thematic two-disc sets, each offering a staggering 30 to 50 tracks where legendary names rub shoulders with bright young Rounder talent.

Tonight is the sixteenth studio album by David Bowie, released in 1984. It followed his most commercially successful album, Let's Dance. He described the album, released immediately after his previous album's tour wrapped up, as an effort to "keep my hand in, so to speak," and to retain the new audience that he had recently acquired…

Ella Fitzgerald - The Complete Piano Duets (2020) {2CD Set, Verve B0031519-02}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 697 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 355 Mb
Artwork (jpg) -> 10 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2020 Verve / Universal | B0031519-02
Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Standards / Piano

Many of the most beautiful recordings in Ella Fitzgerald's catalog were her duets with pianists. The freedom afforded by this simple configuration resulted in some of her most sensitive, affecting and heartfelt work. This collection assembles every recording Ella made in the piano duo format - for the Decca, Verve and Pablo labels. It includes 1950's Ella Sings Gershwin, 1954's Songs In A Mellow Mood and 1956's Let No Man Write My Epitaph, all in one package for the first time.

Billy Cobham - Fruit From The Loom (2007) {Billy Cobham Self-released}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 420 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 151 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 26 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2007 Billy Cobham Self-released | [none]
Jazz / Fusion / Jazz Funk / Drums

Musicians team are impressive, including great Brian Auger ( and in some places you can hear his excellent keyboard sound), bassist Victor Bailey ( ex -Weather Report), big brass section and team of african drummers. Some Cobham old great compositions are included as well (Zanzeebar Dreams, Spectrum and Crosswinds). So, problem is not musicians or musical material, the problem is music itself.

Oliver Lake - Heavy Spirits (1975) {Black Lion BLCD760209 rel 1995}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 230 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 95 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 48 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1975, 1995 Arista / Freedom / Black Lion | BLCD760209
Jazz / Post Bop / Contemporary Jazz / Saxophone

This will be one of the least accessible of altoist Oliver Lake's recordings for most people but repeated listenings reveal a great deal of beauty. The avant-garde master is backed by three violinists on a trio of intense pieces, takes "Lonely Blacks" unaccompanied and performs "Rocket" in an unusual trio with trombonist Joseph Bowie and drummer Bobo Shaw. The other three selections have a more conventional instrumentation (a quintet with trumpeter Olu Dara and pianist Donald Smith) but are almost as challenging. It's worth investigating but listeners will have to have patience in order to fully appreciate this music.

Luther Vandross was one of the most successful R&B artists of the 1980s and '90s. Not only did he score a series of multi-million-selling albums containing chart-topping hit singles and perform sold-out tours of the U.S. and around the world, but he also took charge of his music creatively, writing or co-writing most of his songs and arranging and producing his records. He also performed these functions for other artists, providing them with hits as well. He was, however, equally well known for his distinctive interpretations of classic pop and R&B songs, reflecting his knowledge and appreciation of the popular music of his youth. Possessed of a smooth, versatile tenor voice, he charmed millions with his romantic music.

We’re delighted to release this 2CD Expanded Edition of Laura Branigan’s 3rd studio album, “Self Control”, originally released in 1984 on Atlantic Records.