Of the numerous British blues-rock bands to spring up in the late '60s, the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation was one of the better known, though solid reception on tours did not translate into heavy record sales. Musically, the group recalled John Mayall's Bluesbreakers during the 1966-1967 era that had produced that group's A Hard Road album, though with a somewhat more downbeat tone. The similarities were hardly coincidental, as the band's founder and leader, drummer Aynsley Dunbar, had been in the Bluesbreakers lineup that recorded the A Hard Road LP. Too, bassist Alex Dmochowski would go on to play with Mayall in the 1970s, and guitarist Jon Morshead was friendly with fellow axeman Peter Green (also in the Bluesbreakers' A Hard Road lineup), whom he had replaced in Shotgun Express.

The 1970s saw a plethora of great funk and jazz albums that for somewhat mystifying reasons have failed to be reissued. Sitting at home one night it occurred to me that we had better get a move on and get them out. With this in mind we are launching BGP Funk and Soul Classics: long out-of-print albums on CD featuring the very best mastering, great packaging and some nifty sleeve notes to let you know where the album fits into the scheme of things. Our first batch of releases come from the extensive catalogue of Fantasy Records and feature a host of albums that are sought after by collectors the world over.

Réunis dans ce coffret, 10 de ses meilleurs albums parus entre 1967 et 2006 :
MA JEUNESSE FOUT LE CAMP… (1967) / COMMENT TE DIRE ADIEU (1968) / EN ANGLAIS (1968 / LA QUESTION (1971) / MESSAGE PERSONNEL (1973) / ENTRACTE (1974) / LE DANGER (1996) / CLAIR-OBSCUR (2000) / TANT DE BELLES CHOSES (2004) / (PARENTHÈSES…) (2006). Accompagné d'un livret détaillé, tous les albums sont présentés à l'unité dans une pochette CD simple replica, reprenant les rectos / versos originaux. Ces 10 albums constituent 10 jalons qui ont marqué sa carrière emblématique : 'Ma jeunesse fout le camp'*, 'Comment te dire adieu'*, 'La question' et 'Message Personnel' ont façonné sa légende d'icone Pop dans les années 60 et 70, tandis qu''En anglais'* témoigne de son aura internationale. Le confidentiel 'Entracte'* reste un de ces recueils les plus cultes. Marquant son grand retour en 1996, 'Le Danger' a fait date. Lui succédant dans les années 2000, 'Clair-obscur' (qui comprend la reprise 'Puisque vous partez en voyage'), 'Tant de belles choses' et 'Parenthèses' (albums de duo avec Bashung, Biolay, Dutronc…) restent par ailleurs des sommets de sa discographie. *Remasterisés récemment en 2016 et 2017.

Ornette Coleman Trio, live at the Manchester Free Trade Hall on May 14th 1966 Ornette Coleman formed a new trio with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett in October 1961. As the decade progressed, they expanded their musical palette to include trumpet and violin not instruments Coleman was experienced on and divided audiences and critics with their fiercely uncompromising music. Originally broadcast on FM radio during a short British tour, this remarkable set finds them on typically confrontational form, and is presented here together with background notes and images.

By their very nature, remix albums carry the weight of both their source material and the expectations of a "new" record. More often than not, the original music culled for remix collections is always better, and the result isn't so much a new album as it is a set of old songs restructured and recontextualized as the artist readies their next proper LP. The Cure is no stranger to the remix album. In 1990, after the success of Disintegration, they released Mixed Up, which featured remixed songs from their first decade. A sequel, Torn Down, played catch-up with the preceding quarter century in 2018. Both albums served a purpose, closing chapters for the group.

Paul Bley is a master of the piano trio. He showed new and different ways of exploring the complex triangular geometry of what has arguably become jazz’s signature formation. Bley’s early recording with Charles Mingus and Art Blakey promised great things to come. He emerged more fully as part of Jimmy Giuffre’s innovative trio with Steve Swallow, but it was with his own trios of the mid to late 1960s, with drummer Barry Altschul and bassists Kent Carter and Mark Levinson, that he really began to unfold an individual vision that is best sampled in Touching and in the live recording he made in Haarlem, The Netherlands. These are modern jazz at its most searching.

After the critical acclaim Michael Chapman received for Rainmaker in 1969, he followed up quickly in early 1970 with Fully Qualified Survivor, a record more adventurous and haunting than its predecessor, with added production flourishes and equally strong songs. Fully Qualified Survivor is the album that established Chapman as a folk troubadour. Leaving the guitar pyrotechnics largely locked in a shed, Chapman concentrated instead on his songwriting skills, and the sacrifice—for this record anyway—paid off.

By 1965, Bley had settled on the trio format, and touring Europe revealed a warmer reception for music that employed chordless improvisations, three-way rhythmic counterpoint, un - familiar melodic constructs, and malleable song form. But there was an equally momentous conceptual change in the group’s material, as the adventurous pieces by Carla Bley were gradually being replaced by those of Paul’s new partner, Annette Peacock. - Art Lange

After the bruising Melanie received after The Photograph album being withdrawn from sale and the huge fall out with Atlantic Records Phonogenic, … whilst maybe not in her Top 5 albums, enabled her to exorcise her insecurities and get things off her chest in readiness for the bounce back and freshness of the up coming Ballroom Streets album and the as yet unreleased 1978 studio sessions

Geddy Lee Weinrib known professionally as Geddy Lee, is a Canadian musician and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group Rush. My Favourite Headache, Lee's first and only solo album to date, was released on November 14, 2000 while Rush was on a hiatus due to tragedies in drummer Neil Peart's life. Both the title track and "Grace to Grace" received play on mainstream rock radio, and the album itself peaked at No. 52 on the Billboard 200.

The third and final instalment in their award-winning series, the Calidore Quartet return with a three-disc release of Beethoven Early Quartets. Their previous Beethoven recordings have been described as ‘highly collectible’ by BBC Music Magazine. The first album of Late Quartets won the Chamber Music Award at the BBC Music Magazine Awards 2024, and the second awarded Recording of the Month by Gramophone Magazine. “Our interpretation speaks to the influences of our teachers and the great traditions associated with this repertoire, but also to that of our own generation, contemporary research, style and experience.

The daughter of the popular late R&B singer Donny, husky voiced Lalah Hathaway is the perfect foil for Joe Sample's compelling notion that The Song Lives On. Finding a happy medium between the graceful straight-ahead jazz trio vibe of his Invitation album and the plucky pop energy of Spellbound, Sample provides Hathaway on seven of the 11 tunes with a showcase for her sultry approach.His and Bill Shnee's production approach is generally sparse, not much more than piano and bass, enhanced on occasion by Fender Rhodes and the occasional smoky input of Kirk Whalum. Sample doesn't seem to mind playing second fiddle most of the time, his trademark mix of dark chords and dancing, optimistic improvisations forming harmony lines behind her; often, though, his itchiness to step higher into the mix comes clear and he breaks into extended upbeat improvisations. On a cover of his Crusaders hit "Street Life," Hathaway turns the title into a mantra and Sample echoes her sentiments with sharp, percussive reiterations of the song's main melody. Then Hathaway stops and Michael Thompson steps in with some edgy electric guitar lines.

After the success of her Goldberg Variations and a disc devoted to Rameau’s harpsichord pieces, Céline Frisch, harpsichordist and co-founder of the Café Zimmermann ensemble, returns to the recital with a programme devoted entirely to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. For this recording, Céline Frisch draws on her ‘bedside’ music. She thus reminds us that, beyond an exercise for advancing his technique (and we are well familiar with Bach’s strictness in this art), The Well-Tempered Clavier is also a work of pure pleasure, like a constant rediscovery: a landscape that one never tires of admiring.

Until the arrival of this disc, practically all I knew about Ferdinand Schubert was that he had tended his younger brother Franz in his final illness, that in his two marriages he had fathered more children even than Bach in his (29, to be precise), and that he had composed a quantity of church music, among which was a Requiem described as his Op. 2 which in fact had been written for him—most willingly—by his 21-year-old brother.

Although The Moment followed four years after Kenny G's blockbuster Breathless, the saxophonist didn't change his approach at all during his time off. Kenny G remains a sweet, melodic instrumentalist, who works entirely in lush, slick adult contemporary pop settings. His playing has improved somewhat in those four years – he soars and dives with effortless skill, and his vibrato remains fleet and elegant – yet after The Moment is finished, you wish that he had tried some new musical territories. That said, it is true that The Moment ranks second to only Breathless in terms of sheer consistency in Kenny G's catalog, thanks to the sustained vision of producer Babyface. Of particular note are the two vocal collaborations (Babyface's "Everytime I Close My Eyes," Toni Braxton's "That Somebody Was You"), which are the best duets to yet appear on any of Kenny G's records.