Juanita Hall is best-known for being a stage actress, playing Bloody Mary in South Pacific. However on this 1958 set for Counterpoint she shows that she could effectively sing blues. Mostly sticking to songs from the Bessie Smith songbook (including "You've Been a Good Old Wagon," "Gimme a Pigfoot" and "Nobody Wants You When You're Down and Out"), Hall's extroverted and shouting style fit the music quite well. Pianist Claude Hopkins arranged for the sextet and gathered quite an all-star backup group that includes tenor-saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, clarinetist Buster Bailey and trumpeter Doc Cheatham. Well worth getting.

In fact this is the most complete and most symphonic album by Dutch band Finch from the Hague. Unfortunately there had been this dramatic turn of the tide in which Punk rock flushed away all good music without having been carefully listened to. This appeared to be fatal for a quality band like Finch and "The Galleons Of Passion" sadly sunk away in an ocean of musical oblivion. True progfans however should certainly check out this album, because it shows Finch at their best.

A great issue of some of Billie Holiday's classic sides for the Commodore label - a company she didn't work with often, but home to some of her best material of the early years! The tracks here were mostly recorded in 1944, but the set also features some early bits from 1939 as well - and backing on all numbers is by small combos, with players who include Eddie Heywood on piano, Frankie Newton or Doc Cheatham on trumpet, Tab Smith or Lem Davis on alto, Teddy Walters on guitar, and Kenneth Hollon on tenor sax. Titles include Holiday's seminal "Strange Fruit" - a track that's stunning both for its handling of racial subject matter, and for the fact that it's one of the few penned by Billie herself!

After a long silence, Anekdoten reemerges into the darkness with a record that is both more mature than their debut, Vemod, and yet somewhat less polished than 1995's Nucleus. From Within feels like it was produced on a tighter budget, and the production can have a rehearsal-room feel - although to be sitting in Anekdoten's rehearsal room is no small privilege. The opening title track is a band tour de force of crunching bass, swooping Mellotron, and clattering snare drums; one of the real high points of the album comes with the slowly building instrumental "The Sun Absolute," built around a single pulsing bass guitar note, ghostly Mellotron flutes, and sonar ping keyboards. But this fine album still falls a little short of its predecessor, for although Anna Sofi Dahlberg is still listed in the credits, her cello work is strangely absent from the mix. Its departure only serves to emphasize its importance in the band's sound in previous albums.

Released on Mute on Friday July 28th 2017, the seven track extended single also features remixes of "World Be Gone", "Oh What A World" and "Just A Little Love" alongside the b-side "I Need You Now".
Established in London, England in 1985, enduring alternative dance duo Erasure combine the talents of emotive, broad-ranged vocalist Andy Bell and synth idol Vince Clarke, previously a founding member of Depeche Mode and Yazoo. Like those bands, Erasure is a synth-based group, but with stronger, more house-oriented dance inclinations, as well as a sharp, accessible sense of pop songcraft.