Leftover Salmon - Bridges to Bert 2001

"Mention that the title is a reference to an Ecstasy high," muttered Bart the Stoner upon learning that a review was in the works for Bridges to Bert, dating from 1993 and the earliest item in the discography of Leftover Salmon. Hopefully, drug references will not be the most enduring legacy of an eclectic outfit that promoted its set list as "poly-ethnic slamgrass." Still, there is an enduring image of frontman Vince Herman wandering on-stage for the first morning set of a brilliant music festival organized deep in the Appalachians, hefting a bong and chanting "Yes, we gonna rise up! We gonna wake and bake!" An interesting aspect of the manner in which listeners follow the activities of certain bands hasn't changed much since the days of territory bands wandering certain regions. Based out of Boulder, CO, Leftover Salmon toured mightily in many areas of the United States, among them all the southern Appalachian states. Fans of the band living there potentially might have caught ten gigs by the time Bridges to Bert was erected in 1993. Across the span of several sets, the group's exorbitant sampling of genres made plenty of sense. There was always enough time for lots of bluegrass and old-timey music, which up until the death of banjo player Mark Vann was something this group did brilliantly, perhaps with as much power as electric bluegrass pioneers the Osborne Brothers. Material desired by the boogie bozos, including reggae and Cajun, felt better in the shadowy scent of an excited audience then seeping out of a stereo speaker, a setting where it has to compete with recordings by masters in these genres. Right from the outset it didn't seem like the discography would be the place to really understand Leftover Salmon's charm or abilities. Even with the CD's extended playing time, a group that worked well in long form had to make too many choices regarding what to document and what to present. Business pressures must have been severe, as a group that has already established a certain momentum as a live act can get in the habit of expecting each new CD to be an industry breakthrough and putting it together accordingly. This type of thinking has nothing to do with what made this a fun group, hampering the quality of most of Leftover Salmon sides when obvious. That problem is combined with the usual bumps of a first release, still Bridges to Bert still leads to many wonderful vistas, especially when the lads are picking bluegrass. AMG.

listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK

Emily Remler - Transitions 1983

Thanks to Pascal George from the excellent music blog Life Sensations in Music. Guitarist Emily Remler's third Concord recording was a strong step forward, as she started to really get away from her early Wes Montgomery/Herb Ellis influence and find a voice of her own. Rather than a standard piano-bass-drums trio, Remler teams up with trumpeter John D'Earth, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Bob Moses. Her three originals are challenging, and the quartet also performs Sam Jones' swinging "Del Sasser," Duke Ellington's lesser-known "Searchin'" and Keith Jarrett's "Coral." Throughout, Remler shows that her future lay beyond straight-ahead bebop, although as it turned out, she would not live long enough to be as influential as she would have been. All in all, this is one of the strongest of the six Emily Remler Concord recordings. AMG.

listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK

The Brew - A Million Dead Stars 2010

The Brew is bassist Tim Smith, son Kurtis Smith on drums and young phenom Jason Barwick on guitar and lead vocals. A generation-spanning line-up that fuses elements of classic rock from the 60s and 70s with the sounds of today. As the band’s senior member explains, the explosive mixture heard on their latest album A Million Dead Stars is meant to appeal to both older and younger music fans: “Our style of playing is more of an echo from the past. But the production and sound we’re striking for is a modern sound. As somebody once said, there’s no future without the past. We hope to get the best of both worlds.”.

Following their eponymous debut in 2006 and an EP entitled Fate and Time a year later, this up-and-coming British trio broke out internationally with 2008′s highly acclaimed The Joker. Seemingly overnight, the band was filling thousand-seat venues in countries like Poland and Spain and making a high-profile TV appearance on Germany’s prestigious Rockpalast music programme. Their recent signing with the label Jazzhaus Records coincided with an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to record in world-renowned Chapel Studios with veteran producer Chris West. The goal of the sessions was to take the youthful exuberance and energy The Brew generates onstage and transport it onto record. A tall order to be sure. But A Million Dead Stars delivers.

For one thing, the band had already road-tested the songs. “We write songs we can play live” explains Tim Smith, “and we record songs we’ve been playing live. If it doesn’t work live, we won’t record it.”. Fans will instantly recognize a number of tracks that were a part of the set list throughout 2009: the cracking and defiant opener “Every Gig Has a Neighbour” (with its anthemic “Turn it up, play it loud!” chorus), the unrelenting “Wrong Tunes” as well as an excellent version of the lyrical and poignant “KAM”.

Some familiar elements remain integral to the sound. The ghost of Jimi Hendrix inhabits the bluesy riffs of “Surrender it All.” Jason Barwick’s acoustic playing on “Mav the Rave” and “Monkey Train” recalls Jimmy Page. There’s even a nod to Malcolm Young (or rather, several nods) on the title track. Other songs, however, show the band expanding their territory, exploring more melodic themes while giving Barwick an opportunity to come into his own as a vocalist. In fact, the entire album serves as a kind of coming out party. The twenty-year-old Barwick only recently assumed duties as the band’s lead vocalist, but is already showing signs of greatness. His shining moment on A Million Dead Stars comes on “Change in the Air” a standout tune not quite like anything the band has done before.

Drawing on his experience with classic rockers Status Quo and Uriah Heep as well as Britpop icons Richard Ashcroft and The Verve, producer Chris West has helped create a more varied album with intricately layered, more fully developed songs. There’s no better example than “A Million Dead Stars”. In its seven-and-a-half mind-boggling minutes, the song provides the set with a rousing climax – and gives us a first glimpse of the musical heights these talented artists are poised to climb.

Until now, The Brew has straddled a musical fence, finding friends in both the classic rock and traditional blues camps. There are pitfalls in constantly being compared to artists of the past – as Tim Smith and his two young bandmates are well aware. That’s one reason they’ve worked hard to create something all their own, and to reveal more of their unique personalities in the process. “I think a band searches for its direction for a certain period of time” Smith reflects, “On A Million Dead Stars, it’s very much our own sound.”. At the same time, they chose not to complicate things or get too far away from what they do onstage. “For us, it’s rock ‘n’ roll. We live it, breathe it, sleep it and eat it.”. bluesmagazine.nl

listen here

Buy @ Amazon:,USA - FR - UK

V.A. - African Elegant - Sierra Leone's Kru Krio Calypso Connection 1992

Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, early developed a charming, calypso-like Creole-language palm-wine guitar music. The style's undisputed king was Ebenezeer Calendar, whose Maringar band (acoustic guitar, tuba, percussion) ruled the roost for 30 years. His gentle, extraordinarily catchy hits, on the order of "Jollof Rice" and "Arriah Baby," dominate this unique collection. Also present are several recordings by the Kru seamen who first developed the guitar style that was to travel via Ghana to the world, as well as some Mandingo and Mende groups with wonderfully eccentric brass playing. AMG.

listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK

Hiromi Uehara - Place To Be 2009

Hiromo Uehara is a jazz composer and pianist born in Hamamatsu, Japan. She is known for her virtuosic technique, energetic live performances and blend of musical genres such as jazz, progressive rock, classical and fusion in her compositions.

Link removed

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK

Dirty Three - Ocean Songs 1998

The Dirty Three's fourth venture into long-play territory is easily their most controversial, and a decided change in direction. While the band's previous recordings -- Sad & Dangerous, Dirty Three, and Horse Stories -- have all, in some way, attempted to capture the trio's live show, where slow, winding patterns and riffs become a swirling churning blast of emotional cacophony for both musicians and listeners, Ocean Songs takes a very different tack to achieve an end that is similar, but more focused. There is an aesthetic at work on Ocean Songs, from the cover through to the last note of the original recordings (early issues of the CD came with a second CD with three bonus tracks, all of which have surfaced elsewhere), the purpose of which is held in the somewhat mysterious title. The music is what makes it so. Are D3 playing songs inspired by or seemingly "created" from the ocean? Or are they paying homage to the ocean? The music here keeps all tempos reigned in and all instrumental flurries to a minimum, creating the feeling of waves lapping and pouring into and out of one another. It's as if the D3 were on a vessel, playing to the ocean itself. There are hints in guitarist Mick Turner's gorgeous cover painting, which shows a tranquil mermaid on one side, a near tidal wave over a red boat on the back sleeve, and both in deep blue against a light blue background, seemingly under the ocean. On the tentative opener, "Sirena," Warren Ellis plays two- and three-notes lines, held interminably against Turner's pastoral and minimal guitar flourishes while Jim White's rhythmic constructs glisten and shimmer through the middle, offering it all more room to drift rather than create a frame. On "Distant Shore," a tune built on three chords and a fragment, Ellis puts the album's tentative nature forth in the elegantly twisting lilt of his violin, creating a melody that is simply a chant, as Turner and White slip around his center, creating a view of the shore and the ground, mirage-like and ephemeral, and presented through a watery prism, as mournful, left behind, turned away from. The centerpiece of the album -- from which there is no return, either to "traditional" D3 form or to anything else considered rock music -- is "Authentic Celestial Music." Ellis, for the first time, overdubs his violin, creating a series of drones and overlapping melodies. Turner plays its straight, creating a chord structure that follows the dynamic changes in Ellis' minimal style, from one melody to the next, with no more than 12 notes total. White relies on his tom toms and a muted snare, almost leaving his cymbals out of the mix entirely until over halfway through the tune's nearly 11 minutes. Here is a new kind of intensity for the D3, one built in unison and not in any kind of rock counterpoint. A dynamic range is built upon slowly, with repeated phrases and rhythms masking the turbulence underneath, mirroring it even, and holding some degree of it in, where previously the dials would have been in the red. This is not to say there isn't drama or tension -- far from it. It's just that it does not get released through catharsis; instead, it merely goes quiet. When "Backwards Voyager" ushers in the second half of the album, it is clear that listeners are in the aftermath of a storm. A dangerous calm is created by White's whispering snare, and deepened by Turner's generous open-tuned chords, plucked and gently strummed, as Ellis just hovers elegaically in the background, moving the band into a lulling, shimmering space where everything floats in open, empty, poetic, and lyric space. D3 move eventually from this gorgeous, mournful, and some what sad space into the heart of beauty itself, meditating on this new terrain, one which extends far beyond anything they conceived of exploring as a band on previous albums. Loss, desire, remembrance, solitude, and the tenuous benevolence of nature are all emotional frames explored in tracks like "Last Horse on the Sand," the densely mysterious "Sky Above, Sea Below," and "Black Ride." The disc ends with "Ends of the Earth," withEllis taking up the piano as well as his violin, and Turner playing a gorgeous yet simple lyric line that evokes the shimmering horizon, endlessly out of reach, just over the next curve in the earth. Ellis, whose chords underlie his fragile song, also layers his violin just above White's brushed snare that haunts Turner's guitar. In the middle of the tune's five-minute span, one can see into the depths of the ocean itself, and hear it speak its secret truths while revealing its hidden, flowing body. It's a song than ends in a small, shimmering whisper about things to come, things that are, and things that will never be. On Ocean Songs, The Dirty Three have expanded themselves immeasurably as a band by holding themselves in to listen, and have made some of the most haunting, poetically profound, and emotionally honest music ever to come out of the "rock" world. AMG.

listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK

Apostle of Hustle - Eats Darkness 2009

Another gift from MFP aka LRR. Andrew Whiteman created the atmospheric post-rock/experimental sound ofApostle of Hustle in 2001. Whiteman returned to his native Toronto to resume writing and recording with Broken Social Scene after a two-month stay with his godmother's family in Cuba. He learned to play the tres, a Cuban guitar, during that time. But in the midst of making the Juno Award-winning You Forgot It in People album, Whiteman couldn't escape the Spanish musical flavors of his time spent in El Barrio Santo Suarez. In order to make his fascination come to life, two of his fellow bandmates, Julian Brown and Dean Stone, joined Whiteman for what would become the cinematic, Latin-tinged portrait of Apostle of Hustle. Folkloric Feel was released on Arts & Crafts in late summer 2004. Unlike for their debut, which was put together during breaks from BSS touring, the band was able to spend more time on their follow-up, enlisting the help of percussionist Daniel Stone as well as Stars members Evan Cranley and Chris Seligman, among others. The album, National Anthem of Nowhere, came out in the first part of 2007. AMG.

listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK

Cracker - Cracker 1992

During Cracker's heyday in the 1990s, the Virginia-based band molded elements of alternative pop/rock and country into several irreverent, buzzworthy anthems. Singer/guitarist David Lowery made no attempt to mask his affinity for traditional roots music, but his own background was far from traditional, as he spent the '80s fronting the quirky alternative outfit Camper Van Beethoven. Shortly after Camper Van Beethoven embarked on a long hiatus in 1990,Lowery began demoing new material with guitarist Johnny Hickman and bassist Davey Faragher. The three musicians named the project Cracker (although several of those early demos would later surface under the title David Lowery Demo Mixes) and set up their headquarters in Richmond, VA. By 1991, the band had signed a recording contract with Virgin Records and enlisted the help of several drummers (Jim Keltner, Rick Jaeger, and Phil Jones), all of whom helped shape the sound of Cracker's debut album.

Golden Age spun off another hit with "I Hate My Generation," and the band toured in support of its release. After returning home from the road, Lowery began focusing on his Richmond-based recording studio, Sound of Music, where he produced such artists as Joan Osborne, Lauren Hoffman, Magnet,Fighting Gravity, and Sparklehorse. He also co-produced the Counting Crows along with former Camper Van Beethoven producer Dennis Herring. Lowery's work wasn't limited to the music world, however, as he co-starred in director Eric Drilling's independent film River Red (also composing the film's score) and appeared in another film, director Matt Leutwyler's This Space Between Us.Cracker released their self-titled debut in 1992. Filled with guitar-driven rock songs and gravelly vocals, the album established Cracker's presence in the rock arena, and "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)" became a number one modern rock single. A year later, the sophomore effort Kerosene Hat spawned another popular MTV/radio hit with "Low," which charted in the U.K. and also cracked the pop charts in America. The album went platinum as a result. By the time Golden Age arrived in 1996, however, the band's hitmaking lineup had begun to splinter. Bassist Faragher was replaced byBob Rupe, while the drum spot was occupied by a trio of players: Charlie Quintana, Eddie Bayers, and Johnny Hott.

Cracker (along with select musicians from CVB) issued a live album, 2001's Traveling Apothecary Show & Revue, and Cracker followed its release with Forever (2002) and a rowdy set of country covers calledCountrysides in 2003. The latter album also marked Cracker's first effort as an independent band, as they had recently left the Virgin roster. Three years later, Cracker returned (this time via the U.K.-based indie label Cooking Vinyl) with Greenland, which featured help from guest artists David Immerglück and Mark Linkous. Another concert release, Berlin (Live in Berlin December 2006), arrived in 2008, and the studio effort Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey which cracked Billboard's Top 200 chart, followed one year later in 2009. That same year the band went on a tour of Iraq, playing for U.S. troops while working on the "Yalla Yalla" video which was produced by compiling YouTube videos of American soldiers stationed overseas. Public radio network NPR profiled the tour on their weekly series The Show. A year later the band played a series of sold-out shows with Camper Van Beethoven duubed the 2010 Traveling Apothecary TourBy the end of the decade, Cracker seemed to have settled on a somewhat permanent lineup comprised of drummer Frank Funaro, keyboardist/accordion player Kenny Margolis, and the preexisting core ofLowery, Hickman, and Rupe. This version of the band issued 1998'sGentleman's Blues, a more reflective album that saw the musicians paying homage to Southern rock and blues. Camper Van Beethoven unexpectedly re-formed shortly thereafter, and Lowery began splitting his time between both bands, whose other members frequently joined whichever group was on the road. AMG.

.listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - FR

Bumcello - Al 2012

This one here  it's a gift from the MFP, thanks! Sometimes classified simplistically as trip-hop, Bumcello is a downtempo electronica duo from Paris, France, whose wide-ranging music draws from groove-driven styles such as jazz and left-field house as well as dub reggae and hip-hop. Comprised of producers Vincent Ségal and Cyril Atef, who perform most of the music themselves, Bumcellomade their full-length album debut in 1999 with Bumcello on the independent label Comet Records. Their second album, Booty Time (2001), comprised in part of a live performance on public radio station France Musique, was released on the label Signature - Radio France. In 2002 they advanced to their third label, Tôt ou Tard, a prestigious subsidiary of Warner Music France, and released Nude for Love (2002), a sample-free effort featuring notable guests such as Mathieu Chédid (aka M) on "Death in Brest" and Lateef the Truth Speaker, Gift of Gab, and Chief Xcel on "Beautiful You." A long tour of Europe with Chédid followed along with the accompanying double live album Get Me(2003). Successive albums Animal Sophistiqué (2005) and Lychee Queen (2008) on Tôt ou Tard were well received and, reaching numbers 198 and 159 on the French albums chart, marked the steadily growing popularity of Bumcello. AMG.

listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK

East Ash Street Band - The World Keeps On Spinning 2008

The East Ash Street Band is an American Jam Rock outfit that brings a full audio and visual world to life before your eyes. Transcending genres from over a century of music that soothes your mind and moves your body. With a love for songs, lyrics and extended jams they bring the grooves of funk, blues, reggae, rock, country and psychedelica together, along with a liquid light show, to inspire a variety of different crowds, young and old, too bring their dancing shoes.

listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK

Dungen - Stadsvandringar 2002

Stadsvandringar is the second album from Dungen but the third to hit U.S. shores. Ta Det Lugnt was so inspired and effortless that the earlier efforts are bound to suffer a bit in comparison, but what really becomes evident is the musical growth and progression of Gustav Ejstes that ultimately led to Ta Det Lugnt. The first album caused a such a stir when it hit that Dungen ended up signing with the Swedish arm of Virgin, who somehow found a way to get a track placed on the Scandinavian version of the Jungle Book 2 soundtrack (!). Stadsvandringar is the album that resulted from the Virgin association, and musically, it fits right between the first and third albums. Dungen was a loose and meandering affair peppered with moments of brilliance. For Stadsvandringar, not only are the song structures tightened up, but rather than playing most of the instruments himself (as he did on the other albums), Ejstes has a full band with him. Oddly enough, the spark you would think a band would provide over solo overdubbing seems to be largely missing. Perhaps it was pressure from the label, perhaps it was going from recording in the basement to a real studio, butStadsvandringar somehow feels more studied than either of the other albums. Since the deal with Virgin ended with this album because "this arrangement didn't feel either right or real," you can assume that label pressures or expectations played a role. And this isn't a bad album at all. It's more focused than Dungen and there are some great tracks, but it never reaches the sheer exuberance that Ta Det Lugnt maintains throughout. "Andra Sidan Sjön" harkens back to the first album, with its sitar and acoustic bass while "Solen Stiger Upp, Del 1 & Del 2" has a great trippy backdrop before it heads into a flute/organ workout. "Fest" has some serious guitar crunch, but overall,Stadsvandringar fails to hit as hard as Ta Det Lugnt. It's clearly a transitional album that catches Ejstes in the learning curve that led to the almost universal acclaim of Ta Det Lugnt. It's good, but not quite there yet. AMG.

listen here

Buy @ Amazon: USA - FR - UK