Sass Jordan - Racine 1992

Is anyone named more appropriately than Sass Jordan? On her sophomore effort, the Montreal-based rocker kicks the synth-heavy Starship impersonation of her first album to the curb, raids her old Facesand Bad Company LPs for inspiration, and turns the attitude up to 11. Racine ("roots" in French) lurches into gear with "Make You a Believer," a brassy, swaggering nugget of electric barroom crunch that draws from the same well as the Black Crowes but might go one better with its surging gospel chorus. "If You're Gonna Love Me" wraps a cutting riff around Jordan's reckless vocal, which threatens to careen out of control but -- of course -- never does. Jordan's a pro, as her effortless shift into balladry for "You Don't Have to Remind Me" proves. When she sings the payoff line after the chorus -- "Because every night I sleep alone" -- it's with a sigh and a nod, as if she's acknowledging the crappiness of how things go, but will just have another cigarette and forget about it, because there's plenty of fish in the sea. Later, a horn section stops by for "Do What Ya Want," and even if it's totally clichéd, it somehow works, if only on the sheer elastic sandpaper quality of Jordan's vocal. That's the thing about Racine -- it's not sparklingly original, but who ever said great barroom hard rock had to be? Each song starts with a chip on its shoulder, as if Jordan's the new girl in town and wants to prove she can hang. By song's end, she's the center of attention. And trashing the cold synths of Tell Somebody for the vibrant Hammond organ of the title track and "Windin' Me Up" was the best possible move she could have made. Jordan always sings straight from her heart -- it's great to hear her throaty purr over instrumentation that comes from the same place. AMG.

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Durutti Column - Amigos em Portugal 1983

Done as part of an ultimately failed distribution attempt in the country of the title, Amigos finds Reillyworking very much in the mode of Another Setting, creating five fine pieces that combine his lovely guitar work with piano and other instruments. Though all titles are in Portuguese as well, nothing appears to be specifically about the country or its own musical style -- it's simply Reilly, working solo in this instance, creating some stripped-down work still with that typical hint of Durutti magic. The opening number, the title track itself, actually features some of the most active and busy piano he'd yet recorded, still with just enough control to make it slot in with the remainder of the music. Keyboards also dominate other tracks, including "Lisboa," one of his most straightforwardly beautiful (as opposed to darkly so) numbers, and the concluding waft of "Estoril A Noite." AMG.

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Edward Ka-Spell - Red Letters 1999

The various reds of rage, love, apocalyptic prophecy, and taboo inform RED LETTERS, 2000's song-cycle offering from the pen of Legendary Pink Dots frontman and tortured poet Edward Ka-Spel. Bobbing amid the album's sad, sweet, slow-motion synth swells are some of the most forlorn and lonely words Ka-Spel has ever set to music. His familiar lost-in-space whisper seems content enough amid the star-streaked haze of the opening "Radio 6"; but RED LETTERS broadcasts a profound sense of alienation as it unfolds. Ka-Spel trudges with gloomy resolve through pretty but pained chord changes, a despondent song on his lips.

Dominated by candy-tone keyboards, hypnotic loops, and dazed chamber-music arrangements, RED LETTERS' more mirthful moments recall not only the Dots' first four full-lengths (as do most Ka-Spel solo albums), but also the late-'80s solo work of Wire's Colin Newman. The mystical "Illumina 3/ The Carrier," "Grooovy," and the closing medley wind through sample-warped atmospheric fronts, brushing against trippy, dub-circus beats. "Seeing Red" stands out as RED LETTERS' Ka-Spel classic, its obliquely doleful lyrics set to music of aching loveliness--including a memorable coda of psychedelic orchestration. AMG.

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Fat Mattress - The Black Sheep of the Family - The Anthology 2000

Fat Mattress are primarily known as the just-post-Jimi Hendrix Experience band of Noel Redding, putting out a couple of albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Jimi Hendrix connection was probably responsible for gaining Fat Mattress much of whatever attention they managed to attract. It might have been a double-edged sword, however, as Fat Mattress' music wasn't at all similar to whatRedding had played with Hendrix, being in far lighter folk-rock, psychedelic, and early prog rock styles, and integrating plenty of vocal harmonies. Too, Redding wasn't a dominant figure in the band, though he was an important one; Fat Mattress was a true group effort, with fellow members Neil Landon andJim Leverton writing about as much of their material as Redding did.

Fat Mattress formed in late 1968 shortly before Redding's ultimate departure from Hendrix's band.Redding had been frustrated to an extent in the Experience, playing bass although he had more experience as a guitarist, and barely being allowed to write anything on their records. Fat Mattress would open up more opportunities for him to both play guitar (and sing), and to record more original material. The rest of the band were, like Redding, from Folkestone in England. Singer Landon had done a stint inthe Ivy League, and multi-instrumentalist Leverton had been in the backing band of Engelbert Humperdinck, where he met Fat Mattress' drummer, Eric Dillon.

Fat Mattress came to the attention of the music business quickly, not only via the mere presence ofRedding, but also from playing support on an American tour by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (in whichRedding would double as the Experience's bassist and Fat Mattress' guitarist). Polydor signed them, and their first album, issued in 1969, was very influenced by American west coast psychedelic and folk-rock bands, as well as British pop-psychedelic bands like Traffic (whose reedsman, Chris Wood, played flute on one of the tracks). At the end of the day, the album wasn't nearly as distinctive as the best acts in those styles, but it did contain some pleasant and accomplished work. It was also modestly successful, making number 134 in the U.S., with one of the songs, "Magic Forest," becoming a big hit in Holland.

Fat Mattress ran into problems soon after that, when they returned to America to do their own tour, completing only five of 30 planned dates before going back to England. A second album, the unimaginatively titled Fat Mattress 2, ran over the same ground as their debut did, but with less flair and distinction, remaining derivative and suffering in comparison with other bands using similar approaches. Having failed to graduate to the big leagues, the group broke up soon after that.

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Ensemble Bustan Abraham - Ashra 2000

Bustan Abraham was an Israeli band playing mostly instrumental music, which existed between 1991 and 2003. Its name means "Abraham’s garden"; the reference to the common ancestor of both Hebrew and Muslim traditions intending to imply a unifying theme. The band was called a pioneer in the realm of world music.

The band was born of jam sessions organized during several months by the qanun player and music promoter Avshalom Farjoun, in collaboration with the violin and oud player Taiseer Elias. These sessions brought together musicians with different musical backgrounds, like Arab music, Turkish music, jazz, flamenco, western classical music, and blues. Eight musicians finally stayed to form Bustan Abraham. They made their debut at the Israeli International Arts Festival.[3] The band was collaborative: each member brought his own ideas and composed part of the repertoire. It was composed mainly of Israeli Jewish musicians but two of its members were Israeli Arabs.

Thank to this mix, it was perceived as a symbol of bringing the two groups together. The members nevertheless always insisted on the fact that their approach was foremost a musical one. Their aim was to drag from different traditions to create an entirely new music.

In the years which followed the signing of the Oslo agreements, the group played in numerous concerts and festivals in Europe, Asia and United States. It also recorded with musicians of different backgrounds, like Ross Daly, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Keyvan Chemirani and Zakir Hussain. The albums were sold about 25 0000 copies each. Three of Bustan Abraham’s members, (Taiseer Elias, Zohar Fresco and Nassim Dakwar also performed in trio with a more specifically arabo-turkish repertoire, under the name of Zyriab Trio. Taiseer Elias and Miguel Herstein performed in duo under the name White Bird.

After Benjamin Netanyahu became Prime Minister, in 1996, and even more after the beginning of the Second Intifada, in 2000, invitations abroad became scarcer. The band finally disbanded in 2003, as different viewpoints had emerged on the musical direction to take and as several of its musicians were increasingly busy with other projects.

Some of its members kept on playing together on an occasional basis and four of them formed a new band at the end of 2011, Bustan Quartet. They performed in festivals in the United States and in Israel.

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Friska Viljor - For New Beginnings 2009

Friska Viljor are a Swedish indie rock band from Stockholm. Daniel Johansson and Joakim Sveningsson founded the band in January 2005. The men of Friska Viljor have pledged to never compose sober.

Their debut album Bravo! was released in Sweden in 2006 then the rest of the world the following year. Tour de Hearts was released to the world on 21 May 2008. The band has toured internationally, performing at the Rock am Bach Festival in Neuhofen an der Ybbs, Austria in 2007. With their 2013 album "Remember Our Name", Friska Viljor went touring Europe and played sold out shows especially in Germany. In 2013 they will play some big german summer festivals as Hurricane Festival, and another leg of european club touring in autumn.

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V.A. - Disco Demands Vol. 1 (2005)

A collection of rare 70's dance music, Give it a listen.

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Earl Klugh & George Benson - Collaboration 1990

George Benson rebels against the machine and comes out with an all-instrumental album, his first in 11 years and also his first full teaming with onetime protégé, acoustic guitarist Earl Klugh. Klugh sounds much more mature and forthcoming here than he did as a teenager in Benson's CTI days. Yet Bensonstill blows him away with his effortless swing, endless invention (within the constraints of the carefully controlled arrangements, however) and totally assured placement of the notes. "Mimosa" has some especially fluid work by Benson, with Klugh serving as an effective foil. The backing is mostly an electronic wash, though underpinned by solid funk support from former Benson bandmembers Harvey Mason and Paulinho Da Costa. The biggest hang-up are the so-so tunes, which both guitarists gratefully transcend whenever they solo. While Collaboration disappointed many guitar fans back in 1987 who were hoping for a more energetic session, time has underlined and strengthened its musical virtues. AMG.

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Roldo - Graffiti On The Planck Wall 2012

The Barking Bird series of albums is an experiment in autonomous recording that’s the result of a project that took nearly half a century to complete.
Sometime in the mid-1960’s in a distant (from other a lot of other places) city called Winnipeg a teenager who would eventually, and through no fault of his own, come to be called Roldo set out on his personal journey. This included playing music, as was natural enough for the son of a jazz drummer and a tap dancer who’d met in vaudeville, and he soon drifted into the burgeoning folk scene of church basement coffee-houses and middle-of-the-night psychedelic jam sessions. He flirted, briefly, with the Rock scene, joining an electric ensemble, but found that he felt more comfortable in the more casual company of the acoustic world.
At this time he played a little bit of guitar and a fair bit of blues harp, and soon found a steady gig with a local jug band. There he added jug, kazoo, and washboard to his accomplishments. As time flowed gently on, he discovered other forms of music and other instruments. He also discovered that he could not hear a new musical sound but that he was seized by a powerful desire to have the instrument that made it so that he might make it too. He was in love with sound.
Years kept on passing. He kept on playing. New sounds kept being heard. New instruments keep being added. New people with their influences – and influences without people – kept him moving along. By the early ‘70’s he was writing songs and playing in a fairly consistent regular band, which he considered a perfectly sound reason collect more instruments. And he did.
Around this time he began to get an idea. Recording techniques were evolving apace and home recording devices were becoming available. “What if”, he thought, “I was to record my songs using multi-track recording so I could add my instruments? It would be like painting with sound! “
This inspired him to accelerate his instrument collecting. Anything that could be strummed, plucked, blown, bowed, beaten, shaken, rattled or rolled was welcome at “Roldo’s Home For Aged And Infirm Musical Instruments”, as his various abodes came to be known.
Now he had a goal. All he had to do was wait for home recording equipment to develop and meanwhile he could add more instruments, write more songs, explore new musical genres.
And he did. The 20th century ended. While reaching for his toothbrush one morning he noticed a strange gray-bearded, bald-headed wrinkle-wrought face in the mirror.
But it was done. The Benevolent Tao, or perhaps some stochastic serendipity, had arranged his trip so that as the new Century and the New Millennium began, he and his instruments had a house which he more or less owned and a 32 track digital recording machine that he’d been given the loan of and he had recorded almost every song he’d ever written. He had learned, with only the most minimal kicking and screaming, to use a computer well enough to tweak the recordings in post-production.
The songs themselves are eclectic and diverse. A jig here, some electric rock there, a jug band tune followed by some Indian jugalbandi, fiddles and banjos play a somehow Chinese melody, a Bulbul Tarang celebrates Emperor Norton.
Nor are the lyrics secondary to the music. They’re carefully crafted and considered, and some have even called them poetic.  And now it’s time to offer these songs to anyone who might want to hear them.
So here is the first of the Rarking Bird collection. Enjoy.

Can - Zhengzheng Rikang 2007

Always at least three steps ahead of contemporary popular music, Can were the leading avant-garde rock group of the '70s. From their very beginning, their music didn't conform to any commonly held notions about rock & roll -- not even those of the countercultures. Inspired more by 20th century classical music than Chuck Berry, their closest contemporaries were Frank Zappa or possibly the Velvet Underground. Yet their music was more serious and inaccessible than either of those artists. Instead of recording tight pop songs or satire, Can experimented with noise, synthesizers, nontraditional music, cut-and-paste techniques, and, most importantly, electronic music; each album marked a significant step forward from the previous album, investigating new territories that other rock bands weren't interested in exploring.

Throughout their career, Can's lineup was fluid, featuring several different vocalists over the years; the core bandmembers remained keyboardist Irmin Schmidt, drummer Jaki Leibezeit, guitarist Michael Karoli, and bassist Holger Czukay. During the '70s, they were extremely prolific, recording as many as three albums a year at the height of their career. Apart from a surprise U.K. Top 30 hit in 1978 -- "I Want More" -- they were never much more than a cult band; even critics had a hard time appreciating their music.

Can debuted in 1969 with the primitive, bracing Monster Movie, the only full-length effort to feature American-born vocalist Malcolm Mooney. 1970's Soundtracks, a collection of film music, introduced Japanese singer Kenji "Damo" Suzuki, and featured "Mother Sky," one of the group's best-known compositions. With 1971's two-record setTago Mago, Can hit their visionary stride, shedding the constraints of pop forms and structures to explore long improvisations, angular rhythms, and experimental textures.

1972's Ege Bamayasi refined the approach, and incorporated an increasingly jazz-like sensibility into the mix; Future Days, recorded the following year as Suzuki's swan song, traveled even further afield into minimalist, almost ambient territory. With 1974's Soon Over Babaluma, Can returned to more complicated and abrasive ground, introducing dub rhythms as well as Karoli's shrieking violin. 1976'sUnlimited Edition and 1977's Saw Delight proved equally restless, and drew on a wide range of ethnic musics.

When the band split in 1978 following the success of the album Flow Motion and the hit "I Want More," they left behind a body of work that has proven surprisingly groundbreaking; echoes of Can's music can be heard in Public Image Limited, the Fall, and Einstürzende Neubauten, among others. As with much aggressive and challenging experimental music, Can's music can be difficult to appreciate, yet their albums offer some of the best experimental rock ever recorded. AMG.

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Susana Baca - Afrodiaspora 2011

Susana Baca's seventh album for David Byrne's Luaka Bop imprint is an ambitious affair with Bacabringing her instantly recognizable and elegant vocal style to the table in an attempt to show the pervasive influence of African rhythms and song forms on South American and Caribbean music. It’s not that she hasn’t been doing this all along on her releases, but the title of this one, Afrodiaspora, clearly states the case, and there is an astounding variety of styles blended together here, from tango, salsa, and flamenco to New Orleans-styled brass band blues and dance numbers, and everything comes out sounding distinctly Afro-Peruvian no matter how many regional variations are tossed into the mix. ButBaca isn’t about fusion so much as she is about shining a light on how much folk traditions continually soak up new wrinkles and rhythms as part of the natural human approach to making and playing music, and if the Afro-Andean elements on display here are relatively new, they’re fully in line with what folk music always does: take what works and run with it. There are some gems here, including an Afro-Peruvian remake of the Meters' “Hey Pocky Way,” complete with a brass band, that suggests that the blues and salsa might just be cut from the same cloth. If there’s a misstep on this fine album, it’s the closing cut, which features Carlos Mosquera singing Victor Merino's song for and about Baca, “Canta Susana.” Yeah, it would have been odd to have Baca sing her own praises, but it’s only slightly less odd to have a guest singer do it. Not that it’s a bad song or a poor performance -- it isn’t -- but it just doesn’t somehow seem to fit with the rest of this impressive outing. AMG.

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Miles Davis - Amandla 1989

A particularly strong set by late-period Miles Davis, this LP is highlighted by a surprisingly straight-ahead performance titled "Mr. Pastorius." In addition to Davis and his new altoist Kenny Garrett, various guests (including Marcus Miller, guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly, Joey DeFrancesco on keyboards, Rick Margitzaon tenor, pianist Joe Sample, and bassist Foley) get their chances to play next to the great legend who is in top form. An excellent effort, it was really his last studio recording with his regular band. AMG.

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Levellers - Static On The Airwaves 2012

Their first release since David Cameron became Prime Minister, the crust-rock scene's most enduring band, the Levellers, now approach their 25th anniversary in the same political climate as when they started. It's a situation which ensures that their tenth studio album, Static on the Airwaves, is just as biting and rabble-rousing as their Thatcher-baiting beginnings. "Our Forgotten Towns" is a lament to the decline of the British high street, appropriately backed by Jon Sevink's furious fiddle-playing; "The Recruiting Sergeant" is a raucous rendition of The Black Watch anthem, given an anti-war twist with its references to Afghanistan; while the toe-tapping beats and jaunty banjo riffs of "Second Life" accompany an impassioned tirade against the world of gaming. "Raft of the Medusa," a folk-punk sea shanty about the 19th century shipwrecked frigate, and "Mutiny," which sees frontman Mark Chadwick place himself in the shoes of Jesse Robert Short, a fusilier sentenced to death for his part in the 1917 Etaples Mutiny, show the Brighton outfit are just as anarchic about the past as they are the present. But if all this sounds a little too heavy-going, Sean Lakeman (who was at the helm for 2008 predecessor Letters from the Underground), has once more provided them with the kind of polished sheen that helped 1995's Zeitgeisttop the U.K. charts. "After the Hurricane" is a tender acoustic ballad which recalls the Radio 2-friendly fare of their producer's pin-up brother Seth, while there are even a few unexpected nods to early synth pop, first on the squelchy, spacy effects which open the swaggering baggy pop of "We Are the Gunmen," and secondly, Michael Johnson with the "Are Friends Electric"--esque hook which underpins the grungey "No Barriers." the Levellers may have ceased to be irrelevant in the charts since the turn of the century, but Static on the Airwaves' revolutionary spirit proves that they're still a force to be reckoned with. AMG.

One more kindly proposition from my dear friend MFP aka LRR.

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Mark Weinstein - Jazz Brasil 2010

Mark Weinstein came to the flute late in life, but his mastery of the instrument is never in question on Jazz Brasil. Initially a trombonist with a penchant for Latin jazz—he worked with Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente and others in the ’60s—Weinstein dropped out of music in the ’70s to study philosophy, and then re-emerged as a flutist of considerable agility and intelligence. While salsa is still an important focus—his other most recent album, Timbasa, includes several highly percussive Afro-Cuban tracks—he seems more at home within the less-restrictive rhythms of Brazil.

Alternating between standard, alto and bass flutes, Weinstein surrounds himself with an ace team here: Nilson Matta on bass, Marcello Pellitteri handling drums and percussion and the always brilliant Kenny Barron on piano. The flutist and pianist establish a simpatico relationship early on, in a brisk take on Monk’s “I Mean You,” and sustain it throughout the recording. On Wayne Shorter’s “Nefertiti,” Barron owns the first easygoing, introspective solo, then falls back in support of the flutist as Matta and Pellitteri take their time exploring inventive ways to fill the spaces left by the other two.

Weinstein favors a handful of well-known composers here—there’s a second Monk tune, the tender “Ruby, My Dear”; two from Jobim; Joe Henderson’s funky, airy “Isotope” (featuring Metta and Pellitteri); and an entertaining remake of Herbie Mann’s iconic “Memphis Underground” that shows off everyone’s strengths but never approaches the source material’s fire. But the two consecutive tracks authored by band members—Matta’s chipper “Sambosco” and Weinstein’s moody “Dawn’s Early Light”—are the equal of anything else here. As fine an interpreter as he is, Weinstein might want to consider a set of all-original music next time out. He’s earned it.

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