Paula Shocron – Gran Ensamble (2012)

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Argentinean pianist Paula Shocron’s initial foray into her own big band ensemble is a successful one. Another classical trained musician who couldn’t resist the allure of jazz, Paula’s previous output under her own name was solo and trio pieces, and thankfully she brings some of those small-ensemble sensibilities into her big band compositions. There is an intimacy here that sometimes gets lost in the exuberance of a large ensemble performance, and the interplay between small voice and booming creates some fun tension as a listener. Recommended.

mp3 192 kbps | 77 MB | DF

Marcus Miller – Renaissance (2012)

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Marcus Miller – bass, fretless bass, bass clarinet, acoustic bass
Louis Cato – drums
Kris Bowers – piano, fender rhodes
Adam Agati – guitar
Alex Han – alto sax
Maurice Brown – trumpet
Federico Gonzales Pena – fender rhodes, piano
Adam Rogers – guitar, acoustic guitar
Sean Jones – trumpet
Gretchen Parlato – vocals
Ruben Blades – vocals
Ramon Yslas – percussion
Bobby Sparks – organ
Paul Jackson, Jr. – guitar
Dr. John – vocals

mp3 320 kbps | 146 MB | DF

Ian Tyson – Raven Singer (2012)

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In 2006, while performing at an outdoor country music festival, Ian Tyson damaged his vocal cords. Raven Singer CD music A long bout with the flu followed and he lost much of his voice. He considered retiring, but singing is in his blood, so he learned how to sing with his new, limited range. Raven Singer is the second album he’s made since using his new voice, and, at times, every one of his 78 years is evident in his range and delivery. But he still writes great songs and his backing trio, along with a few guests including superstar mandolin player Sam Bush, still lays down crackling country-folk tracks full of energy. “Charles Goodnight’s Grave” is a tribute to the man who was probably the best-known cattle rancher in Texas and the inventor of the chuck wagon. It rides a loping beat and introduces Tyson’s brittle, but still passionate, vocal style. On “Rio Colorado” Tyson rides a new horse trough a desolate landscape and contemplates mortality with his familiar understated poetry. Tyson’s always had a way with love songs and a couple of tracks here rank up there with his best. The countrified, subtly sexy “Saddle Bronc Girl” tips its hat to a tough-as-nails woman with a will of her own. “Winterkill” uses images of frost and desolation to describe the end of a relationship, while the gently cynical “Under African Skies” explores the emotional pain of unrequited love that lingers long after the relationship is over. The album closes with “The Yellow Dress,” a blue country waltz that lets the players show off their understated chops.

mp3 192 kbps | 48 MB | DF

Mariem Hassan – El Aalun Egdat (2012)

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Next month, one of the great singers of north Africa returns to the UK for the Roundhouse’s Sahara Nights concert, supporting the development of a music industry in the Saharawi refugee camps in the Algerian desert. Now based in Spain, Mariem Hassan spent much of her life in the camps, and most of her songs are concerned with the struggles of those, like her, who were forced to flee from the upheavals in their Western Sahara homeland. She has been singing for more than 30 years, and still has a remarkable voice and the ability to switch between laments and upbeat desert blues: from the pained and personal Your Desertion to the cheerful R&B of The Melfa, praising traditional women’s dress (all in the Hassania language, but with translations provided). The band aren’t always as impressive as Hassan herself, and she is at her best showing off her thrilling, powerful voice with minimal backing, as on the title track and Gdeim Izik, an intense and furious song of suffering and resistance.

mp3 VBR~179 kbps | 94 MB | DF | TB

Gordon Lightfoot – All Live (2012)

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It is the musical highlight of every calendar year when Canadian Music legend, Gordon Lightfoot announces his run of concert dates at Toronto’s storied Massey Hall.  Last May 25th, 2011 marked Gordon’s 150th concert at the hallowed hall in the past 40 years.  In 1978 he played a remarkable 10 shows in 9 days, selling out each and every night.  Now, for the first time ever, Gordon has gone through the archives of live recordings from Massey Hall and has picked the finest performances recorded between 1998 – 2001.  “The recordings have not been technically altered and are authentic live mixes,” says Lightfoot of the album.  Fans will hear each song exactly as it was performed that night – no over dubs, no mixing – ALL LIVE.

mp3 320 kbps | 166 MB | DF

Volcano the Bear – Golden Rhythm / Ink Music (2012)

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Over a distinctive 17-year career, English quartet Volcano the Bear have traversed a wide range of odd sounds and skewed songs. Their knack for marrying the absurd to the sublime places them in the eccentric lineage of art-rock bands such as the Residents, Henry Cow, This Heat, and Nurse With Wound. As with those spiritual comrades, Volcano the Bear have amassed a discography that’s easy to get lost in, and most of which is now available for free from WFMU’s excellent Free Music Archive.Golden Rhythm/Ink Music, Volcano the Bear’s first studio album in five years, tips more toward the controlling side. As a result it sits in the middle of their oeuvre in terms of how compelling it is, and lower on the scale of surprise. Crafted by a duo version of the group (with multi-instrumentalists Aaron Moore and Daniel Padden), its more predictable moments lean too heavily on blunt rhythms, mannered vocals, and a tonally flat trumpet. When those three elements occur simultaneously, the album feels somewhat stilted.Almost as often, though, Golden Rhythm/Ink Music finds sonic angles that are less expected. Usually this is the product of Moore and Padden giving percussion prominence over singing and trumpet-playing. Their beats acquire a junk-shop/kitchen-sink quality that evokes rattling Tom Waits grooves. Take “Baby Photos”, whose off-kilter rhythm makes the duo’s vocals richer and more responsive. Even better are tunes that dart between disparate moods, be it the schizophrenic “Spurius Ruga” or sound-poems like the staccato “Quiet Salad” and the cathartic “Golden Ink”.

mp3 256 kbps | 81 MB | DF

Andre Williams & Sadies – Night & Day (2012)

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Canada’s finest live band, The Sadies, have reunited with explicit soul singer/cult legend Andre Williams for Night and Day on Yep Roc records. Night and Day is the result of sessions that began in 2008 at Key Club Studio in Detroit and captures Andre, then 70 years old and still using at the time, at his most raw, honest, and immediate. No filter. Andre is aided by a stellar cast of musical friends, dirty bluesers who have earned the trust of the ancient hustler, including Jon Spencer (who directed these sessions) and Matt Verta-Ray of Heavy Trash, Danny Kroha of Detroit’s own gutter-blues superheroes, The Gories, the unsinkable Mekon, Jon Langford, and of course, behind it all, The Sadies’ long-time line-up of Dallas Good on guitars and keys, his brother Travis Good on guitars and fiddle, Mike Belitsky on drums, and the mighty Sean Dean on the bass. The result is a raw, gritty slice of raunch rock that has attitude in spades and the hooks and playing to back it up.

mp3 192 kbps | 49 MB | DF

Nick Waterhouse – Time’s All Gone (2012)

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Nick Waterhouse is another retro-R&B stylist in the vein of Sharon Jones and Amy Winehouse, with the kind of analogue obsession that suggests even the valves of his heart glow: this debut album was even cut on the same Gold Star Studios lathe used by Phil Spector.But you can’t knock results that bear out Waterhouse’s ear: “Is That Clear” has the youthful brashness of the early Stones, while “Say I Wanna Know” boasts both a trenchant Fifties swing and a Raelettes-style confidence about its backing vocals. Waterhouse’s own voice is slightly under-recorded, but the musical settings – the understated Telecaster twang, the honking horns, the rumbling tom-toms – always churn with the right degree of roadhouse charm.

mp3 320 kbps | 72 MB | DF

Matching Mole – Matching Mole 1972 [2CD Deluxe Edition] (2012)

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This was a short lived, but essential band in the annals of what’s called the Canterbury Sound, created by British progressive ensembles in the late sixties and early seventies. The band was formed when Robert Wyatt was ousted from Soft Machine, which he’d founded in the mid-sixties. Matching Mole was a wonderful debut that included tracks such as ‘O Caroline’, ‘Signed Curtain’ and ‘Part of the Dance’. This edition has been newly remastered from the original master tapes and is expanded to include five previously unreleased studio session alternate takes, the single versions of ‘O Caroline’ and ‘Signed Curtain’, along with two BBC Radio One sessions from 1972.

mp3 320 kbps | 373 MB | DF

The Walkman – Heaven (2012)

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“Heaven,” the title track off the Walkmen’s seventh album (out June 5 on Fat Possum/Bella Union), is free of the youthful detachment of the band’s previous releases, harnessing their energy into a sweeping, more mature arrangement. Combining jangly guitars, throbbing two-chord bass and an engaging tambourine, “Heaven” works under a “less is more” theory while maintaining a certain level of arena aspirations. Frontman Hamilton Leithauser belts, “Remember/Remember/What we fight for,” during a cinematic chorus that eventually feeds into the song’s most memorable lyric: “Don’t leave me now/You’re my best friend/All of my life/You’ve always been.” The Walkmen somehow manage to make desperation empowering on “Heaven,” and following the group’s critically acclaimed 2010 album Lisbon, its latest single boasts of a newfound paternal energy.

mp3 256 kbps | 94 MB | DF

Siba – Avante (2012)

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Although the title signals Avante idea of ​​the future, the third solo album Siba – successor Fuloresta Samba (2002) and Every time I give the World a Step Out of Place (2007) – reconnecting the artist to his background as a guitarist master Ambrose, the group that designed Siba over the 90 years. Produced by guitarist Fernando Catatau, in partnership with the very Siba, Onward goes on sale in January 2012 with 11 songs, eight of them previously unreleased.

mp3 320 kbps | 100 MB | DF

Wovenhand – Live at Roepaen (2012)

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This exact line-up (Edwards, Garrison, Humbert and Linsenmeier) plus Greek percussion player Lukas Metaxas played a gig in an old church in Ottersum (Netherlands) in October 2010. An ancient building well known for its very special atmosphere and amazing acoustics, the room was the perfect setting for Woven Hand’s first live album – Live At Roepan. And due to high-end recording facilities the sound is sensational and of course, without overdubs. Every song (three stem from Folklore, 16 Horsepower’s swan song) is a significant progression from the studio version and the whole album acts as the missing piece in the band’s recorded output.

mp3 320 kbps | 177 MB | DF

Hope Sandoval – B-Sides & Live

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Tracklist:

01 The Jesus & Mary Chain – Sometimes Always,1994
02 The Jesus & Mary Chain – Рerfume,1998
03 Chemical Brothers – Asleep From Day,1999
04 Death In Vegas – Killing Smile,2002
05 Death In Vegas – Help Yourself,2002
06 Bert Jansch – All This Remains,2002
07 Air – Cherry Blossom Girl (Hope Sandoval Version,2004)
08 Vetiver – Angels’ Share,2004
09 Mazzy Star – Fade Into You (live, bootleg)
10 Mazzy Star – Tell Me Now (live, bootleg)

mp3 320 kbps | 104 MB | DF

Omar Rodriguez Lopez – Un Corazon de Nadie (2012)

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Omar Rodriguez Lopez of The Mars Volta is back with yet another solo album, Un Corazón De Nadie. Released today on his own label Rodriguez Lopez Productions and the LA based imprint Sargent House, this album is an unexplainable ride of ten tracks saturated in heavy elements of electronics. Metallic rhythms, small traces of recognizable guitar and hallucinogenic synth and vocal work, Omar Rodriguez Lopez and his colleagues take a subversive dive into extreme states of illumination and darkness on Un Corazón De Nadie.  Electronic in body, young in spirit and something otherworldly in the aftermath, haunting melodies and snake like movement becomes the focal point, not overpowering sequences of note configurations. I pictured a haunted mirrored house when first hearing many of these pieces, with siren esk sounds that fluctuate in breathing like patterns. The drum and percussive elements are surprisingly ridged yet have that fluid and glossy feeling that the tools of today are giving electronic drums.

mp3 VBR~257 kbps | 90 MB | DF

Jazz Bigband Graz – Urban Folktales (ACT,2012)

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Jazz Bigband Graz was founded in 1998, and has devoted itself to a world music mix from Europe and Africa, and traditional jazz methods coloured by contemporary electronica. Kurt Elling, Take 6 and Jon Hendricks have all guested with JBBG, and the vocalist here is the intriguing Theo Bleckmann, who has interpreted artists as varied as Charles Ives and Kate Bush. The burnished sound of Finnish trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, the inquisitiveness of Italian trombonist Gianluca Petrella and the tone-bends and raw rock power of French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyen Le also make key contributions. Urban Folktales organically joins six rich-textured pieces, embracing softly pulsing minimalism reminiscent of the Necks, recorded speech from Apollo space missions from which deep brass and chanting vocals rise, and a standout track in the almost 20-minute Reve Africain. This fine showcase for Guinean singer Hadja Kouyate’s imploring vocals and Johannes Enders’s tenor sax is an African incantation that drops to a Gil Evans-like orchestral glow, before sprinting back into a sax-led shuffle. Elsewhere, the set’s eclecticism has a bland and borderline-smooth gloss at times, but Urban Folktales is agreeably accessible, sometimes inspired, and trenchantly performed world-jazz.

mp3 320 kbps | 149 MB | DF

Penny Jo Pullus – Through the Glass (2012)

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Penny Jo Pullus celebrates the highly anticipated release of her CD, Through The Glass (MaHatMa Records) Penny Jo Pullus is finally getting the national release and attention she so richly deserves. Her latest is a cd with hits to spare, a rare and vibrant collection of works produced (in collaboration) by Ron Flynt, late of the band 20/20, and one of Austin’s top producers. Joining Penny Jo on this cd is an A-list of Austin musicians, including Ian McLagan (Small Faces, The Faces, The Bump Band, and member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame), Jimmy LaFave, John Bush (Edie Brickell And the New Bohemians, Greezy Wheels), Will Sexton, Matt Giles (Tortilla Flats, Marcia Ball Band),
Scrappy Jud Newcomb (Resentments, Bump Band), Chip Dolan (Shelley King, Kelly Willis) and Cleve Hattersley (Greezy Wheels).

As William M. Smith writes it in Rockzilla World: “Pullus’s vocal attraction lies in her ability to alternate between hellcat on a tear and the girl next door.”
Sultry or snarling, Penny Jo Pullus is the real deal.

mp3 320 kbps | 78 MB | DF

Roy Assaf – Respect vol.1 (2012)

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A core trio set from pianist Roy Assaf – but one that also features some great horn work on some tracks too – including guest tenor from Eric Alexander, flugelhorn from Roy Eldridge, and trumpet from Greg Gisbert! Assaf gets things going in a bluesy, swinging groove – but then stretches out quickly into a range of modern modes from the late 20th Century – bringing in some great post-swing, post-bop modes with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Greg Hutchinson. Alexander soars on a great version of McCoy Tyner’s “Fly With The Wind” – which also has percussion from Vanderlei Pereira – and other titles include “Prism”, “Song For Abdullah”, “September In Rio”, “Hymn To Freedom”, “Uranus”, and “Textures”.

mp3 320 kbps | 124 MB | DF

Luther Dickinson – Hambone’s Meditations (2012)

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New project from singer/songwriter and North Mississippi All Stars band member. Just three days after the death of his father, Memphis (and Muscle Shoals and Miami) music legend Jim Dickinson, Luther Dickinson opened the doors to the family’s Zebra Ranch studio in Independence, Mississippi and recorded Onward and Upward, an album of gospel songs and hymns over the course of a few hours. Luther was joined by an ad hoc group dubbed The Sons of Mudboy (an homage to his late father s influential rock band Mudboy and the Neutrons) who were all close to Dickinson the elder and wished to address his loss in a musical way.

mp3 160 kbps | 45 MB | DF

James Luther Dickinson – Dinosaurs Run In Circles (2009)

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Jim Dickinson’s third album, in as many years, for Memphis International is very much a stylistic departure from anything he’s previously recorded in a music career that spans five decades. Dickinson, producer (Big Star, Replacements, Green On Red, Ry Cooder, Mudhoney, Alvin Youngblood Heart, etc.); session man (Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Duane Allman) and cultural observer (“Memphis Saturday Night”) is, to say the least, one of the most idiosyncratic artists of our time. Here, he is joined only by the rhythm section of Sam Shoup (bass) and Tom Lonardo (drums) for an outing that celebrates his non-rock and roll roots.

mp3 160 kbps | 41 MB | DF