Hello,

Today's Artists Eythor, Fridrik, Johann and Gulli were only fifteen and sixteen years old when they formed the band in Reykjavik 1977. The four teenage boys all loved playing their instruments and shared an interest in music, from heavy-rock to jazz-rock fusion and funk. Their enthusiasm and energy soon caught the attention of Icelandic recording executive Steinar Berg, who thought this could lead to something worthwhile and signed the band to his Icelandic label, Steinar hf, in 1979. After three albums of experimenting and developing their skills, the band travelled to London in 1982 to record what turned out to be the pivotal fourth album, Surprise, Surprise.  They teamed up with producer/engineer Geoff Calver, horn- & vocal arranger Chris Cameron and percussionist Luis Jardim, who helped the young Icelanders shape their style and create what became the unmistakable sound of Mezzoforte. Catchy melodies, strong grooves and exciting solos were the key elements. ....N Joy

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Until the arrival of the Sugarcubes, jazz fusion band Mezzoforte was Iceland’s best-known musical export. The group was formed in 1977 at a Reykjavik high school by Fridrik Karlsson (b. 24 April 1960; guitar), Eythór Gunnarsson (b. 9 September 1961; keyboards), Jóhann Ásmundsson (b. 30 March 1961; bass), and Gunnlaugur Briem (b. 8 September 1962; drums).

Mezzoforte was founded in 1977 by four 15-17 year old guys, Eyþór Gunnarsson, Friðrik Karlsson, Jóhann Ásmundsson and Gunnlaugur Briem.

Eyþór and Friðrik had been playing in a dance band together (they actually first met at a summer festival arranged by the Icelandic boy scouts in 1976) and Gulli and Jóhann had been playing together for a short while. What brought them all together was a shared interest in jazz and fusion music.

In the beginning they practiced playing songs by artists like Weather Report, Al di Meola, Chick Corea, Earth, Wind and Fire, George Duke, Jean Luc Ponti (they had a violinist in the band for some months) and other fusion bands. Pretty soon however they started writing some songs of their own, with Friðrik and Eyþór being the most active songwriters.

From early on it was obvious that both personally and musically they all fitted well together. They rehearsed for several hours a day, seven days a week and spent the rest of the time together going to the movies or listening to music. Having played in Reykjavík (mainly in high schools) for just over a year they were offered a recording contract with Steinar Records(later SPOR Records). Mezzoforte had actively started to write their own material and soon developed a unique sound, blending melodic harmonies with tight, funky, rhythm and unpredictable tempo changes. The band recorded their first album in Hljóðriti the only 24 track studio in Iceland at that time.

The first album simply called Mezzoforte was released in 1979 and is the first Icelandic fusion album.

In the following years the band made two additional albums and toured around Iceland. They also played in various dance and jazz bands, some of them were already full time musicians by the age of eighteen. The band was a five-piece band during the first years. Stefan S. Stefansson played saxophone on the first album, but left soon after the release of the album. Björn Thorarensen (keyboards) joined the band in 1979 and played on the second and third album. The band became well respected for their music and the members were in increased demand as session players, and backing band to vocalists. Some interest was also building up outside Iceland.

The second album Í hakanum, was made in the same studio in Iceland. When it came to making the third album the band and Steinar Berg Ísleifsson their record publisher wanted to make an album that would stand the test of a more international audience. They travelled to London, in the fall 1981 to make the album, under the direction of Simon Heyworth. Björn decided to leave Mezzoforte in 1982 to concentrate on his studies in computer sciences. Following his departure Kristinn Svavarsson (saxophones) who had been playing with the band for a while, formally joined the band.

The album Þvílíkt og annað eins was released in Iceland around Christmas time in 1981. Plans for release in the UK did not come through however and since the band was very actice in their songwriting at this time they ended up recording another album in London in 1982, without Þvílíkt og annað eins ever being released in its entity outside of Iceland. (The album will be released as a part of re-releasing all Mezzoforte albums in 1997)

1982-1984

In early 1982 the song Dreamland (Ferðin til draumalandsins) was released with Shooting Star from the second album as a double A-side single and did well on the club scene in the UK.

Having recorded their fourth album Surprise Surprise in London in 1982 the band found themselves standing at crossroads. The small Icelandic market was not enough to support a full time fusion band and the future did not look too positive. They played some concerts in Iceland, but the novelty of an instrumental band was wearing off and interest in funk and fusion music was diminshing with punk rock taking over the music scene. The band held a concert in one of Reykjaviks high scools in february 1983, to an audience of six people. This made them think seriously of breaking up the band.

It was therefore a big surprise when the song Garden Party from the Surprise Surprise album started to climb the British dance and pop charts and eventually found its way to number 17 on the british pop chart in the spring of 1983. Following this the band came internationally known. Garden Party made it into the pop charts in most European countries and suddenly the band was in big demand. The members moved with their families to England and spent the next years touring extensively around Europe and also toured Japan and other countries.

Having enjoyed the success of Garden Party and the Surprise Surprise album for only a few months, Mezzoforte started working on the followup album, their fifth studio album, Observations. Recording sessions were squeesed in between concerts and tours around the world, but despite a very busy schedule the recordings were finished in just two months. Nine songs were recorded for the album, but earlier in the year the band had recorded Rockall which was released as a single in June 1983. The album was first released in Iceland in December 1983 as Yfirsýn with Icelandic songtitles.

After the release of Observations, Mezzoforte toured Europe and Japan, playing more than 150 concerts in one year, including most major festivals, such as the North Sea festival in Holland and the Montreux Festival in Switzerland where the band headlined a concert with Passport, Steps Ahead and Spyro Gyra. Observations is the last Mezzoforte album to feature Kristinn Svavarsson on saxophones. While the rest of the band decided to stay in the UK, Kristinn went back to Iceland in the summer of 1984, having spent one year on the road while his family was living in London.

So now Mezzoforte was a four piece band. They had recorded five albums, made the charts in most European countries and played at more concerts and TV shows than anyone can remember. With their families back home in Iceland, the band was still living in England between tours.

During the late summer and fall 1984, the band recorded Rising in three different studios. This is the only album Mezzoforte made as a quartet, relying on just two other musicians to complete the musical picture on a couple of songs. The band was also taking more responsibility for producing the songs with Geoff Calver behind the mixing console.

For concerts the four Icelanders added musicians of several other nationalities performing as six or even seven-piece band during late 1984 and 1985. During that period they took a step into another musical direction adding lead vocals to the lineup.

1985-1989

No limits is the seventh studio album made by Mezzoforte. On this album made in 1985, two long time touring partners took part in the recordings. The dutch percussionist Jeroen De Rijk and the british saxophonist David O'Higgins played on a couple of songs. On this album Mezzoforte changes their musical course, recording three tracks with lead singer Noel McCalla. This album was produced by Nigel Wright who also wrote lyrics to a couple of songs. By this time the band had moved back to Iceland, but was as busy as ever touring around Europe with David O'Higgins and Noel McCalla. Mezzoforte started working on building their own recording studio in Iceland and this was the last time they went to England to make an album. A recording deal with BMG Ariola had secured the release of Mezzoforte albums in the USA and early 1987 the band started to make an album aimed at this new market. Enjoying the luxury of having their own studio available at all times the band spent endless time in the studio. A lot of time went into programming synthesizers and sequencers and in fact the band did not play much together or rehearse the songs before going into the studio. The only song on the album that the band recorded as a group is In a Word and that took only few hours to complete.

For additional producers they looked in two opposite directions. Two of the songs are produced and partially arranged by two Norwegians, Svein Dag Hauge and Rolf Graf. They were members of the group Lava a well known group in Norway, frequently backing Randy Crawford on her tours outside the US. Eythor Gunnarsson worked with Lava/Randy Crawford for some time and the saxophonist of Lava, Kåre Kolve later joined Mezzoforte.

The other producer Eric Phersing came from the United States. He had worked with several jazz/fusion artists in Los Angeles. Most of the recordings were done in Iceland but when it came to putting the finishing touches to the album the band went to Los Angeles where Ernie Watts and Steve Tavaglione added some saxophone lines to the songs. The Seawind horns played on three songs and Efrain Toro added some percussion.

In order to make the album sound more like US albums, the band got Erik Zobler to mix the album in Los Angeles. Zobler who is half Icelandic was at that time best known for his long time work with George Duke and his work on Michael Jacksons album BAD.

After two years of more or less continous work the album was finally released in 1989. It did not do as well as expected in the US market and the reaction in other parts of the world were disappointing for the band as well. So having played at concerts in Europe in 1989/90 and done some re-recordings for a compilation album (Fortissimos released in 1991) the band took a break to work on other projects and did not return to the recording studio as Mezzoforte until late 1993.

1990-1997

During this period Fridrik Karlsson made a solo album (Point Blank released 1990) featuring Mezzofortes members on some of the songs, they also worked with Eythor Gunnarssons wife Ellen Kristjánsdóttir and saxophonist Sigurður Flosason. Both these acts toured around Scandinavia in 1990-92 under various names. Friðrik and Jóhann joined the pop/dance band Stjórnin, and participated in the Eurovision Grand Prix Song Contest as Heart 2 Heart. Eyþór and Gulli started working with Bubbi Morthens, an Icelandic rock star, with Eyþór producing a couple of his albums.

The band had begun writing for a new album in early 1993 when they received an invitation to go to SE Asia to play at two jazz festivals in Indonesia and Malaysia in September 1993. By this time Kåre Kolve had become a member of the band. Coming straight off the tour, the band went to Puk Studios in Denmark to record a new album, before returning home to Iceland. This time the band produced the album by themselves and changed their working methods by recording most of the music "live" and using very few additional musicians. The album called Daybreak was released internationally in 1994. During 1994 the band toured in Norway and SE Asia adding Singapore to the list of countries. But most of the time was spent on other projects.

In January 1995 Mezzoforte started working on a new album and during that year spent much time writing and recording new material with a new saxophone player Óskar Guðjónsson The recordings were finished in December 1995 and the album called Monkey Fields was released in Central Europe in September 1996, in Scandinavia in December 1996/January 1997.

In 1996 Mezzoforte visited four countries for the first time, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in April and Bulgaria in December. The band played at the JakJazz festival in Indonesia for the third time and played some concerts in Iceland, one of which was recorded for Radio and Television. In early 1996 Frissi Karlsson moved to London to work as a session musician. He was soon offered to play on the soundtrack for the movie Evita. Later Gulli Briem joined Frissi in the studio and together they performed with Madonna on BBC´s Top of the Pops.

In 1997 the band will be touring in Europe, starting to work on a new album, working on a documentary TV program and several other projects.

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Recorded in England in 1983. This is the “follow up” to the hugely succsessful Surprise Surprise. Written and recorded in the turmoil of a busy touring schedule. Yet, absolutely fresh and ingenious. They show them the joy of playing, they still played together in the studio at this time.  That was clearly their best creative period, even if they only later at least partially studied music, but that's not what matters.  They are one of the best fusion bands of all time, and that's what you hear here.  Ingenious with wit and sophistication.



 Mezzoforte - Observations (flac   341mb)

01 Midnight Sun 4:33
02 Spring Fever 3:45
03 Summer Dream 5:20
04 The Venue 4:52
05 Rockall 5:02
06 Double Orange Juice 5:42
07 We're Only Here For The Beer 5:47
08 Observations 5:10
09 Distance 6:24

Mezzoforte - Observations (ogg    131mb)

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Recorded in England in 1984. By this time saxophonist Kristinn Svavarsson had left the band so saxophone is much less prominent than before. Another change from the previous 2 albums is the absence of a horn section, instead it's the synthesizer for the foreground.  The music did not detract from this, quite the contrary.  Compared to its quite clear-sounding predecessor "Observations", Mezzoforte returns to its former compositional class and achieves m.E.  the level of albums like "Surprise Surprise" or "Octopus" (and let's be honest: without igniting melodies this kind of music is quite boring and arbitrary).  The funk purist "Rising" may sound a bit too sterile, on the other hand, there are rows of earworm-like songs, which I like to use.  during the car ride loud in front of me.  No "easy listening" (which always sounds a bit condescending), but happy listening! Playing Tips: "Take Off", "Happy Hour", "Solid" and "Northern Comfort".



Mezzoforte - Rising (flac   300mb)

01 Check It In 2:03
02 Take Off 5:40
03 Happy Hour 5:30
04 Waves 5:34
05 Blizzard 4:00
06 Solid 4:02
07 Northern Comfort 4:49
08 Fiona 5:42
09 Rising 5:29
10 Check It Out 3:27

Mezzoforte - Rising (ogg  116mb)

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The last one of the "classic" Mezzoforte albums, No Limits is a fine 80's fusion release if you ignore the fact that it is somewhat uneven. A couple of vocal tracks are featured here as well but they don't add anything to the album really. The mini epic "Evolution", however, might be Mezzoforte's finest moment and is a progressive and epic fusion journey that pushes their own limits even further. The rest of the album is also solid, particulary "Icebreaker" and the live favorite "E.G. Blues".



 Mezzoforte - No Limits (flac   254mb)

01 Icebreaker 4:10
02 No Limit 5:23
03 Joyride 4:35
04 Evolution 7:40
05 Nothing Lasts Forever 4:48
06 E.G. Blues 6:13
07 Another Day 4:57
08 Crystal Rain 5:42

 Mezzoforte - No Limits (ogg   104mb)

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Mezzoforte's most commercial album to date doesn't quite reach up to their earlier albums due to it's more "sterile" and almost computerised sound. The recording time was split between Reykjavik and Los Angeles, with West Coast hornmen Ernie Watts, Jerry Hey, and Steve Tavaglione contributing to some of the perkiest original compositions this side of, well, Greenland.  As with other Mezzoforte albums, the songs are well composed and melodic but lack of variation makes the album a bit tiresome after a while. It's very enjoyable taking it for what it is, and should be investigated if you're a fan.



 Mezzoforte - Playing for Time (flac   251mb)

01 Playing For Time 5:16
02 Expressway 4:26
03 Magic 4:55
04 Take A Breath 5:16
05 Prime Time 5:32
06 Hitchhiker 3:58
07 High Season 4:54
08 Quick Step 4:09
09 In A Word 3:45

 Mezzoforte - Playing for Time (ogg   98mb)

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Hello,


Today's Artist introduces himself as a synthesist, drummer, electronic groove creator and sound sculptor. He mixes experimental sound sculpting with a hybrid of electronic and acoustic grooves. .......N'Joy

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Synthesist, drummer, sound sculptor and electronic groove creator, Peoria-Illinois-based "Vir Unis" (real name: John Strate-Hootman, 26 October 1969, Morton, IL, United States ) is a significant voice in the world of atmospheric / tribal / ambient music. With an emphasis on rhythm and pulse, underpinned by deep synthesizer textures, Vir Unis realizes music that moves between the organic intensity of ever evolving fractal grooves and the harmonic complexity of mist strewn sonic atmospheres. Co-founder of AtmoWorks

After performing as a drummer in various synth pop and new wave bands in the 1980's, he worked for several years in solitude developing atmospheric and experimental music via a simple analog 4-track cassette deck, one effects box, delay pedal, drum machine, and a synthesizer. Acquiring his first computer, Vir Unis was first introduced to digital recording via Sonic Foundry software in 1996. Realizing the vast potential that the digital realm offers the electronic musician, he quickly set about creating a new world of possibilities for himself, both atmospherically and rhythmically. Starting out as a drummer and percussionist, these kinds of software tools helped shape a lot of the ideas that he was developing in his mind, but could not produce with the audio tools of the time, given the limitations of magnetic tape. However, being based in this minimalist approach to creating music, he was accustomed to pushing the instruments that he had to the furthest point and beyond, thus creating an atmosphere in which the imagination could thrive in either the digital or analog world. Forging a new and experimental fusion of analog percussion sources and digital editing became the primary focus for the next several years. Combining these electronic grooves with the sonic and misty psychedelic atmospheres that he had been working on for the past decade seemed the perfect alchemy and the next level he had been seeking.

In the summer of 1998, Imaginarium was released. This was a collaboration album with Midwest duo Ma Ja Le and was produced by the legendary electronic music composer Steve Roach. This proved to be quite a fortuitous event for many reasons, but the main reason was a lasting collaboration between Roach and Unis, developing their ongoing exploration of fractal groove creation into what Roach has called "Elegant Futurism". Their first collaboration, Body Electric, was released on Projekt in February of 1999. Well received by both critics and listeners alike, Body Electric received much radio airplay nationwide and remained in the Airwaves and New Age Voice top ten for over 8 weeks. Later that year, Vir Unis released his first solo album, The Drift Inside, in November of 1999 on Minneapolis based label GreenHouse Music. Produced by Steve Roach and Vir Unis, The Drift Inside focused primarily on self-reflective inner space music. Being completely beatless, his first solo album offered a different side to the tribal and electronic groove albums with Steve Roach and Ma Ja Le. However, The Undivided Flow, his contribution to The Ambient Expanse (Mirage), did offer a glimpse at the music that was developed on The Drift Inside. He also contributed one track, Beneath the Hive, to GreenHouse Music's first compilation album, Convergent Evolution in 1999. The Drift Inside has received several highly charged and positive reviews. A favorite of many space music fans, it was #2 on the New Age Sampler Radio show for The Ambient Hour which broadcasts on 89.9 FM, WWSP from the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. Vir Unis was also interviewed for their Millennium Featured Artist Series during this time. The Drift Inside was also featured in February 2000 on Hearts of Space program entitled "Luminosity".

Of music, Strate says, "I consider music to be a visual medium. Not just in imagining pictures while listening to music, but in a much more direct way. I see music when I listen to it. It creates patterns, textures, and all sorts of mandala like structures. In designing images on the computer, I try to capture the things I see in music. Painting, drawing, and computer aided design is all musical too. So, there's this sort of synesthesia that occurs naturally if you tune into it, and that's why a lot of artists are able to cross over into various mediums, because they all derive from the same source".

Vir Unis performed on 4 March 2000 at The Gatherings Concert Series in Philadelphia. This was his first concert ever on the east coast of the USA, second solo concert ever and demonstrated his talent for exploring, through music, the areas of space within and outside of the audience. A recording of this concert has been released via MP3.com.
Following the 4 March Gathering, Saul Stokes and Vir Unis performed their first collaboration live on the 03.05.00 broadcast of STAR'S END. Vir Unis + James JohnsonVir Unis returned to Philadelphia on 12 April 2003 to once again perform at The Gatherings Concert Series. Joining him was friend and collaborator, noted sonic explorer James Johnson. The duo presented live material in the vein of their recent release, Perimeter and its follow-up 3CD set, Perimeter 2 - released in Philadelphia on 12 April.

Among music composition and recording, Vir Unis has also been credited as a graphic designer for all his own solo albums, the cover artwork for Steve Roach's Midnight Moon (Projekt), and most recently, Blood Machine and the upcoming Sonic Foundry Vir Unis ACID Loop Library. Vir Unis has also musically contributed to Steve Roach's solo album, Light Fantastic (HOS/Fathom) as a guest artist, which earned Steve the AIIFM award for 1999, and also Roach's Serpant's Lair (Projekt), which was a collaboration album with percussionist Byron Metcalf. Always looking to keep the music and ideas fresh and evolving, Vir Unis is relentless in his search for new sounds, new grooves, and new worlds in which to create. Combing the various sources of acoustic and electronic sounds from the ground up into an analog and digital fractal stew and utilizing the latest software and hardware, Vir Unis' goal was nothing less than to create 100% original electro-psychedelic mind-body music.



2001 Interview

AV:  You started your musical career playing drums. Bearing in mind other synthesists like Klaus Schulze, Chris Franke started out on the same route, what made you change to synthesizers?

VU:  Actually, my brother had a Moog Rogue and a Prophet 600 and I remember being quite fascinated with the possibilities to create strange and alien sounds.  I didn't really care too much about conventional sounds and playing chops or recognized musical forms.  I was very intrigued with the idea that one could sculpt sound and the patterns could just keep changing infinitely. I liked synthesizers because they were their own instrument.  I despised the more featureless black box sample playback machines that were starting to come out.  They seemed to have more in common with a Stealth Bomber than they did a musical instrument!  I was way more intrigued by the analog synthesizers and all the blinking lights, sliders, faders, and knobs they had.  From there I started listening closely to some of the more atmospheric string sounds that a lot of New Wave pop bands were utilizing in their songs and recognizing how they sort of sprung from a lot of the early Brian Eno recordings and also stuff that David Sylvian and Richard Barbieri were doing with their band, Japan.  So I set out with really no concrete plans other than to just sit in front of the synth and just dream.

AV:  What exactly is a "fractal groove" in technical terms?

VU:  "Fractal grooves" are really a process born out of extracting rhythmic patterns from within patterns.  It's also an endless and infinite array of possibilities, so I was certainly fascinated with this concept when I first discovered how you could literally produce 30 different type of grooves from a single loop.  It's a matter of increasing complexity, taking one simple groove and pushing it through this process to create highly sophisticated and what Steve Roach calls "elegant futuristic" beats.  The idea is to create several varying degrees of a type of loop and blend them together in oscillating crossfades that create this sort of mandala like fractalization.  It gives that sort of psychedelic and liquid  lava lamp like flow to the grooves.

AV:  Can you remember the first electronic recording you heard and how it affected you?

VU:  I can't recall the exact title of the first electronic recording I heard.  But, I can recall first listening to space music in the mid eighties.  A girlfriend of mine had a tape she made of a program that I had just heard about called "Hearts of Space".  I remember how lush and mind expanding it sounded in comparison to the more upbeat electronic pop music that I was listening to and performing at the time.  It wasn't something that I listened to all the time or very much, for that matter, so when I did listen to it it was a unique and special event.  So this atmosphere of it being a special event started to develop.  It began to affect me slowly but deeply.  It really felt like the soundtrack to a dream, and increasingly I felt connected to it at a deeper level, as it felt like something that I had been searching for a long time.  Staying up late and listening to this music in a dark room became a favorite ritual over time.

AV:  How do you go about preparing for a concert? Is it a disciplined approach with hours of rehearsal or is a lot done on the spur of the moment in the concert hall?

VU:  My preparation for a concert is more psychological than anything else. Of course, I go through all the usual preparations of getting a few sounds programmed on the synthesizers and putting together backdrop atmospheres, although I prefer to mainly twist the music on the fly.  Mostly I tend to become very quiet, preferring little or no speech, and slowly start to focus on being in the moment and being carried by the current of the beats and sounds.  Usually this approach melts away the nervous energy that builds up preceding a performance.  Most of the shows that I've done recently have been based on improvisation.  You make yourself prepared emotionally and physically and the spirit will move you to create the right stuff.  This is something that makes the shows much more exhilarating, on the edge, and less of being a sound pilot/dj for the crowd. I definitely think it's much more interesting to see a performer moving and interacting with other musicians.  That's why a lot of my recent shows have been with others.

AV:  You have worked with Steve Roach on a number of albums now. What is the single most important thing you have learned from this veteran of the scene?

VU:  Actually, several things.  Integrity.  Grace.  Focus.  Dedication.  I've met very few people in this life as focused and dedicated to their craft as Steve Roach.  Time and time again he has blown me away with how deep his art flows.  This is a man who makes no compromises with the outer world, instead choosing to dive into the dark and bring back something profoundly human, rich, and enduring. It's a hero's quest, and working with him has only served to clarify my calling, my destiny.

AV:   Is there a single piece of musical equipment that you would just love to own?

VU:  I would love to own a top of the line Lexicon reverb.  It's pure space contained in a black box....

AV:  Have you ever been tempted to try and break into the mainstream music charts by releasing a commercial "pop" piece of music?

VU:  I come from a background of playing in bands that though they have been a bit on the unconventional side still created musical forms from the well of popular culture.  I did this for approximately 7 years, so I've had my fill to last a lifetime.  Since I've been on my own, it's been all about creating my own space.

AV:  A lot of your music is very reflective and spiritual. Do you have your own personal belief system or do you practice a faith that comes through with the music?

VU:  I don't practice any sort of organized religious doctrine.  I tend to shy away from the dogma that lies at the outer perimeter of religion and go immediately to it's essence which I feel connects all the world's ideologies and traditions.  I come from a Christian environment that had very little to do with the actual teachings of Christ, so the reflective and spiritual aspect of my music is really an attempt to get past these layers of cultural conditioning and dive deeper to the truth that lies inside.  I have a lot of beliefs and ideas that spring from a more eastern philosophy or approach to life, so I certainly have an affinity with Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen, but by no means am I a scholar of any these ways of life.  Essentially, my religion, if anything, is my music.

AV:  Beyond Perimeter what projects do you have in the works for next year that we might be looking for?

VU:  A collaboration with Saul Stokes should be finished by the end of the year.  This is titled "Thermal Transfer" and will be released on Hypnos' new affiliate label, Binary.  An official release date hasn't been scheduled yet, but it's expected to be out sometime around early February 2002.  It's really a nice mix of Saul's homemade synth style electronic music and my fractal groovescapes and atmospheres.  We've been working on it for about a year, so I'm really excited about seeing it finally come to life. I also have a solo album, tentatively titled "Mercury and Plastic" coming out sometime next year.  It's a continuation of Pulse n Atmo and a lot of the work that I've done with Steve Roach and James Johnson. A live disc from the Space For Music Festival that Interstitial and I performed at in Milwaukee last May will also be released sometime early in 2002.  We're hoping to encode it in 5.1 surround for a really expansive experience.  That will probably be released on my new artist direct label, "In The Bubble Music".

I also hope my long time collaboration with MJ Dawn, Steve Roach and Subatomic God will be finished.  It's taken a lot of twists and turns these past four years and I'm really anxious to see it finally finished.  Expect some real high energy and fast paced groovescapes on that one!  Other than that, James Johnson and I have been talking about releasing a live CD that would consist of tracks collected from our Fall 2001 shows that we're in the middle of right now. Also a collaboration with guitartist Chris Short, entitled Hub of The Mono Gods, may be finished sometime in the Spring or Summer of 2002.   Actually, despite this list of collaborations and solo projects, I really intended to relax some more next year, but the projects are already stacking up!

AV:  Do you have any plans for appearances for the balance of this year and into next year that have been finalized?

VU:  My next scheduled apprearance is Nov. 4th and 6th in Toronto, Canada for 1groove.com and The Ambient Ping.  The show at the Ambient Ping is actually a release party for "Perimeter" with James Johnson.  We'll be performing material from this album at both shows.  Other than those two concerts, nothing else is scheduled for the remainder of this year....At least, for now....

AV:  Lastly where do you see yourself in say ten years time?

VU:  It's hard to say.  All of us, in this world, are really on the edge of uncertainty.  The world really does spin on a dime, and who knows what will happen with any one of us.  Of course I have my personal hopes and aspirations that I work towards, but I really try to stay focused on the present and the immediate future.  In ten years time, I do know that I will be on the same path that I am now, but with hopefully a lot more insight, patience, respect, and compassion.  Other than just being alive and breathing, what more could I ask for?


Well i made an effort to tell you about the man, even if the net delivers very little on him, and now i guess here at Rho-Xs we have the best advertorial on him now, hmmm someone should create a wiki page on him

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“Perimeter” is a double cd-r release which sees fractal-groove king Vir Unis collaborates with ambient composer James Johnson. The disc of 60 and 70 minutes each feature a blend of high-tech groove and pulse sequencer patterns and rhythms, loops, radiowave mutations and fractalizations to which textures and soundscapes are added. The outcome is an uninterrupted, overall dynamic sonic landscape that’s constantly shapeshifting and on the move. Sometimes surreal, but also easily switching to bubbling high-tech sonic environments, the music of “Perimeter” will be liked by those who appreciate Vir Unis’ album “Pulse ‘n Atmo” or his collaborative albums “Body Electric” and “Blood Machine” with Steve Roach.



 Vir Unis & James Johnson ‎- Perimeter (flac  472mb)

01 Magnetic Monopole 12:23
02 Discriminating The Intervals 10:35
03 Metabolizing Starlight Directly 6:56
04 Cartesian Plane 1 11:51
05 Cartesian Plane 2 8:28
06 Cartesian Plane 3 8:41
07 Infinity Walk 15:01

Vir Unis & James Johnson ‎- Perimeter   (ogg  194mb)

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 Vir Unis & James Johnson ‎- Perimeter (flac  392mb)

01 Continuous Prehistory 1 10:44
02 Continuous Prehistory 2 4:23
03 Singular Integral 8:57
04 Elastic Mixture 16:55
05 Cross Hemispheric Coherence 13:19
06 Geometry Of Recursion 6:45

Vir Unis & James Johnson ‎- Perimeter   (ogg  159mb)

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"Bridging the psycho-cybernetic synaptic gap between the organic and mechanic. Where space is relative to scale and time is immaterial. All things are paced by the filter of individuality and travel according to a common plan." The outcome is more relaxed and moody, giving room to expansive ambient farscapes with beautiful introspective string pads, floating soundscapes and a whole range of subtle elements swirling round and round in the sound spectrum..

Disc 1 has some of the same feeling as Unis’ own Mercury and Plastic but with a lighter texture. The almost-melodic line, often played on what sounds like a fuzz-distort sustained electric guitar, is a signature sound for Unis and Johnson. Together with  electronic beats and minor and modal harmonies, this ensemble looks back to the pioneering electronic krautrock of Europe in the 70’s. Disc 2 is probably the best of the three. It has the most variety and invention of the set: a celebration of technology and modern sound-processing and outright “computer music.” It abounds in special sound-effects, looping sequences, and “fractal” contours. But it is also an impersonal sound, driven by mechanical rhythms and a cool, sometimes even melancholy mood. Its melodies and harmonies are understated, at least in the early sections. It is music to code by, composed with computers, using sound generated by a computer, and played on the listener’s computer. Track 4, bounces along with a syncopated beat which is reminiscent of Perimeter I’s “Infinity Walk.” As the album progresses, though, the beats recede and the music turns restful and soft.Track 5 leads into a much quieter mood; it is also one of the more emotionally expressive passages in the album, reinforced by the drifting track 7. The titles, with names like “Mobius Polarities,” “Indivisible Circles,” and “Dimensional Vertices,” are highly abstract, in keeping with the emotional distance of much of this album set. Electronic chill reigns here. Disc 3, which is the shortest in duration of the three, features some of the more “romantic” sounds of the duo, that put the “soft” back into “software” with a sequence of gentler textures. The hard rhythms are put aside, and sustained synthesizer notes dominate.  It’s romantic, but it’s still chill, its pretty floating chords wrapped in layers of shimmering sonic ice. Track 2, “Measuring Seasons,” is one of the best tracks of the whole 3-cd set, in which a repeating modal sequence anchors a glittering texture of zippy special effects; the whole thing has a kind of quirky sweetness. The last track, “Moving Language,” lulls the listener with a misty twilight of blue electrons. Perimeter II gives the listener a glowing screen-window into what the twenty-first century might hold for us in artistic expression, as our media become more and more dependent on artificial intelligences of all kinds.



 Vir Unis & James Johnson ‎- Perimeter II  (flac 472mb)

101 Mapping The Four Worlds 8:12
102 Dropping The Symbolic 3:39
103 Spherical Archetypes 7:30
104 The Supernal Process 10:08
105 Boundary Plane 1:46
106 From Earth To Metal 4:55
107 The Color Link 7:15
108 Patterns Of The Petroglyph 6:48
109 Disintegration And Bonding 3:30
201 45 Intersecting Planes 12:17
202 Moving Platonic Solids 10:11

 Vir Unis & James Johnson ‎- Perimeter II     (ogg  203mb)

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 Vir Unis & James Johnson ‎- Perimeter II  (flac 458mb)

203 Dividing The Blueprint 7:26
204 Mobius Polarities 6:17
205 Indivisible Circles 8:18
206 A Brightly Colored Phase 0:44
207 A Sacred Portion 7:11
208 Dimensional Verices 10:07
301 Within The Unapproachable 12:07
302 Measuring Seasons 7:37
303 Numeric Remembering 12:17
304 Embracing The Infinite 9:21
305 Moving Language 8:12

 Vir Unis & James Johnson ‎- Perimeter II     (ogg  211mb)

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Hello,


11 correct requests for this week, 1 cloudy re up, 3 too early , whatever another batch of 44 re-ups (13.9 gig)


These days i'm making an effort to re-up, it will satisfy a smaller number of people which means its likely the update will  expire relatively quickly again as its interest that keeps it live. Nevertheless here's your chance ... asks for re-up in the comments section at the page where the expired link resides, or it will be discarded by me. ....requests are satisfied on a first come first go basis. ...updates will be posted here remember to request from the page where the link died! To keep re-ups interesting to my regular visitors i will only re-up files that are at least 12 months old (the older the better as far as i am concerned), and please check the previous update request if it's less then a year old i won't re-up either.

Looka here , requests fulfilled up to February 25th !... N'Joy

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5x Aetix Back in Flac (China Crisis - Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, China Crisis - Working With Fire And Steel, China Crisis - Flaunt The Imperfection, China Crisis - What Price Paradise, China Crisis - Diary Of A Hollow Horse)


4x Sundaze Back In Flac (Jeff Pearce - Daylight Slowly, Jeff Pearce - To the Shores of Heaven, Jeff Pearce - The Light Beyond, Jeff Pearce - Bleed)


4x Aetix Back In Flac (Throbbing Gristle - Funk Beyond Jazz, Throbbing Gristle - Heathen Earth, Throbbing Gristle - Mission Of Dead Souls, Throbbing Gristle - Journey Through A Body)



3x Sundaze Back in Flac (VA - Butterfly Dawn, VA - Wider Horizons, VA - Illuminations)



3x Beats Back in Flac (Alex Gopher - You My Baby & I , Alex Gopher With Demon - Wuz, Alex Gopher - Alex Gopher)



3x Aetix Back in Flac (Hunters & Collectors - Hunters & Collectors, Hunters & Collectors - Fireman's Curse, Hunters & Collectors - The Jaws of Life)


3x Sundaze Back In Flac (Bark Psychosis - Scum, Bark Psychosis - Hex, Bark Psychosis - Codename:Dustsucker)



3x Sundaze Back In Flac (David Sylvian - Brilliant Trees, David Sylvian - Secrets of the Beehive,  David Sylvian - Dead Bees on a Cake)



9x Scotland Back  in Flac (The Associates - The Affectionate Punch, The Associates - Perhaps, Boards of Canada - Geogaddi, Mogwai - Happy Songs, The Blue Nile - A Walk Across The Rooftops, Scars - Author ! Author !, still in ogg The Fire Engines - Lubricate your living room, Skids - Best of, Skids - Joy)


3x Beats Back in Flac (AFX - Analord 01, 02, 03, AFX - Analord 04, 05, 06, 07, AFX - Analord 08, 09, 10, 11)



3x Alphabet-Soup-Z Back in Flac (Frank Zappa - Joe's Garage Act I, Frank Zappa - Joe's Garage Act II, Frank Zappa - Joe's Garage Act III, Zita Swoon - Music Inspired By Sunrise, The Zutons - Who Killed The Zutons)






cloudy files re-up

1x Aetix Back in Flac ( Section 25 - Love and Hate )



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Hello, a tale of the bungling of Armageddon, featuring an angel, a demon, an 11-year-old Antichrist, and a doom-saying witch, crazy stuff right in sync with the crazy Trump age, still a few months before it premieres end of May at Amazon, so why not get prepared and listen to what BBC radio 4 made of this....


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It is the coming of the End Times: the Apocalypse is near, and Final Judgement will soon descend upon the human species. This comes as a bit of bad news to the angel Aziraphale (who was the guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden) and the demon Crowley (who, when he was originally named Crawly, was the serpent who tempted Eve to eat the apple), respectively the representatives of Heaven and Hell on Earth, as they have become used to living their cosy, comfortable lives and have, in a perverse way, taken a liking to humanity. As such, since they are good friends (despite ostensibly representing the polar opposites of Good and Evil), they decide to work together and keep an eye on the Antichrist, destined to be the son of a prominent American diplomat stationed in Britain, and thus ensure he grows up in a way that means he can never decide between Good and Evil, thereby postponing the end of the world.

In fact, Warlock, the child whom everyone thinks is the Anti-Christ, is a normal eleven-year-old boy. Due to the mishandling of several infants in the hospital, the real Anti-Christ is Adam Young, a charismatic and slightly otherworldly eleven-year-old living in Lower Tadfield, Oxfordshire, an idyllic town in Britain. Despite being the harbinger of the Apocalypse, he has lived a perfectly normal life as the son of typical English parents, and as a result has no idea of his true powers. He has three close friends - Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian - who collectively form a gang that is simply referred to as "Them" by the adults.

As the end of the world nears, Adam blissfully and naively uses his powers, changing the world to fit things he reads in a conspiracy theory magazine, such as raising the lost continent of Atlantis and causing Little Green Men to land on earth and deliver a message of goodwill and peace. In the meantime, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse assemble: War (a female war correspondent), Death (a biker), Famine (a dietician and fast-food tycoon), and Pollution (a young man--Pestilence having retired after the discovery of penicillin). The incredibly accurate (yet so highly specific as to be useless) prophecies of Agnes Nutter, 17th-century prophetess, are rapidly coming to pass.

Agnes Nutter was a witch in the 17th century and the only truly accurate prophet to have ever lived. She wrote a book called The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, a collection of prophecies that did not sell very well because they were unspectacular, cryptic and all true. She, in fact, decided to publish it only so she could receive a free author's copy. This copy is passed down to her descendants, and is currently owned by her multi-great granddaughter Anathema Device. Agnes was burned at the stake by a mob; however, because she had foreseen her fiery end and had packed 80 pounds of gunpowder and 40 pounds of roofing nails into her petticoats, everyone who participated in the burning was killed instantly.

As the world descends into chaos, Adam attempts to split up the world between his gang. After realizing that by embracing absolute power, he will not be able to continue to grow up as a child in Lower Tadfield, Adam decides to stop the apocalypse.

Anathema, Newton Pulsifer (one of the two last members of the Witchfinder Army), Adam and his gang, Aziraphale and Crowley gather at a military base near Lower Tadfield to stop the Horsemen causing a nuclear war and ending the world. Adam's friends capture War, Pollution, and Famine. Just as Adam's father, the devil, seems to come and force the end of the world, Adam twists everything so his human father shows up instead, and everything is restored.

Gaiman and Pratchett had known each other since 1985. It was their own idea, not that of their publisher, to collaborate on a novel. According to Gaiman, he originally began the book as a parody of Richmal Crompton's William books, named William the Antichrist, but it gradually outgrew the original idea.
Pratchett and Gaiman planned the novel together over lengthy phone conversations, and shared their writing by mailing floppy disks (remember floppy disks?) back and forth.

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According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, the world will end on a Saturday. A Saturday quite soon,...

Events have been set in motion to bring about the End of Days. The armies of Good and Evil are gathering and making their way towards the sleepy English village of Lower Tadfield. The Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pollution and Death - have been summoned from the corners of the earth and are assembling.

Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell and his assistant Newton Pulsifier are also en route to Tadfield to investigate some unusual phenomena in the area, while Anathema Device, descendent of prophetess and witch Agnes Nutter, tries to decipher her ancestor's cryptic predictions about exactly where the impending Apocalypse will take place.

Atlantis is rising, fish are falling from the sky; everything seems to be going to the Divine Plan. Everything that is but for the unlikely duo of an angel and a demon who are not all that keen on the prospect of the forthcoming Rapture. Aziraphale (once an angel in the Garden of Eden, but now running an antiquarian bookshop in London), and Crowley (formerly Eden's snake, now driving around London in shades and a vintage Bentley) have been living on Earth for several millennia and have become rather fond of the place. But if they are to stop Armageddon taking place they've got to find and kill the one who will the one bring about the apocalypse: the Antichrist himself.

There's just one small problem: someone seems to have mislaid him...


Dirk Maggs, best known for his adaptation of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, adapted and directed the radio dramatization along with producer Heather Larmour and, of course, Neil Gaiman himself.

Josie Lawrence as Agnes Nutter and Paterson Joseph as Famine, as well as Game of Thrones actor Clive Russell, Julia Deakin, Louise Brealey, Simon Jones, Arsher Ali, Phil Davis, and Mark Benton. The two lead roles of Aziraphale and Crowley will be voiced by Mark Heap (Spaced) and Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy), respectively. And, on top of all that, we can expect to hear cameo appearances from both Pratchett and Gaiman themselves.


Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 2 ( 28min mp3     33mb).


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previously

Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 1 ( 28min mp3     33mb).



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Hello, music news of the day was undoubtedly the death of the charismatic and hyperactive frontman of the Prodigy, Keith Flint who topped himself age 49. He was the lightning rod for Mike Howlett's project the Prodigy, he burnt brightly but then at 50 , somehow it didn't make sense anymore and he left this realm. Seriously before Flint found time to indulge other enthusiasms too. He kept fit by boxing or practicing jiu-jitsu and was an enthusiastic motorcyclist with his own successful motorcycle team, Team Traction Control. He lived in a lovingly restored (by him) Tudor manor house with 10 acres of land that he had bought near Felsted. That said, his wife Japanese DJ Mayumi Kai had left him, but the band was still going strong, 2019 tour planned, it's hard to fathom from here why his life became too much, rest me to say, rest in piece Keith..




Today's artists originated in the punk underground, namely from the ashes of the controversial X-Ray Spex. After banshee wailer Poly Styrene departed from X-Ray Spex, the remaining members held auditions for a replacement singer. Solo won the approval of a few of Styrene's former bandmates, and they debuted at the Music Machine on August 1979. Though experiencing only minor success in their native UK, most notably with their 1982 Top 20 hit "Is It a Dream", the band had number one hits in Poland, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Israel, Iceland, and other countries.  ......N-Joy

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Classix Nouveaux was one of the first new romantic acts in England. Although Classix Nouveaux's more guitar-heavy sound separated them from the mostly synthetic rhythms of Japan and Ultravox, the group's appetite for stylish fashion and danceable keyboards had them quickly associated with the new romantic movement.


The break-up of X-Ray Spex triggered an advertisement placed in Melody Maker, searching for a new lead singer. Sal Solo (formerly with The News) answered the advertisement. Jak Airport and B.P. Hurding left X-Ray Spex to form Classix Nouveaux with Mik Sweeney and Sal Solo. Their first gig was on 25 August 1979 at London's Music Machine nightclub (which would later become the Camden Palace & now called Koko). With publicity growing for the band, their dramatic and heavily made-up image led to the music press associating them with the burgeoning New Romantic movement. Jak Airport was replaced by Gary Steadman during the same year.

In 1980, the band recorded a four track session for Capital Radio and one track, "Robot's Dance", was played regularly by DJ Nicky Horne. This got the interest of the United Artists record company (then part of the EMI group), but as negotiations dragged on, the band decided to release the track as their debut single on their own ESP label. They also performed for the first time on television on Thames TV in London. "Robot's Dance" spent eleven weeks on the UK Indie Chart, reaching No. 22, and became a popular alternative dance floor track. The group's second single, "Nasty Little Green Men", followed on 10 November 1980.

In 1981, the first Classix Nouveaux album Night People was released along with two moderately successful singles "Guilty" and "Tokyo". Both singles reached the UK Top 75, and "Guilty" reached the Top 20 in Sweden and No. 25 in Australia. The album itself peaked at No. 66 in the UK. In September 1981, Classix Nouveaux hired Finnish guitarist Jimi Sumen to replace Gary Steadman. Sumen had been a member of the support act at their Helsinki gig. The second Classix Nouveaux album brought the band its biggest hits. La vérité was released in 1982 and the single release "Is It A Dream" brought the group its only British Top 20 hit, peaking at No. 11. Their next single, "Because You're Young", peaked at No. 43 in the UK, while the album itself peaked at No. 44.

The third and final Classix Nouveaux album, Secret, was released in 1983, produced by Alex Sadkin. The album, and its singles, were unsuccessful in the UK, but the band had number one hit singles in Poland with "Never Never Comes" and "Heart from the Start". The band toured and played to 25,000 people in Helsinki, but by now Solo was the only original member remaining after Jimi Sumen was replaced by Rick Driscoll and BP Hurding was replaced by Paul Turley.

Classix Nouveaux broke up in 1985, by which time Sal Solo had already begun a solo career. He had a UK Top 20 hit with "San Damiano" which reached No. 15 in early 1985. He released an album, Heart and Soul, the same year, and further singles, "Music and You" and "Forever Be", but none of these was successful. He went on to record and perform with the French/Italian space-rock and electronic band Rockets, before becoming heavily involved in Catholicism and releasing several Christian-oriented albums.

Mik Sweeney moved to Los Angeles where he built fretless bass guitars and did studio session work; he currently lives in Ireland. Gary Steadman went on to join A Flock of Seagulls. Jimi Sumen became a record producer in Finland and released a number of solo works there.

The first Classix Nouveaux compilation album was released in 1997 via EMI Records and was reissued with a slightly different track listing in 2003. Beginning that same year, the band's original albums saw reissue on CD by Cherry Red Records. In 2005 River Records released The River Sessions, a live album recorded at Strathclyde University in 1982 and, in January 2010, all the band's singles and associated B-sides saw release as The Liberty Singles Collection, again via Cherry Red Records.



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When Classix Nouveaux came up the band merged the modish style of New Romantic with the dark sound of The Sisters Of Mercy into classical disco rhythms. It could have worked pretty well if ...Han Solo was a great singer and songwriter but he isn't. If there is a theme that is "Guilty", epic, synthesizers but also colorful and rhythmic guitars plus a very danceable beat,  This is the creative peak of Classix Nouveaux, its best contribution to history, with which they can already feel proud, even when their albums are not masterpieces, like this "Night People", average exercise of new romantic, with good times, the introduction "Foreward", cold primitive synthpop, hermetic and robotic, the same for "623" and little less for "Inside Outside".

 It might be influenced by their image, but Classix Nouveaux sounds like a more cavernous Duran Duran, they do not have happy themes, the voice of Sal Solo seems to tell us that they take things more seriously, here it's not about going to be nice to bring women closer. In this way, the sound of Classix, although unmistakably new romantic, is closer to Gothic lands for example, for example "Every Home Should Have One", one of the substantial themes of the album, could be camouflaged by a  Sisters of Mercy theme a little past the compass.  "Tokyo" is also remarkable, a track that pays the high price of accompanying "Guilty" on the same album, otherwise it would be the star.  Well well. Here mixed and extended with most of their eponomous debut album.



Classix Nouveaux - Night People ( 401mb)

01 Foreward 3:22
02 Guilty 4:39
03 Run Away 2:39
04 No Sympathy, No Violins 4:04
05 Inside Outside 4:18
06 623 2:27
07 Every Home Should Have One 3:54
08 Tokyo 2:38
09 Or A Movie 4:28
10 Soldier 3:43
11 The Protector Of Night 5:20
Bonus
12 The Robot's Dance 3:53
13 Nasty Little Green Men 3:13
14 Test Tube Babies 2:44
15 Night People 3:51
16 Old World For Sale 2:34
17 627 2:28
18 We Don't Bite 3:23

Classix Nouveaux - Night People(ogg  149mb)

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Classix Nouveaux's second album was spearheaded by their biggest British hit single, "Is It a Dream," as well as the smaller hits "Because You're Young" and "Never Again" (though, oddly, the album only just made it inside the U.K. Top 50). "Is It a Dream" was catchy, lightweight, soul-tinged, and pretentiously vocalized, very much in the stream of the new romantic pop that was peaking around the time of this release. With its synth-heavy production, the album's sound is as firmly dated as a Doris Day record, but actually it's not among the most offensive items in this genre. Sal Solo's high vocals sound not far from Brian Wilson's in texture on "To Believe," believe it or not, and "Because You're Young" has a peppy, uplifting tone that's a little dampened by the ostentatious singing. It's music of a hand-wringing, grandiose chic glamour on its more ethereal cuts, and of unabashed, bouncy synth pop on more dance-oriented outings like "Never Again" and "1999." The 2002 CD reissue on Cherry Red adds two bonus tracks, "It's Not Too Late" and "Where to Go" (the B-sides of "Because You're Young" and "Is It a Dream," respectively).



Classix Nouveaux - La Verite ( 293mb)

01 Foreward 1:08
02 Is It A Dream 4:16
03 To Believe 3:46
04 Because You're Young 3:47
05 Six To Eight 1:58
06 La Verité 5:12
07 Never Again 4:06
08 It's All Over 3:55
09 1999 3:45
10 I Will Return 5:43
11 Finale 2:34
Bonus
12 It's Not Too Late 3:23
13 Where To Go 3:14

Classix Nouveaux - La Verite (ogg  113mb)

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While their first two albums may have cemented their fate as goth new romantics, there was always more to Classix Nouveaux than fashion and their short-lived "flavor of the week" status. In frontman Sal Solo, they had a vocalist with an exceptional range and a knack for writing catchy songs that would oftentimes get buried beneath the quirky arrangements and production that didn't seem to fully comprehend the depth of Solo's songs. On Secret, released in 1983, it all finally came together. Under the guidance of producer Alex Sadkin, most of the white funk elements of their sound had been chucked and replaced by a far more commercial synth-based sound, which helped to compliment Sal's vocals and push the melodies of the songs to the fore. Fans of the first two albums didn't have to worry, though, because there were moments here that could fit easily on the first pair of albums (namely, "The Fire Inside" and "The Unloved"). But those looking for something more than retreads of their past glories were pleased with the more direct sound of Secret. Some of the band's finest songs can be found on this platter, including "Never Never Comes,""Forever and a Day,""All Around the World," and "Heart from the Start." Sal's vocals were more passionate and his lyrics more personal. In the past, it often seemed too flashy when he'd slip into his trademark falsetto, but here he uses it sparingly and only to accent the songs. This was a new, mature Classix Nouveaux. Even Edward Bell's cover art moved the band to a new level of acceptability, adding a colorful flair to their older, darker image. Unfortunately, as Classix Nouveaux moved forward, their audience stayed behind and the album was not as successful as it should have been. Meanwhile, Sal had a deeply moving religious experience and began moving in a different musical direction. The band recorded another single with Sal but the writing was on the wall, and Solo took flight and went...er....solo.



Classix Nouveaux - Secret ( 281mb)

01 All Around The World 4:20
02 Manitou 3:54
03 Heart From The Start 3:32
04 The Fire Inside 3:48
05 Forever And A Day 3:38
06 Never Never Comes 2:58
07 The Unloved 5:17
08 When They All Have Gone 6:00
09 No Other Way 4:52

Classix Nouveaux - Secret (ogg 90mb)

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Hello,


Today's artist was one of Latin music's most respected vocalists. A ten-time Grammy nominee, who sang only in her native Spanish language, received a Smithsonian Lifetime Achievement award, a National Medal of the Arts, and honorary doctorates from Yale University and the University of Miami. A street in Miami was even renamed in her honor, and her trademark orange, red, and white polka dot dress and shoes have been placed in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute of Technology. The Hollywood Wax Museum includes a statue of the Cuba-born songstress. According to the European Jazz Network, she "commands her realm with a down-to-earth dignity unmistakably vibrant in her wide smile and striking pose.".....N'Joy

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Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso was born on October 21, 1925 in the diverse, working-class neighborhood of Santos Suárez in Havana, Cuba, the second of four children. Her father, Simón Cruz, was a railroad stoker and her mother, Catalina Alfonso was a homemaker who took care of an extended family. Celia was one of the eldest among fourteen children- brothers, sisters, and many cousins- she often had to put the younger ones to bed by singing them to sleep. While growing up in Cuba's diverse 1930s musical climate, Cruz listened to many musicians who influenced her adult career, including Fernando Collazo, Abelardo Barroso, Pablo Quevedo and Arsenio Rodríguez. Despite her father's opposition and the fact that she was Catholic, as a child Cruz learned Santería songs from her neighbor who practiced Santería.

As a teenager, her aunt took her and her cousin to cabarets to sing, but her father encouraged her to attend school in the hope she would become a teacher. After high school she attended the Normal School for Teachers in Havana with the intent of becoming a literature teacher. At the time being a singer was not viewed as an entirely respectable career. However, one of her teachers told her that as an entertainer she could earn in one day what most Cuban teachers earned in a month. Cruz's big break came in 1950 when Myrta Silva, the singer with Cuba's Sonora Matancera, returned to her native Puerto Rico. Since they were in need of a new singer, the band decided to give the young Celia Cruz a chance. She auditioned in June, and at the end of July she was asked to join as lead singer.[10] She won the support of Sonora's band leader, Rogelio Martínez, and went on to record hits such as "Yembe Laroco" and "Caramelo". Soon her name was bigger than the band's. During her 15 years with Sonora Matancera, she appeared in cameos in some Mexican films such as Rincón criollo (1950), Una gallega en La Habana (1955) and Amorcito corazón (1961), toured all over Latin America, and became a regular at Havana's famous Tropicana nightspot.

After Fidel Castro assumed control of Cuba in 1959, when the Sonora Matancera left Cuba to perform in Mexico in June 1960, they did not return. Cruz and her husband, Pedro Knight, were prohibited from returning to their homeland and became citizens of the United States. In 1965, Cruz left the group and in 1966, Cruz and Tito Puente began an association that would lead to eight albums for Tico Records. The albums were not as successful as expected. However, Puente and Cruz later joined the Vaya Records label. There, she joined accomplished pianist Larry Harlow and was soon headlining a concert at New York's Carnegie Hall. Cruz's 1974 album with Johnny Pacheco, Celia y Johnny, was very successful, and Cruz soon found herself in a group named the Fania All-Stars, which was an ensemble of salsa musicians from every orchestra signed by the Fania label (owner of Vaya Records).

In 1976, she participated in a documentary film Salsa about the Latin culture, along with figures like Dolores del Río and Willie Colón. She also made three albums with Willie Colon (1977, 1981, 1987). With a voice described as operatic, Cruz moved through high and low pitches with an ease that belied her age, and her style improvising rhymed lyrics added a distinctive flavor to salsa. Her flamboyant costume, which included various colored wigs, tight sequined dresses, and very high heels, became so famous that one of them was acquired by the Smithsonian institution. During the 1980s, Cruz began to garner the international recognition that was her due, she made many tours in Latin America and Europe, doing multiple concerts and television shows wherever she went, and singing both with younger stars and stars of her own era. She began a crossover of sorts, when she participated in the 1988 feature film Salsa alongside Robby Draco Rosa.

In 1990, Cruz won a Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance – Ray Barretto & Celia Cruz – Ritmo en el Corazón. She later recorded an anniversary album with Sonora Matancera. In the same year, she was recipient of the Excellence Award at the 1990 Lo Nuestro Awards. In 1992, she starred with Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas in the film The Mambo Kings. Cruz's popularity reached its highest level after she appeared in the The Mambo Kings. Cruz also appeared in the film The Perez Family. She sang a duet version of "Loco de Amor," with David Byrne, in the Jonathan Demme movie Something Wild.In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded Cruz the National Medal of Arts. In the same year, she was inducted into Billboards Latin Music Hall of Fame along with fellow Cuban musician Cachao López. In 1999, Cruz was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.Cruz continued to record and perform until sidelined by a brain tumor in 2002. While recovering from surgery to remove the tumor, she managed to make it in to the studio in early 2003 to record Regalo de Alma. Her surgery was only partially successful and she died July 16, 2003. The passing of the "Queen of Salsa" left a huge gap in Latin music, but also a remarkable catalog to document her reign.

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This album, The Winners, originally released in 1987 on Vaya Records, was the last of three collaborations between the late, great sonera, Celia Cruz and world renown trombonist, producer and singer, Willie Colon. Celia's readily apparent improvisational vocal prowess leaves no doubt as to why she was the most sought after female sonera of the era. Por algo le decian "La Reina"! Willie does not play any musical instruments, but his phenomenal skills as a producer and innovator are tantamount. As evidence of the high esteem and affection that Willie held for the trombone, he recruited not one, not two, not three, but FIVE excellent trombonists for this album: Steve Turre, Barry Rogers, Angel Vazquez, Leopoldo Pineda and Lewis Kahn. Also, in addition to producing the album, Willie sings the chorus lines along with some of the most mellifluous voces of the era: Milton Cardona, Tito Allen, Domingo Quinones and Adalberto Santiago. With a cast of seasoned musicians, this album had all the important elements in place for a blockbuster recording.



 Celia Cruz y Willie Colon - The Winners      (flac  247mb)

01 Un Bembe Pa' Yemaya 5:45
02 Son Matamoros 4:17
03 Vendedores 5:43
04 El Paraiso 5:16
05 Dice Anton 5:17
06 Yo Si Soy Veneno 6:13
07 Se Tambalea 4:28
08 Ache Para Todos 4:22

Celia Cruz y Willie Colon - The Winners   (ogg  97mb)

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Master conguero Ray Barretto and salsa queen Celia Cruz had already worked together on the 1983 session Tremendo Trío, which found them teaming up with Puerto Rican sonero Adalberto Santiago. Five years later, towards the end of 1988, la guarachera and Barretto recorded the delightful, no-frills salsa session that you hold in your hands. The quality of the songwriting and the excellent production values of "Ritmo En El Corazon" gained the album a Grammy award in 1990.
Historically speaking, this is a fascinating session. It was recorded during the very last days of the Fania heyday-- it is, in fact, one of the company's last albums to shine with the same kind of majestic feeling that defines the label's classic sessions of the '70s and early '80s. By the late '80s, Cruz was getting ready to embark on the next (and last) phase of her career, favoring a poppier sound and experimenting with new formats such as hip-hop on a string of commercially successful albums recorded for the RMM and Sony labels. Barretto's career was also in something of a transition. The Nuyorican percussionist had abandoned the more progressive side of salsa that characterized seminal sessions such as The Message and Indestructible. He would eventually abandon tropical music altogether and shine with smaller instrumental combos in the Latin jazz arena.
"Ritmo En El Corazon," then, offers a stark contrast to the stylistic directions that both of its protagonists would follow in the future. The album is made up of eight salsa jams, bubbly and concise, devoid of any grand artistic pretensions or excessive soloing. In fact, there is not a single instance in the entire collection where you can hear Barretto's congas stand out from the meticulously orchestrated ensemble-- a testament to the late bandleader's decision never to position himself on the foreground.



Celia Cruz y Ray Barretto - Ritmo En El Corazon    (flac  244mb)

01 El Chisme 4:33
02 No Me Cambie Camino 4:28
03 Para Decirte Adios 5:00
04 Mala Suerte 5:05
05 En Que Quedamos 4:50
06 Tu Musica Popular 4:48
07 Bambarakatunga 4:33
08 Ritmo En El Corazon 4:40

Celia Cruz y Ray Barretto - Ritmo En El Corazon  (ogg    104mb)

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The question that must be confronted for those familiar with the breadth of her work is, "Is it even possible for Celia Cruz to record a bad album?" With elements such as producer Emilio Estefan, Jr., executive producer Angel Carrasco, and of course, la guarachera del mundo herself converging to create 2000's Siempre Vivire, the answer to that question seems clear. Celia's first album for Sony certainly captured those elements that uniquely belong to Cruz, and discriminatingly avoided any influences of the day that might adulterate those qualities or date the project. In conceiving this record, the creative team walked a very fine line by deciding on a project that could both stand among its contemporary peers and yet sound classic. It is hard in modern salsa to find the tres, a sultry bolero, or to hear plena played well. In a genre that continues to narrow its stylistic scope, it's refreshing to come across a record that can simultaneously be a citizen of the present, and reach to the past. Cruz herself delivers that gutsy, dark molasses tone that is as sweet as the "Azucarrr!" she made famous. Like Celia, Siempre Vivire is of such a high quality that is both a bold challenge for tomorrow and a graceful bow to yesterday.



Celia Cruz - Siempre Vivire     (flac  354mb)

01 Cucala 3:48
02 Orizah Eh 4:15
03 Tres Dias De Carnaval 4:58
04 No Me Hables De Amor 3:19
05 Dime Si Llegue A Tiempo 3:49
06 La Sopa En Botella 5:08
07 De La Verdegue 3:00
08 Ni Hablar 3:11
09 Rico Changi 4:22
10 No Aguanto Mas 3:31

Celia Cruz - Siempre Vivire (ogg  133mb)

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Two things, looking at the cover, Celia seems to be all dressed up in her future heavenly attire (as imagined by us mortals), anyway she passed on weeks before her final 'soul gift' got released, not sure why the older i will survive got added, Celia had done more than enough that she wouldn't be forgotten anytime soon, clearly the power of the internet wasn't grasped yet.

The final recording of the mighty Queen of Salsa's career, Regalo del Alma was certainly in keeping with the exuberant, joyful tone that her enormous fan base has come to expect from her. With stylistic influences and production value a bit more modern than one might expect from a legend whose recording career has spanned 45 years, this album will hook yet another generation on Celia Cruz's regal, earthy presence. Cruz is joined by a cast of consummate professionals including producer Sergio George, percussionists Marc Quiñones and Luis Quintero, and many of the usual suspects that one might expect to find on a record of this caliber. These contemporary masters bring a freshness to the project that is invigorating. There are several loop-driven tracks like "Ella Tiene Fuego" and "La Nina de la Trenza Negra" that propel Cruz and her loyal fan base into the 21st century. There are times when this production masks the subtle richness of Celia's vocal performance. For this reason, there could be some Cruz purists who are turned off by the new approach. The final track on the album is a creative rendition of the disco classic "I Will Survive." Like a declaration from beyond, chilling lyrics and a gorgeous arrangement hit their mark with force. "In the soul of my people, in the skin of the drums, in the hands of the conga player, in the feet of the dancer, I will live on."



Celia Cruz - Regalo del Alma    (flac  338mb)

01 Ella Tiene Fuego 4:07
02 Jose Caridad 3:59
03 Rie Y Llora 4:10
04 Ay, Pena, Penita 4:58
05 Diagnostico 4:28
06 La Nina De La Trenza Negra 4:10
07 Me Huele A Rumba 4:04
08 No Estes Amargao 4:03
09 Pa' La Cola 4:04
10 Maria La Loca 4:01
Bonus
11 Yo Vivire 4:31

Celia Cruz - Regalo del Alma  (ogg  123mb)

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Hello,


Today's Artist could be best be described as funk? R&B? Soul? Rock? Singer-songwriter? Poetry? The answer is...all of the above. She hits it out the park with such deep grooves, catchy drums, tasty guitar breaks and sorrowful lyrics. Some of her non-PC words make it hard to drop songs into playlists for public consumption, but that doesn't mean they're not worthy. She has received significant critical acclaim throughout her career, and although she has never won a Grammy Award, she has been nominated ten times. She has been credited for helping to have "sparked the neo-soul movement."....N Joy

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 Although Meshell Ndegeocello scored a few hits early in her career, the bassist, singer, and songwriter later opted to concentrate on more challenging material by exploring the politics of race and sex, among other topics. From her 1993 Maverick label debut through her releases of the 2010s for Naïve, she built a discography of recordings that defied classification through progressive mixtures of jazz, R&B, hip-hop, and rock. Initially held in regard primarily for her bass playing and bold lyrics, her songwriting, which often examined dark interpersonal issues, was just as exceptional.

Michelle Lynn Johnson, born on August 29, 1968, spent the first few years of her life in Germany. Her father was both a military man and a jazz saxophonist. She relocated with her family to Virginia in the early '70s. As a youngster, Johnson developed an interest in music; during her teenage years, she began to play regularly in the clubs of Washington, D.C., but eventually settled down in New York City after a stint of studying music at Howard University. By this point, she was going by Me'Shell NdegéOcello -- her adopted last name Swahili for "free like a bird."
Ndegeocello honed her skills on the D.C. go-go circuit in the late 1980s with the bands Prophecy, Little Bennie and the Masters, and Rare Essence. She unsuccessfully tried out for Living Colour's bassist position, vacated in 1992 by Muzz Skillings. NdegéOcello struck out on her own and often performed solo with just a bass, drum machine, and keyboard. In the early '90s, she was one of the first artists signed to Madonna's Warner-affiliated Maverick label.

NdegéOcello's debut album, 1993's Plantation Lullabies, was produced with David Gamson, as well as with André Betts and Bob Power, and involved input from a wide range of musicians, including DJ Premier, Joshua Redman, Bill Summers, Wah-Wah Watson, and David Fiuczynski. An impressive first album, presenting a distinctly androgynous persona, spawned the hit "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" and received three Grammy nominations. A duet with John Mellencamp on a cover of Van Morrison's "Wild Night," released a year later, brought her more mainstream attention; it peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

Her biggest hit is a duet with John Mellencamp, a cover version of Van Morrison's "Wild Night", which reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts. Her only other Billboard Hot 100 hit besides "Wild Night" has been her self-penned "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)", which peaked at No. 73 in 1994. Also in 1994, Ndegeocello collaborated with Herbie Hancock on "Nocturnal Sunshine," a track for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool. The album, meant to raise awareness and funds in support of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the African American community, was heralded as "Album of the Year" by Time magazine.

She had a No. 1 Dance hit in 1996 with a Bill Withers cover song called "Who Is He (And What Is He to You)?" (briefly featured in the film Jerry Maguire) as well as Dance Top 20 hits with "Earth", "Leviticus: Faggot", "Stay" and the aforementioned "If That's Your Boyfriend.. Last Night)". Ndegeocello played bass on the song "I'd Rather be Your Lover" for Madonna on her album Bedtime Stories. Ndegeocello was also tapped, at the last minute, to perform a rap on the same song. This came after Madonna and producers decided to remove Tupac Shakur's rap (which he did while he and Madonna were dating in 1994), after he had criminal charges filed against him. Almost three years passed between the release of NdegéOcello's first and second albums, but during the wait, she collaborated with Chaka Khan on the track "Never Miss the Water," and she appeared on movie soundtracks (White Man's Burden, Money Talks) and on such multi-artist releases as Ain't Nuthin' But a She Thing and Lilith Fair, Vol. 3. Peace Beyond Passion finally saw release in 1996, peaked higher on the Billboard 200 (at number 63), and was also nominated for a Best R&B Album Grammy. Its cover of Bill Withers'"Who Is He (And What Is He to You?)" topped Billboard's club chart. Produced by Gamson, it featured a longer list of noted associates, including several heard on the debut, as well as Billy Preston, Bennie Maupin, David Torn, Wendy Melvoin, and Paul Riser.

Another three-year break between albums occurred, during which time she collaborated with rapper Queen Pen on the track "Girlfriend." Bitter, for which she was billed as Meshell Ndegéocello, was released in 1999. She took another three-year break and emerged with Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape -- as Meshell Ndegeocello -- in 2002. Comfort Woman followed in 2003 and Dance of the Infidel, a sprawling album made with numerous collaborators from the jazz world, surfaced in 2005. Two years later, her fantastic Decca debut, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, which included guest appearances from Pat Metheny and Oumou Sangare, was released. Her music has been featured in a number of film soundtracks including How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Lost & Delirious, Batman & Robin, Love Jones, Love & Basketball, Talk to Me, Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls, The Best Man, Higher Learning, Down in the Delta, The Hurricane, Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom, and Soul Men.

She has appeared on recordings by Basement Jaxx, Indigo Girls, Scritti Politti, and The Blind Boys of Alabama. On The Rolling Stones' 1997 album Bridges to Babylon she plays bass on the song "Saint of Me". On Alanis Morissette's 2002 album Under Rug Swept, she plays bass on the songs "So Unsexy" and "You Owe Me Nothing in Return". On Zap Mama's album ReCreation (2009), she plays bass on the song "African Diamond".

Her first pop-related recording in half a decade, 2009's Devil's Halo featured Ndegeocello in a quartet setting. The album also included guest spots from Lisa Germano and Oren Bloedow. Ndegeocello toured the album in opera houses and concert halls across the United States and Europe. In 2011, she partnered with Grammy-winning producer Joe Henry for the album Weather; it was issued on the Naïve label. In 2012, Ndegeocello released Pour une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone, a collection of tunes intimately associated with the legendary vocalist and pianist. Comet, Come to Me, another deep set of introspective songs, followed in 2014. During the next few years, she appeared on a wide assortment of recordings by the likes of Terry Lyne Carrington, Chris Connelly, Benji Hughes, Marcus Strickland (whose Nihil Novi she produced), and Ibeyi. She returned as a leader in 2018 with Ventriloquism, for which she reinterpreted formative R&B classics of the '80s and early '90s.

Personal life
Ndegeocello is bisexual and previously had a relationship with feminist author Rebecca Walker. Ndegeocello's first son, Solomon, was born in 1989. As of 2011 she had been married to Alison Riley for five years, with whom she has a second son.

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Me'shell NdegéOcello's debut album twists and turns through so many genres -- R&B, pop, jazz, hip-hop -- that it's hard to put a finger on just where she wants to take its 13 songs. That she also spins conventional racial and sexual identity here makes Plantation Lullabies an occasionally overwhelming -- as well as a vibrantly sophisticated -- listen. NdegéOcello defies labels throughout, tagging her slinking and crawling songs with a rubbery flow that's just as rooted in '70s funky soul as it is in '90s hip-hop culture. The best songs here -- "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night),""Dred Loc," and "Outside Your Door" -- work their way into their grooves with a seamless, and almost uniform, bounce. It can be a bit derivative (for all of NdegéOcello's genre crossing, she always seems to go back to the same musical blueprint), but most of the time it's just about as boundary-busting and as affecting as '90s R&B gets.



 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Plantation Lullabies   (flac   323mb)

01 Plantation Lullabies 1:31
02 I'm Diggin You (Like An Old Soul Record) 4:25
03 If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night) 4:31
04 Shoot'n Up And Gett'n High 4:14
05 Dred Loc 4:05
06 Untitled 1:41
07 Step Into The Projects 3:54
08 Soul On Ice 5:08
09 Call Me 4:45
10 Outside Your Door 5:08
11 Picture Show 4:38
12 Sweet Love 4:54
13 Two Lonely Hearts (On The Subway) 4:16

Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Plantation Lullabies   (ogg    124mb)

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There are times on Me'Shell Ndegéocello's second album where the funky hybrid of R&B and alt-pop that she laid down on her 1993 debut, Plantation Lullabies, actually seems to take on an ethereal quality. Beats and grooves float effortlessly out of the fluid rhythms, and Ndegéocello herself sings with a soothing reserve that was a little too deliberate on her previous work. And it's a better album because of it. Peace Beyond Passion is built around a triumvirate of songs addressing man's inhumanity toward man throughout the ages (with such heavy-handed titles as "Deuteronomy: Niggerman" and "Leviticus: Faggot"), but the real highlights of the set are a wry take on Bill Withers'"Who Is He and What Is He to You" and the ultra-smooth, slow-burning "Stay." It's new age soul that's as spiritually purifying as it is musically sophisticated, but with a deliberately distressed cover



Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Peace Beyond Passion (flac   355mb)

01 The Womb 1:26
02 The Way 4:58
03 Deuteronomy: Niggerman 4:01
04 Ecclesiastes: Free My Heart 5:22
05 Leviticus: Faggot 6:08
06 Mary Magdalene 5:51
07 God Shiva 4:06
08 Who Is He And What Is He To You 4:49
09 Stay 4:30
10 Bittersweet 5:17
11 A Tear And A Smile 3:49
12 Make Me Wanna Holler 8:50

Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Peace Beyond Passion (ogg  135mb)

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Bitter is an appropriate title for Meshell Ndegéocello's third album. Inspired by a torturous romantic relationship, Bitter surges with emotions, and most of them are shaded with regret, remorse, or bitterness. Undoubtedly, the relationship was painful, but it has given Ndegéocello an artistic focus missing on her two previous albums. It provides a sorrowful, meditative emotional template that she matches with moody, slow songs that flow into each other. It's the kind of album that demands close listening, otherwise it has the tendency to fade into the background. For some listeners, concentrated listening may be a little difficult, given the bleak emotions of the music, but Ndegéocello's subtle songcraft truly reveals itself upon close inspection. And, with repeated plays, Bitter reveals itself as the most personal -- and in many ways, most rewarding -- album of her career.



 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Bitter (flac   272mb)

01 Adam 2:24
02 Fool Of Me 3:30
03 Faithful 4:46
04 Satisfy 4:05
05 Bitter 4:15
06 May This Be Love 5:17
07 Sincerity 5:30
08 Loyalty 4:20
09 Beautiful 2:44
10 Eve 1:23
11 Wasted Time 4:55
12 Grace 4:27

 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Bitter (ogg   99mb)

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To get immediately to the point, if Meshell Ndegeocello's Comfort Woman isn't regarded as one of the finest contemporary soul albums of 2003, then those who review music for a living had better get eardrum transplants and a transfusion of blood to get rid of the sawdust, or quit to sell used cars, work in a fast-food establishment, or pump gas. The marketplace is tricky, but if this disc doesn't sell, then Madonna needs to fire her marketing department at Maverick. Comfort Woman is a deeply sensual album, sexy as hell and drenched with lush, richly textured bass grooves that bubble under warmly and luxuriantly in a series of songs that may not be all that divergent in tempo, but don't have to be either. This is late-night music, where the sound of a bass doesn't so much pop as it rumbles in the lower spine, looking for release. Make no mistake on Comfort Woman, space is the place and that place is reached via two vehicles, a perfect commingling of the spirits of dub reggae and mid-'70s soul and groove jazz. Think, perhaps, of David Sancious and Teena Marie as bandmates with Sly & Robbie in the rhythm section, Jimi Hendrix's "Rainy Day, Dream Away" as a music model, and Sade as vocalist -- you get the idea. The opening track, "Love Song," begins with a spacy bassline, rumbling in the lower register soft enough to ease its way into a song yet tough enough that it won't let the listener go. With a B-3 shimmering in the background, Ndegeocello begins to sing, so s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y: "If you want me, baby, just call/Let me kiss your body/Fill you with love/Let me feed your body/Feed it with love/I can't sleep...this is love/This is how I love you...." She croons with a breathy Smokey Robinson coo. On "Come Smoke My Herb," you can hear traces of both Shuggie Otis' and the Brothers Johnson's ballads infused with the brazen promise of Joni Mitchell and Gregory Isaacs meeting in bliss to swing and sway under a dubwise moon. Speaking of moons, "Liliquoi Moon" features guest guitarist Oren Bloedow, who adds his tonal dexterity to a soulfully psychedelic mix of woven acoustic guitars, a lullaby melody, and life-affirming lyrics until the end when Doyle Bramhall goes into overdrive in his solo, transforming the tune into a shape-shifting poltergeist of a track. Bramhall also lends his axe to "Love Song #3," which was truly inspired by Hendrixian grace and elegance à la Electric Ladyland. "Love Song # 2" and "Andromeda & the Milky Way" are sex beat tracks, music with a slow walking tiger in the hips as bass and keyboards stride out, loping, then halting and curling around the listener like smoke. Fact of the matter is, Comfort Woman is one of the most forward-thinking records to come out of contemporary soul in well over a decade. It's possible to remember when Prince made music as fine, sensual, and spiritual as this, but it's a struggle. This is Ndegeocello's finest moment on record thus far, and is as good as it gets in the field.



 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Comfort Woman (flac   260mb)

01 Playing For Time 5:16
02 Expressway 4:26
03 Magic 4:55
04 Take A Breath 5:16
05 Prime Time 5:32
06 Hitchhiker 3:58
07 High Season 4:54
08 Quick Step 4:09
09 In A Word 3:45

 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Comfort Woman (ogg   96mb)

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Hello,


Today's Artist introduces himself as a synthesist, drummer, electronic groove creator and sound sculptor. He mixes experimental sound sculpting with a hybrid of electronic and acoustic grooves. .......N'Joy

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Synthesist, drummer, sound sculptor and electronic groove creator, Peoria-Illinois-based "Vir Unis" (real name: John Strate-Hootman, 26 October 1969, Morton, IL, United States ) is a significant voice in the world of atmospheric / tribal / ambient music. With an emphasis on rhythm and pulse, underpinned by deep synthesizer textures, Vir Unis realizes music that moves between the organic intensity of ever evolving fractal grooves and the harmonic complexity of mist strewn sonic atmospheres. Co-founder of AtmoWorks

After performing as a drummer in various synth pop and new wave bands in the 1980's, he worked for several years in solitude developing atmospheric and experimental music via a simple analog 4-track cassette deck, one effects box, delay pedal, drum machine, and a synthesizer. Acquiring his first computer, Vir Unis was first introduced to digital recording via Sonic Foundry software in 1996. Realizing the vast potential that the digital realm offers the electronic musician, he quickly set about creating a new world of possibilities for himself, both atmospherically and rhythmically. Starting out as a drummer and percussionist, these kinds of software tools helped shape a lot of the ideas that he was developing in his mind, but could not produce with the audio tools of the time, given the limitations of magnetic tape. However, being based in this minimalist approach to creating music, he was accustomed to pushing the instruments that he had to the furthest point and beyond, thus creating an atmosphere in which the imagination could thrive in either the digital or analog world. Forging a new and experimental fusion of analog percussion sources and digital editing became the primary focus for the next several years. Combining these electronic grooves with the sonic and misty psychedelic atmospheres that he had been working on for the past decade seemed the perfect alchemy and the next level he had been seeking.

In the summer of 1998, Imaginarium was released. This was a collaboration album with Midwest duo Ma Ja Le and was produced by the legendary electronic music composer Steve Roach. This proved to be quite a fortuitous event for many reasons, but the main reason was a lasting collaboration between Roach and Unis, developing their ongoing exploration of fractal groove creation into what Roach has called "Elegant Futurism". Their first collaboration, Body Electric, was released on Projekt in February of 1999. Well received by both critics and listeners alike, Body Electric received much radio airplay nationwide and remained in the Airwaves and New Age Voice top ten for over 8 weeks. Later that year, Vir Unis released his first solo album, The Drift Inside, in November of 1999 on Minneapolis based label GreenHouse Music. Produced by Steve Roach and Vir Unis, The Drift Inside focused primarily on self-reflective inner space music. Being completely beatless, his first solo album offered a different side to the tribal and electronic groove albums with Steve Roach and Ma Ja Le. However, The Undivided Flow, his contribution to The Ambient Expanse (Mirage), did offer a glimpse at the music that was developed on The Drift Inside. He also contributed one track, Beneath the Hive, to GreenHouse Music's first compilation album, Convergent Evolution in 1999. The Drift Inside has received several highly charged and positive reviews. A favorite of many space music fans, it was #2 on the New Age Sampler Radio show for The Ambient Hour which broadcasts on 89.9 FM, WWSP from the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. Vir Unis was also interviewed for their Millennium Featured Artist Series during this time. The Drift Inside was also featured in February 2000 on Hearts of Space program entitled "Luminosity".

Of music, Strate says, "I consider music to be a visual medium. Not just in imagining pictures while listening to music, but in a much more direct way. I see music when I listen to it. It creates patterns, textures, and all sorts of mandala like structures. In designing images on the computer, I try to capture the things I see in music. Painting, drawing, and computer aided design is all musical too. So, there's this sort of synesthesia that occurs naturally if you tune into it, and that's why a lot of artists are able to cross over into various mediums, because they all derive from the same source".

Vir Unis performed on 4 March 2000 at The Gatherings Concert Series in Philadelphia. This was his first concert ever on the east coast of the USA, second solo concert ever and demonstrated his talent for exploring, through music, the areas of space within and outside of the audience. A recording of this concert has been released via MP3.com.
Following the 4 March Gathering, Saul Stokes and Vir Unis performed their first collaboration live on the 03.05.00 broadcast of STAR'S END. Vir Unis + James JohnsonVir Unis returned to Philadelphia on 12 April 2003 to once again perform at The Gatherings Concert Series. Joining him was friend and collaborator, noted sonic explorer James Johnson. The duo presented live material in the vein of their recent release, Perimeter and its follow-up 3CD set, Perimeter 2 - released in Philadelphia on 12 April.

Among music composition and recording, Vir Unis has also been credited as a graphic designer for all his own solo albums, the cover artwork for Steve Roach's Midnight Moon (Projekt), and most recently, Blood Machine and the upcoming Sonic Foundry Vir Unis ACID Loop Library. Vir Unis has also musically contributed to Steve Roach's solo album, Light Fantastic (HOS/Fathom) as a guest artist, which earned Steve the AIIFM award for 1999, and also Roach's Serpant's Lair (Projekt), which was a collaboration album with percussionist Byron Metcalf. Always looking to keep the music and ideas fresh and evolving, Vir Unis is relentless in his search for new sounds, new grooves, and new worlds in which to create. Combing the various sources of acoustic and electronic sounds from the ground up into an analog and digital fractal stew and utilizing the latest software and hardware, Vir Unis' goal was nothing less than to create 100% original electro-psychedelic mind-body music.



2001 Interview

AV:  You started your musical career playing drums. Bearing in mind other synthesists like Klaus Schulze, Chris Franke started out on the same route, what made you change to synthesizers?

VU:  Actually, my brother had a Moog Rogue and a Prophet 600 and I remember being quite fascinated with the possibilities to create strange and alien sounds.  I didn't really care too much about conventional sounds and playing chops or recognized musical forms.  I was very intrigued with the idea that one could sculpt sound and the patterns could just keep changing infinitely. I liked synthesizers because they were their own instrument.  I despised the more featureless black box sample playback machines that were starting to come out.  They seemed to have more in common with a Stealth Bomber than they did a musical instrument!  I was way more intrigued by the analog synthesizers and all the blinking lights, sliders, faders, and knobs they had.  From there I started listening closely to some of the more atmospheric string sounds that a lot of New Wave pop bands were utilizing in their songs and recognizing how they sort of sprung from a lot of the early Brian Eno recordings and also stuff that David Sylvian and Richard Barbieri were doing with their band, Japan.  So I set out with really no concrete plans other than to just sit in front of the synth and just dream.

AV:  What exactly is a "fractal groove" in technical terms?

VU:  "Fractal grooves" are really a process born out of extracting rhythmic patterns from within patterns.  It's also an endless and infinite array of possibilities, so I was certainly fascinated with this concept when I first discovered how you could literally produce 30 different type of grooves from a single loop.  It's a matter of increasing complexity, taking one simple groove and pushing it through this process to create highly sophisticated and what Steve Roach calls "elegant futuristic" beats.  The idea is to create several varying degrees of a type of loop and blend them together in oscillating crossfades that create this sort of mandala like fractalization.  It gives that sort of psychedelic and liquid  lava lamp like flow to the grooves.

AV:  Can you remember the first electronic recording you heard and how it affected you?

VU:  I can't recall the exact title of the first electronic recording I heard.  But, I can recall first listening to space music in the mid eighties.  A girlfriend of mine had a tape she made of a program that I had just heard about called "Hearts of Space".  I remember how lush and mind expanding it sounded in comparison to the more upbeat electronic pop music that I was listening to and performing at the time.  It wasn't something that I listened to all the time or very much, for that matter, so when I did listen to it it was a unique and special event.  So this atmosphere of it being a special event started to develop.  It began to affect me slowly but deeply.  It really felt like the soundtrack to a dream, and increasingly I felt connected to it at a deeper level, as it felt like something that I had been searching for a long time.  Staying up late and listening to this music in a dark room became a favorite ritual over time.

AV:  How do you go about preparing for a concert? Is it a disciplined approach with hours of rehearsal or is a lot done on the spur of the moment in the concert hall?

VU:  My preparation for a concert is more psychological than anything else. Of course, I go through all the usual preparations of getting a few sounds programmed on the synthesizers and putting together backdrop atmospheres, although I prefer to mainly twist the music on the fly.  Mostly I tend to become very quiet, preferring little or no speech, and slowly start to focus on being in the moment and being carried by the current of the beats and sounds.  Usually this approach melts away the nervous energy that builds up preceding a performance.  Most of the shows that I've done recently have been based on improvisation.  You make yourself prepared emotionally and physically and the spirit will move you to create the right stuff.  This is something that makes the shows much more exhilarating, on the edge, and less of being a sound pilot/dj for the crowd. I definitely think it's much more interesting to see a performer moving and interacting with other musicians.  That's why a lot of my recent shows have been with others.

AV:  You have worked with Steve Roach on a number of albums now. What is the single most important thing you have learned from this veteran of the scene?

VU:  Actually, several things.  Integrity.  Grace.  Focus.  Dedication.  I've met very few people in this life as focused and dedicated to their craft as Steve Roach.  Time and time again he has blown me away with how deep his art flows.  This is a man who makes no compromises with the outer world, instead choosing to dive into the dark and bring back something profoundly human, rich, and enduring. It's a hero's quest, and working with him has only served to clarify my calling, my destiny.

AV:   Is there a single piece of musical equipment that you would just love to own?

VU:  I would love to own a top of the line Lexicon reverb.  It's pure space contained in a black box....

AV:  Have you ever been tempted to try and break into the mainstream music charts by releasing a commercial "pop" piece of music?

VU:  I come from a background of playing in bands that though they have been a bit on the unconventional side still created musical forms from the well of popular culture.  I did this for approximately 7 years, so I've had my fill to last a lifetime.  Since I've been on my own, it's been all about creating my own space.

AV:  A lot of your music is very reflective and spiritual. Do you have your own personal belief system or do you practice a faith that comes through with the music?

VU:  I don't practice any sort of organized religious doctrine.  I tend to shy away from the dogma that lies at the outer perimeter of religion and go immediately to it's essence which I feel connects all the world's ideologies and traditions.  I come from a Christian environment that had very little to do with the actual teachings of Christ, so the reflective and spiritual aspect of my music is really an attempt to get past these layers of cultural conditioning and dive deeper to the truth that lies inside.  I have a lot of beliefs and ideas that spring from a more eastern philosophy or approach to life, so I certainly have an affinity with Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen, but by no means am I a scholar of any these ways of life.  Essentially, my religion, if anything, is my music.

AV:  Beyond Perimeter what projects do you have in the works for next year that we might be looking for?

VU:  A collaboration with Saul Stokes should be finished by the end of the year.  This is titled "Thermal Transfer" and will be released on Hypnos' new affiliate label, Binary.  An official release date hasn't been scheduled yet, but it's expected to be out sometime around early February 2002.  It's really a nice mix of Saul's homemade synth style electronic music and my fractal groovescapes and atmospheres.  We've been working on it for about a year, so I'm really excited about seeing it finally come to life. I also have a solo album, tentatively titled "Mercury and Plastic" coming out sometime next year.  It's a continuation of Pulse n Atmo and a lot of the work that I've done with Steve Roach and James Johnson. A live disc from the Space For Music Festival that Interstitial and I performed at in Milwaukee last May will also be released sometime early in 2002.  We're hoping to encode it in 5.1 surround for a really expansive experience.  That will probably be released on my new artist direct label, "In The Bubble Music".

I also hope my long time collaboration with MJ Dawn, Steve Roach and Subatomic God will be finished.  It's taken a lot of twists and turns these past four years and I'm really anxious to see it finally finished.  Expect some real high energy and fast paced groovescapes on that one!  Other than that, James Johnson and I have been talking about releasing a live CD that would consist of tracks collected from our Fall 2001 shows that we're in the middle of right now. Also a collaboration with guitartist Chris Short, entitled Hub of The Mono Gods, may be finished sometime in the Spring or Summer of 2002.   Actually, despite this list of collaborations and solo projects, I really intended to relax some more next year, but the projects are already stacking up!

AV:  Do you have any plans for appearances for the balance of this year and into next year that have been finalized?

VU:  My next scheduled apprearance is Nov. 4th and 6th in Toronto, Canada for 1groove.com and The Ambient Ping.  The show at the Ambient Ping is actually a release party for "Perimeter" with James Johnson.  We'll be performing material from this album at both shows.  Other than those two concerts, nothing else is scheduled for the remainder of this year....At least, for now....

AV:  Lastly where do you see yourself in say ten years time?

VU:  It's hard to say.  All of us, in this world, are really on the edge of uncertainty.  The world really does spin on a dime, and who knows what will happen with any one of us.  Of course I have my personal hopes and aspirations that I work towards, but I really try to stay focused on the present and the immediate future.  In ten years time, I do know that I will be on the same path that I am now, but with hopefully a lot more insight, patience, respect, and compassion.  Other than just being alive and breathing, what more could I ask for?


Well i made an effort to tell you about the man, even if the net delivers very little on him, and now i guess here at Rho-Xs we have the best advertorial on him now, hmmm someone should create a wiki page on him

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Originally created as a souvenir for a concert performance, Aquaculture is a three way improvisation between Vir Unis James Johnson & Christopher Short recorded in a single session, single take. Aquaculture defies gravity with ultralight streams of beauty... Preternaturally serene, these otherworlds are brought to life by James Johnson, Vir Unis and Chris Short who display amazing restraint in the organically evolving subtleties of Aquaculture, as airy as it is liquid. With this trio you expect good things, and you get them... an A.



 Vir Unis, James Johnson, Chris Short - Aqua Culture I   (flac  341mb)

01 Aqua Culture 63:13

Vir Unis, James Johnson, Chris Short - Aqua Culture I    (ogg  153mb)

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From October 23 1888 through December 26th 1888 Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin spent time living and working together in Arles France, which included the famous incident of Van Gogh cutting part of his ear off. Vincent called the studio the "Yellow House".

Recorded at the Victorian Mansion John was living at during that time. Yellow House was culled from two improvisations between Vir Unis (John Stratehootman) and Christopher Short. One in the evening and one in the morning.Two friends getting together having a musical conversation and a good one at that. Even before the completion of the music, John and I decided the Yellow House was to be the title and conceptual theme of the album. The improvisations were taken by Christopher and edited down, arranged and overdubbed. John did the final mastering.



 Vir Unis and Christopher Short - The Yellow House (flac 402mb)

01 Monastery Of The South 16:34
02 On The Threshold Of Eternity 8:47
03 Journey Of The Wayfarers 10:11
04 Stormy Seas 8:47
05 Quest For Paradise 3:40
06 Starry Night 25:56

 Vir Unis and Christopher Short - The Yellow House     (ogg  171mb)

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Here’s a work that has affinity with the fractal groove releases of Steve Roach, Vir Unis and the collaborative works they did together. “Tokyo Highway” incorporates “fractal” computer-generated beats, oriental/tribal percussion and high-tech electronics without much melody. The 44-minute/six-track release offers a myriad of clean, groovy, pulse and minimal-oriented sonic exercises with an edge, together evoking a futuristic mood and feel. Contrary to that, a mellow- introspective sphere is painted by “Metasystems Transition” and the ethereal/melancholic “Passing through the Macroscope”. All in all it’s an interesting blend of active ambient and reflective soundscapes.



Vir Unis and The Elf Machine - Tokyo Highway (flac  235mb)

01 Static Reflections 7:51
02 Memetic Transfer 6:19
03 Prebiotic Complexity 8:26
04 Metasystems Transition 9:11
05 Dissipative Structures 9:21
06 Passing Through The Macroscope 2:52

Vir Unis and The Elf Machine - Tokyo Highway (ogg   115mb)

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The fractal groove creation, sophisticate percussive elements and progressive-atmospheric ambient sound design presented on “Stand still like the Hummingbird” all deliver a new chapter of imaginative, non-melodic sound paintings by John Strate-Hootman. The minimalist music extends further on earlier sonic excursions such as “Mercury and Plastic” and integrates new sample and looping technologies. The continuous, electro-acoustic outcome features futuristic, tribal and energizing passages that strengthen and support each other while feeding the power-current flowing gently underneath. There are deep and ultraviolet colored aural landscapes to explore while geometrical images of rhythms and electro-acoustical hybrid grooves forge new paths. To my ears, the emotive/introspective element is best expressed on “The Moon and Tomorrow”, as the abstract high-tech vibe roams far more profound on all other pieces. All electrifying grooviness culminates on the 24-minute title track, where a slight tribal touch and liquidness shines through its minimalist veins occasionally. Overall, the aural futurism “Stand still like the Hummingbird” is best appreciated with headphones to sense it deeper, captivating and mesmerizing effects.



Vir Unis - Stand Still Like The Hummingbird   (flac  298mb)

01 Sons Of Thunder 5:23
02 A Calling Through The Wind 8:14
03 A Deepening Shift 5:09
04 Since Feeling Is First 5:01
05 The Moon And Tomorrow 4:15
06 In The Shade Sat Quietly 3:48
07 Stand Still Like The Hummingbird 24:02

Vir Unis - Stand Still Like the Hummingbird   (ogg   143mb)

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Hello, a lot of fin the siecle chic and beyond, courtesy of Dimitri From Paris shaking his ass around the Playboy mansion in the upload today. Furthermore there was this greedy anon who thought he could ask for a re up of 6 posts i made on Twin Peaks, well most were re-upped within the twelve months, but hey as it happens there's one coming up, and BTW i only re up 1 post from a series per week.


13 correct requests for this week, 3 too early , whatever another batch of 41 re-ups (12.9 gig)

These days i'm making an effort to re-up, it will satisfy a smaller number of people which means its likely the update will  expire relatively quickly again as its interest that keeps it live. Nevertheless here's your chance ... asks for re-up in the comments section at the page where the expired link resides, or it will be discarded by me. ....requests are satisfied on a first come first go basis. ...updates will be posted here remember to request from the page where the link died! To keep re-ups interesting to my regular visitors i will only re-up files that are at least 12 months old (the older the better as far as i am concerned), and please check the previous update request if it's less then a year old i won't re-up either.

Looka here , requests fulfilled up to March 9th !... N'Joy

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5x Beats Back in Flac (Dimitri From Paris - A Night at the Playboy Mansion, Dimitri From Paris - After The Playboy Mansion 1, Dimitri From Paris - After The Playboy Mansion 2, Dimitri From Paris - Return to the Playboy Man 1, Partytime, Dimitri From Paris - Return to the Playboy Man 2, Sexytime)


3x Sundaze Back In Flac (O'Rang – Herd Of Instinct + Spoor EP, O'Rang - Fields and Waves, Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis)


3x Sundaze Back In Flac (Talk Talk - Laughing Stock, Jóhann Jóhannsson - Virðulegu Forsetar, Yokoto & Rothko - Distant sounds of ..)


3x Sundaze Back in Flac (Philip Glass - Glassworks, Philip Glass - Symphonies No. 2 & 3, Philip Glass - Orion)


4x Sundaze Back in Flac (Badalamenti - Comfort Of Strangers , Badalamenti and Booth - Booth And The Bad Angels , Julee Cruise - The Voice Of Love, Badalamenti & Lynch Archive part 3 )


3x Roots Back in Flac (Gary Clail's - Tackhead Tape Time, Gary Clail & On-U - Dreamstealers, Gary Clail - Keep The Faith)


1x Aetix Back In Flac (The Sound A New Dark Age)


3x Roots Back In Flac (Matumbi - Seven Seals, Dennis Bovell - Brain Damage , Dennis Bovell - Decibel Cuts & Dubs)


4x Sundaze Back  in Flac (Ryuichi Sakamoto - Elephantism, Ryuichi Sakamoto - Chasm, Ryuichi Sakamoto - Bricolages, Ryuichi Sakamoto - Out Of Noise)


3x Alphabet Soup H NOW in Flac (Steve Harley n Cockney Rebel - Best of, Hallo Venray - The More I Laugh, Hidden Cameras - The Smell Of Our Own)


3x Sundaze Back in Flac (John Foxx - Cathedral Oceans I, John Foxx - Cathedral Oceans II, John Foxx - Cathedral Oceans III)


3x Sundaze Back in Flac (Budd & Guthrie - Mysterious Skin OST, Budd & Guthrie - Moon And The Melodies, Budd & Guthrie - Night Falls/Day Breaks)


3x Sundaze Back in Flac (Robin Guthrie - Imperial, Robin Guthrie - Continental + Everlasting EP, Robin Guthrie - Carousel + 2 EP's)

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Hello, a tale of the bungling of Armageddon, featuring an angel, a demon, an 11-year-old Antichrist, and a doom-saying witch, crazy stuff right in sync with the crazy Trump age, still a few months before it premieres end of May at Amazon, so why not get prepared and listen to what BBC radio 4 made of this....


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It is the coming of the End Times: the Apocalypse is near, and Final Judgement will soon descend upon the human species. This comes as a bit of bad news to the angel Aziraphale (who was the guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden) and the demon Crowley (who, when he was originally named Crawly, was the serpent who tempted Eve to eat the apple), respectively the representatives of Heaven and Hell on Earth, as they have become used to living their cosy, comfortable lives and have, in a perverse way, taken a liking to humanity. As such, since they are good friends (despite ostensibly representing the polar opposites of Good and Evil), they decide to work together and keep an eye on the Antichrist, destined to be the son of a prominent American diplomat stationed in Britain, and thus ensure he grows up in a way that means he can never decide between Good and Evil, thereby postponing the end of the world.

In fact, Warlock, the child whom everyone thinks is the Anti-Christ, is a normal eleven-year-old boy. Due to the mishandling of several infants in the hospital, the real Anti-Christ is Adam Young, a charismatic and slightly otherworldly eleven-year-old living in Lower Tadfield, Oxfordshire, an idyllic town in Britain. Despite being the harbinger of the Apocalypse, he has lived a perfectly normal life as the son of typical English parents, and as a result has no idea of his true powers. He has three close friends - Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian - who collectively form a gang that is simply referred to as "Them" by the adults.

As the end of the world nears, Adam blissfully and naively uses his powers, changing the world to fit things he reads in a conspiracy theory magazine, such as raising the lost continent of Atlantis and causing Little Green Men to land on earth and deliver a message of goodwill and peace. In the meantime, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse assemble: War (a female war correspondent), Death (a biker), Famine (a dietician and fast-food tycoon), and Pollution (a young man--Pestilence having retired after the discovery of penicillin). The incredibly accurate (yet so highly specific as to be useless) prophecies of Agnes Nutter, 17th-century prophetess, are rapidly coming to pass.

Agnes Nutter was a witch in the 17th century and the only truly accurate prophet to have ever lived. She wrote a book called The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, a collection of prophecies that did not sell very well because they were unspectacular, cryptic and all true. She, in fact, decided to publish it only so she could receive a free author's copy. This copy is passed down to her descendants, and is currently owned by her multi-great granddaughter Anathema Device. Agnes was burned at the stake by a mob; however, because she had foreseen her fiery end and had packed 80 pounds of gunpowder and 40 pounds of roofing nails into her petticoats, everyone who participated in the burning was killed instantly.

As the world descends into chaos, Adam attempts to split up the world between his gang. After realizing that by embracing absolute power, he will not be able to continue to grow up as a child in Lower Tadfield, Adam decides to stop the apocalypse.

Anathema, Newton Pulsifer (one of the two last members of the Witchfinder Army), Adam and his gang, Aziraphale and Crowley gather at a military base near Lower Tadfield to stop the Horsemen causing a nuclear war and ending the world. Adam's friends capture War, Pollution, and Famine. Just as Adam's father, the devil, seems to come and force the end of the world, Adam twists everything so his human father shows up instead, and everything is restored.

Gaiman and Pratchett had known each other since 1985. It was their own idea, not that of their publisher, to collaborate on a novel. According to Gaiman, he originally began the book as a parody of Richmal Crompton's William books, named William the Antichrist, but it gradually outgrew the original idea.
Pratchett and Gaiman planned the novel together over lengthy phone conversations, and shared their writing by mailing floppy disks (remember floppy disks?) back and forth.

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According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, the world will end on a Saturday. A Saturday quite soon,...

Events have been set in motion to bring about the End of Days. The armies of Good and Evil are gathering and making their way towards the sleepy English village of Lower Tadfield. The Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pollution and Death - have been summoned from the corners of the earth and are assembling.

Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell and his assistant Newton Pulsifier are also en route to Tadfield to investigate some unusual phenomena in the area, while Anathema Device, descendent of prophetess and witch Agnes Nutter, tries to decipher her ancestor's cryptic predictions about exactly where the impending Apocalypse will take place.

Atlantis is rising, fish are falling from the sky; everything seems to be going to the Divine Plan. Everything that is but for the unlikely duo of an angel and a demon who are not all that keen on the prospect of the forthcoming Rapture. Aziraphale (once an angel in the Garden of Eden, but now running an antiquarian bookshop in London), and Crowley (formerly Eden's snake, now driving around London in shades and a vintage Bentley) have been living on Earth for several millennia and have become rather fond of the place. But if they are to stop Armageddon taking place they've got to find and kill the one who will the one bring about the apocalypse: the Antichrist himself.

There's just one small problem: someone seems to have mislaid him...


Dirk Maggs, best known for his adaptation of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, adapted and directed the radio dramatization along with producer Heather Larmour and, of course, Neil Gaiman himself.

Josie Lawrence as Agnes Nutter and Paterson Joseph as Famine, as well as Game of Thrones actor Clive Russell, Julia Deakin, Louise Brealey, Simon Jones, Arsher Ali, Phil Davis, and Mark Benton. The two lead roles of Aziraphale and Crowley will be voiced by Mark Heap (Spaced) and Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy), respectively. And, on top of all that, we can expect to hear cameo appearances from both Pratchett and Gaiman themselves.


Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 3 ( 28min mp3     33mb).


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previously

Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 1 ( 28min mp3     33mb).
Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 2 ( 28min mp3     33mb).


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Hello, leftbrainers like PM May are hopeless negotiators, too detailistic, incapable to see the whole or danger and , when they fail they tend to brake down like MRS May loosing not just the vote but her voice too. That's new elections or a new referendum latter would be preferable to most MP's who wants to canvass the public for their vote after this Brexit debacle, or who knows the EU might be fed up and say this has gone on long enough No Deal it is then.




Today's artists are an English pop rock band formed in Bath in 1981 by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith. Founded after the dissolution of their first band, the mod-influenced Graduate, they were initially associated with the new wave synthesiser bands of the early 1980s but later branched out into mainstream rock and pop, which led to international chart success. They were part of the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US.  ......N-Joy

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Orzabal and Smith met as teenagers in Bath, Somerset, England. The duo became session musicians for the band Neon, where they first met future Tears For Fears drummer Manny Elias. Neon also featured Pete Byrne and Rob Fisher who went on to become Naked Eyes. Smith and Orzabal's professional debut came with the band Graduate, a mod revival/new wave act. In 1980, Graduate released an album, Acting My Age, and a single "Elvis Should Play Ska" (referring to Elvis Costello, not Presley). The single just missed the top 100 in the UK, though it performed well in Spain and in Switzerland.

By 1981, Orzabal and Smith had become more influenced by artists such as Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno. They departed from Graduate and formed a band called History of Headaches, which they soon changed to Tears for Fears. The band's name was inspired by primal therapy, developed by the American psychologist Arthur Janov, which gained tremendous publicity after John Lennon became Janov's patient in 1970. In a 2004 interview with VH1 UK, Orzabal and Smith said that when they finally met Janov in the mid-1980s, they were disillusioned to find that he had become quite "Hollywood" and wanted the band to write a musical for him.

As Tears for Fears, Orzabal and Smith intended to form the nucleus of the group and bring in surrounding musicians to help them complete the picture. Around this time they met local musician Ian Stanley who offered them free use of his home 8-track studio. Stanley began working with the duo as their keyboard player and, after recording two demos, Tears for Fears were signed to Phonogram Records, UK in 1981 by A&R manager Dave Bates. Their first single, "Suffer the Children" (produced by David Lord), was released on that label in November 1981, followed by the first edition of "Pale Shelter" (produced by Mike Howlett) in March 1982, though neither of these releases were successful.

The band achieved their first taste of success with their third single, "Mad World", which reached no. 3 in the UK in November 1982. Their first album, The Hurting, was released in March 1983. For this album (and the next), keyboardist and composer Ian Stanley and drummer Manny Elias were considered full band members, though Smith and Orzabal were still essentially the frontmen and public face[s] of the band. The album, produced by Chris Hughes and Ross Cullum, showcased guitar and synthesiser-based songs with lyrics reflecting Orzabal's bitter childhood and his interest in primal therapy. The album was a big success and had a lengthy chart run (65 weeks) in the UK, where it reached no. 1 and platinum status. It also reached the top 20 in several other countries and yielded the international hit singles "Mad World" (top 5 hit in the Philippines and South Africa), "Change" (top 40 hit in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Poland and South Africa. It also became their first single to reach the US Billboard Hot 100), and a re-recorded version of "Pale Shelter" (top 10 hit in the Philippines). All three of these singles reached the Top 5 in the UK.

Towards the end of 1983, the band released a new, slightly more experimental single, "The Way You Are", intended as a stopgap while they worked on their second album. The single was a top 30 hit in the UK, but did not come close to matching the success of their three previous hits, despite a national concert tour in December of that year (captured on the In My Mind's Eye live video release). The single, which heavily featured sampling and programmed rhythms, was a departure from Tears for Fears' previous musical approach. In the liner notes to their 1996 B-sides compilation album Saturnine Martial & Lunatic they wrote that "this was the point we realised we had to change direction", although the somewhat experimental style of the single continued to be reflected in their forthcoming B-sides.

In early 1984, they began working with a new producer, Jeremy Green, on their new single "Mothers Talk". However, the band were ultimately unhappy with the results and so producer Chris Hughes was brought back into the fold and the "Mothers Talk" single re-produced for release in August 1984. A departure from their earlier works, the single became a top 20 hit in the UK, but it was the follow-up single "Shout" (released in the UK in November 1984) that was the real beginning of the band's international fame.

"Shout", a top 5 UK hit, paved the way for their second album, Songs from the Big Chair (released in February 1985), which entered the UK album chart at no. 2 and remained in the upper reaches of the chart for the next 12 months. They did away with the predominantly synthpop feel of the first album, instead expanding into a more sophisticated sound that would become the band's stylistic hallmark. Anchored around the creative hub of Orzabal, Stanley, and producer Hughes, the new Tears for Fears sound helped to propel Songs from the Big Chair into becoming one of the year's biggest sellers worldwide, eventually being certified triple-platinum in the UK and quintuple-platinum in the US (where it remained the no. 1 album for five weeks in the summer of 1985). The album's title was inspired by the book and television miniseries Sybil, the chronicle of a woman with multiple personality disorder who sought refuge in her analyst's "big chair", Orzabal and Smith stating that they felt each of the album's songs had a distinctive personality of its own. The band had also recorded a track titled "The Big Chair", which was released as the B-side to "Shout" but was not included on the album.

The album's success came in conjunction with the array of hit singles it yielded: "Mothers Talk" (re-recorded yet again for its US release in 1986), "Shout" (no. 4 UK, no. 1 in the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and a huge hit in other territories, in fact one of the biggest hit songs of the 1980s), "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (their highest-charting UK and Irish hit at no. 2 and another no. 1 in the US and in Canada), "Head over Heels" (UK no. 12, US no. 3, Ireland no. 5, Canada no. 8), and "I Believe (A Soulful Re-Recording)" (UK no. 23 and Ireland no. 10). Some territories even saw the release of limited edition 10" singles for these hits, and a variety of double packs and picture discs in addition to the regular 7" and 12" formats.

Following the album's release, the band went on a world tour that lasted most of the year, playing notably at the Montreux Golden Rose Rock and Pop Festival in May 1985. In September 1985, the band performed "Shout" at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards at the Radio City Music Hall in New York. Also during the tour, Orzabal and Smith discovered an American female singer/pianist, Oleta Adams, who was performing in a Kansas City hotel bar, and whom they invited to collaborate on their next album. Towards the end of the year, the band released a video collection/documentary entitled Scenes from the Big Chair. In February 1986, having completed the lengthy and exhausting Big Chair world tour, Tears for Fears were honoured at the 1986 Brit Awards in London where they won the Best British Single award for "Everybody Wants To Rule The World". The band was also nominated for Best British Group and Best British Album, and Chris Hughes was nominated for Best Producer. The band performed the song at the ceremony, which became the final public performance of drummer Manny Elias who left the group shortly afterwards.

On 13 July 1985, Tears for Fears were scheduled to perform at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia for the Live Aid charity event. However, on the morning of the historic event, it was announced that the band (who had actually been billed to appear at the event before they had even agreed to do so) had pulled out of the show. They were replaced by blues rock group George Thorogood and the Destroyers, which has a strong Philadelphia-area following. The official reason given for their non-appearance was that two of their backing musicians, guitarist Andrew Saunders and saxophonist Will Gregory, had quit due to the expiration of their contract; they were replaced by Alan Griffiths on guitar and Josephine Wells on saxophone for the remaining bulk of the 1985 world tour. In place of appearing, the band pledged to donate proceeds from their concerts played in Tokyo, Sydney, London and New York.

It was 1989 before the group released their third album, The Seeds of Love (on which Ian Stanley appeared for the last time as a member of Tears for Fears), at a reported production cost of over a million pounds. The album was written largely by Orzabal along with keyboardist Nicky Holland, who had toured with the band on their "Big Chair" world tour in 1985. Moving from various studios and using various sets of producers over many months, the band ultimately decided to scrap the recordings and take the reins themselves with assistance from engineer Dave Bascombe. Much of the material was recorded in jam sessions and later edited down. The length of the production impacted on the band's management company, who had financially over-extended themselves in other business matters and were hoping for an earlier release date to pay off their debts.

The album retained the band's epic sound while showing increasing influences ranging from jazz and blues to the Beatles, the latter being evident on the hit single "Sowing the Seeds of Love" (the first record ever played on the Irish-based longwave radio station Atlantic 252). The second single from the album was "Woman in Chains" (a top 40 hit in the UK, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and the US), on which Phil Collins played drums and Oleta Adams—whom Orzabal would later guide to a successful solo career—shared vocals.
The album was a worldwide success, entering the UK Albums Chart at no. 1, making the top 10 in the US and in numerous other countries, eventually going on to sell millions of copies internationally. The band set out on an extensive "Seeds of Love" world tour sponsored by Philips to start recovering the debt incurred. The band's show in Santa Barbara, California, in May 1990 would be captured on the Going to California live video as the singles "Advice for the Young at Heart" and "Famous Last Words" delivered modest chart success. A 64-page companion book, simply titled Tears for Fears – The Seeds of Love, was released by Virgin Books in 1990 and offered extensive insight from Orzabal, Holland and Adams into the songwriting and production process for the album, as well as the musical scores for each track and rare promotional photographs from the era.
Break-up and solo careers (1991–1992)

After The Seeds of Love, Orzabal and Smith had an acrimonious falling out and parted company in 1991. The split was blamed on Orzabal's intricate but frustrating approach to production and Smith's desire to slow down the pace of their work (prior to the release of The Seeds of Love, Smith's marriage had also broken down). Another factor in the break-up was the band's manager, Paul King, who declared bankruptcy in 1990 and was later convicted of fraud. The duo had signed to King's Outlaw Management Agency in 1982 and remained clients throughout the remainder of the decade (the agency also operated the band's fan club, the Tears For Fears World Service, between 1983 and 1986). By the late 1980s, the agency had run into serious debt and, after discrepancies were discovered in King's financial management, Orzabal became increasingly concerned that Smith was unwilling to drop King as their manager. Outlaw folded in 1990 with debts of almost £1 million as King declared bankruptcy. In 2004, following fraudulent activities with his other businesses, King was prosecuted for fraud and imprisoned for three and a half years, as well as being disqualified from being a company director again for ten years.

Following Smith's departure, Orzabal kept the band name alive by releasing the 1992 hit single "Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down)". The single was released to promote the band's greatest hits collection Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82–92), which featured every single to reach the Top 20, either in the UK or internationally, apart from the Sport Aid fundraiser. The album peaked at no. 2 in the UK, where it was certified double platinum, and also reached the Top 10 in France and Italy. Smith relocated to New York City, and in 1993 he released his first solo album, Soul on Board. The album was a commercial failure and Smith himself has said on numerous occasions that he despised it, alleging that he only made it to fulfill his recording contract. In 1995, he met local songwriter and producer Charlton Pettus. The two formed a self-described "organic" partnership, writing simple, melody-based songs and recording them at home on vintage analogue equipment. The result was released in 1997 under the name Mayfield and a short US tour followed.

In 1993, Orzabal (still under the name Tears for Fears) released the album Elemental together with longtime collaborator Alan Griffiths. Co-produced by Tim Palmer, it yielded the international hit "Break It Down Again" (top 20 in the UK, Canada, France, and Italy) and was supported with another successful world tour, including a college tour of the US where "Break It Down Again" reached no. 25. The album was a top 10 hit in the UK, France and Italy, and top 30 in several other countries. Although it charted considerably lower in the US than the previous two studio albums (no. 45), it still earned a Gold disc there for sales of over half a million copies. The singles "Cold", "Elemental" and "Goodnight Song" met with minor chart success in certain territories.

Orzabal, still working with Griffiths and Palmer, released another Tears for Fears album, Raoul and the Kings of Spain, in 1995. This was a more contemplative work that delved into his own Spanish heritage and showcased a new Latin musical influence (Raoul was originally the name Orzabal's parents wanted to give him, and is also the name of his own first son). Orzabal stated that it was not a concept album but that there was a theme, namely that of familial relationships. The album also included a reunion with Oleta Adams who duetted with Orzabal on the track "Me and My Big Ideas". The album was not a commercial success by Tears for Fears standards, though minor chart success came via the single release of the title track (top 40 in the UK) and (to a lesser extent) the single "God's Mistake".  A worldwide tour followed, including dates in Latin America, though Orzabal declined to tour his native UK this time except for a single show in London.

In 1996 a B-sides collection, Saturnine Martial & Lunatic, was released on Mercury, which included B-sides and some rare tracks from the successful 1982–93 period. The liner notes, written by Orzabal and Chris Hughes, gave fans an insight into the songwriting process as well as a rare glimpse of self-deprecating humour regarding the tracks they would rather forget.
Remasters and other projects. In 1999, Mercury Records released remastered editions of Tears for Fears' first three albums, including B-sides, remixes, and extended versions. Supervised by producer Chris Hughes, the remasters also included new liner notes for each album providing details and new insights into the music.

After undertaking production work and some songwriting for the Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini on her 1999 album Love in the Time of Science, Orzabal re-teamed with Alan Griffiths and released the album Tomcats Screaming Outside, released on Eagle Records as a solo project under his own name. Whereas Tears for Fears' work had become guitar-based, Tomcats Screaming Outside showcased a predominantly electronic style.


In 2000, routine paperwork obligations led the duo to re-establish contact with each other after Orzabal signed a business document on Smith's behalf. Smith flew back to England (where Orzabal still lived) and they had dinner and decided to work on a new album together. The songwriting sessions included Charlton Pettus (Smith's collaborator since the mid-1990s), and fourteen songs were written and recorded in less than six months. The ensuing album, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, was scheduled for release on Arista Records in late 2003, but a change in management at Arista prompted the band to opt out of their contract and switch to the New Door label (a new offshoot of Universal Music), and delayed the release until September 2004. Two US tours followed, and the 2004 tour included an unrehearsed guest appearance by Oleta Adams at the Kansas City show for a performance of "Woman in Chains". The song "Who Killed Tangerine?" was used in the movie Fever Pitch.

Everybody Loves a Happy Ending was released in the UK and Europe in March 2005 on Gut Records, shortly after the comeback single "Closest Thing to Heaven" became the first Tears for Fears UK Top 40 hit in a decade. The promo video for the single was a colourful fantasy that featured Hollywood actress Brittany Murphy riding in a hot air balloon. The European releases of the album contained all fourteen tracks recorded during the ELAHE sessions (the US version only contained twelve), and a brief tour of larger UK venues followed in April. In 2005, the band began discussions with Universal Music for the release of a new comprehensive anthology of their work to date, including a new track entitled "Floating Down the River". However, the subsequent release (at least in the US) was a compilation issued as part of Hip-O Records' generic "Gold" series, a Universal subsidiary that specialises in budget-priced back catalogue compilations.

A live performance at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris, recorded in June 2005, was released on CD and DVD in France and Benelux. Entitled Secret World – Live in Paris, it was released on the XIII Bis label in early 2006 and became a best-seller, with over 70,000 physical copies sold in addition to downloads. The CD contained the aforementioned new studio song, "Floating Down the River", and a remastered Curt Smith/Mayfield track, "What Are We Fighting For?". The relationship with XIII Bis proved so successful that Smith chose the comparatively small French label to release his 2007 solo album, Halfway, Pleased.

In May 2013, Smith confirmed that he was writing and recording new Tears for Fears material with Orzabal and Charlton Pettus. Several songs were worked on in the UK at Orzabal's home studio, Neptune's Kitchen, in April 2013, and continued in Los Angeles in July 2013. According to Orzabal, they have been producing more dark, dramatic pieces of music. "There's one track that's a combination of Portishead and Queen. It's just crazy," Orzabal stated. In August 2013, Tears For Fears released their first newly recorded material in nearly a decade, with a cover of Arcade Fire's "Ready to Start" made available on SoundCloud. In 2014, the track was included on a limited edition 3-track 10" vinyl EP from the band called Ready Boy & Girls?, released exclusively for Record Store Day, which also featured covers of Hot Chip's "Boy From School" and Animal Collective's "My Girls". All three songs were recorded as "kick-start" projects as the band commenced work on their seventh studio album. In an interview on BBC Radio Devon in October 2014, Orzabal stated that the band had now signed to Warner Music Group and that around five or six songs had so far been completed for the new album.[43][44]

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the band's debut album The Hurting, Universal Music reissued it in October 2013 in two Deluxe Editions (one a 2-disc set and the other a 4-disc set with a DVD of the 1983 In My Mind's Eye concert). Deluxe Editions of the band's second album, Songs From The Big Chair, were released on 10 November 2014 including a 6-disc set that features various rarities and two DVDs (one audio, one video). On 12 November 2014, Tears for Fears performed "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! TV programme. In mid 2015, the band began a series of live dates in the US and Canada.

In July 2016, the band played their first live dates in the UK in over ten years: the Newmarket Nights festival at Newmarket Racecourse on 29 July, and a closing night headlining appearance at Camp Bestival at Lulworth Castle in Dorset on 31 July. The gigs marked the band's first UK festival appearances since Knebworth in 1990. The band again toured the US and Canada in September and October 2016. In 2017, the band toured North America with co-headliners Hall & Oates, and also played in Israel, at the British Summer Time Festival in London's Hyde Park on 8 July, and at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil on 22 September. In a July 2017 interview, Orzabal stated that the band had collaborated with songwriter/producer Sacha Skarbek on their new album tentatively entitled The Tipping Point, and divulged several song titles from it including "My Demons", "I Love You But I'm Lost", "End of Night" and "Up Above the World". In an interview with SiriusXM Canada the same month, Orzabal divulged that although the band had signed with Warner Music to release their new album (which had been scheduled for October 2017), Universal Music had then approached Warner Music about buying the rights to the album so that they could release it (Universal being the rights holders of the vast majority of the band's back catalogue).

On 26 October 2017, the band performed a 65-minute live set at the BBC Radio Theatre in London for the Radio 2 In Concert series, which was broadcast on both radio and television (via the BBC Red Button service). The following night, the band played their first full-length UK concert since 2005, at London's Royal Albert Hall. Prior to this, on 12 October, "I Love You But I'm Lost" was released as a single from a new 16-track Tears For Fears compilation album entitled Rule The World - The Greatest Hits. The compilation was released by Universal Music on 10 November 2017, and includes fourteen Top 40 hits from all six previous Tears For Fears albums along with two new tracks. In October 2017, the band announced an 11-date UK arena tour for April–May 2018, which was to feature Alison Moyet as the support act. However, the tour was postponed to early 2019 due to unspecified health reasons. The band are also scheduled to perform at further UK festivals in Summer 2019, starting with the Hampton Court Palace Festival on 18 and 19 June, and the Nocturne Live Concert Series at Blenheim Palace on 22 June.



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The Hurting would have been a daring debut for a pop-oriented band in any era, but it was an unexpected success in England in 1983, mostly by virtue of its makers' ability to package an unpleasant subject -- the psychologically wretched family histories of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith -- in an attractive and sellable musical format. Not that there weren't a few predecessors, most obviously John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album -- which was also, not coincidentally, inspired by the work of primal scream pioneer Arthur Janov. (But Lennon had the advantage of being an ex-Beatle when that meant the equivalent to having a box next to God's in the great arena of life, where Tears for Fears were just starting out.) Decades later, "Pale Shelter,""Ideas as Opiates,""Memories Fade,""Suffer the Children,""Watch Me Bleed,""Change," and "Start of the Breakdown" are powerful pieces of music, beautifully executed in an almost minimalist style. "Memories Fade" offers emotional resonances reminiscent of "Working Class Hero," while "Pale Shelter" functions on a wholly different level, an exquisite sonic painting sweeping the listener up in layers of pulsing synthesizers, acoustic guitar arpeggios, and sheets of electronic sound (and anticipating the sonic texture, if not the precise sound of their international breakthrough pop hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"). The work is sometimes uncomfortably personal, but musically compelling enough to bring it back across the decades.



Tears For Fears - The Hurting ( 434mb)

01 The Hurting 4:19
02 Mad World 3:35
03 Pale Shelter 4:34
04 Ideas As Opiates 3:45
05 Memories Fade 5:06
06 Suffer The Children 3:52
07 Watch Me Bleed 4:17
08 Change 4:14
09 The Prisoner 2:55
10 Start Of The Breakdown 5:00
Bonus
11 Pale Shelter (Long Version) 7:09
12 The Way You Are (Extended) 7:43
13 Mad World (World Remix) 3:42
14 Change (Extended Version) 6:00

Tears For Fears - The Hurting(ogg  149mb)

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Tears For Fears - B-Sides And Remixes ( flac  391mb)

01 Suffer The Children (7" Version) 3:45
02 Pale Shelter (You Don't Give Me Love) 4:04
03 The Prisoner 2:45
04 Ideas As Opiates (Alternate Version) 3:57
05 Change (New Version) 4:40
06 Suffer The Children (Remix) 4:21
07 Pale Shelter (You Don't Give Me Love) (Extended Version) 7:07
08 Mad World (World Remix) 3:43
09 Change (Extended Version) 6:01
10 Pale Shelter (Extended Version) 7:09
11 Suffer The Children (Instrumental) 4:27
12 Change (7" Edit) 3:57
13 Wino 2:26
14 The Conflict 4:04
15 Broken Revisited 5:17
16 Suffer The Children (Demo - Promo CD Version) 3:59

Tears For Fears - The Hurting B-Sides And Remixes (ogg  140mb)

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If The Hurting was mental anguish, Songs from the Big Chair marks the progression towards emotional healing, a particularly bold sort of catharsis culled from Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith's shared attraction to primal scream therapy. The album also heralded a dramatic maturation in the band's music, away from the synth-pop brand with which it was (unjustly) seared following the debut, and towards a complex, enveloping pop sophistication. The songwriting of Orzabal, Smith, and keyboardist Ian Stanley took a huge leap forward, drawing on reserves of palpable emotion and lovely, protracted melodies that draw just as much on soul and R&B music as they do on immediate pop hooks. The album could almost be called pseudo-conceptual, as each song holds its place and each is integral to the overall tapestry, a single-minded resolve that is easy to overlook when an album is as commercially successful as Songs from the Big Chair. And commercially successful it was, containing no less than three huge commercial radio hits, including the dramatic and insistent march, "Shout" and the shimmering, cascading "Head Over Heels," which, tellingly, is actually part of a song suite on the album. Orzabal and Smith's penchant for theorizing with steely-eyed austerity was mistaken for harsh bombasticism in some quarters, but separated from its era, the album only seems earnestly passionate and immediate, and each song has the same driven intent and the same glistening remoteness. It is not only a commercial triumph, it is an artistic tour de force. And in the loping, percolating "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," Tears for Fears perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the mid-'80s while impossibly managing to also create a dreamy, timeless pop classic. Songs from the Big Chair is one of the finest statements of the decade.



Tears For Fears - Songs From The Big Chair ( 518mb)

01 Shout 6:34
02 The Working Hour 6:32
03 Everybody Wants To Rule The World 4:12
04 Mothers Talk 5:07
05 I Believe 4:55
06 Broken 2:38
07 Head Over Heels / Broken (Live) 5:02
08 Listen 6:54
Bonus
09 The Big Chair 3:22
10 Empire Building 2:53
11 The Marauders 4:16
12 Broken Revisited 5:16
13 The Conflict 4:06
14 Mothers Talk (U.S. Remix) 4:14
15 Shout (U.S. Remix) 8:03

Tears For Fears - Songs From The Big Chair (ogg  177mb)

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Along with Songs from the Big Chair, The Seeds of Love was part of a one-two artistic punch in the late '80s that situated Tears for Fears as one of the decade's more ambitious pop groups. But at the time, Tears was more a platform for Roland Orzabal than a true band -- Curt Smith is present only on the smash "Sowing the Seeds of Love" (his only co-writing credit), while Ian Stanley was replaced by Nicky Holland as a keyboardist and Orzabal's songwriting partner. Like their other albums, The Seeds of Love continues the concept of moving from hurting to healing to beginning anew (the hit "Sowing the Seeds of Love") to growing apart. The songs feature expansive melodies instead of blatant hooks, and the sound is more grounded in soul and gospel on songs like "Woman in Chains," the updated Philly-soul strain of "Advice for the Young at Heart" and "Badman's Song." Orazabal's passionate vocals are well matched by Oleta Adams' fervent contributions. The group even dabbles in jazz on "Standing on the Corner of the Third World," the fabulous "Swords and Knives," and the slow-burning "Year of the Knife." As for the title track, it manages to be insanely intricate as well as catchy. Full of arcane references, lovely turns of phrase, and perfectly matched suite-like parts, it updates the orchestral grandiosity -- though not the actual sound -- of the Beatles' psychedelic period. It's completely different from the polished, atmospheric soul that surrounds it, but paradoxically, it's also the album's cornerstone. "Sowing the Seeds of Love" is the apotheosis of Orzabal and Smith's evolution together, and foreshadowed their impending split: the two parted on bad terms during the album, ensuring yet another change in the band's direction thereafter.



Tears For Fears - The Seeds Of Love ( 449mb)

01 Woman In Chains 6:30
02 Badman's Song 8:32
03 Sowing The Seeds Of Love 6:16
04 Advice For The Young At Heart 4:52
05 Standing On The Corner Of The Third World 5:30
06 Swords And Knives 6:14
07 Year Of The Knife 7:06
08 Famous Last Words 4:23
Bonus
09 Tears Roll Down 3:17
10 Always In The Past 4:38
11 Music For Tables 3:33
12 Johnny Panic And The Bible Of Dreams 4:17

Tears For Fears - The Seeds Of Love (ogg 157mb)

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Hello, the final 8 Championsleague teams were established tonight, Messi n Co had no trouble dispatching Lyon 5-1, the dinosaurs tonight were Bayern and Liverpool both 5 times winners of the Cup, the giants that stood firm for most of the time they met but then Sane scored and from that moment on Liverpool started believing, even the forced own goal by Matip didn't change that, he kept Lewandowski from scoring and completely out of the game. It fell to Virgiel Van Dijk to break the German back with a great header, building on that wonderful assist he gave Mane to score the first goal. By then it was clear Bayern were made impotent and Liverpool's third was just a question of time, it came via that wonderfoot of Salah, all Mane needed to do is give it the final nod. That's 4 English teams in the quarterfinals, together with the Portugese, Dutch, Spanish and Italian Champions, money rules in current football.




Today's artist was one of Latin music's most respected vocalists. A ten-time Grammy nominee, who sang only in her native Spanish language, received a Smithsonian Lifetime Achievement award, a National Medal of the Arts, and honorary doctorates from Yale University and the University of Miami. A street in Miami was even renamed in her honor, and her trademark orange, red, and white polka dot dress and shoes have been placed in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute of Technology. The Hollywood Wax Museum includes a statue of the Cuba-born songstress. According to the European Jazz Network, she "commands her realm with a down-to-earth dignity unmistakably vibrant in her wide smile and striking pose.".....N'Joy

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Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso was born on October 21, 1925 in the diverse, working-class neighborhood of Santos Suárez in Havana, Cuba, the second of four children. Her father, Simón Cruz, was a railroad stoker and her mother, Catalina Alfonso was a homemaker who took care of an extended family. Celia was one of the eldest among fourteen children- brothers, sisters, and many cousins- she often had to put the younger ones to bed by singing them to sleep. While growing up in Cuba's diverse 1930s musical climate, Cruz listened to many musicians who influenced her adult career, including Fernando Collazo, Abelardo Barroso, Pablo Quevedo and Arsenio Rodríguez. Despite her father's opposition and the fact that she was Catholic, as a child Cruz learned Santería songs from her neighbor who practiced Santería.

As a teenager, her aunt took her and her cousin to cabarets to sing, but her father encouraged her to attend school in the hope she would become a teacher. After high school she attended the Normal School for Teachers in Havana with the intent of becoming a literature teacher. At the time being a singer was not viewed as an entirely respectable career. However, one of her teachers told her that as an entertainer she could earn in one day what most Cuban teachers earned in a month. Cruz's big break came in 1950 when Myrta Silva, the singer with Cuba's Sonora Matancera, returned to her native Puerto Rico. Since they were in need of a new singer, the band decided to give the young Celia Cruz a chance. She auditioned in June, and at the end of July she was asked to join as lead singer.[10] She won the support of Sonora's band leader, Rogelio Martínez, and went on to record hits such as "Yembe Laroco" and "Caramelo". Soon her name was bigger than the band's. During her 15 years with Sonora Matancera, she appeared in cameos in some Mexican films such as Rincón criollo (1950), Una gallega en La Habana (1955) and Amorcito corazón (1961), toured all over Latin America, and became a regular at Havana's famous Tropicana nightspot.

After Fidel Castro assumed control of Cuba in 1959, when the Sonora Matancera left Cuba to perform in Mexico in June 1960, they did not return. Cruz and her husband, Pedro Knight, were prohibited from returning to their homeland and became citizens of the United States. In 1965, Cruz left the group and in 1966, Cruz and Tito Puente began an association that would lead to eight albums for Tico Records. The albums were not as successful as expected. However, Puente and Cruz later joined the Vaya Records label. There, she joined accomplished pianist Larry Harlow and was soon headlining a concert at New York's Carnegie Hall. Cruz's 1974 album with Johnny Pacheco, Celia y Johnny, was very successful, and Cruz soon found herself in a group named the Fania All-Stars, which was an ensemble of salsa musicians from every orchestra signed by the Fania label (owner of Vaya Records).

In 1976, she participated in a documentary film Salsa about the Latin culture, along with figures like Dolores del Río and Willie Colón. She also made three albums with Willie Colon (1977, 1981, 1987). With a voice described as operatic, Cruz moved through high and low pitches with an ease that belied her age, and her style improvising rhymed lyrics added a distinctive flavor to salsa. Her flamboyant costume, which included various colored wigs, tight sequined dresses, and very high heels, became so famous that one of them was acquired by the Smithsonian institution. During the 1980s, Cruz began to garner the international recognition that was her due, she made many tours in Latin America and Europe, doing multiple concerts and television shows wherever she went, and singing both with younger stars and stars of her own era. She began a crossover of sorts, when she participated in the 1988 feature film Salsa alongside Robby Draco Rosa.

In 1990, Cruz won a Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance – Ray Barretto & Celia Cruz – Ritmo en el Corazón. She later recorded an anniversary album with Sonora Matancera. In the same year, she was recipient of the Excellence Award at the 1990 Lo Nuestro Awards. In 1992, she starred with Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas in the film The Mambo Kings. Cruz's popularity reached its highest level after she appeared in the The Mambo Kings. Cruz also appeared in the film The Perez Family. She sang a duet version of "Loco de Amor," with David Byrne, in the Jonathan Demme movie Something Wild.In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded Cruz the National Medal of Arts. In the same year, she was inducted into Billboards Latin Music Hall of Fame along with fellow Cuban musician Cachao López. In 1999, Cruz was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.Cruz continued to record and perform until sidelined by a brain tumor in 2002. While recovering from surgery to remove the tumor, she managed to make it in to the studio in early 2003 to record Regalo de Alma. Her surgery was only partially successful and she died July 16, 2003. The passing of the "Queen of Salsa" left a huge gap in Latin music, but also a remarkable catalog to document her reign.

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The world's love affair with Celia Cruz is a story that has a middle but no beginning. Today, the world remembers Cruz as the Queen of Salsa, with her towering wigs, cackling refrain of ¡Azúcar! and permanent smile. Her best-loved hits concern happiness in the face of life's hardships: "Ay / no hay que llorar / que la vida es un carnaval / es más bello vivir cantando" (You don't have to cry / life is a carnaval / it's more beautiful to live singing). For so many, the hope and joy that Cruz embodied made her difficult ascension to fame a footnote to her success.



 Celia Cruz - Hall of Fame  Azucar, Vol. 1     (flac  219mb)

01 Tu Voz 3:21
02 Mala Mujer 3:54
03 Lágrimas Negras 3:10
04 Amor 3:05
05 El Pacifico 3:03
06 Total 3:01
07 Quedate Negra 3:06
08 Me Extraña 2:55
09 Canoero 3:15
10 Marina 2:47
11 Canto a la Caridad 3:32
12 Seis de la Mañana 4:52

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Celia Cruz - Hall of Fame  Reina del Tumbao, Vol. 2    (flac  202mb)

01 El Pescador 2:52
02 A Burujon Puñao 2:54
03 Bravo 2:55
04 Olga 3:20
05 Mas Fuerte Que Tu Amor 2:42
06 Humo 2:50
07 Te Solte la Rienda 3:27
08 Ojos Malos 2:44
09 La Adivinanza 2:54
10 Ay Cosita Linda 2:37
11 Ahora Es Cuando 3:39
12 Se Que Lloraras 4:26

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 Celia Cruz - Hall of Fame  La Guarachera de Oriente 3     (flac  202mb)

01 Yerberito Moderno 2:40
02 La Vecina 2:52
03 La Campeona 3:29
04 Irresistible 2:20
05 Alguien 2:18
06 Amor Sin Esperanza 2:40
07 Mi Lindo Bohio 2:36
08 Oyeme Mama 3:17
09 Comence a Adorarte 3:01
10 Amor de Pelicula 2:47
11 Rompe Bonche 2:33
12 A Dios Que Reparta Suerte 3:41

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With her powerful pipes, stunning showmanship, and superhuman sense of timing, Celia Cruz defined her chosen genre like few other performers in the history of popular music. Exitos Eternos  is a collection of tracks the "Queen of Salsa" recorded during the last decade of her life that, despite the vocalist's advanced age, clearly show Cruz's talents never wavered. Known for her uncompromising attitude and refusal to sing in English, Cruz valued aesthetic purity, but never became a museum piece. A driving pulse and rhythmic toasting that recall dancehall reggae propel her 2001 hit "La Negra Tiene Tumbao," and other tracks feature subtle synthesizer textures. Unlike lesser artists, however, Cruz is able to incorporate these disparate sonic colors seamlessly, making them sound as traditional as a conga drum or guiro. Of course, the unrelenting force behind each recording is Cruz's astounding voice, the sheer energy of which makes even these later recordings sound both classic and utterly contemporary. Celia Cruz is the Queen of Salsa, the contagious joy of her voice, the movement of those Latin rhythms, her signature shouts of "Azucar!" and her everlasting enthusiasm for life. Vive la reina l!



Celia Cruz - Exitos Eternos    (flac  459mb)

01 La Vida Es Un Carnaval 4:39
02 La Negra Tiene Tumbao 4:19
03 Que Le Den Candela 3:54
04 Sazon 4:51
05 Usted Abuso 4:18
06 La Guagua 5:40
07 Oye Como Va 4:22
08 La Voz De La Experiencia (Con La India) 5:26
09 Mi Vida Es Cantar 4:01
10 Cucala (Live) 5:08
11 Tu Voz (Con Vicente Fernandez) 3:23
12 Quimbara (Live) 6:04
13 Guantanamera (Live) 6:19
14 Por Si Acaso No Regreso 5:49

Celia Cruz - Exitos Eternos  (ogg  173mb)

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Hello,


Today's Artist could be best be described as funk? R&B? Soul? Rock? Singer-songwriter? Poetry? The answer is...all of the above. She hits it out the park with such deep grooves, catchy drums, tasty guitar breaks and sorrowful lyrics. Some of her non-PC words make it hard to drop songs into playlists for public consumption, but that doesn't mean they're not worthy. She has received significant critical acclaim throughout her career, and although she has never won a Grammy Award, she has been nominated ten times. She has been credited for helping to have "sparked the neo-soul movement."....N Joy

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 Although Meshell Ndegeocello scored a few hits early in her career, the bassist, singer, and songwriter later opted to concentrate on more challenging material by exploring the politics of race and sex, among other topics. From her 1993 Maverick label debut through her releases of the 2010s for Naïve, she built a discography of recordings that defied classification through progressive mixtures of jazz, R&B, hip-hop, and rock. Initially held in regard primarily for her bass playing and bold lyrics, her songwriting, which often examined dark interpersonal issues, was just as exceptional.

Michelle Lynn Johnson, born on August 29, 1968, spent the first few years of her life in Germany. Her father was both a military man and a jazz saxophonist. She relocated with her family to Virginia in the early '70s. As a youngster, Johnson developed an interest in music; during her teenage years, she began to play regularly in the clubs of Washington, D.C., but eventually settled down in New York City after a stint of studying music at Howard University. By this point, she was going by Me'Shell NdegéOcello -- her adopted last name Swahili for "free like a bird."
Ndegeocello honed her skills on the D.C. go-go circuit in the late 1980s with the bands Prophecy, Little Bennie and the Masters, and Rare Essence. She unsuccessfully tried out for Living Colour's bassist position, vacated in 1992 by Muzz Skillings. NdegéOcello struck out on her own and often performed solo with just a bass, drum machine, and keyboard. In the early '90s, she was one of the first artists signed to Madonna's Warner-affiliated Maverick label.

NdegéOcello's debut album, 1993's Plantation Lullabies, was produced with David Gamson, as well as with André Betts and Bob Power, and involved input from a wide range of musicians, including DJ Premier, Joshua Redman, Bill Summers, Wah-Wah Watson, and David Fiuczynski. An impressive first album, presenting a distinctly androgynous persona, spawned the hit "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" and received three Grammy nominations. A duet with John Mellencamp on a cover of Van Morrison's "Wild Night," released a year later, brought her more mainstream attention; it peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

Her biggest hit is a duet with John Mellencamp, a cover version of Van Morrison's "Wild Night", which reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts. Her only other Billboard Hot 100 hit besides "Wild Night" has been her self-penned "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)", which peaked at No. 73 in 1994. Also in 1994, Ndegeocello collaborated with Herbie Hancock on "Nocturnal Sunshine," a track for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool. The album, meant to raise awareness and funds in support of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the African American community, was heralded as "Album of the Year" by Time magazine.

She had a No. 1 Dance hit in 1996 with a Bill Withers cover song called "Who Is He (And What Is He to You)?" (briefly featured in the film Jerry Maguire) as well as Dance Top 20 hits with "Earth", "Leviticus: Faggot", "Stay" and the aforementioned "If That's Your Boyfriend.. Last Night)". Ndegeocello played bass on the song "I'd Rather be Your Lover" for Madonna on her album Bedtime Stories. Ndegeocello was also tapped, at the last minute, to perform a rap on the same song. This came after Madonna and producers decided to remove Tupac Shakur's rap (which he did while he and Madonna were dating in 1994), after he had criminal charges filed against him. Almost three years passed between the release of NdegéOcello's first and second albums, but during the wait, she collaborated with Chaka Khan on the track "Never Miss the Water," and she appeared on movie soundtracks (White Man's Burden, Money Talks) and on such multi-artist releases as Ain't Nuthin' But a She Thing and Lilith Fair, Vol. 3. Peace Beyond Passion finally saw release in 1996, peaked higher on the Billboard 200 (at number 63), and was also nominated for a Best R&B Album Grammy. Its cover of Bill Withers'"Who Is He (And What Is He to You?)" topped Billboard's club chart. Produced by Gamson, it featured a longer list of noted associates, including several heard on the debut, as well as Billy Preston, Bennie Maupin, David Torn, Wendy Melvoin, and Paul Riser.

Another three-year break between albums occurred, during which time she collaborated with rapper Queen Pen on the track "Girlfriend." Bitter, for which she was billed as Meshell Ndegéocello, was released in 1999. She took another three-year break and emerged with Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape -- as Meshell Ndegeocello -- in 2002. Comfort Woman followed in 2003 and Dance of the Infidel, a sprawling album made with numerous collaborators from the jazz world, surfaced in 2005. Two years later, her fantastic Decca debut, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, which included guest appearances from Pat Metheny and Oumou Sangare, was released. Her music has been featured in a number of film soundtracks including How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Lost & Delirious, Batman & Robin, Love Jones, Love & Basketball, Talk to Me, Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls, The Best Man, Higher Learning, Down in the Delta, The Hurricane, Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom, and Soul Men.

She has appeared on recordings by Basement Jaxx, Indigo Girls, Scritti Politti, and The Blind Boys of Alabama. On The Rolling Stones' 1997 album Bridges to Babylon she plays bass on the song "Saint of Me". On Alanis Morissette's 2002 album Under Rug Swept, she plays bass on the songs "So Unsexy" and "You Owe Me Nothing in Return". On Zap Mama's album ReCreation (2009), she plays bass on the song "African Diamond".

Her first pop-related recording in half a decade, 2009's Devil's Halo featured Ndegeocello in a quartet setting. The album also included guest spots from Lisa Germano and Oren Bloedow. Ndegeocello toured the album in opera houses and concert halls across the United States and Europe. In 2011, she partnered with Grammy-winning producer Joe Henry for the album Weather; it was issued on the Naïve label. In 2012, Ndegeocello released Pour une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone, a collection of tunes intimately associated with the legendary vocalist and pianist. Comet, Come to Me, another deep set of introspective songs, followed in 2014. During the next few years, she appeared on a wide assortment of recordings by the likes of Terry Lyne Carrington, Chris Connelly, Benji Hughes, Marcus Strickland (whose Nihil Novi she produced), and Ibeyi. She returned as a leader in 2018 with Ventriloquism, for which she reinterpreted formative R&B classics of the '80s and early '90s.

Personal life
Ndegeocello is bisexual and previously had a relationship with feminist author Rebecca Walker. Ndegeocello's first son, Solomon, was born in 1989. As of 2011 she had been married to Alison Riley for five years, with whom she has a second son.

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A few things are proven on Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, mainly that Me'Shell Ndegéocello can still play bass, and that three years between albums can be worth the wait. Both concepts were tested with her previous disc, Bitter, which lacked Ndegéocello's playing skills and floundered under mixed reviews and limited commercial appeal. While her fifth disc may not alleviate the latter, the former should be back around in droves. The attempts at pop songcraft heard on her earlier albums and best represented with the minor hit "If That's Your Boyfriend" seem long gone. That's not to say that Cookie is not catchy, just not within the parameters of traditional pop methodology, as she instead brings the funk constantly, mixing it up with a smattering of jazzy sensibilities and hip-hop. Ultimately, the disc is a mix of Afrocentrifugal explosiveness -- not only from the music, but also from her powerful lyrics that make the political personal and the personal political.



 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape (flac   432mb)

01 Dead Nigga Blvd. (Pt. 1) 3:04
02 Hot Night 4:32
03 Interlude: Blah Blah Blah, Dyba Dyba, Dyba 0:40
04 Priorities 1-6 3:43
05 Pocketbook 4:00
06 Barry Farms 5:21
07 Trust 5:26
08 Akel Dama (Field Of Blood) 7:28
09 Earth 5:14
10 Better By The Pound 5:24
11 Criterion 4:28
12 GOD.FEAR.MONEY 3:32
13 Jabril 6:06
14 Break 1 0:05
15 Break 2 0:05
15 Break 3 0:05
17 Dead Nigga Blvd. (Pt. 2) 3:13
18 Interlude: 6 Legged Griot Trio (Weariness) 4:54
19 Pocketbook (Rockwilder And Missy Elliott Remix) 4:00

Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape (ogg    169mb)

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Say what you will about bassist, songwriter, singer, bandleader, and arranger Meshell Ndegeocello, any box you attempt to put her into is not possibly big enough to hold her creativity and restless, unwieldy aesthetic vision. On "The Sloganeer: Paradise," a tune in which she equates the bland, complicit nature of blindly living modern life with committing suicide, she sings: "To know me is to know I love with/My imagination." It's a summation of her entire career thus far, and this album furthers that notion exponentially. The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams is Ndegeocello's debut for Decca; it is wilder than Cookie: An Anthropological Mixtape. Musically, this albums walks through walls. There are funky soul tunes whose backdrops are full of psychedelic music that would make the latter-day Jimi Hendrix smile in delight (think the material from Cry of Love). There are jazz-oriented tunes that slip toward pop, folk, and whole-tone folk songs. The lyrical content engages spiritual concerns and carnal love more often than not in the same song. And while she once more employs a wildly diverse collection of collaborators that include everyone from Ross and Lake to Pat Metheny, Oumou Sangare, Robert Glasper, Mike Severson, Daniel Jones, Doyle Bramhall, David Gilmore (not the one from Pink Floyd), James Newton, and Graham Haynes, she also cut two songs ("Evolution" and the bonus cut "Soul Spaceship"), playing all the instruments herself. So what does it sound like? The future arriving fully formed on the doorstep. It opens provocatively enough with noted American Muslim teacher and Islamic scholar Shiek Hamza Yusuf reciting the predictions of Mohammed to a backwash of Ross' guitar and ambient sounds. It moves into a rock & roll dreamscape called "Sloganeering: Paradise" awash in keyboards, a drummer playing drum and bass breaks that would make Prince jealous. "Evolution" is a spaced-out psychedelic dirge with few lyrics and a sound field worthy of Hendrix (and indeed her guitar playing is influenced in that direction). The sci-fi jazz of "Virgo," with Lake, Newton, and trombonist George McMullen, hovers and floats in vanguard space before turning into a dreamy pop song with acoustic guitars, synth washes, and samples but is held together with a gorgeous melody and vocal performance (and contains a funky little solo by Lake on alto saxophone). "Shirk" is a gorgeous spiritual duet between Sangare and Ndegeocello with Hervé Sambe and Metheny on acoustic guitars. Metheny also appears on "Article," the following cut with a guest appearance by Thandiswa Mazwai singing with Ndegéocello, but this time out she pops that bass of hers in response. It's a dizzying cut with shifting rhythms and textures, and call-and-response vocals that feel more like counterpoint as different sonic and textural motifs move across the front of the tune. All this and the record is just over halfway. The deep spirituality at work here has been present in Ndegeocello's work arguably since the beginning, but it has become more pronounced in recent years. That said, the beautiful and poetic expressions of desire as it encounters both flesh and the divine are soulful, without pretension or artifice. "Michelle Johnson" is a freewheeling exploration of electronic outer realms, tough guitar, and bass-heavy funk, with killer drum kit work by Deantoni Parks and hand percussion by Gilmar Gomes. The sonic treatments by Scott Mann and Chad Royce are all structure to fill the space around the artist's basslines and expressive belly-deep voice -- and you can be the judge as to which Michelle Johnson she's speaking of here. "Solomon" is among the most beautiful songs this woman has ever written. It is presented in a painterly way, illustrated and framed inside a warm bubbly electronic backdrop that gives way to languid melody, a spine-moving bassline that grooves low and slow on this futuristic soul lullaby. The official album closes with the completely out-to-lunch "Relief: A Stripper Classic," which is the true missing link between urban soul, heavy metal, and slow, downtempo funk -- all of it with a pronounced hook and refrain. "Soul Spaceship" is the place where Sly Stone, Amp Fiddler, and Millie Jackson meet in a big bass sci-fi wonderland presided over by Rick James and Teena Marie! The basslines and synth lines are huge, drum machines abound and skitter, and all the while Ndegéocello and Sy Smith make a beautifully grooving mess with the vocals. Ultimately, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, with its irony, sincerity, seeming contradiction, and elliptical paradox, is the most expansive, complex record yet released by this always provocative artist. It will take more than a single listen to warm up to, but once you actually take it in, it will be one of her recordings you go back to over and again because while it gives up its secrets slowly, it gives the listener something new each time too. Wild, visionary, and marvelously tough, this is a groover that will turn you inside out.



Me'Shell Ndegeocello - The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams (flac   285mb)

01 Haditha 1:31
02 The Sloganeer: Paradise 5:05
03 Evolution 3:44
04 Virgo 2:51
05 Lovely Lovely 3:27
06 Elliptical 5:34
07 Shirk 3:53
08 Article 3 3:33
09 Michelle Johnson 5:03
10 Headline 1:53
11 Solomon 4:03
12 Relief: A Stripper Classic 4:28

Me'Shell Ndegeocello - The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams (ogg  110mb)

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On three of her last four recordings, Meshell Ndegeocello has showcased her aesthetic restlessness, expanding her musical horizons to jazz, hip-hop, and the far-flung reaches of rock as well as funk and soul. On Devil's Halo, she focuses her vision deliberately on a dozen soulish, near-pop, rock tunes. Recorded by S. Husky Höskulds, it's stark compared to her last three albums. Ndegeocello plays bass and sings backed by guitarist Chris Bruce, drummer Deantoni Parks, and keyboardist Keith Ciancia, with guest appearances by Oren Bloedow, and Lisa Germano.

Desire haunts all the songs on Devil's Halo, beginning with "Slaughter," its opening track. Ndegeocello sings slowly, softly, deliberately, without a hint of irony: "She said she loved me/I ran away/ Don't say you love me/I'll run away..." The refrain explodes with guitars, bass, and vocals in a shattering crescendo: "...My love will leave you slaughter..." Romance, substance abuse, and one woman speaking candidly to another are themes in this musical meditation on bliss, lust, loneliness, and emotional wreckage, which are inseparable when the amorous is even considered, at least in Ndegeocello's world. "Lola" begins with the lines: "She drinks until she passes out/on the floor..." then erupts with a series of double-timed breaks to underscore confusion: "The boy she loved/left her for another girl/The girl she loved/left her for another boy..." A staccato explosion from Bruce's guitar engages her bassline in an instrumental bridge that Frank Zappa would have loved. "Mass Transit" is funkier, a bit more aggressive from the outset with Bruce's guitar leading the way, though Ndegeocello's bassline offers an alternate read on both melody and rhythmic pulse. Her voice is a soft croon despite the music's aggression, and it keeps the tune grounded in the seductive. "White Girl" may be the straightest pop song Ndegeocello's ever written, but its bassline is strictly dubwise. The vocals are smoky and elliptical, they create their own chorus in reverb and in the singer's deliberately stretched-out phrase, all around a very simple, hooky melody. The title track is a nearly ambient instrumental, with Ndegeocello playing harmonics on her bass in the mix just underneath a snare and kick drum barely outlining the time signature. Bruce paints it gingerly with his chord voicings. "A Bright Shiny Morning" is a gorgeous if lithe rocker, while "Blood on the Curb" is a more soulful, spacy rockist number with Ndegeocello's voice barely crooning above the heavyweight instrumentation, though she practices dynamic restraint. The album ends with another ballad, the brief but startling "Crying in Your Beer" with Bruce playing a spidery banjo as well as guitar atop Ciancia's ghostly keyboards and a skeletal bassline. It's an atmospheric tune, made taut by the words: " Sometimes, I forget where we are/Sometimes, I forget we're in love/Don't let me/die alone...."



 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Devil's Halo (flac   224mb)

01 Slaughter 2:32
02 Tie One On 2:30
03 Lola 2:59
04 Hair Of The Dog 1:40
05 Mass Transit 3:41
06 White Girl 2:40
07 Love You Down 5:21
08 Devil's Halo 2:20
09 Bright Shiny Morning 3:00
10 Blood On The Curb 2:40
11 Die Young 4:18
12 Crying In Your Beer 2:36

 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Devil's Halo (ogg   82mb)

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Few artists are as tough to pin down as Meshell Ndegeocello. Throughout her career she has continually thwarted attempts by industry forces who would attempt to define her. She's a master bassist and a poignant, restless songwriter. Pour Une Âme Souveraine is a collection of songs associated with or written by Nina Simone. It stands in sharp contrast to 2011's Weather, a stripped-down meditation on love's difficulties, disappointments, and endurance. Pour Une Âme Souveraine, was co-produced by Ndegeocello and guitarist Chris Bruce. They, along with Deantoni Parks on drums and Jebin Bruni on keyboards, account for most of the music-making here. Ndegeocello's voice and bass are central, though she enlists a handful of guest vocalists who add a mercurial dimension to these sometimes startling proceedings. Ndegeocello doesn't try to re-create Simone's performances or merely pay tribute. Instead, she invokes her pioneering spirit. Simone tried to present her own totality and complexity in each song she wrote and performed. Ndegeocello adds layers of not only complexity, but also ambiguity to her own identity as she celebrates her subject's pioneering spirit. Highlights include a startling read of Simone's stellar "Feelin' Good." Ndegeocello gets at the root of what is inferred in the tune, not declared in its title: ambivalence. Her interpretation reveals the title as an unanswered question. Her version of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" contains double-timed drums, slippery electric guitars, a pronounced bassline, and sprightly piano; it's a love song whose perspective implies direct experience with the subject, instead of an homage to the object of its lyrics. Toshi Reagon's appearance on "House of the Rising Sun" is drenched in soul atop driving, funky rock & roll. While the waltz time of "Don't Take All Night" remains the same, Sinéad O'Connor guides it as a sad country tune instead of a souled-out blues. Lizz Wright's voice in front of "Nobody's Fault But Mine" is a moaning, gospel blues."See Line Woman" is a skittering, syncopated jazz with Ndegeocello's funky bassline contrasted with a swooping flute. Tracy Wannomae's vocal keeps the brooding quality of the original, but it's inside a spooky jazz-funk number with skittering tom-toms and snares. Chesnutt's "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," written for Simone by Weldon Irvine, is lovely yet curious because it's a cut that Ndegeocello may have easily -- and convincingly -- claimed for herself. She does own "Black Is the Color Of My True Love's Hair," with its broken beat drums, reverbed electric guitar, and sensual, spooky keyboards. Pour Une Âme Souveraine is the best kind of dedication to Simone: it invokes her inspiration rather than attempting to re-create her character.



 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Pour Une Âme Souveraine, A Dedication To Nina Simone (flac   315mb)

01 Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood 4:08
02 Suzanne 4:27
03 Real Real 3:08
04 House Of The Rising Sun 3:36
05 Turn Me On 3:08
06 Feeling Good 4:10
07 Don't Take All Night 3:28
08 Nobody's Fault But Mine 2:37
09 Be My Husband 3:31
10 Black Is The Color Of My True Loves Hair 3:53
11 See Line Woman 5:51
12 Either Way I Lose 3:29
13 To Be Young, Gifted And Black 3:16
14 Four Women 5:02

 Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Pour Une Âme Souveraine, A Dedication To Nina Simone (ogg   115mb)

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Hello, the F1 season starts this weekend as usual down under in Australia. Looks like business as usual for Mercedes they must be very happy tonight specially while Bottas laid down some sharp targets for Hamilton to overcome, behind it was business as usual with Ferrari and Red Bull although latter forgot to take Gasly with them, after an insanely close first qualifying round his 1.004 sec gap to the front left him 17th !. First strategical error by Red Bull this season, they should have anticipated the effect of all that extra rubber on the track. Remains to be seen if he's up to the 2 Haas Ferrari's that look set to become team #4 this season. McLaren showed they mean business this year. With the wider wings this season expect chaos at the start, wings will be crushed. Looking forward to tomorrows race even if its likely going to be a Merc 1,2, behind them there will be plenty of action...



Today's artists are an UK collective which is a strong contender for the ultimate cult electronic band. Anonymous, uncompromising, wryly humorous and famously fond of weird album packaging, the band has grown a loyal and obsessive fan base since the original lineup of Ben Ponton, Peter Jensen and Robin Storey made their recorded debut in 1982...  ......N-Joy

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.Most prolific in 1980's and 90's, the band's discography presents an original, experimental lo-fi concoction of electronics, found sounds, assorted acoustic instruments, vocal samples, tape effects, industrial clatter and all kinds of location recordings. Sometimes it sounds like a hybrid of experimental electronics and Third World music. At others times it's almost pure industrial, forged with metallic drones and mechanical noise, as cold as stone. It's ambient music, of a kind, though some of it is too abrasive and/or energetic to really be considered as such. Zoviet France's music certainly demands much of the listener, but with listener effort comes reward. If you're intrigued, here are some suggested releases to begin exploring.


The early classic Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music (1985) sounds - unsurprisingly - nothing like its absurd title suggests. The sprawling 3CD set is a fascinating and strangely seductive exercise in ambient noise and atmospheres with traces of melody and tonality. The sheer variety on offer is the album's greatest strength. "Decoy" resembles early German psychedelic spacemusic, its surreal beauty unanchored by beats or recognisable harmony. "Sidi" is an indescribable concoction of found sounds and fluttering bells. "Sein" is a nocturnal sound painting fashioned with eerie drones and watery effects. It's a good album for newcomers; the short track lengths mean even the most demanding moments don't last too long.

The Soviet Songs album is a Zoviet France template of sorts; many of the band's subsequent albums echo parts of it, or emphasise and further explore a certain element.

The intoxicating Loh Land (1987) and Just An Illusion (1990), for example, both have a deeply tribal current. Zither and flute melodies, exotic poly-rhythms and assorted Arabic vocal samples are electronically manipulated and woven among the grimy atmospheres and metallic rings. These albums are dark, often surreal and strangely cinematic, with definite echoes of prolific British artist Muslimgauze.

The excellent 90's releases What Is Not True (1993) and Digilogue (1996) emphasise another element: drone music, this time explored over longer distances. The 60-minute "Cyclonic Sub Alien" from the former album is a remarkable track best heard at volume in a darkened room. It flirts with muted percussion, harmonic throat singing, sustained bell tones and bright metallic washes of sound, before finally melting into a lovely harmonic drone - the last being somewhat atypical for the band, but making for a highly effective conclusion.

The band continues today, although Ben Ponton is the only remaining member of the original lineup. Some hardcore Zoviet France fans much prefer the music being released by The Reformed Faction, a group formed in 2006 by ex-members Andy Eardley, Mark Spybey and Robin Storey.

and when there's not that much to go on a good interview will do.

Interview with Ben of Soviet France, by and (C) Brian Duguid, Grand National Day, 6/4/91, shortly before the group toured North America.

Like Nocturnal Emissions, Soviet France have become a cult band. With a reputation for obscurity that would put many others to shame, they've been quietly producing their own distinctive blend of industrial sound collage throughout the last decade. Noisy and primitive material has gradually given way to, well, noisy and sophisticated material. Some of the abstract music they are now creating is minimal, ambient, unintrusive, some of it is loud and disconcerting, but it all manages to define a sonic space very much of their own. The traditions are clearly visible, both the admitted academic and rock-born sound collagists of the sixties and seventies, but Soviet France's music is distinguished by its very personal quality. A pop analogue might be The Blue Nile, who combine discordance with harmony in a wonderfully serene music that has few easy landmarks to refer to in the rest of its musical terrain.

Again like the Emissions, they started life roughly a decade ago, in the fallout from the innovative European music of the 70s and punk, and in the heyday of "industrial" music.

"None of us had any real musical background, we just decided to be in bands. Without any outside influence we very quickly decided we wanted a band that completely ignored conventional approaches to music, including the minimal amount of training we had ourselves."

Of course, at the end of the seventies everyone was forming bands (didn't you? OK, neither did I. Maybe not everyone.) But most of them seemed to find their favourite three chord thrash, get stuck there, and give up within a year or two to become accountants. Maybe it all just lies in the previous influences. Soviet France's are not that surprising when you come to listen to their music.

"We were into all the more familiar stuff, like Can, and Neu, and early Kraftwerk, all the German bands. A lot of classical stuff as well like Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez, and Luciano Berio. It was the stuff that I personally, and I think this goes for the other members of the group, had more of an instinct for. We felt closer to it than conventional commercial music. At the same time we've got very catholic tastes, we listen to all kinds of music. We're just as much into Motorhead as we are into Stockhausen. I think the common factor in all of it is an element of noise really. Noise is a non-musical sound format, which you find in Motorhead just as much as you do in Stockhausen."

So that's the influences out of the way. But there is more to the music of Soviet France than just genre or stylistic considerations.

"I think we were searching for something else within music, something that meant a lot more to us personally than you would get being in a conventional band really. Most conventional bands are performers. They try to supply something as entertainment to an audience. We weren't interested in that at all. We were interested in a lot of the power within music for creating states of mind. and revealing parts of your own personality to yourself. Also as an avenue or a medium for accessing some of the more primitive instincts and subconscious: stuff that goes on in everybody's heads, but most people don't have an outlet for."

Soviet France certainly go some way to following up that avenue. It's generally a cyclic, abstract music, looping and shifting textures of noise around to create a soundscape that certainly doesn't exist anywhere else in this world. It's lack of obvious connections to any conventional instrumentation or sometimes any other recognisable sounds can make it sound alien and unwelcome. On the other hand, sometimes there are recognisable fragments swimming through the music, brief snatches of voice, or perhaps something else that sounds familiar but rarely identifiable. This side of the mix will inevitable trigger instinctive associations in the mind of the listener, helping to personalise it and drawing them in. It's repetitive nature is highly entrancing, very hypnotic. Although Soviet France feel their music is a highly personal expression, there is quite a lot there to attract others to it.

"We produce music all the time. The figure we always quote, and it still holds true, is that what we've actually released to the world is about 5% of what we've actually recorded. We record everything we do. Making music is an end in itself to us. We make music just because we like doing it. We have a huge archive of unreleased material. When we come to release something, on CD or whatever, the reasons for choosing that particular material is that it seems more important musically to us than anything else we have lying around at the time ...

"Making music is what I like doing more than any other serious intellectual or physical activity that I'm involved in. Anything else is subsidiary and secondary to it. I'm really into the music. We're fortunate in a way, in that because part of the way that we produce the music is to enter into a sort of altered state of consciousness, without trying to sound too pretentious. We just switch off all conscious sensory perceptions, and we start making the music. Once we've finished and we've come out of that it's very exhausting for a start, and you always feel immediately afterwards that what we've produced is a load of rubbish. Maybe two days later we listen back to it. Because we're listening to it in a different state of consciousness, it's like listening to somebody else's music. I find myself totally addicted to it. It's music I like listening to over and above any other kind of music. We're fortunate in that we can both the producers of the music and in turn the audience, without being too critical or feeling so involved in it that we are unable to listen to our music in the way that many musicians are. Having said that, we always have this problem in that actually releasing something exorcises these kinds of feelings. In many ways, to release a piece of our music really is giving something of ourselves away to people. The process of getting that music into a state where it can be released on CD or vinyl or whatever means that we have to listen to it in such a close and detailed way, through the production processes, that we take it apart. It loses all the previous relevance that it had for ourselves. I've never had any children, but the closest thing I can imagine to it is like losing a child ... it's really taking something away from us."

Regardless of the attachment that the group may have to their own music, or the feelings it can generate in open-minded listeners, its actual production comes down to what may seem like a very mundane process. Most of what the group do is improvised, and then edited to impose a coherent structure upon it. Because it isn't actually composed, it's arguable whether it's ever likely to produce a single masterpiece. Also, it means that the music is to a large extent irrepeatable. Some of the sounds and developments used in it can be reused and repeated, but because of the improvisation always involved, it can never be the same twice. Because this means there is such a huge quantity of Soviet France music, and such a seemingly huge quantity of potential music still to come, it makes brief excerpts (like albums) seem somehow less important. In conventional musical thought, if there is so much of something, then it can't really be worth anything - it's only the rarities, the one-offs, the composed masterpieces that can ever achieve true musical magnificence. This has an element of truth in it, but it ignores the fact that there is more to music than just its function as a series of works of art. Because there is so much of it, Soviet France's music achieves a far more mundane but far more significant result. It integrates itself into life more, becomes more closely entwined with the people who produce it. Compositional master-works may shine as artistic beacons of light, but they shine all too rarely, whereas Soviet France's music is a part of their day-to-day life, and with them whenever they want.

For us poor schmucks who only buy the stuff, it can never form such an important place in our life. It's someone else's personal expression, not ours. We can only get some sort of intellectual or emotional resonance in bite-sized chunks. But that's hardly the point. The point is that what Soviet France do anyone can do: if music really can have intuitive, subconscious application, and if only music that someone produces themself is ever really going to give them the meaning that they need, then surely they should get out their and do exactly what Soviet France have done. The production process can be as mystical or as mundane as anyone wants:

"About 90% of our material is generated from acoustic sound sources. We've quite a collection between us of ethnic musical instruments, instruments that we built ourselves, or objects that we use as sound sources. That's always the starting point. We set up a few mikes around the place, wherever we decide to make the recording. We have these boxfuls of acoustic instruments, and we just improvise there on the spot. We generate about two to three hours worth of material, and then post produce it. We mix what we've got, reprocess it, and complete a finished set of recordings which maybe one day will get released. In a way, there's two very apposite sides to the production. We start by making very live recordings, very acoustic recordings. Then we process those in a very artificial way to produce what finally becomes the music."

At the time of this interview, the group had performed live less than a dozen times. Immediately afterwards they toured North America, taking in over thirty venues. Their most recent performance was due to be as part of the Eurobeat Avant-Garde event in London in October, which amongst others was due to feature Nocturnal Emissions, Konstruktivists and Morphogenesis. (This event was later cancelled). Performance is a slightly different matter to the production of a studio recording:

"The only difference is in the editing. Live performance is a continuous sort of musical production, almost identical to the way that we produce music for a recording. The only difference being that we maybe cut out and reprocess some of the stuff on its way into a recording ... In fact, although it seems quite far removed from what people hear in the releases that we make, it's still Soviet France music and very recognisable as such."

Throughout their history, Soviet France have frequently been lumped in with any number of other "industrial" or post-industrial groups, from Throbbing Gristle onwards. Having initially attached themselves to the label Red Rhino, they quickly became the label's token "weird" group, producing esoteric and obscure music that was sure to find its own cult audience but probably not get much further. It's only natural that they achieved some recognition as part of the "lunatic" fringe of the burgeoning indie music scene.

"We never felt we were in the industrial tradition which was very much the contemporary movement from which we sprang. It was round about that time where everybody seems to have arrived at the same point and started lots of things, like Nocturnal Emissions, and what Throbbing Gristle were doing, and Test Dept's early days, and everybody else ... 23 Skidoo. We were aware of what everyone else was doing, but because we were in Newcastle which is quite a cultural island in itself, we didn't feel any bonding to that at all, we didn't feel any attachment to it. We saw ourselves as very isolated and very much out on a limb. It didn't worry us, we were quite happy in that situation, quite happy to continue fiddling about with the ideas we had. We didn't feel that we had to conform to any kind of preconceptions about what we were doing at all ...

"I think there seems to have been a particular generation of people who arrived at a particular point in their own minds, post-sixties, post-early seventies, with a lot of twentieth century musical history behind them, going back to Dada and a lot of early ideas about how sound and noise could become music. It seemed to coalesce, particularly after punk. Punk was quite significant in that it opened up in a lot of people's minds a crucial idea, which was that you can obtain the means of production, and you can make your own music, and you can make it available to the general population quite easily. That also coincided with a general upgrading in technology, like the synthesiser and cassette recording technology. People realised very quickly that they could make what the fuck they like as music, call it music, and be able to spread it around and distribute it. And people would be interested in that."

I don't want to keep on mentioning our friends Nocturnal Emissions, but yet another similarity between the two groups lies in their development throughout the eighties, which paralleled the progression of various other post-industrial groups from harsh to softer noise. What was at first noisy and abrasive gradually matured into a more sophisticated sound. In Soviet France's case, the harsher cyclic music of their early albums made way for something that was smoother, easier to listen to, and as a result probably more effective in its ability to worm its way into the listener's subconscious. Part of the reason for the development is a purely technical one, a growing appreciation of how to use their instruments and recording technology. An additional reason, like N.E., was a growing appreciation that although noise had functioned well to wake people up at one point, it rapidly became a self-defeating pursuit, one that provoked a response and then left the listener hanging in mid-air. With the ability to produce something with less rough edges, it also resulted in a music that was more positive in feeling, less of a reaction and more of a contribution.

"The first two releases, they're musically very naive. We still make them available. We haven't disowned them and don't regard them as irrelevant. But compared to what we're doing now they're almost childish in their approach. It was a very important period of development, which is why we haven't disavowed them. We had to deal with that then to come to where we are now. If anything, anybody who has reviewed our music over the last ten years, the thing that would strike them is that we've probably become a lot softer in our musical approach. It's no more accessible now, in fact it's probably even less accessible than it was in the early days ...



"If you've been doing music for ten years, you do become more sophisticated, both in terms of your practical approach to making the music, and also in the ideas which you use to inform the music. In the early days the whole idea was to be confrontational. To borrow a phrase from Test Dept, it was a kind of 'shock therapy'. You use noise and extremes of noise to shock people into a new way of perceiving things, a new state of mind.

"The impact that the first Throbbing Gristle LP had on me was way beyond anything I'd ever heard. It was complementing something that I knew I had within me anyway, and at the same time it was like 'fucking hell, there's people actually doing this kind of stuff'. I know that we've had that kind of impact on other people as well. Some of the feedback we get, with people writing letters to us, it's very obvious that when people first come to Soviet France they find something, both within themselves, and at the same time so new to them that it does shock them into a new idea about music altogether."

One other thing about the band grew less extreme as the years passed, although for different reasons. At the outset, the group developed a fetishistic passion for unusual packaging for their releases, with early albums coming out in a hessian sack and packaged in roofing felt. Commercial restraints, and the amount of simple hard work that unusual packaging demands, have diminished this impulse as time has gone on. An album like Look Into Me sits in a perfectly normal CD or LP sleeve. However, Just an Illusion, released by Staalplaat, keeps up the packaging reputation by being a CD coming in a little hardwood box, with indented printing on the outside. There's more to this than just a desire to maintain some form of notoriety, of course. These products really are something special. My enjoyment of Just an Illusion was definitely enhanced by its presentation: by making the album something special, something outside the run-of-the-mill plastic CD boxes which currently fill one of my drawers, I was always going to pay closer attention to what it contains. It becomes a fetish, a unique object invested with spiritual significance, rather than just one among the many, and the effort is definitely appreciated. The band have managed to keep their visibility as individuals at a minimum level. This is, of course, an old trick by individuals anxious to either avoid or exploit the pop industry's obsession with saleable images. The Residents achieved notoriety throughout the seventies (and boredom thereafter) by refusing to allow their individual identities to become known. Test Dept, trying to present themselves as a collective unit in order to reflect their political beliefs have acted in a similar way. The band's name is known but the individuals forming it are rarely singled out for attention. Soviet France, aware of how the industry operates and trying to avoid its less pleasant tendencies, have also kept their individual identities out of the picture as far as the music is concerned, while remaining perfectly accessible to those who bother to contact them.

"We realised early on that one of the biggest favours we could do ourselves was in not creating any kind of image or allowing any kind of image to be created for us. That's the reason why we don't include any names of personnel on the records. It's not secrecy, and it's not a deliberate marketing ploy like the Residents use. Anybody who really wants to can find out who we are and talk to us personally, like you're doing. But we cottoned on really quickly to the idea of the cult of personality, and realised that it was a fundamental means of control used in the music industry, and so we deliberately set our faces against that. We set about creating a complete antithesis to it. We've never allowed photographs of ourselves to be published, or haven't until now anyway, and we've never really identified ourselves as personalities at all."

Just in case all the above makes the group seem a bit po-faced, it's worth pointing out that the music of Soviet France can actually be funny too. It's hardly laugh-out-loud stuff, but the loops and snippets of recycled sound material frequently have a playfulness to them that can be quite readily spotted.

"People do recognise the humour sometimes, maybe not as often as they should. Particularly with the early releases there was a lot of self-effacing humour, and cynical and critical humour as well. Cynical humour about the industrial movement, cynical humour about the political state of the world or this country. There was a lot of musical humour as well. We have a good laugh making it and we think other people should have a good laugh listening to it as well, if they can work out what the jokes are!"

Although the group admits to no long term plans, a whole series of short-term ones exist. A compilation CD is being compiled for release through Mute subsidiary The Grey Area; a recording of their live performance from Vienna in 1990 is being released by their own label Charrm, entitled simply Vienna Live; and Canadian label DOVentertainment (whose The Death of Vinyl compilation CD they contributed to) are releasing their latest proper album, Shadow: Thief of the Sun.





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The musical equivalent of having your wisdom teeth pulled without anesthesia in the back alley of a Chinese restaurant at night by a deranged psychopathic clown (too much…?), Garista is a trying and arduous debut, one that I cannot for the life of me finish in one sitting. To be honest, I know they had to start somewhere but I feel like this was a joke just to see what they could get away with and self-release.  Well, needless to say it worked, and we have nearly 30 years of classic tribal/industrial ambient. Personally though, I feel Untitled [aka Hessian] was the real debut and this was just a big tease. Some of it isn’t that bad though, I love the ghostly moans of Mosbas, feels like the windswept plains of Scotland are being torn into another dimension! The rest is really a mind screw of the highest caliber and only a seasoned veteran of the harshest noise and musique concrete will find something positive to say, for me though I think I will stick with their latter releases.



Zoviet France - Garista ( 204mb)

01 Scrama Mdags 2:28
02 Mosbas 3:37
03 Mama Piss 3:21
04 Nruknesh 2:52
05 Caarcuraz 5:39
06 M1 M1 M1 7:24
07 Rangmabasm 14:23

  (ogg  mb)

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Hessian certainly is an album to respect the hell out of at least, from its violent and anxious opening on Ritual, a song that can curdle milk with its tortured screams and distorted mechanical instrumentation to the more subdued and cerebral Mudbast Boys which feels like a dark and twisted sojourn into the dark forest of the mind, complete with German expressionist vistas and distorted and bent tree stumps. Really though , the only song you definitely need to hear on this massacre of sound is Ji Boys, one of my favorite tracks this group ever put out. A whirlwind of tribal violence and graphic mechanical distortion, like a cargo cult worshiping a combine harvester that washed up on the shore of their island only for it to suddenly gain a mind of its own and kill all in its path 12 minutes of this madness.....yeah. This album represents all that there is to love in creating music in the most punk way imaginable, and regardless of its overall quality I adore it for being just an unpleasant experience all around. If you want to see just how far Zoviet France went from their latter day Industrial/Dark Ambient look no further then this, a dark and twisted release that time almost forgot.



Zoviet France - Untitled (Hessian) ( 194mbmb)

01 Ritual 50
02 Mudbast Boys 4:34
03 Sem Boys 4:23
04 Bring Hessa 2:47
05 Mounw 2:16
06 Ji Boys 11:56

    (ogg  mb)

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A totemic salute to the things that go bump in the night, Mohnomishe is a shivering call into the black primal void of nature. While early Zoviet France is definitely a challenging taste to acquire, this is one of their better releases and when stacked with their later albums like Shouting at the Ground or Just an Illusion, it still holds that powerful foreboding of the unknown. I remember my 5th grade school trip to out door ed in big bear and we were all sent on a night hike. The same unsettling fear, the deafening silence of the forest entwined in the blackest of Onyx, was perfectly recreated with some of the chilling drones and the blown out warbles. Just like their early releases of Norsch and the Hessian album, this can be a nauseating listen at times. Still Mohnomishe captures the title of "dark ambient" to a T.

The last of Zoviet Frances devilish earlier releases that evoke the garish and ugly soundscapes of cannibalistic rituals and satanic cult like atmospheres. Norsch is a sonic malestorm that continues where Mohnomishe left off, with powerful tribal beats and skewered obscure dubs that add all the more to the feeling of walking into a gothic/Cyberpunk dance club in the early 80's, especially in Imirsch which is probably the most danceable tune you are ever going to hear from these purveyors of destroyed sounds.



Zoviet France - Mohnomishe + Norsch EP ( 367mb)

01 Untitled 5:36
02 Untitled 4:44
03 Untitled 6:14
04 Untitled 10:02
05 Untitled 8:21
06 Untitled 6:24
07 Untitled 5:27
08 Untitled 14:31

01 Norsch Tauss 7:10
02 Norsch Baelmaen 8:17
03 Norsch Virang 2:57
04 Norsch Imirsch 3:52
05 Norsch Vorvah 3:42

Zoviet France - Mohnomishe + Norsch EP (ogg  167mb)

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A brute and malicious force that creeps silently through the dead of winter, Eostre fits right at home with the classic early work of Zoviet France. Eostre begins with somewhat of an audio incantation. Hand drums, unidentifiable stringed instruments, eventual people chanting "Allah" and hands clapping blend into a psychedelic whorl. There is nothing nautical about it. Although things may get quiet at times, this is not wallpaper ambient and a bit of listening attention yields worthwhile results. Some of the tracks, in the purist sense, are downright "groovy". Ancient primal music emanating from musicians circled around a fire but using studio trickery/magic to push it into another dimension. If in the right (or wrong) state of mind, Eostre has the power to make time stop. Just be careful with the track Cad Goddeu, you could get hurt. Highly highly recommended. Eostre (and Gris) is Zoviet France at their peak.



Zoviet France - Eostre ( 281mb)

01 Shout The Storm 9:23
02 Cirice 10:19
03 Hymen 4:07
04 Gustr 8:37
05 Kirke 2:13
06 Pearroc 4:17
07 Regn 4:38
08 Bell 1:32
09 Cad Goddeu 4:50
10 Wajis 7:33
11 Angelus 7:13
12 Neptune 4:30

Zoviet France - Eostre (ogg 90mb)

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Hello, Bottas had a great start and left Hamilton in his wake and rode a great race upfront, there wasn't much overtaking apart from Verstappen who took Vetttel's 3rd place, but he lacked the power to do the same to Hamilton, still Red Bull Toyota were very happy with the new car, even if their 2nd driver Gasly got stuck on 11th, and that's the thing with the seasons opening race it's difficult to overtake there, certainly when cars are egually powerful. Ferrari disappointed , however Vettel probably reckoned a Hamilton, win that didn't happen so now he trails 5 points to his perceived main rival, but then Verstappen might enter the titel race and Bottas who knows he might win the next race too...




14 correct requests for this week, 3 too early , whatever another batch of 41 re-ups (12.3 gig)


These days i'm making an effort to re-up, it will satisfy a smaller number of people which means its likely the update will  expire relatively quickly again as its interest that keeps it live. Nevertheless here's your chance ... asks for re-up in the comments section at the page where the expired link resides, or it will be discarded by me. ....requests are satisfied on a first come first go basis. ...updates will be posted here remember to request from the page where the link died! To keep re-ups interesting to my regular visitors i will only re-up files that are at least 12 months old (the older the better as far as i am concerned), and please check the previous update request if it's less then a year old i won't re-up either.

Looka here , requests fulfilled up to March 16th !... N'Joy

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3x Sundaze Back in Flac (Vladislav Delay - Anima, Vladislav Delay - Naima, Vladislav Delay - Whistleblower)


3x Beats Back In Flac (Mouse On Mars - Vulvaland, Mouse on Mars - Iaora Tahiti, Mouse On Mars - Autoditacker)


4x Aetix Back In Flac (Opposition - Promises, Opposition - Empire Days, SO - Horseshoe in the Glove, Opposition - Blue Alice Blue)


1x Sundaze Back in Flac (Philip Glass - Solo)



2x Sundaze Back in Flac (John Foxx and Robin Guthrie - Mirrorball , John Foxx - Tiny Colour Movies)


4x Sundaze Back in Flac (Ryuichi Sakamoto - The Last Emperor, Ryuichi Sakamoto - The Sheltering Sky, Ryuichi Sakamoto - Little Buddha, Ryuichi Sakamoto - Snake Eyes OST)


3x Roots Back In Flac (Gary Clail & On-U - Emotional Hooligan, Andy Fairley - System Vertigo, Tackhead Sound Crash (Mix Sherwood))


4x Roots Back In Flac (Som Imaginario - Som Imaginario, Uakti - Aguas da Amazonia , Olodum - Filhos Do Soll, Olodum - 20 Years)


3x Sundaze Back  in Flac (Arovane ‎- Tides, Arovane - Atol Scrap, Arovane ‎– Lilies)


3x Sundaze NOW in Flac (Harold Budd - Luxa, Harold Budd - The Room, Harold Budd - Avalon Sutra )


3x Sundaze Back in Flac (Schulze/Namlook- Evolution of DSOTM, Move D / Namlook V - Wired, Move D / Namlook - X - Let The Circle Not Be Broken)


3x Sundaze Back in Flac (Elve - Emerald, Ishq - And Awake, Ishq - Skyspaces)


3x Aetix Back in Flac (The Dream Syndicate - The Days Of Wine and Roses, The Dream Syndicate - Medicine Show, The Dream Syndicate - Out Of The Grey)


2x Sundaze NOW in Flac ( Skyphone - Fabula, Steve Roach- Artifacts )


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Hello, a tale of the bungling of Armageddon, featuring an angel, a demon, an 11-year-old Antichrist, and a doom-saying witch, crazy stuff right in sync with the crazy Trump age, still a few months before it premieres end of May at Amazon, so why not get prepared and listen to what BBC radio 4 made of this....


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It is the coming of the End Times: the Apocalypse is near, and Final Judgement will soon descend upon the human species. This comes as a bit of bad news to the angel Aziraphale (who was the guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden) and the demon Crowley (who, when he was originally named Crawly, was the serpent who tempted Eve to eat the apple), respectively the representatives of Heaven and Hell on Earth, as they have become used to living their cosy, comfortable lives and have, in a perverse way, taken a liking to humanity. As such, since they are good friends (despite ostensibly representing the polar opposites of Good and Evil), they decide to work together and keep an eye on the Antichrist, destined to be the son of a prominent American diplomat stationed in Britain, and thus ensure he grows up in a way that means he can never decide between Good and Evil, thereby postponing the end of the world.

In fact, Warlock, the child whom everyone thinks is the Anti-Christ, is a normal eleven-year-old boy. Due to the mishandling of several infants in the hospital, the real Anti-Christ is Adam Young, a charismatic and slightly otherworldly eleven-year-old living in Lower Tadfield, Oxfordshire, an idyllic town in Britain. Despite being the harbinger of the Apocalypse, he has lived a perfectly normal life as the son of typical English parents, and as a result has no idea of his true powers. He has three close friends - Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian - who collectively form a gang that is simply referred to as "Them" by the adults.

As the end of the world nears, Adam blissfully and naively uses his powers, changing the world to fit things he reads in a conspiracy theory magazine, such as raising the lost continent of Atlantis and causing Little Green Men to land on earth and deliver a message of goodwill and peace. In the meantime, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse assemble: War (a female war correspondent), Death (a biker), Famine (a dietician and fast-food tycoon), and Pollution (a young man--Pestilence having retired after the discovery of penicillin). The incredibly accurate (yet so highly specific as to be useless) prophecies of Agnes Nutter, 17th-century prophetess, are rapidly coming to pass.

Agnes Nutter was a witch in the 17th century and the only truly accurate prophet to have ever lived. She wrote a book called The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, a collection of prophecies that did not sell very well because they were unspectacular, cryptic and all true. She, in fact, decided to publish it only so she could receive a free author's copy. This copy is passed down to her descendants, and is currently owned by her multi-great granddaughter Anathema Device. Agnes was burned at the stake by a mob; however, because she had foreseen her fiery end and had packed 80 pounds of gunpowder and 40 pounds of roofing nails into her petticoats, everyone who participated in the burning was killed instantly.

As the world descends into chaos, Adam attempts to split up the world between his gang. After realizing that by embracing absolute power, he will not be able to continue to grow up as a child in Lower Tadfield, Adam decides to stop the apocalypse.

Anathema, Newton Pulsifer (one of the two last members of the Witchfinder Army), Adam and his gang, Aziraphale and Crowley gather at a military base near Lower Tadfield to stop the Horsemen causing a nuclear war and ending the world. Adam's friends capture War, Pollution, and Famine. Just as Adam's father, the devil, seems to come and force the end of the world, Adam twists everything so his human father shows up instead, and everything is restored.

Gaiman and Pratchett had known each other since 1985. It was their own idea, not that of their publisher, to collaborate on a novel. According to Gaiman, he originally began the book as a parody of Richmal Crompton's William books, named William the Antichrist, but it gradually outgrew the original idea.
Pratchett and Gaiman planned the novel together over lengthy phone conversations, and shared their writing by mailing floppy disks (remember floppy disks?) back and forth.

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According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, the world will end on a Saturday. A Saturday quite soon,...

Events have been set in motion to bring about the End of Days. The armies of Good and Evil are gathering and making their way towards the sleepy English village of Lower Tadfield. The Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pollution and Death - have been summoned from the corners of the earth and are assembling.

Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell and his assistant Newton Pulsifier are also en route to Tadfield to investigate some unusual phenomena in the area, while Anathema Device, descendent of prophetess and witch Agnes Nutter, tries to decipher her ancestor's cryptic predictions about exactly where the impending Apocalypse will take place.


Atlantis is rising, fish are falling from the sky; everything seems to be going to the Divine Plan. Everything that is but for the unlikely duo of an angel and a demon who are not all that keen on the prospect of the forthcoming Rapture. Aziraphale (once an angel in the Garden of Eden, but now running an antiquarian bookshop in London), and Crowley (formerly Eden's snake, now driving around London in shades and a vintage Bentley) have been living on Earth for several millennia and have become rather fond of the place. But if they are to stop Armageddon taking place they've got to find and kill the one who will the one bring about the apocalypse: the Antichrist himself.

There's just one small problem: someone seems to have mislaid him...


Dirk Maggs, best known for his adaptation of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, adapted and directed the radio dramatization along with producer Heather Larmour and, of course, Neil Gaiman himself.

Josie Lawrence as Agnes Nutter and Paterson Joseph as Famine, as well as Game of Thrones actor Clive Russell, Julia Deakin, Louise Brealey, Simon Jones, Arsher Ali, Phil Davis, and Mark Benton. The two lead roles of Aziraphale and Crowley will be voiced by Mark Heap (Spaced) and Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy), respectively. And, on top of all that, we can expect to hear cameo appearances from both Pratchett and Gaiman themselves.


Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 4 ( 28min mp3     26mb).


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previously

Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 1 ( 28min mp3     33mb).
Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 2 ( 28min mp3     33mb).
Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens - Episode 3 ( 28min mp3     33mb).

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Hello,


Today's artists are from Tel Aviv, Israel were one of the little-known post-punk acts outside of the usual suspects. Formed in 1981 by vocalist Samy Birnbach, bassist Malka Spigel, and guitarist Berry Sakharof, they incorporated native Middle Eastern sounds into dark European rock, breaking ground that groups would eventually cross. What prevented Minimal Compact from becoming completely obscure because of their geographic roots was that they relocated to Amsterdam early in their career and therefore found support within the European music community. The band wanted refuge from their native land's provincial attitudes; moving to Amsterdam enabled them to fulfill their dream of international recognition. The group was signed to the Belgian label Crammed and released a self-titled EP in 1981. A year later, Minimal Compact issued their first LP, One by One. Minimal Compact's arty sensibilities and adventurous, experimental spirit made them true cult favorites.  ......N-Joy

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Between its foundation in 1980 and its dissolution seven years later, Minimal Compact played an important role in the European rock scene. Malka Spigel (bass, vocals), Samy Birnbach (vocals, lyrics) and Berry Sakharof (guitars, keyboards, vocals) left their native Tel-Aviv in 1981 for Amsterdam in search of an escape from the provincial attitudes of their own city. Of the trio, only Berry was a "real" musician. Malka was "learning to play the bass", while Samy was better known as a DJ (Morpheus) and a music fan who dabbled in poetry. They recorded a 2-song demo at home, and became one of the first artists signed to the Belgian Crammed label.

During the recording for a speculative 7" in a little studio in the Belgian countryside, it became quickly evident that the trio had hit upon something worthy of development and their first, self-titled, mini album Minimal Compact was the fruit of this. Their burgeoning style was a heavily Middle-Eastern coloured brand of post-new wave, based on driving rhythms, scratchy guitars and their own very un- "Anglo-American" style of vocalisation. In this way they both prefigured alternative dance and later fascinations with so called world music. This mini-album (now re-released on CD along with its successor "One by One") features "Statik Dancin'" which remained a live staple throughout the band's career, and "Creation Is Perfect", based on a text by the beat poet Bob Kaufman.

One by One, the second album, was recorded in London in 1982, and like its predecessor co-produced by Dirk Polak (from Mecano (Dutch band)) and Crammed supremo Marc Hollander. It includes tracks such as "Babylonian Tower", "Disguise" (another live staple), "It Takes a Lifetime". With this release Minimal Compact had become a "real band" with the addition of the native Amsterdammer Max Franken on drums. Now Minimal could play live, this was to prove a strong element in their career. As Minimal began to tour more extensively they went from strength to strength as a live band. Deadly Weapons, produced by Gilles Martin and Tuxedomoon's Peter Principle dates from 1984 and is considered by some their most experimental album. Nonetheless it threw up a "club classic" of the time in the shape of "Next One Is Real" (famously remixed by Dick O'Dell, one time boss of the Guerilla label). The sleeve was by Neville Brody. On this album the "classic" 5-person line up became complete with the addition of guitarist/vocalist Rami Fortis a long time Minimal cohort from Tel Aviv who was arguably Israel's most innovative post-punk musician with his solo debut Plonter (knots). Fortis had previously collaborated with Malka on their "7 codes" tape (a low-fi home tape effort which had been sold in the indie shops in Amsterdam).

Touring by this point took them further and further afield, everywhere from Palermo to Kyoto fell to their conquest, although British success was limited to an NME single of the week and a John Peel session. Raging Souls was released in 1985. Produced by Colin Newman,[1] with artwork by Eno/Sylvian collaborator Russell Mills, it has proved their most popular album, with tracks like "My Will", "When I Go" (which was included in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire movie soundtrack), "The Traitor", "Autumn Leaves" all of which became live favorites. By this time Minimal had become established in Brussels and were at the hub of the local "International Indie Scene" which featured at various times, Tuxedomoon (both individually and collectively), Bel Canto, Colin Newman, Sonoko, Gilles Martin and Benjamin Lew. As a follow up Minimal Compact recorded a 12" Immigrants Songs (featuring a Led Zeppelin cover) with Israeli Uri Barak. Like "Next One Is Real" before it the 12" received extensive US college/dance attention and figures amongst their most enduring work.

The Figure One Cuts was their last studio album, recorded in 1987 with producer John Fryer (Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Fade Gadget). Tracks include "Nil-Nil"", "Inner Station", "New Clear Twist", "Piece of Green". The Lowlands Flight instrumental album was released at the same time in Crammed's "Made To Measure" series. The touring continued but their goal of following up their record success in the USA was never achieved as several planned tours were cancelled because the US immigration authorities refused to grant them visas. Minimal Compact Live was recorded in 1987 in Rennes, France, this last album came out after the band split in '88.

In 2003 there was a minor flood of releases: There's Always Now (Remixes & Remakes) and Returning Wheel (Classics, Remixes & Archives). In 2004, The band reformed briefly for a series of shows in Israel and a European tour. Crammed published a "best of" compilation and a box set containing unreleased material and remixes to coincide with the reunion. Berry & Fortis are currently collaborating under the name Fortisakharof, Malka & Max are in Githead & Samy continues to DJ and make music under the name DJ Morpheus. In July 2008, the band reunited for series of live shows in Tel Aviv, Israel, starting on July 8, 2008, marking the 60th birthday of Samy Birnbach. Raging and Dancing - The Anthology was released in 2011, it was announced that Minimal Compact would be reuniting for a short tour of 5 dates in Israel in January–February 2012. The band would perform in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, between January 25–February 2, 2012. Minimal Compact reunited once again for 2 dates in Israel in January 2016. The high demand caused the band to extend the short tour to 4 dates, the band would perform in Tel Aviv, between January 20-26, 2016

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"One" is Minimal Compact's originally self-titled debut mini-album, which was recorded and released in 1981. The band was still a trio at the time (consisting of Samy Birnbach, Berry Sakharof and Malka Spigel). They were assisted for this recording by Dick Polak (from Dutch band Mecano, who played accordion), Marc Hollander (woodwind & organ), Corrie Bolten (synth) and drummers Pieter Bannenberg and Stephane Karo. Containing a.o. the emblematic Statik Dancin', which became a classic, this mini-album immediately put Minimal Compact on the map.

"One By One" was the first full-length album by the band, who had become a quartet with the adjunction of drummer Max Franken. It was recorded during the Spring & Summer of ‘82, first in Dordrecht then in London’s Berry Street Studio. Dick Polak and Marc Hollander co-produced and guested on various instruments. The MC sound of that period is best exemplified by a song like “Babylonian Tower”, with its driving rhythm, funky guitar, apocalyptical lyrics and Middle-Eastern flavouring.



Minimal Compact - One + One By One ( 289mb)

One
01 Statik Dancin' 3:47
02 Creation Is Perfect (I Am A Camera) 4:28
03 Ready-Made Diary 4:37
04 To Get Inside 5:18
05 Happy Babouge 3:29
One By One
06 Invocation (For Things To Come) 3:17
07 Cold Life 3:55
08 Take Me Away 2:45
09 It Takes A Lifetime 3:01
10 Disguise 4:42
11 Babylonian Tower 3:30
12 Orkha Bamidbar (The Wandering Song) 4:25
13 Head Section 2:20
14 Morpheus Secrets 4:48
15 Ships 1:55

Minimal Compact - One + One By One (ogg  124mb)

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Despite the Colin Newman ties, Minimal Compact made long-limbed post-punk from a bleaker, less-spastic perspective. Deadly Weapons emphasized the situational decay of a lot of what had become standard in early-'80s anti-pop. Minimal Compact's world was stiff and artificial, made to underscore the bizarro funk of the brass and the woefully droning and distorted vocals. Everything, in fact, was swollen with a phobic sense of performance, as if the band was afraid to touch their instruments. "There's Always Now," an exaggerated shadow play of the Cure's Pornography, is still fantastically depressing; the title track is almost synth pop in spirit; and "The Howling Hole" is a mangled interpretation of a repetitive, barely decipherable, tribal-drum Middle Eastern snarl. Underappreciated, if nothing else.



Minimal Compact - Deadly Weapons + Next One Is Real EP ( flac  345mb)

Deadly Weapons
01 Next One Is Real 3:03
02 Losing Tracks (In Time) 3:46
03 The Well 3:04
04 There's Always Now 3:03
06 5Nada 4:19
07 Not Knowing 4:08
0D eadly Weapons 4:24
08 Burnt-Out Hotel 3:55
09 The Howling Hole 3:22
Next One Is Real
10 Next One Is Real (Radio Remix) 3:46
11 Not Knowing (Remix) 3:57
12 Babylonian Tower (Remix) 3:37
13 Hole Version (Incidental Remix) 3:27
14 Next One Is Real (Extended Remix) 5:51
15  EPIntrospection 4:54

Minimal Compact - Deadly Weapons + Next One Is Real EP (ogg  142mb)

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It is dark, but it's very pleasant, with excellent atmosphere, although drums sometimes sound too harsh, too mid 80s - for years I thought that was rhythm machine. Also, as great as it is, there are some less than perfect moments: first Sananat which isn't bad, but isn't as good as the rest of the album. Secondly, Shouts & Kisses is the weakest song on the album and is pretty unnecessary, still, the rest of the album is just perfect. For minimalism sake, I think it was their best one, their peak of inspiration. In this album you can clearly hear the amazing voice of Malka Spiegel (singer, bass), especially in a lovely brilliant (and quiet) song called "When I Go". It seems the album deals with the powerful emotions of the human nature. It's so good that it's painful for being a little bit short work.



Minimal Compact - Raging Souls ( 225mb)

01 The Traitor 4:27
02 My Will 3:43
03 This World 3:59
04 When I Go 3:14
05 Autumn Leaves 4:26
06 Raging Souls 5:17
07 Returning Wheel 4:30
08 Sananat 4:05
09 Shouts & Kisses 5:45

Minimal Compact - Raging Souls (ogg  91mb)

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When post-punk’s Minimal Compact album The Figure One Cuts ebbed from my stereo I half heartedly swore that David Byrne had to be lurking somewhere in the background, as the music wasn’t so much post-punk, ... it was more of a multi cultural ensemble where art-rock meets world music head on, showcasing a sense of mature refined versatility; yet the band has been able to avoid that scheme of self-conscious artistry that often fails to find either intelligence or tastefulness.  Minimal Compact mange to do all this and more, including the development of every member of the band or perhaps more formally, a troupe, where each member is a character in their own right. Perhaps most evident is the band’s ability to switch gears and interweave British art-rock with Middle Eastern inspired folk, creating a sound thats slightly Afrocentric, mixed with a baroque infused Beatlesque pop, and all with a danceable atmospheric beat.  The producer John Fryer (This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins) Produced the album.

As part of the Made for Measure series of records of soundtrack material, Lowlands Flight diverges from Minimal Compact's usual avant-garde rock songs. One side of the disc has music that accompanied a performance by Blue Ran Dances, while the other side contains background music for a Dutch radio program, and as might be expected, most of these pieces are atmospheric and moody instrumentals. Not that some of Minimal Compact's more typical moves don't show up, from the bits of Middle Eastern melody that sift through on many of the tracks to the slow and clunky, but thunderous drum rhythms on "The Conference of Snakes," to the dark but elegant atmosphere that permeates the record. A few tracks like "Scums & Halfwits" have some distorted vocals, and several more pieces, especially on the second half, add in bits of spoken word. There is some nice piano work on several of the pieces, especially "Clock Bird" and "Waterfall." On "Clock Bird" the slow gloomy melody is carried on the low end of the keys while a pair of repetitive chords at the high-end act as rhythm, and on "Waterfall" the piece starts off with a bouncy guitar lick before more complex piano blossoms out of it. "Naked as You Came" is an even stranger piece, even in Minimal Compact's repertoire, as some crooning and Hawaiian guitar are thrown in for a haunting and beautiful piece of avant-lounge. A few of the other pieces don't really rise above their status as "background" music, but Lowlands Flight does offer a different take on Minimal Compact, and is one of the more dynamic records in the Made for Measure series.



Minimal Compact - The Figure One Cuts + Lowlands Flight ( 441mb)

01 Nil-Nil 4:52
02 Everything Is Wonder 4:54
03 Inner Station 4:13
04 Fading Light 3:31
05 This Scent Of Love 4:15
06 Piece Of Green 5:16
07 Is It So? 4:22
08 New Clear Twist 4:47
09 Childhood's End 5:01
10 Night Light 2:15
11 Immigrant Song 3:26
12 I Imagine 4:08

Minimal Compact - Lowlands Flight

01 Clock Bird 6:44
02 Ararat 2:34
03 Scums & Halfwifts 3:08
04 Low Flight 4:07
05 Fatapolis 3:24
06 How Do You Regard Suicide? 4:52
07 The Conference Of Snakes 5:22
08 Waterfall 3:40
09 Naked As You Came 4:02

Minimal Compact - The Figure One Cuts + Lowlands Flight (ogg 190mb)

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Hello,


Today's artist was a top-notch pianist/composer/arranger, he was the musical director of nightclub shows at the Tropicana in Havana by 1948.
Very active in the 1950s, he was considered one of the giants of Cuban music, arranging many recordings, composing mambos, and organizing Afro-Cuban jazz jam sessions. He defected from Cuba in 1960 and by 1963 had settled in Stockholm. In 1994, after 34 years off records, he cut Bebo Rides Again for the Messidor label, not only playing piano but composing eight numbers and arranging 11 songs in the 36 hours before the first session; he was 76 at the time......N'Joy

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Bebo Valdés was born Dionisio Ramón Emilio Valdés Amaro on October 9, 1918, in the village of Quivicán, Cuba, near Havana. He started his career as a pianist in the nightclubs of Havana during the 1940s. He replaced René Hernández as pianist and arranger in Julio Cueva's band. In October 1946 the band recorded "Rareza del Siglo", one of Bebo's most famous mambos. From 1948 to 1957 he worked as pianist and arranger for the vedette Rita Montaner, who was the lead act in the Tropicana cabaret. His orchestra, Sabor de Cuba, and that of Armando Valdés, alternated at the Tropicana, backing singers such as Benny Moré and Pío Leyva. Valdés played a role in the adaptation of the mambo into the big band format (it was previously performed by charangas) during the late 1940s and 1950s, and developed a new rhythm to compete with Perez Prado's mambo, called the batanga. Valdés was also an important figure in the incipient Afro-Cuban jazz scene in Havana, taking part in sessions commissioned by American producer Norman Granz during 1952. These sessions yielded the famous improvised piece "Con Poco Coco" among others, which served as a precedent to Panart's descarga sessions (with one exception). In the late 1950s he recorded with Nat "King" Cole. In 1960, accompanied by Sabor de Cuba's lead vocalist Rolando Laserie, Bebo defected from Cuba to Mexico. He then lived briefly in the United States before touring Europe, and eventually settled in Stockholm, where he lived until 2007. In Sweden he was instrumental in spreading the techniques of Cuban music and Latin jazz.

Valdés' career got a late career boost in 1994 when he teamed up with saxophone player Paquito D'Rivera to release a CD called Bebo Rides Again. In 2000, the film Calle 54 by Fernando Trueba brought his piano playing to a wide audience. In 2003, he and Diego El Cigala, a famous Spanish cantaor (flamenco singer), recorded the album Lágrimas Negras (Black Tears), a fusion of Cuban rhythms and flamenco vocals. During his career, Valdés—one of the founders of Latin jazz, and a pioneer in bringing Afro-Cuban sacred rhythms to popular dance music—won seven Grammy Awards: two for El Arte del Sabor (2002), one for Lágrimas Negras, and two for Bebo de Cuba in 2006 (in the categories "Best Traditional Tropical Album" and "Best Latin Jazz Album").

His last musical production was one fittingly recorded with his son: Bebo y Chucho Valdés: Juntos para Siempre (Together Forever 2008),[10] winner of the Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album at the 52nd Grammy Awards in 2010; they also won the Latin Grammy Award on the same field. In 2004, he was again filmed by Trueba, in El milagro de Candeal in Brazil, and later composed a score for Trueba's 2010 film Chico and Rita, which included bits from his own life. Chico and Rita ends with the dedication "a Bebo". In May 2011, Bebo Valdés was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.

Valdés was married to Pilar Valdés. This marriage produced five children, one of whom is the pianist Chucho Valdés. In 1963 he stopped in Sweden on a tour with the Lecuona Cuban Boys. There he met the 18-year-old Rose Marie Pehrson (August 28, 1928), a cavalry officer's daughter. They got married the same year and he settled in Sweden. He described it as the most important moment of his life: "It was like being hit by lightning," he said. "If you meet a woman and you want to change your life you have to choose between love and art." They remained together until her death in 2012. Valdés was in the middle of the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, which he had suffered for several years, when he died in Stockholm, Sweden, on March 22, 2013, aged 94.


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This 1959 compilation of the maestro, Bebo Valdes, was recorded in Havana by Everest Records. The sound quality is exceptional since the stereo masters were used. With the onslaught of Cuban music, many CDs were released with less than dynamic sound reproduction. It is satisfying to hear the vibrant bottom and midrange in these classic recordings. These choice tracks were recorded just before the great pianist fled Cuba in hopes that the regime and his exile would be short-lived. Music trumps politics, so these great arrangements of the legendary pianist provide a peek back to a glorious golden era. The orchestra is in top form and so is the maestro. This is an integral part of the mother lode of the Cuban big-band sound. There's plenty of drive and percussion in the cha chas and mambos to move the dustiest of shoes and hips. With all due respect to the revival spurred by Ry Cooder, gems like this album are some of the original fountains that flowed during the heyday of Cuban big bands. This album stands on its own and is timeless in its appeal. Highly recommended.



 Bebo Valdez y His Orchestra - Cuban Dance Party    (flac  297mb)

01 Babalu 2:54
02 Cha Cha No.1 2:39
03 El Cumbanchero 2:41
04 Habana 2:47
05 A Quien Enganes 3:30
06 Ita Morreal 2:37
07 El Manisero 2:39
08 Feria De Los Siglos 3:29
09 Aquellos Ojos Verdes 3:05
10 Sacuma  2:21
11 Tu Sabes Bien Que Te Queiro 2:37
Bonus Tracks Featuring Los Cardobeses
12 Besame Mucho 3:30
13 Los Tintosos 3:02
14 Poinciana 4:24
15 El Bodeguero 3:03

Bebo Valdez y His Orchestra - Cuban Dance Party  (ogg  117mb)

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This album is both historic and quite exciting. Bebo Valdes (father of Chucho, the leader of Irakere) was one of the giants of Cuban jazz and popular music until he fled the country in 1960. Amazingly enough, he had not recorded since, despite living peacefully in Sweden. This recording is also significant in that it is one of the first times that Cuban exiles had recorded with Cubans still living under Castro (guitarist Carlos Emilio Morales and percussionist Amadito Valdes). Paquito D'Rivera (who organized this set) deserves a lot of credit for its success, but Valdes is the real star. He composed eight new selections in the 36 hours before the recordings began, although he was 76 years old at the time. Although Valdes claimed that, with the lack of sleep and excess of writing (he also arranged ten of the 11 songs), his fingers felt a bit stiff, he plays quite well throughout the very enjoyable music. The final results are full of strong melodies, stirring rhythms, exciting ensembles, and lots of variety. The instrumentation differs on each track, with plenty of solo space for D'Rivera (on both alto and clarinet), trombonist Juan-Pablo Torres (who takes "Veinte Anos" as a duet with Valdes), trumpeter Diego Urcola, and the pianist. The percussionists work together quite well behind the lead voices, and every selection is well worth hearing. This is one of the finest Afro-Cuban jazz recordings of recent times. Highly recommended.



Bebo Valdes - Bebo Rides Again    (flac  297mb)

01 Al Dizzy Gillespie 4:57
02 Anda 4:51
03 Pa' Goza 4:23
04 Felicia 5:20
05 La Comparsa 4:53
06 A La Marcheré 3:41
07 Pan Com Timba 6:57
08 Veinte Años 3:36
09 Pierre Jamballah 5:31
10 To Mario Bauza 6:03
11 Oleaje 2:01

Bebo Valdes - Bebo Rides Again  (ogg    128mb)

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Bebo Valdés, Eladio Reinón, David Pastor, Matthew Simon, John DuBuclet, Mikel Andueza, Victor de Diego, José Luis Gámez, Rickard Valdés
deliver a stunning album that is so tight, elegant, and fun. The kind of record you put when you want the music to make you feel good, for a long time. Bebo is the cruise control, his piano figures of the band's solution mostly Spanish in a groove, letting the soloists take their time.  And their improvisations are the thing to wait for.



Eladio Reinon Latin Big Band & Bebo Valdes - Afrocuban Jazz Suite No.1    (flac  421mb)

01 Cachao 10:22
02 Ecuación 13:09
03 Devoción 6:23
04 Nocturno en Batanga 10:31
05 Copla nº4 4:47
06 El Son de Cecilio 11:05
07 Final: "¿Ar Ni Fröken Pehrson?" 0:28

08 The Big "B" 9:18
09 José's Guaracha 7:17

Eladio Reinon Latin Big Band & Bebo Valdes - Afrocuban Jazz Suite No.1   (ogg  177mb)

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A major name in Cuba in the 1950s, pianist Bebo Valdes defected from Cuba in 1960 and in 1963 settled in Stockholm. He was rediscovered and finally recorded again in 1994 (though he had played locally all along). This date reunites him at the age of 82 with bassist Cachao (also 82) in a group also including the 74-year old conga player Patato Valdes and (on three numbers) Paquito D'Rivera on alto and clarinet. The music is full of charming melodies, subtle interplay, and wonderful playing. In fact, the performances (which are full of rich themes) rewards repeated and close listenings. A gem.



 Bebo Valdes - El Arte del Sabor    (flac  274mb)

01 Lamento Cubano 3:29
02 Son De La Loma 3:24
03 El Maranon 3:13
04 Bolero Potpurrí 3:09
05 Priquitín Pin Pon 4:25
06 Negro De Sociedad 2:15
07 Buche Y Pluma "Na Má" 3:59
08 El Reloj De Pastora 3:50
09 Conga Potpourrí (3:39)
10 Agguere 6:44
11 Pare Cochero 2:14
12 Cumbachero 4:30
13 Si Llegó A Besarte 3:39
14 Guaracha Popurri 3:32
15 Romance En La Habana 4:29
16 Route 66 5:02
17 Adios Panamá / Para Vigo Me Voy 1:47

Bebo Valdes - El Arte del Sabor (ogg   mb)

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Hello,


Today's Artists are an American funk and soul band signed to Daptone Records. They are part of a revivalist movement recreating mid-1960s to mid-1970s style funk and soul music. In December 2014, the band was nominated for a Grammy, in the category Best R&B Album of the Year for Give the People What They Want. Yeah... N Joy

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 By the sound of them, you would have thought Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings started making funk-threaded soul music together in the 1960s. Few devotedly retro acts were as convincing. Few singers as skilled as Sharon Jones at stuffing notes with ache and meaning would be willing to invest in a sound so fully occupied by the likes of Bettye LaVette and Tina Turner in the Ike years, too. But what Jones brought to the funkified table had legs of its own -- eight of them, to be exact -- and they belonged to Binky Griptite, Bugaloo Velez, Homer Steinweiss, and Dave Guy -- her Dap-Kings.

Jones, like James Brown, was born in Augusta, Georgia; there she sang in her church choir, and from fellow parishioners picked up the kind of back-patting she needed to convince her to go mainstream. As a teenager, she moved with her family to Brooklyn, where she immersed herself in 1970s disco and funk with an eye toward cutting a record of her own. Instead, studios came calling and with them steady work -- by her twenties, Jones was turning in backup vocals for gospel, soul, disco, and blues artists, most of it uncredited. In the '80s, however, Jones' sound was deemed unfashionable, and instead of pushing ahead with her soul diva's dream she went back to church singing. She also took a job as a corrections officer at New York's Rikers Island.

It wouldn't be until 1996 that Desco Records would rediscover Jones' sweat-basted, lived-in talent. With that label's house band, the Soul Providers, Jones released several singles in the late '90s; their warmth and genuineness propelled the act across the Atlantic, and Jones picked up a moniker -- the queen of funk -- that stuck. Jones released her first full-length with the Dap-Kings, Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, after signing with Daptone Records in 2002. Years of touring behind it, as well as cutting singles with other artists (including Greyboy) ensued. In 2005, Jones re-teamed with the Dap-Kings for the winking groovefest that is Naturally, following it up two years later with 100 Days, 100 Nights. Jones also had a bit part in The Great Debaters as the singer Lila. A new studio effort, I Learned the Hard Way, appeared in 2010.

In 2013, Jones revealed that she had been diagnosed with cancer -- initially in the bile ducts, and later stage two pancreatic cancer -- but she continued to perform as often as her therapy schedule would permit, sometimes appearing on-stage with a bald head after chemotherapy caused her hair to fall out. In late 2013, Jones was well enough to complete work on the next Dap-Kings album, and Give the People What They Want appeared in 2014. Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple premiered a film about the vocalist, Miss Sharon Jones!, at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival; Jones was in attendance for the debut screening, and revealed that her cancer had returned but defiantly added, "I'm gonna keep fighting, we got a long way to go." Fittingly, the determined Jones and the Dap-Kings returned in October 2015 with a collection of Christmas and Hanukkah tunes titled It's a Holiday Soul Party. As the film Miss Sharon Jones! was poised to go into theatrical release, in August 2016 Daptone Records released an original soundtrack album. The Miss Sharon Jones! album featured a selection of Jones' most memorable performances along with a new track, the autobiographical "I'm Still Here." Sadly, however, she would lose her valiant battle with cancer, which took her life, at age 60, in November of that year. Shortly before her death, Jones completed vocals for a final album with the Dap-Kings. That album, Soul of a Woman, was released in November 2017, a year after her death. No specific announcement has been made regarding the band's future; however, The Dap-Kings have subsequently performed at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017.


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It's hard to believe that Sharon Jones' debut LP is a product of the year 2002, for several reasons. Given the excellent singles she recorded for Desco beginning in the late '90s, it seems like she would have gotten the opportunity for a full-length sooner; plus, her brand of raw, heavy, hard-driving funk is such a throwback to the '70s, and she pulls it off so well, that you wonder how she could have escaped that decade without at least a few rare, classic 45s (in the vein of labelmate Lee Fields). It's not hard to believe she once made her living as a prison guard, based on the tough-as-nails, no-nonsense performances she belts out on Dap Dippin' With Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, the first full-length release on Desco's descendant, Dap-Tone. Backed by the Dap-Tone house band (a conglomeration of studio pros with connections reaching back to the Desco orbit), Jones delivers a storming set of tunes that would have sounded perfectly at home on the James Brown's Original Funky Divas compilation. The style and quality are pretty consistent all the way through, but it's hard not to single out the nearly unrecognizable cover of Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done for Me Lately," which is transformed into a churning blast of funk full of biting guitars (and nary a synth or drum machine in sight). Other highlights include the chunky leadoff track, "Got a Thing on My Mind," the would-be dance-craze "The Dap Dip," the slow-burning "Make It Good to Me," and the trials-and-tribulations tale "Ain't It Hard." Plus, label head Gabriel Roth throws in his usual "authentic" trappings -- the fake live introduction running down Jones'"hits," the intentionally dated copy on the back cover -- that make the whole package even more fun. All in all, a terrific debut.



 Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Dap-Dippin' With.. (flac   266mb)

01 (Introduction) 1:30
02 Got A Thing On My Mind 2:58
03 What Have You Done For Me Lately? 3:16
04 The Dap Dip 4:01
05 Give Me A Chance 3:10
06 Cut The Line 3:28
07 Got To Be The Way It Is 3:25
08 Make It Good To Me 4:25
09 Ain't It Hard 4:30
10 Pick It Up, Lay It In The Cut 4:07
11 Casella Walk 3:09

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Dap-Dippin' With.. (ogg    84mb)

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Following up her excellent 2002 debut, Sharon Jones stays true to the formula she laid down on her early releases and Dap Dippin' by presenting another session of full-force funk that pays homage to the genre's glory years without coming off as contrived. The deep funk revival continues with Jones belting out commanding vocal performances that are uncompromisingly forceful yet full of rich, soulful emotion. It's a session worthy of being found in any beat-miner's record collection and any funk enthusiast's basket of obscurities and rarities. Her cover of "This Land Is Your Land" is equally as impressive, as she somehow takes the song from being an American folk standard and turns it into a full-on sonic explosion. Fans of her earlier work will no doubt find great joy in this follow-up, and those seeking Jones out for the first time certainly will not be disappointed in what they find.



Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Naturally (flac   272mb)

01 How Do I Let A Good Man Down? 3:03
02 Natural Born Lover 3:05
03 Stranded In Your Love 5:47
04 My Man Is A Mean Man 3:16
05 You're Gonna Get It 5:00
06 How Long Do I Have To Wait For You? 4:04
07 This Land Is Your Land 4:31
08 Your Thing Is A Drag 3:33
09 Fish In The Dish 3:18
10 All Over Again 4:44

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Naturally (ogg  102mb)

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Sharon Jones, the big-voiced lead singer of the Dap-Kings -- a band that recently began making its name known outside those enthusiasts of the Daptone label and the reaches of the soul community thanks to appearances with Amy Winehouse and work for Mark Ronson, including a version of Dylan's "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" -- is no music-world neophyte. 100 Days, 100 Nights is just her third full-length with the Dap-Kings, but Jones has been singing on and off since the 1970s, without much of a break until she began working with her current label. Meaning, she's certainly paid her dues, and she has enough life experience behind her voice to make the words she sings sound that much truer. Because soul music -- and this isn't neo-soul, or contemporary R&B, but straight-up Stax and Motown brassy soul -- is so much more than the actual lyrics themselves; it's about the inflection and emotion that the vocalist is able to exude, and Jones proves herself to be master of that, moving from coy to romantic to defiant easily and believably. The album is much smoother, even gentler, than her previous releases, and though the Dap-Kings still power their way through the ten songs with bright horn licks, inspired drumming, and staccato guitar lines, there's a deeper, bluesier edge to the record, heard in "Let Them Knock" or the slower "Humble Me.""Don't let me forget who I am," Jones croons in the latter, her voice rising to a sweet falsetto at the end of the phrase. It's a very clean record, not over-produced but well produced, with a lot of great pop moments tucked in between the brassier, funkier bits. The title track relies on a sultry organ and a minor vamp to make its point, while "Something's Changed" uses strings and punctuated sax and bass as the singer drops a bit of her lungs out, bringing a kind of immediacy to her words, as if the actuality of the situation around her hasn't quite set in enough for her to wail about it, as if she's just realizing it and listeners are right there to hear about it. But that's the magic and power of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: their ability to convey passion and pain, regret and celebration, found in the arrangements and the tail ends of notes, in the rhythms and phrasing, and it is exactly that which makes 100 Days, 100 Nights such an excellent release.



 Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights (flac   224mb)

01 100 Days, 100 Nights 3:45
02 Nobody's Baby 2:27
03 Tell Me 2:46
04 Be Easy 3:03
05 When The Other Foot Drops, Uncle 3:15
06 Let Them Knock 4:29
07 Something's Changed 2:56
08 Humble Me 4:05
09 Keep On Looking 2:49
10 Answer Me 4:08

 Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights (ogg   82mb)

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Since so few acts in the new millennium attempt the old-school soul that’s the specialty of Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, it may be easy to assume that they’re heralded simply because of their rarity: although they certainly sound like plenty of acts from back then, they’re praised because nobody else sounds like them now, something that’s all well and good but doesn’t quite suggest how good the group really is. I Learned the Hard Way, their fourth album, goes a long way in illustrating that they’re very, very good, holding their own with all the ‘60s Southern and Northern soul they hold so dear. In fact, the striking thing about the album is that contrary to their deep soul rep, Jones & the Dap Kings spend just as much time riding smooth easy grooves as they do pouring out some sweat: despite its tough title, “I Learned the Hard Way” breezes with the cool assurance of Curtis Mayfield’s Windy City and the instrumental “The Reason” shimmers like the sound of Philadelphia circa 1969. A large part of Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings charm is that they mix up these regional styles, blending them into a ‘60s soul fantasia, but they also favor recordings that sound like the ’60s: there’s air and grit within the grooves of I Learned the Hard Way that gives it an authentic kick. Of course, all this would be surface charm if the group didn’t deliver songs, and they do -- songs that swagger and stir the soul, fitting within tradition without being beholden to it, songs that prove that Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings are the real deal.



 Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - I Learned The Hard Way (flac   252mb)

01 The Game Gets Old 3:55
02 I Learned The Hard Way 3:47
03 Better Things 3:40
04 Give It Back 3:22
05 Money 3:22
06 The Reason 2:20
07 Window Shopping 4:35
08 She Ain't A Child No More 2:35
09 I'll Still Be True 3:48
10 Without A Heart 2:45
11 If You Call 3:00
12 Mama Don't Like My Man 2:31

 Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - I Learned The Hard Way (ogg   93mb)

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Hello,


Today's artists are an UK collective which is a strong contender for the ultimate cult electronic band. Anonymous, uncompromising, wryly humorous and famously fond of weird album packaging, the band has grown a loyal and obsessive fan base since the original lineup of Ben Ponton, Peter Jensen and Robin Storey made their recorded debut in 1982...  ......N-Joy

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.Most prolific in 1980's and 90's, the band's discography presents an original, experimental lo-fi concoction of electronics, found sounds, assorted acoustic instruments, vocal samples, tape effects, industrial clatter and all kinds of location recordings. Sometimes it sounds like a hybrid of experimental electronics and Third World music. At others times it's almost pure industrial, forged with metallic drones and mechanical noise, as cold as stone. It's ambient music, of a kind, though some of it is too abrasive and/or energetic to really be considered as such. Zoviet France's music certainly demands much of the listener, but with listener effort comes reward. If you're intrigued, here are some suggested releases to begin exploring.

The early classic Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music (1985) sounds - unsurprisingly - nothing like its absurd title suggests. The sprawling 3CD set is a fascinating and strangely seductive exercise in ambient noise and atmospheres with traces of melody and tonality. The sheer variety on offer is the album's greatest strength. "Decoy" resembles early German psychedelic spacemusic, its surreal beauty unanchored by beats or recognisable harmony. "Sidi" is an indescribable concoction of found sounds and fluttering bells. "Sein" is a nocturnal sound painting fashioned with eerie drones and watery effects. It's a good album for newcomers; the short track lengths mean even the most demanding moments don't last too long.

The Soviet Songs album is a Zoviet France template of sorts; many of the band's subsequent albums echo parts of it, or emphasise and further explore a certain element.

The intoxicating Loh Land (1987) and Just An Illusion (1990), for example, both have a deeply tribal current. Zither and flute melodies, exotic poly-rhythms and assorted Arabic vocal samples are electronically manipulated and woven among the grimy atmospheres and metallic rings. These albums are dark, often surreal and strangely cinematic, with definite echoes of prolific British artist Muslimgauze.

The excellent 90's releases What Is Not True (1993) and Digilogue (1996) emphasise another element: drone music, this time explored over longer distances. The 60-minute "Cyclonic Sub Alien" from the former album is a remarkable track best heard at volume in a darkened room. It flirts with muted percussion, harmonic throat singing, sustained bell tones and bright metallic washes of sound, before finally melting into a lovely harmonic drone - the last being somewhat atypical for the band, but making for a highly effective conclusion.

The band continues today, although Ben Ponton is the only remaining member of the original lineup. Some hardcore Zoviet France fans much prefer the music being released by The Reformed Faction, a group formed in 2006 by ex-members Andy Eardley, Mark Spybey and Robin Storey.

and when there's not that much to go on a good interview will do.

Interview with Ben of Soviet France, by and (C) Brian Duguid, Grand National Day, 6/4/91, shortly before the group toured North America.

Like Nocturnal Emissions, Soviet France have become a cult band. With a reputation for obscurity that would put many others to shame, they've been quietly producing their own distinctive blend of industrial sound collage throughout the last decade. Noisy and primitive material has gradually given way to, well, noisy and sophisticated material. Some of the abstract music they are now creating is minimal, ambient, unintrusive, some of it is loud and disconcerting, but it all manages to define a sonic space very much of their own. The traditions are clearly visible, both the admitted academic and rock-born sound collagists of the sixties and seventies, but Soviet France's music is distinguished by its very personal quality. A pop analogue might be The Blue Nile, who combine discordance with harmony in a wonderfully serene music that has few easy landmarks to refer to in the rest of its musical terrain.

Again like the Emissions, they started life roughly a decade ago, in the fallout from the innovative European music of the 70s and punk, and in the heyday of "industrial" music.

"None of us had any real musical background, we just decided to be in bands. Without any outside influence we very quickly decided we wanted a band that completely ignored conventional approaches to music, including the minimal amount of training we had ourselves."

Of course, at the end of the seventies everyone was forming bands (didn't you? OK, neither did I. Maybe not everyone.) But most of them seemed to find their favourite three chord thrash, get stuck there, and give up within a year or two to become accountants. Maybe it all just lies in the previous influences. Soviet France's are not that surprising when you come to listen to their music.

"We were into all the more familiar stuff, like Can, and Neu, and early Kraftwerk, all the German bands. A lot of classical stuff as well like Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez, and Luciano Berio. It was the stuff that I personally, and I think this goes for the other members of the group, had more of an instinct for. We felt closer to it than conventional commercial music. At the same time we've got very catholic tastes, we listen to all kinds of music. We're just as much into Motorhead as we are into Stockhausen. I think the common factor in all of it is an element of noise really. Noise is a non-musical sound format, which you find in Motorhead just as much as you do in Stockhausen."

So that's the influences out of the way. But there is more to the music of Soviet France than just genre or stylistic considerations.

"I think we were searching for something else within music, something that meant a lot more to us personally than you would get being in a conventional band really. Most conventional bands are performers. They try to supply something as entertainment to an audience. We weren't interested in that at all. We were interested in a lot of the power within music for creating states of mind. and revealing parts of your own personality to yourself. Also as an avenue or a medium for accessing some of the more primitive instincts and subconscious: stuff that goes on in everybody's heads, but most people don't have an outlet for."

Soviet France certainly go some way to following up that avenue. It's generally a cyclic, abstract music, looping and shifting textures of noise around to create a soundscape that certainly doesn't exist anywhere else in this world. It's lack of obvious connections to any conventional instrumentation or sometimes any other recognisable sounds can make it sound alien and unwelcome. On the other hand, sometimes there are recognisable fragments swimming through the music, brief snatches of voice, or perhaps something else that sounds familiar but rarely identifiable. This side of the mix will inevitable trigger instinctive associations in the mind of the listener, helping to personalise it and drawing them in. It's repetitive nature is highly entrancing, very hypnotic. Although Soviet France feel their music is a highly personal expression, there is quite a lot there to attract others to it.

"We produce music all the time. The figure we always quote, and it still holds true, is that what we've actually released to the world is about 5% of what we've actually recorded. We record everything we do. Making music is an end in itself to us. We make music just because we like doing it. We have a huge archive of unreleased material. When we come to release something, on CD or whatever, the reasons for choosing that particular material is that it seems more important musically to us than anything else we have lying around at the time ...

"Making music is what I like doing more than any other serious intellectual or physical activity that I'm involved in. Anything else is subsidiary and secondary to it. I'm really into the music. We're fortunate in a way, in that because part of the way that we produce the music is to enter into a sort of altered state of consciousness, without trying to sound too pretentious. We just switch off all conscious sensory perceptions, and we start making the music. Once we've finished and we've come out of that it's very exhausting for a start, and you always feel immediately afterwards that what we've produced is a load of rubbish. Maybe two days later we listen back to it. Because we're listening to it in a different state of consciousness, it's like listening to somebody else's music. I find myself totally addicted to it. It's music I like listening to over and above any other kind of music. We're fortunate in that we can both the producers of the music and in turn the audience, without being too critical or feeling so involved in it that we are unable to listen to our music in the way that many musicians are. Having said that, we always have this problem in that actually releasing something exorcises these kinds of feelings. In many ways, to release a piece of our music really is giving something of ourselves away to people. The process of getting that music into a state where it can be released on CD or vinyl or whatever means that we have to listen to it in such a close and detailed way, through the production processes, that we take it apart. It loses all the previous relevance that it had for ourselves. I've never had any children, but the closest thing I can imagine to it is like losing a child ... it's really taking something away from us."

Regardless of the attachment that the group may have to their own music, or the feelings it can generate in open-minded listeners, its actual production comes down to what may seem like a very mundane process. Most of what the group do is improvised, and then edited to impose a coherent structure upon it. Because it isn't actually composed, it's arguable whether it's ever likely to produce a single masterpiece. Also, it means that the music is to a large extent irrepeatable. Some of the sounds and developments used in it can be reused and repeated, but because of the improvisation always involved, it can never be the same twice. Because this means there is such a huge quantity of Soviet France music, and such a seemingly huge quantity of potential music still to come, it makes brief excerpts (like albums) seem somehow less important. In conventional musical thought, if there is so much of something, then it can't really be worth anything - it's only the rarities, the one-offs, the composed masterpieces that can ever achieve true musical magnificence. This has an element of truth in it, but it ignores the fact that there is more to music than just its function as a series of works of art. Because there is so much of it, Soviet France's music achieves a far more mundane but far more significant result. It integrates itself into life more, becomes more closely entwined with the people who produce it. Compositional master-works may shine as artistic beacons of light, but they shine all too rarely, whereas Soviet France's music is a part of their day-to-day life, and with them whenever they want.

For us poor schmucks who only buy the stuff, it can never form such an important place in our life. It's someone else's personal expression, not ours. We can only get some sort of intellectual or emotional resonance in bite-sized chunks. But that's hardly the point. The point is that what Soviet France do anyone can do: if music really can have intuitive, subconscious application, and if only music that someone produces themself is ever really going to give them the meaning that they need, then surely they should get out their and do exactly what Soviet France have done. The production process can be as mystical or as mundane as anyone wants:

"About 90% of our material is generated from acoustic sound sources. We've quite a collection between us of ethnic musical instruments, instruments that we built ourselves, or objects that we use as sound sources. That's always the starting point. We set up a few mikes around the place, wherever we decide to make the recording. We have these boxfuls of acoustic instruments, and we just improvise there on the spot. We generate about two to three hours worth of material, and then post produce it. We mix what we've got, reprocess it, and complete a finished set of recordings which maybe one day will get released. In a way, there's two very apposite sides to the production. We start by making very live recordings, very acoustic recordings. Then we process those in a very artificial way to produce what finally becomes the music."

At the time of this interview, the group had performed live less than a dozen times. Immediately afterwards they toured North America, taking in over thirty venues. Their most recent performance was due to be as part of the Eurobeat Avant-Garde event in London in October, which amongst others was due to feature Nocturnal Emissions, Konstruktivists and Morphogenesis. (This event was later cancelled). Performance is a slightly different matter to the production of a studio recording:

"The only difference is in the editing. Live performance is a continuous sort of musical production, almost identical to the way that we produce music for a recording. The only difference being that we maybe cut out and reprocess some of the stuff on its way into a recording ... In fact, although it seems quite far removed from what people hear in the releases that we make, it's still Soviet France music and very recognisable as such."

Throughout their history, Soviet France have frequently been lumped in with any number of other "industrial" or post-industrial groups, from Throbbing Gristle onwards. Having initially attached themselves to the label Red Rhino, they quickly became the label's token "weird" group, producing esoteric and obscure music that was sure to find its own cult audience but probably not get much further. It's only natural that they achieved some recognition as part of the "lunatic" fringe of the burgeoning indie music scene.

"We never felt we were in the industrial tradition which was very much the contemporary movement from which we sprang. It was round about that time where everybody seems to have arrived at the same point and started lots of things, like Nocturnal Emissions, and what Throbbing Gristle were doing, and Test Dept's early days, and everybody else ... 23 Skidoo. We were aware of what everyone else was doing, but because we were in Newcastle which is quite a cultural island in itself, we didn't feel any bonding to that at all, we didn't feel any attachment to it. We saw ourselves as very isolated and very much out on a limb. It didn't worry us, we were quite happy in that situation, quite happy to continue fiddling about with the ideas we had. We didn't feel that we had to conform to any kind of preconceptions about what we were doing at all ...

"I think there seems to have been a particular generation of people who arrived at a particular point in their own minds, post-sixties, post-early seventies, with a lot of twentieth century musical history behind them, going back to Dada and a lot of early ideas about how sound and noise could become music. It seemed to coalesce, particularly after punk. Punk was quite significant in that it opened up in a lot of people's minds a crucial idea, which was that you can obtain the means of production, and you can make your own music, and you can make it available to the general population quite easily. That also coincided with a general upgrading in technology, like the synthesiser and cassette recording technology. People realised very quickly that they could make what the fuck they like as music, call it music, and be able to spread it around and distribute it. And people would be interested in that."

I don't want to keep on mentioning our friends Nocturnal Emissions, after all they had their own interview last issue, but yet another similarity between the two groups lies in their development throughout the eighties, which parallelled the progression of various other post-industrial groups from harsh to softer noise. What was at first noisy and abrasive gradually matured into a more sophisticated sound. In Soviet France's case, the harsher cyclic music of their early albums made way for something that was smoother, easier to listen to, and as a result probably more effective in its ability to worm its way into the listener's subconscious. Part of the reason for the development is a purely technical one, a growing appreciation of how to use their instruments and recording technology. An additional reason, like N.E., was a growing appreciation that although noise had functioned well to wake people up at one point, it rapidly became a self-defeating pursuit, one that provoked a response and then left the listener hanging in mid-air. With the ability to produce something with less rough edges, it also resulted in a music that was more positive in feeling, less of a reaction and more of a contribution.

"The first two releases, they're musically very naive. We still make them available. We haven't disowned them and don't regard them as irrelevant. But compared to what we're doing now they're almost childish in their approach. It was a very important period of development, which is why we haven't disavowed them. We had to deal with that then to come to where we are now. If anything, anybody who has reviewed our music over the last ten years, the thing that would strike them is that we've probably become a lot softer in our musical approach. It's no more accessible now, in fact it's probably even less accessible than it was in the early days ...

"If you've been doing music for ten years, you do become more sophisticated, both in terms of your practical approach to making the music, and also in the ideas which you use to inform the music. In the early days the whole idea was to be confrontational. To borrow a phrase from Test Dept, it was a kind of 'shock therapy'. You use noise and extremes of noise to shock people into a new way of perceiving things, a new state of mind.

"The impact that the first Throbbing Gristle LP had on me was way beyond anything I'd ever heard. It was complementing something that I knew I had within me anyway, and at the same time it was like 'fucking hell, there's people actually doing this kind of stuff'. I know that we've had that kind of impact on other people as well. Some of the feedback we get, with people writing letters to us, it's very obvious that when people first come to Soviet France they find something, both within themselves, and at the same time so new to them that it does shock them into a new idea about music altogether."

One other thing about the band grew less extreme as the years passed, although for different reasons. At the outset, the group developed a fetishistic passion for unusual packaging for their releases, with early albums coming out in a hessian sack and packaged in roofing felt. Commercial restraints, and the amount of simple hard work that unusual packaging demands, have diminished this impulse as time has gone on. An album like Look Into Me sits in a perfectly normal CD or LP sleeve. However, Just an Illusion, released by Staalplaat, keeps up the packaging reputation by being a CD coming in a little hardwood box, with indented printing on the outside. There's more to this than just a desire to maintain some form of notoriety, of course. These products really are something special. My enjoyment of Just an Illusion was definitely enhanced by its presentation: by making the album something special, something outside the run-of-the-mill plastic CD boxes which currently fill one of my drawers, I was always going to pay closer attention to what it contains. It becomes a fetish, a unique object invested with spiritual significance, rather than just one among the many, and the effort is definitely appreciated. The band have managed to keep their visibility as individuals at a minimum level. This is, of course, an old trick by individuals anxious to either avoid or exploit the pop industry's obsession with saleable images. The Residents achieved notoriety throughout the seventies (and boredom thereafter) by refusing to allow their individual identities to become known. Test Dept, trying to present themselves as a collective unit in order to reflect their political beliefs have acted in a similar way. The band's name is known but the individuals forming it are rarely singled out for attention. Soviet France, aware of how the industry operates and trying to avoid its less pleasant tendencies, have also kept their individual identities out of the picture as far as the music is concerned, while remaining perfectly accessible to those who bother to contact them.

"We realised early on that one of the biggest favours we could do ourselves was in not creating any kind of image or allowing any kind of image to be created for us. That's the reason why we don't include any names of personnel on the records. It's not secrecy, and it's not a deliberate marketing ploy like the Residents use. Anybody who really wants to can find out who we are and talk to us personally, like you're doing. But we cottoned on really quickly to the idea of the cult of personality, and realised that it was a fundamental means of control used in the music industry, and so we deliberately set our faces against that. We set about creating a complete antithesis to it. We've never allowed photographs of ourselves to be published, or haven't until now anyway, and we've never really identified ourselves as personalities at all."

Just in case all the above makes the group seem a bit po-faced, it's worth pointing out that the music of Soviet France can actually be funny too. It's hardly laugh-out-loud stuff, but the loops and snippets of recycled sound material frequently have a playfulness to them that can be quite readily spotted.

"People do recognise the humour sometimes, maybe not as often as they should. Particularly with the early releases there was a lot of self-effacing humour, and cynical and critical humour as well. Cynical humour about the industrial movement, cynical humour about the political state of the world or this country. There was a lot of musical humour as well. We have a good laugh making it and we think other people should have a good laugh listening to it as well, if they can work out what the jokes are!"

Although the group admits to no long term plans, a whole series of short-term ones exist. A compilation CD is being compiled for release through Mute subsidiary The Grey Area; a recording of their live performance from Vienna in 1990 is being released by their own label Charrm, entitled simply Vienna Live; and Canadian label DOVentertainment (whose The Death of Vinyl compilation CD they contributed to) are releasing their latest proper album, Shadow: Thief of the Sun.



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Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music is the sixth album by the British avant-garde music group :zoviet*france:, who, when it was recorded, identified themselves as :zoviet-france:. Recorded in 1984 and 1985, it was first released in 1985 by the band's label Singing Ringing in collaboration with Red Rhino in double cassette format. The packaging was elaborate and very labour-intensive to create; the cassettes sat inside a sculpted, clear-glazed ceramic box with a short length of twine with a hand-painted stick on the end sticking out of the bottom. A seabird feather gathered from the beach at Seascale (one mile from the Sellafield nuclear reactor) was stuck through a hole in each side of the box, held in place with sealing wax, which held the cassettes in. The inserts included a parody of the American flag (with mini-hammer and sickles in place of the stars) silk-screened on muslin, a piece of paper with art silk-screened on it, and a professionally printed sheet of paper with the track list and various sets of instructions for use of the package in English, Spanish and French, with most of them obviously being jokes ("Remove feather by melting wax seal. Discard burnt cassettes. Retain box."). Staalplaat re-released it in triple cd format in 1994, with other editions in 1995 and 2004. These were packaged between two round felt pieces cut from black market Red Army caps, and held together with a Soviet military pin. The design on the front cover piece is by E. Van Weelden.

Popular Soviet Songs plays like a tour through a long abandoned victorian era laboratory with extra doses of eldritch lovecraftian horror sprinkled in. Dusty shelves of old medical textbooks, jars holding fossilized specimens of small rodents and plants in muddy formaldehyde, a journal of the rooms previous owner, documenting strange and unearthly creatures and plant life discovered while on his travels and several drawings and meticulously recorded Taxonomy of a few of his samples. What this album does right is create quite a thick atmosphere of musty obscurity. However its sheer length is a major detriment, despite the use of some downright sinister collages. Its hard classifying this release but it is one of the groups most inventive albums.



Zoviet France - Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music 1 ( 190mb)

101 Tier Of Veils 4:55
102 Ram 2:49
Stains And Filth In The Convent AOUEI
103 Duir 1:52
104 Zonë 2:41
105 Straif (La Mère Du Bois) Z Estrif 3:59
106 White Track (Fire Frost) 4:57
107 Veil 8:12
108 Pesach 1:49
109 Decoy 6:36
110 Yezidi 5:03

  (ogg  mb)

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Zoviet France - Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music 2 ( 307mbmb)

201 добрый день ("good day" or "good afternoon") 4:39
Yezidi Circle Trap
202 Signal 0:14
203 Sidi 3:36
204 Birch Brake 2:21
205 Sein 3:46
206 Spin (Hellisein) 3:20
207 Tan-Tal 9:37
208 Ma-Ja 6:20
209 Whip 2:33
210 Veil 1:12
211 Fearn 5:45
212 Burning Bush 9:03
Beak And Snout
213 Sidhe (Riuben) 3:36
214 Marsh 2:44
215 Swine 1:09
216 Marsh 1:32
217 Signal (Circe) 1:23
218 Migration 6:44

Zoviet France - Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music 2   (ogg  154mb)

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Zoviet France - Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music 3 ( 244mb)

301 Burning Bush 4:39
302 Sheol 9:25
303 Veil (Sloe Semen) 6:02
304 Signal 1:39
Charm
305 Chirm Ela 8:05
306 Chirm Geis 7:07
307 Charm Aliso 4:52
308 Shewel 5:52
309 Yezidi Say 5:55

Zoviet France - Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music 3 (ogg  120mb)

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Though that isn't really saying much, there's some charm to this record that I cant quite pin down. I feel it is a much more varied album then the others in the series and it capitalizes on some of the groups most grungy and sinister of drone pieces especially the first Signal track, which smacks the listener over the head with teeth clattering bassy drones. The production sells the record, one can just feel the fog and humidity settling over the hills near the run down shack that this thing was recorded at (metaphorically..probably.) and the reverb effects are used very well. The Track that steals the show though is the final They're Eating the Passengers, a sinister piece with soundbites lifted off of the TWA Flight 847 plane hijacking in Beirut set to pensive Oud like riffs that drone and reverb through out the entire track, lending itself well to anxiety and paranoia. While not the strongest release, Misfits is still one I would definitely check out for sheer atmosphere alone, it's one of the shorter Zoviet France albums recorded during their most productive period. Highly original and very unusual, 'Misfits, Loony Tunes and Squalid Criminals' is an album that will certainly not appeal to many and sounds nothing like the comedic moniker the title suggests.



Zoviet France - Misfits, Loony Tunes + Gesture Signal Threat ( 174mb+209mb)

01 Signal 0:47
02 Host / Blowing In The Instrument 5:47
03 Signal 1:40
04 Flote 9:30
05 Signal 1:05
06 Gesture, Signal, Threat 2:16
07 Semasen 5:05
08 Rattle Stick Cruss 5:53
09 They're Eating The Passengers 5:43

Gesture Signal Threat is one of the more unsettling ZF albums, Morphed, twanging strings of unknown origin strum as subdued fake ethnic chants open 'Gesture, Signal Threat'. Odd little whistling instruments are layered throughout. 'Gllisten'. It's a repetitive swirling track that makes you feel you're listening to music whilst in a coma. Unfortunately it ends as a few tracks do on this recording with a huge rush of static buzz which is enough to make you jump out of your skin if listening on headphon. "Glisten" has a shimmery gamelan feel.  There are a couple of segue tracks named "Signal," which each seem to incorporate modified radio static. The hypnotic "Blow" is built on some reversed tape loops and pitch-shifting techniques.

01 Gote 6:57
02 Blow 7:12
03 Dhimmi 2:31
04 Signal 1:15
05 Bran 4:29
06 Glisten 6:05
07 Host 5:05
08 Signal 2:56
09 Signal 1:26
10 Threat 6:09
11 Signal 1:45

Zoviet France - Misfits, Loony Tunes + Gesture Signal Threat (ogg  192mb)

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