Sometimes you feel so far away:
Montrose ‘Paper Money’ - patchy second album with a rather pointless ballad treatment of ‘Connection’, one of my fave Stones songs;
Jeff Buckley ‘Sketches For “My Sweetheart The Drunk”’ - for an unfinished record this sounds pretty damn complete to me. In fact, I prefer it to ‘Grace’. However Jeff might have revised it for release, it stands up strongly as a beautifully executed set of songs in its own right;
Judas Priest ‘Invincible Shield’ - it’s remarkable how ancient entities like Priest and Saxon can still rock as hard as they do. This is one heavy mother: no surprises, and so what;
KK’s Priest ‘The Sinner Rides Again’ - and guess what, there exists another Priest lineup even heavier than the mothership. Hearing this and the last named in quick succession was a bit much on the old cranium, but ‘twas much fun;
Van der Graaf Generator ‘Still Life’ - the greatest prog rock album ever. There, I’ve said it;
Faust ‘The Faust Tapes’ - shit bag bone on, shit bag oh penisey. Y’know the bit I mean. Forever the twelve years old I was when I first heard it;
Tangerine Dream ‘Phaedra’ - fifty years old? Nah. Last week maybe;
La La Land OST - a damn fine musical score is all, and I don’t care what anyone thinks;
Anthony Braxton ‘Sextet (Victoriaville) 2005’ - Braxton’s Composition no.345 makes for a surprisingly approachable hour long listen with enough textural variety to hold interest;
Joy S/T - a sound reminder of the freshness of the Brit jazz scene in the mid-70s;
Jan Garbarek Quartet ‘Afric Pepperbird’ - sounding more resplendent than ever in its new audiophile vinyl reissue (and with Jon Christensen’s drums more to the fore than ever before), this is easily Garbarek’s greatest studio achievement and one of my all-time fave jazz records. Talk about far out: he never sounded this feral again. Check out ‘Blow Away Zone’ for proof. Oh my;
Don Byas ‘Classic Don Byas Sessions 1944-1946’ (Discs 2 & 3) - this is another of those mammoth Mosaic box sets that has too much great music to digest in a few days so I’m limiting my listening to 2 or 3 CDs a week. Suffice to say the standard of Byas’ artistry is consistently superb, and the transfer fidelity remarkable;
Keith Jarrett ‘Bridge Of Light’ - music for small ensembles by the extraordinarily diverse talent that is Keith Jarrett. Best is his Violin Sonata which is as much jazz as conventional chamber music;
Beethoven: String Quartet Op.135 (Alban Berg Quartet) - from their second, live set of LvB’s late quartets. Perfect contemplative music for a rainy Friday afternoon;
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel/Schubert: Symphony no.8/Rachmaninov: Symphony no.2 (RPO or NYPO/Arthur Rodzinski) - decent performances from a gun totin’ conductor (yes, really);
Bruckner: Symphony no.0 (Saarbrucken RSO/Stanislaw Skrowaczewski) - reference recording of the Nullte by a much missed - and underrated - conductor;
Bruckner: Symphony no.00 (Aachen SO/Marcus Bosch) - Bruckner’s Schubertesque ‘Study Symphony’ given a decent enough run through;
Dvorak: Symphony no.7 (Cleveland/Christoph von Dohnanyi) - damn near ideal take on Dvorak’s magnum opus.
Ultimately passing away time which no longer has any meaning.
Dave x
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