Someone once said there are two ways of listening to music - with your body and with your mind. When you're hit by the groove, you're listening with your body, compelling you to dance. Engaging with the music in this way is quite different to how you'd respond to, say, Nick Drake or Billie Holiday, where the music seems to deny a physical response.
All of which is a roundabout way of trying to explain what this eternally hip Belgian pianist's album is all about. Opening with a four-to-the-floor drum and bass riff, 'Silver (Who Stole the Groove?)' uses a sample taken from the classic Blue Note album Doin' the Thing (at the Village Gate) by Horace Silver. It becomes a repeated motif as Bert Joris's trumpet, Moulin's Fender Rhodes piano and Christa Jérome's voice weave textures around the hypnotic beat…

Ford Theatre were one of the most promising and best US psychedelic bands of the 60's. A few months after truly excellent Trilogy For The Masses debut LP (from December 1968) they released another concept album for ABC Records - Time Changes. Influenced by the recent works of The Beatles, The Byrds and Love, this slightly more commercial and unjustly underrated record was a kind of musical based on one man’s life. The music itself was very diverse, ranged from dark, atmospheric and ambitious tracks full of hard rock guitar-organ interplay, to much lighter sounds usually coupled with lush sound of strings. This record (an early production by Bill Szymczyk) is specially recommended for those who like classic 60's rock sound.

This second volume of producer Steve Hoffman's discoveries in the Chess Records vaults features some less-prominent Chuck Berry tunes, again in the form of demos, unreleased alternate takes, and stereo remixes. Listeners are getting into collector territory here, but there are still some enjoyable examples of the Berry repertoire.

Rock & roll's prime innovator, thanks to his detailed songwriting, dazzling lyrics, and clear, economical guitar licks.
Of all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none was more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He was its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers. Quite simply, without him there would be no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, nor myriad others. There would be no standard "Chuck Berry guitar intro," the instrument's clarion call to get the joint rockin' in any setting. The clippety-clop rhythms of rockabilly would not have been mainstreamed into the now standard 4/4 rock & roll beat…

This Gershwin collection is divided into two CDs; the first has many of his more popular pieces from Broadway productions, and the second has a selection of his symphonic works. Some of the songs on the first CD are performed by singers such as Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington and sound absolutely spectacular.

Gòtic is the legendary musical band formed in Barcelona in the 70’s. Its activity lasted a few years , between 1970 and 1978. They published a single work, the L.P. " Escenes " in 1978. Over the years, and for the new generations , the band’s unique "long -play " has become an icon of the symphonic and progressive rock, almost an iconic sample of an era.
Back in 1978 Gòtic recorded the demo takes of what would be their second album (LP) during some “live” sessions in “Gema-1” recording studios of Barcelona. The band’s recording label disliked the tunes considering them “not enough sofisticated"… In 2013 the band recovered the original tapes and decided to digitalize, remaster and publish the works, with the invaluable help of the original engineers, Enric Català and Jordi Vidal, amazed by their quality and alive groove feeling.

Chuck Berry's debut LP is fairly strong musically, as well as having a really cool cover (a still shot of Berry, guitar slung in front of him, from the movie Rock, Rock, Rock!). After School Session was just the second long-player ever issued by Chess - only the soundtrack to the movie Rock, Rock, Rock! preceded it. This May 1957 release made Berry something of a late-bloomer among rock & roll's foundation performers - he'd had his first recording session two years earlier, in May of 1955, and by the spring of 1957, Bill Haley already had a handful of LPs to his credit, Elvis Presley was gaining on him, and Clyde McPhatter's version of the Drifters was represented on album, with numerous others soon to join their ranks. Berry had actually enjoyed only two major pop (i.e. rock as opposed to R&B) chart hits at the time: "Maybellene" in the summer of 1955, and "Roll Over Beethoven," which had just made the Top 30 in the summer of 1956…

J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy provide the inspiration for a series of strange, other-worldly tracks that transcend their source material. Hansson's keyboard playing is quite unlike the work of such rivals as Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman, less heavy and "gothic" and more oriented toward jazz. His guitar work as is flashy and aggressive as his keyboards ("The Black Riders/Flight to the Ford" is a great showcase for both), and the backing by sax, flute, and drums creates an overall rich sonic palette.
The album was first released on CD in 1988 as an "extended remixed version", with an additional eleven bonus tracks taken from Hansson's other 1970s albums "Magician's Hat" and "Attic Thoughts."

This impressive, but rather underrated soundtrack album to documentary movie about motorcycle racing was taped by the classic Gong line-up in May 1971, at the very beginning of the recording sessions for their amazing "Camembert Electrique" LP and then released by French Philips at the end of the year. There's no keyboards or synthesizer parts at all, just extended guitar-dominated, heavy psychedelic and mostly instrumental jams (with occasional vocals and space whispers) filled with very intense and mind-blowing glissando guitar notes & vibrating sax noises against hypnotic & pulsating rhythm section.

Known for performing the original version of "Everything's Alright" (covered by David Bowie on his Pin Ups album), the Mojos were one of the best Liverpool groups of the British Invasion. Besides "Everything's Alright" - a Top Ten raver in the U.K. - they never scored any other hits of note, though a couple squeezed into the Top 30.
There have been a couple of other good Mojos compilations that have gathered most of this Merseybeat group's work, focusing wholly on their mid-'60s Decca output. Since their Decca recordings comprise almost everything they released, there's not room for much more on a Mojos anthology. But Everything's Alright: The Complete Recordings does manage to beat out previous Mojos collections by a nose, for it includes not only all 17 of the tracks they issued on Decca between 1963-1967, but also the one they did for the 1963 This Is Merseybeat, Vol. 2 compilation…

Veteran Chicago drummer Sam Lay is a famous behind-the-scenes blues and rock character - he played with the great Howlin' Wolf in the '60s, backed Bob Dylan when he "went electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and was an early member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He isn't famous for singing, however, and that's the main problem with the latest of his many collaborations with guitarist Fred James. The band's rhythm section is as strong as you'd expect, with Lay and acoustic bassist Bob Kommersmith locking into confident, slightly laid-back grooves on "Baby How Long" and the closing instrumental "Midnight Drag." But despite Lay's deep, funny charisma on "I Like Women" and "I Got Two Women," he was better at backing the Wolf than he is replacing him.

The sole Applejacks LP is highlighted by "Tell Me When," and hindered by quaintness and a lack of strong tunes (only one of which was a group original), limiting its worth to British Invasion obsessives for the most part. "No Time," one of several songs co-written by future Honeybus main man Pete Dello, is about the best song, with its moody melody; at their most energetic (as on "See If She Cares") they sound a bit like Gerry & the Pacemakers. The covers of '50s rock classics such as "Kansas City," "What'd I Say," and "Too Much Monkey Business" are dire, and their second single (and most well-known recording), the cover of Lennon-McCartney's "Like Dreamers Do," is not present…

This LP comprises one of altoist Lee Konitz's greatest sessions. In 1967 he recorded a series of very diverse duets, all of which succeed on their own terms. Konitz is matched with valve trombonist Marshall Brown on a delightful version of "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" and matches wits with the tenor of Joe Henderson on "You Don't Know What Love Is." He plays "Checkerboard" with pianist Dick Katz, "Erb" with guitarist Jim Hall, "Tickle Toe" with the tenor of Richie Kamuca (Konitz switches to tenor on that cut), and an adventurous and fairly free "Duplexity" with violinist Ray Nance. Konitz also has three different duets in five versions of "Alone Together" and, on "Alphanumeric," welcomes practically everyone back for a final blowout. The music ranges from Dixieland to bop and free, and is consistently fascinating.

The two dozen songs on Sugar, Sugar… come from the first four long-players issued in conjunction with the CBS-TV animated program The Archie Show and the expanded Archie Comedy Hour. The project was spearheaded by pop music mogul Don Kirshner. Having scored notable success with early Monkees sides, he found another batch of recording studio pros to provide material and audibly animate the Archies. Among the primary contributors were Ron Dante (vocals/guitar), Andy Kim (vocals), and Jeannie Thomas (vocals), who was replaced by Toni Wine (vocals). The Archies (1968) was the prefab combo's debut and despite an appearance in the album charts, this package yields only the churning midtempo "Truck Driver," the pseudo-affective and hormone-driven ballad "Seventeen Ain't Young," and the infectious bubblegum frolic "Bang-Shang-A-Lang"…