Around The World (32)

Hello Around the World is still covering classical treasures. Besides the introduced multi-faceted prodigy Saint-Saëns, and the to me unknown thusfar Max Bruch, there are goodies from Debussy , Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto De Aranjuez and Carl Gustav Mahler's 5th symphon. We end with the Bolero which seems to get people, specially women, into a hormonal frenzy, personally i think 13 minutes is a bit short, but then i read recently that a bolero a day keeps the divorce lawyers away...wink.

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Charles Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist, and more known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse Macabre, Samson et Dalila, and Symphony No. 3 (Organ Symphony).

Saint-Saëns was born in Paris, France. His father died three months after his birth. His mother, Clemence, sought the assistance of her aunt, Charlotte Masson, she moved in and introduced Saint-Saëns to the piano. One of the most talented child prodigies of his time, he possessed perfect pitch at two years of age and began piano lessons with his great-aunt at that time. He almost immediately began composing. His first composition, a little piece for the piano dated 22 March 1839, is now kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. His precociousness was not limited to music, however. He had learned to read and write by age three and mastered Latin by seven.

His first piano recital was given at age five, when he accompanied a Beethoven violin sonata. In 1842, Saint-Saëns began piano lessons with Camille-Marie Stamaty, who had his students play the piano while resting their forearms on a bar situated in front of the keyboard, so that all the pianist's power came from the hand and fingers and not the arms. At ten years of age, Saint-Saëns gave his debut public recital with a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 15 , and various pieces by Handel, Kalkbrenner, Hummel, and Bach. As an encore, Saint-Saëns offered to play any one of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas by memory. Word of this incredible concert spread across Europe, and reached as far as the United States. He then studied organ and composition. Saint-Saëns won many top prizes and at the age of sixteen, Saint-Saëns wrote his first symphony; his second, published as Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, was performed in 1853 to the astonishment of many critics and fellow-composers. Hector Berlioz, who also became a good friend, famously remarked, Il sait tout, mais il manque d'inexpérience (He knows everything, but lacks inexperience). For income, Saint-Saëns worked playing the organ at various churches in Paris, his weekly improvisations stunned the Parisian public and earned Liszt's 1866 observation that Saint-Saëns was the greatest organist in the world.

Saint-Saëns was a multi-faceted intellectual. From an early age, he studied geology, archaeology, botany, and lepidoptery. He was an expert at mathematics. Later, in addition to composing, performing, and writing musical criticism, he held discussions with Europe's finest scientists and wrote scholarly articles on acoustics, occult sciences, Roman theatre decoration, and ancient instruments. He wrote a philosophical work, Problèmes et Mystères, which spoke of science and art replacing religion; Saint-Saëns's pessimistic and atheistic ideas foreshadowed Existentialism. Other literary achievements included Rimes familières, a volume of poetry, and La Crampe des écrivains, a successful farcical play.

In 1870, the Franco-Prussian War, despite being over in barely six months, left an indelible mark on the composer. He fled to London for several months when the Paris Commune broke out in the besieged Paris of winter 1871. After the fall of the Paris Commune, Saint-Saëns returned and became a powerful figure in shaping the future of French music. In 1875, Saint-Saëns married Marie-Laure Truffot and they had two children, André and Jean-François, who died within six weeks of each other in 1878. Saint-Saëns left his wife three years later. The two never divorced, but lived the rest of their lives apart from one another.

In 1886 Saint-Saëns debuted two of his most renowned compositions: Le Carnaval des Animaux and Symphony No. 3, dedicated to Franz Liszt, who died that year. Two years later, Saint-Saëns's mother died, driving the mourning composer away from France to the Canary Islands under the alias "Sannois". Over the next several years he travelled the world, visiting exotic locations in Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Saint-Saëns chronicled his travels in many popular books using his nom de plume, Sannois. Saint-Saëns continued to write on musical, scientific and historical topics, travelling frequently before spending his last years in Algiers, Algeria. In recognition of his accomplishments, the government of France awarded him the Légion d'honneur. Saint-Saëns died of pneumonia on 16 December 1921 at the Hôtel de l'Oasis in Algiers. His body was repatriated to Paris, honoured by state funeral at La Madeleine, and interred at Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

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Max Christian Friedrich Bruch (January 6, 1838 – October 2, 1920) a German Romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, one of which is a staple of the violin repertoire. Bruch was born in Cologne, Rhine Province, where he received his early musical training under the composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller. He had a long career as a teacher, conductor and composer, moving among musical posts in Germany: Mannheim (1862-1864), Koblenz (1865-1867), Sondershausen, (1867-1870) Berlin (1870-1872), Bonn, where he spent 1873 -1878 working privately. At the height of his reputation he spent three seasons as conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society (1880-83). He taught composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (the Berlin Conservatoire) from 1890 until his retirement in 1910.

His conservatively structured works, in the German romantic musical tradition, placed him in the camp of Romantic classicism exemplified by Johannes Brahms, rather than the opposing "New Music" of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. In his time, he was known primarily as a choral composer. His Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (1866) is one of the most popular Romantic violin concertos. Other pieces which are also well-known and widely played include the Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra Bruch also wrote Kol Nidrei, Op. 47, a popular work for cello and orchestra.

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Millenium - Classical Treasures IV ( 99 , 73min ^ 170mb)



01 - Camille Saint-Saens - Dans Macabre, Op.40 ( 7:07)
02 - Camille Saint-Saens - Carnaval des Animaux - The Swan ( 3:12)
03 - Max Bruch - Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, Op. 26 - I-Allegro Moderato ( 8:13)
04 - Max Bruch - Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, Op. 26 - II-Adagio ( 8:41)
05 - Max Bruch - Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, Op. 26 - III-Finale (allegro Energico) ( 7:04)
06 - Archille-Claude Debussy - Clair de lune ( 4:47)
07 - Joaquin Rodrigo - Concierto De Aranjuez - II-Adagio ( 10:51)
08 - Gustav Mahler - Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor - IV-Adagietto ( 10:00)
09 - Maurice Ravel - Bolero ( 13:03)

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Foundation (IV)

Hello, had some mix ups this weekend, all rectified now... Foundation moves to the second book of the trilogy, Foundation and Empire, but first what happened last week in "The Merchant Princes"

The Foundation has expanded through the use of Scientism and economics. Three Foundation vessels have vanished near the Republic of Korell, a nation suspected of technological development. Trader Hober Mallow is sent to uncover information on their technology and hopefully find the missing ships. While at Korell, Mallow convinces Korell's leader Commdor Asper Argo to purchase Foundation technology. Mallow also discovers that Korell still maintains some relics of the Empire such as atomic hand guns. But he also notes the Republic's decrepit condition and lack of modern technology. On return to Terminus, he is considered a traitor for not spreading Scientism to Korell, although an unlikely development clears Mallow allowing him to win an election for Mayor. Years later Korell goes to war against The Foundation, Mallow as Mayor confidently severs supplies of goods that Korell's people have grown accustomed to, thus starting a revolt against their own government in favour of the Foundation.

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Foundation Trilogy, episode IV - The General (34mb)


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Sundaze (32)

Hello, Sundaze today is all about the appearance of Harold Budd on the ambient scene. I have here his early work, i tell you ripping ambient vinyl is work. As those grooves are very close together and undeep..these are very susceptible to scratches , clicks and ticks...ambient music is made for digital formats. The recording and normalising demands much more attention with ambient vinyl aswell...luckily i did buy the plateaux of mirror on cd aswell.

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Harold Budd (May 24, 1936) is an American ambient/avant-garde composer. Born in Los Angeles, California, he was raised in the Mojave Desert, and was inspired at an early age by the humming tone caused by wind blown across telephone wires. His music, a sparse and tonal wash of keyboard treatments, was inspired by a boyhood spent listening to the buzz of telephone wires near his home in the Mojave Desert town of Victorville, California (though he was born in nearby Los Angeles). Budd was 30, already married and with children of his own, by the time he graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Musical Composition in 1966.

He became a respected name in the circle of minimalist and avant-garde composers based in Southern California during the late '60s, premiering his works The Candy-Apple Revision and Unspecified D-Flat Major Chord around the area. As his career progressed, his compositions became increasingly minimal. Among his more experimental works were two drone pieces, "Coeur d'Orr" and "The Oak of the Golden Dreams". "The Oak of the Golden Dreams" was based on the Balinese "Slendro" scale. After composing a long-form gong solo titled "Lirio", he felt he had reached the limits of his experiments in minimalism and the avant-garde. He retired temporarily from composition in 1970 and began a teaching career at the California Institute of the Arts.

Two years later, while still retaining his teaching career, he resurfaced as a composer. Spanning from 1972-1975 he created four individual works under the collective title The Pavilion of Dreams. The style of these works was an unusual blend of popular jazz and the avant-garde. In 1976 he resigned from the institute and began recording his new compositions, produced by British ambient pioneer Brian Eno. Two years later Harold Budd's debut album The Pavilion of Dreams was released.Two years later, he collaborated with Eno on one of the landmark albums of the ambient style, Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirrors. After recording two albums for Cantil in 1981 (The Serpent [In Quicksilver]) and 1984 (Abandoned Cities), Harold Budd again worked with Eno on 1984's The Pearl. A contract with Eno's Opal Records resulted in one of Budd's most glorious albums, The White Arcades, recorded in Edinburgh with Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins. Budd left Opal after 1991's By the Dawn's Early Light, and recorded two albums for Gyroscope: Music for Three Pianos (with Ruben Garcia and Daniel Lentz) and the lauded Through the Hill, a collaboration with Andy Partridge of XTC.

In the mid-'90s, Budd recorded albums for New Albion and All Saints before signing to Atlantic. His thematic 2000 release The Room saw a return to a more minimalist approach. Budd's album Avalon Sutra from 2004 was billed as "Harold Budd's Last Recorded Work" by the record label Samadhi Sound. Their press release continued: "Avalon Sutra brings to a conclusion thirty years of sustained musical activity. Asked for his reasons, Budd says only that he feels that he has said what he has to say. With characteristic humility, he concludes, “I don’t mind disappearing!” In spite of this, Budd's soundtrack to the film Mysterious Skin (a collaboration with Robin Guthrie) and Music for 'Fragments from the Inside' (with Eraldo Bernocchi) were both released in 2005. In February 2007, David Sylvian's label Samadhisound released Perhaps, a live recording of Budd's improvised performance in tribute to his late friend, James Tenney. Recorded at CalArts in December 6, the album is only available as a digital download. Darla Records released two CDs by Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd in June 2007, After The Night Falls and Before The Day Breaks. Recorded in Spring 2006, each features 9 tracks with linked titles, e.g. "How Distant Your Heart"/"How Close Your Soul" and "I Returned Her Glance"/"And Then I Turned Away".

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Harold Budd - The Pavilion Of Dreams (78 ^ 187mb)

Harold Budd creates a series of siren songs on The Pavilion of Dreams that shimmer like light reflected on the water's surface. Billed as "an extended cycle of works begun in 1972," Budd's debut apparently took a while to see the light of day itself, having been recorded in 1976, released on the aptly titled Obscure label in 1978, and re-released in 1981 on Editions EG. The minimalist composer had gained some attention in avant-garde circles with the piece "Madrigals of the Rose Angel"; featured here, it reveals the unhurried and unfolding nature of Budd's melodies as well as his penchant for clusters of bell-like notes. "Two Songs" was written in the years that followed, adapting works from Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane with arrangements that feature only mezzo-soprano Lynda Richardson and harpist Maggie Thomas. The opening "Bismillahi 'Rhahmani 'Rrahim" is the musical equivalent of a bubble bath; led by the soulful saxophone of Marion Brown, it's initially lovely, yet the circumspect arrangement saps the piece of its spellbinding effect before long. The last piece composed here, "Juno," is also the most passionate, foreshadowing the warmth and presence that would appear on subsequent works like "The Plateaux of Mirror." As with most minimalist works, The Pavilion of Dreams requires patience and open-mindedness on the part of the listener, only more so. Harold Budd achieved an evocative and succinct style on subsequent albums, and these songs are simply the rudimentary steps that led there.



01 - Bismillahi ´Rrahman ´Rrahim (18:15)
Two Songs (Voc.Lynda Richardson)
02 - Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord (3:09)
03 - Butterfly Sunday (3:00)
Madrigals Of The Rose Angel
04 - Rossetti Noise (5:33)
05 - The Crystal Garden And A Coda (8:29)
06 - Juno (7:34)

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Harold Budd and Brian Eno - Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror ( 80 ^ 158mb)

The second in Brian Eno's ambient series, The Plateaux of Mirrors fuses the fragile piano melodies of Harold Budd and the atmospheric electronics of Eno to create a lovely, evocative work. In sharp contrast to the exaggerated pieces found on his debut, The Pavilion of Dreams, this record finds Budd delivering sharp shards of piano notes pregnant with meaning and minimal in the best sense of the word. Eno's unobtrusive electronics add a resonance and atmosphere that draw from the ambient textures found on Discreet Music, Music for Films, and Evening Star.

Eno said of Budd that he indulged in "live improvisation on The Plateaux Of Mirror ... I would set up a sound, he would improvise to it, and occasionally I would add something: but it was mainly him performing in a sound-world I had created".
Speaking about how Budd discovered new ways of playing on the album simply by bouncing ideas off each other, Eno has also commented "... with him I used to set up quite complicated treatments and then he would go out and play the piano. And you would hear him discovering, as he played, how to manipulate this treatment. How to make it ring and resonate. Which notes work particularly well on it. Which register of the piano. What speed to play at, of course, because some treatments just cloud out if they have too much information in them".

The album's best moments evoke their subject matter efficaciously and effortlessly; "First Light" creates an audible early morning chill, "An Arc of Doves" employs flights of Frippertronics, "Not Yet Remembered" seesaws between sleep and consciousness, and so on. Although neither artist is a musician in the usual sense of the word -- Budd's piano playing is still somewhat limited here -- they excel as musical painters. The Plateaux of Mirrors remains a fascinating hybrid, reflecting the uniqueness of both composers in a most flattering light.



01 - First Light (6:58)
02 - Steal Away (1:25)
03 - The Plateaux Of Mirror (4:09)
04 - Above Chiangmai (2:44)
05 - An Arc Of Doves (6:22)
06 - Not Yet Remembered (3:48)
07 - The Chill Air (2:09)
08 - Among Fields Of Crystal (3:24)
09 - Wind In Lonely Fences (3:50)
10 - Failing Light (4:32)

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Harold Budd and Brian Eno - The Pearl ( 84 ^ 178mb)

In some respects the counterpart to Ambient 2, with the same sense of hushed, ethereal beauty the Budd / Eno partnership brought forth on that album, The Pearl is so ridiculously good it instantly shows up much of the mainstream new age as the gloopy schlock that it often is. The merest hints of synth and whisper play around Budd's performances, ensuring the latter takes center stage. Eno and Daniel Lanois handle the production side of things, their teamwork once again overseeing a winner. Part of the distinct charm of the album is how the song titles perfectly capture what the music sounds like -- "A Stream With Bright Fish" is almost self-defining. Another key point is how Budd truly captures what ambience in general can and does mean. "Against the Sky" is a strong example -- it can be totally concentrated upon or left to play as atmospherics and is also at once both truly beautiful and not a little haunting in a disturbing sense.



01 - Late October (4:38)
02 - A Stream With Bright Fish (3:5o)
03 - The Silver Ball (3:21)
04 - Against The Sky (4:45)
05 - Lost In The Humming Air (3:53)

06 - Dark-Eyed Sister (4:36)
07 - Their Memories (2:51)
08 - The Pearl (3:07)
09 - Foreshadowed (3:46)
10 - An Echo Of Night (2:24)
11 - Still Return (4:00)

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Rhotation (32) Into BPM

Hello, Rhotation 32 spins off some more techno routines...I posted Orbital Diversions at Rhotation 17, however got some more to share by these brothers that have meanwhile grown apart. I tossed and upcame In Sides. It raised some eyebrows in the beginning, specially the 28 min single, The Box, (included here) and switching from the political Snivilization to a more eco themed album, not very trendy in the UK at the time, caused some headscratching, however as these things go, with hindsight In Sides turned out a classic....Apollo 440 came out of the limelight with Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Dub, showing what creative sampling can accomplish. They have been very active at the remix front, however when they let other remix their single Liquid Cool the result was stunning, it needed 2 different EP's of about 40 min to comply releasing the excellent results, unfortuately i only have the 2nd one which i include with Electro Glide In Blue, their 97 landmark album.

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Orbital - In Sides (97 ^ 480mb)

The brothers Hartnoll, Phil and Paul, grew up in Dartford, Kent, listening to early-'80s punk and electro, during the mid-' 80s, Phil worked as a bricklayer while Paul played with a local band called Noddy & the Satellites. They began recording together in 1987 with a four-track, keyboards, and a drum machine, and sent their first composition, "Chime" (recorded and mastered onto a cassette tape for a total production cost of £2.50), into Jazzy M's pioneering house mix show Jackin' Zone, as a result "Chime" was released as a single in 89. The following year, ffrr Records re-released the single and signed a contract with the duo -- christened Orbital in honor of the M25, the circular London expressway which speeded thousands of club kids to the hinterlands for raves during the blissed-out Summer of Love. "Chime" hit number 17 and saw them on Top of the Pops, where the Hartnolls stared at the audience from behind their synth banks.

Orbital's untitled first LP (the "green album") was released in September 1991, consisted of all-new material -- that is, if live versions of "Chime" and the fourth single "Midnight" are considered new works. Unlike the Hartnolls' later albums, though, the debut was more of a collection of songs than a true full-length work, its cut-and-paste attitude typical of many techno LPs of the time. During 1992, Orbital continued their chart success with two EPs. The Mutations remix work -- with contributions from Meat Beat Manifesto, Moby, and Joey Beltram, Orbital returned Meat Beat's favor later that year by remixing "Edge of No Control," and later reworked songs by Queen Latifah, the Shamen, and EMF as well.

Their career took off in 1993-1994, with the release of the EPs "Lush" and "Radiccio" and their second album ,also untitled, but nicknamed the "brown" album as an alternative to the "green" debut, it unified the disjointed feel of its predecessor and hit number 28 on the British charts. The Hartnolls continued the electronic revolution that fall during their first American tour. Phil and Paul had first played live at a pub in Kent in 1989 -- before the release of "Chime" -- and had continued to make concert performance a cornerstone of their appeal during 1991-1993, featuring live projections, live musical arranging and sequencing on the fly, making their shows entertaining, improvised and truly "live". On a tour with Moby and Aphex Twin, Orbital proved to Americans that techno shows could actually be diverting for the undrugged multitudes. That summer proved to be the pinnacle of Orbital's performance ascent; an appearance at Woodstock 2 and a headlining spot at the Glastonbury Festival (both to rave reviews) confirmed the duo's status as one of the premier live acts in the field of popular music, period.

The U.S.-only albumlength Diversions EP released in March 1994 as a supplement to the second LP -- selected tracks from both the Peel Sessions and strong remixes from the album's single, "Lush." Following in August 1994, Snivilisation became Orbital's first named LP. The duo had not left political/social comment completely behind on the previous album -- "Halcyon + On + On" was in fact a response to the drug used for seven years by the Hartnolls' own mother -- but Snivilisation pushed Orbital into the much more active world of political protest. It focused on the Criminal Justice Bill of 1994, which gave police greater legal action both to break up raves and prosecute the promoters and participants. The wide variety of styles signalled that this was Orbital's most accomplished work. Snivilisation also became the duo's biggest hit, reaching number four in Great Britain's album charts.

During 1995, the brothers concerned themselves with touring, headlining the Glastonbury Festival in addition to the dance extravaganza Tribal Gathering. In May 1996, Orbital set out on quite a different tour altogether; the duo played untraditional, seated venues -- including the prestigious Royal Albert Hall -- and appeared on-stage earlier in the night, much like typical rock bands. Two months later, Phil and Paul released "The Box," a 28-minute single of orchestral proportions. It screamed of prog rock excess -- especially the inclusion of synth harpsichords -- and appeared to be the first misstep in a very studied career. The resulting In Sides, however, became their most acclaimed album, with many excellent reviews in publications that had never covered electronic music. It was over three years before the release of Orbital's next album, 1999's Middle of Nowhere. An aggressive, experimental album titled The Altogether emerged in 2001, and one year later Orbital celebrated over a decade together with the release of the retrospective Work 1989-2002. With the release of 2004's Blue Album, however, the Hartnolls announced that they were disbanding Orbital. After the split, Paul began recording music under his own name, including material for the Wipeout Pure PSP game and a solo album (The Ideal Condition), while Phil formed another duo, Long Range, with Nick Smith and released Madness and Me last year.



Orbital - In Sides (480mb)

01 - The Girl With The Sun In Her Head (10:26)
02 - P.E.T.R.O.L. (6:20)
03 - The Box (Part I) (6:28)
04 - The Box (Part II) (6:00)
05 - Dŵr Budr (9:55)
06 - Adnan's (8:41)
07 - Out There Somewhere? (Part I) (10:42)
08 - Out There Somewhere? (Part II) (13:26)

Orbital - In Sides 2  (391mb)

01 Times Fly (Slow) 7:58
02 Sad But New (Voc Alison Goldfrapp) 7:29
03 Times Fly (Fast) 7:53
04 The Tranquilizer 6:27
05 The Box (Voc Alison Goldfrapp) 28:11
xtra
10 The Saint 4:33

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Apollo 440 - Electro Glide In Blue ( 97)

Apollo 440 (alternately known as Apollo Four Forty or @440) was formed in 1991 by Howard Gray, his brother Trevor, classically trained on the piano, and their Liverpool schoolmate Noko, formerly the guitarist in Howard Devoto's Luxuria, and James Gardner, although Gardner left after the recording of the first album. The name comes from the Greek god Apollo and the frequency of concert pitch — the A note at 440 Hz, often denoted as "A440", and the Sequential Circuits sampler/sequencer, the Studio 440. The group was initially influenced by Britain's acid-house explosion, and worked as remixers (sometimes under the name Stealthsonic Orchestra) for U2, EMF and Shabba Ranks before making the leap to actual recording. The single "Astral America" appeared on the group's own Stealth Sonic Records in 1993. After relocating to the Camden area of London, Apollo 440 recorded their debut album, Millennium Fever, and released it in 1994 on their own Stealth Sonic Recordings label.

The band had been most known for its remixes (about 50 in the nineties) until the release of Liquid Cool in the UK. However, it was not until the success of the singles Krupa and Ain't Talkin' 'bout Dub that their own musical efforts were brought to international attention — particularly the latter contributed greatly to pushing Apollo 440 into the spotlight. They hit the British Top Ten in 1997 by sampling Van Halen for the single "Ain't Talkin' Bout Dub". It was followed by the release of their second album, Electro Glide in Blue, it features Charles Bukowski, Billy Mackenzie and a tribute to Gene Krupa: all three of whom had become deceased by the time of the album's release. On the day that Princess Diana died, BBC Radio One suspended its regular schedule out of respect and spent the day playing more understated music; the track Stealth Mass in F#m was played several times on this day.

The group resurfaced in early 1999 with Getting High on Your Own Supply., in 2003 they've released their thusfar last album Dude Descending a Staircase (2cd) , the title and cover refer to the famous painting Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp. Currently, the band resides in Islington, London, having once again moved its headquarters (affectionately labelled Apollo Control). In 2007, the band played a tribute gig to the late singer Billy MacKenzie and decided to go on after that. They plan for several more gigs and an album that should be out in 2008.



Apollo Four Forty - Electro Glide In Blue  (444mb)

01 - Stealth Overture (Voc.Elizabeth Gray ) (1:00)
02 - Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Dub (Voc.Mary Mary) (4:31)
03 - Altamont Super-Highway Revisited (6:31)
04 - Electro Glide In Blue (Voc.E MacFarlane) (8:36)
05 - Vanishing Point (7:27)
06 - Tears Of The Gods ( Vo. C.Bukowski) (6:17)
07 - Carrera Rapida (Theme From Rapid Racer) (Voc.Mary Mary) (6:46)
08 - Krupa (6:15)
09 - White Man's Throat (Voc.Dr G.Hoxley)(4:53)
10 - Pain In Any Language (Voc.B.MacKenzie) (8:38)
11 - Stealth Mass In F#m (6:35)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !

Alphabet Soup II (E)

Hello, Alphabet Soup dishes up E, and that means today E-lectric Lite Orchestra. Indeed that aha ! lightbulb did its work but thats not where the name originates. From 1972 to1986, ELO accumulated more combined UK and US Top 40 hit singles than any other band in the world, 46. Todays treat however was all but completely shunned on their UK hometurf. It did sell well in the Wizard of Oz mad(cover) US and mainland Europe, but the Brits didnt like the real orchestra thing or the concept story, whatever it's my favourite ELO album.....Eardrum, now thats almost the opposite spectrum, avant-rock percussion/drums, live, grooves and atmospheres manipulated in a rigorous editing process and treated electronically out of all recognition. .... Finally Echoboy, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Richard Warren's ambitious synth pop on Giraffe initially recieved a mixed response as he let go some of his more experimental side on it. At least on the surface, because he manages to twist the '70s- and '80s-inspired vibe into something new and fresh....

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Electric Light Orchestra - Eldorado (A Symphony) (74 ^ 99mb)

The group's name is an intended pun based not only on electric light but also using "electric" rock instruments combined with a "light orchestra" (orchestras with only a few cellos and violins)

In the late 1960s, Roy Wood, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter of The Move, had an idea to form a new band that would use cellos, violins, horns and woodwinds to give their music a classical sound, taking rock music in a new direction and "picking up where The Beatles left off. Jeff Lynne, frontman with fellow Birmingham band The Idle Race, was excited by the concept. In January 1970, Lynne accepted Wood's second invitation to join the band on the condition that they focus their energy on the new project. On the 12th of July 1970, when Wood added multiple cellos to a Lynne-penned song intended to be a Move B-side, the new concept became a reality and "10538 Overture" became the first Electric Light Orchestra song.

The debut album The Electric Light Orchestra was released in 1971 (1972 in the US as No Answer) and "10538 Overture" became a UK top ten hit. However, tensions soon surfaced between Wood and Lynne, Wood left the band, taking cellist Hugh McDowell and horn player Bill Hunt with him to form Wizzard. Despite predictions from the music press that the band would fold without Wood, Lynne stepped up to lead the band, with Bev Bevan remaining on drums, joined by Richard Tandy on the Moog synthesizer, Mike de Albuquerque on bass, Mike Edwards and Colin Walker adding cello and Wilfred Gibson replacing Steve Woolam on violin. The band released their second album, ELO 2 in 1973, which produced their first U.S. chart hit, a hugely elaborate version of the Chuck Berry classic "Roll Over Beethoven". During the recording of the third album, Gibson and Walker left the band. Mik Kaminski joined as violinist, while remaining cellist Edwards finished the cello parts before McDowell returned to ELO from Wizzard. The resulting album, On the Third Day was released in late 1973, with the American version featuring the hit "Showdown."

For the band's fourth album, Eldorado, A Symphony, a concept album about dreams, Lynne was finally able to stop overdubbing strings, and hire an orchestra and choir. Louis Clark joined the band as string arranger.The first single off the album, "Can't Get It Out Of My Head," became their first U.S. Billboard charts Top 10 hit, and Eldorado, A Symphony became ELO's first gold album. The integration of the orchestra would become even more thorough on future albums, but Eldorado was notable for mixing the band and orchestra (and a choir) in ways that did no violence to the best elements of both.
Despite Electric Light Orchestra's commercial success, the band remained relatively faceless; the lineup changed constantly, with sole mainstays Lynne and Bevan preferring to let their elaborate stage shows and omnipresent spaceship imagery instead serve as the group's public persona. 1975's Face the Music went gold, generating the hits "Evil Woman" and "Strange Magic," . ELO had become successful in the United States at this point and they were a star attraction on the stadium and arena circuit, back in the UK they were still largely ignored until their sixth album, A New World Record, hit the top ten there in 1976. It contained the hit singles "Livin' Thing", "Telephone Line", "Rockaria!" and "Do Ya", a rerecording of a Move song, it sold five million copies internationally.

A New World Record was followed by another platinum selling album, the double-LP Out of the Blue, in 1977. It featured the singles "Turn to Stone," "Sweet Talkin' Woman," "Mr. Blue Sky," and "Wild West Hero," each becoming a hit in the United Kingdom. The band then set out on a nine-month, 92-date world tour, with an enormous set and a hugely expensive space ship stage with fog machines and a laser display. During the famous spaceship tour, The Big Night went on to become the highest-grossing live concert tour in music history up to that point (1978).The band also played at the Wembley Arena for eight straight sold-out nights during the tour as well, another record at that time. The first of these shows was recorded and televised, and later released as a CD and DVD. In 1979,the multi-platinum album Discovery (or "Disco? Very!", as fans refer to it), was released. Although the biggest hit on the album was the hard-rock song "Don't Bring Me Down", the album was criticised for its heavy disco influence. The Electric Light Orchestra finished 1979 as the biggest selling act in the United Kingdom.ELO had reached the peak of their stardom, selling millions of albums and singles.

In 1980, Jeff Lynne was asked to write for the soundtrack of the musical film Xanadu, with the other half written by John Farrar and performed by the film's star Olivia Newton-John. The movie performed poorly at the box office, but the soundtrack did exceptionally well, eventually going double platinum. In 1981, ELO's sound changed again with the science fiction concept album Time, a throwback to earlier, more progressive rock albums like Eldorado. With the string section laid off, synthesisers took a dominating role. Time topped the UK charts for two weeks and is the last ELO studio album to date to be certified platinum in the UK. Jeff Lynne wanted to follow Time with a double album, but CBS blocked his plan, claiming it would be too expensive. The new album was whittled down to a single disc and released as Secret Messages in 1983 (many of the outtakes were later released on box sets or singles). The album's release was dampened by a string of bad news - that there would be no tour to promote the LP, that drummer Bevan was to play drums for Black Sabbath, and that bassist Kelly Groucutt had left the band. By 1984, Bevan was expressing a desire to join Black Sabbath permanently, Lynne and Tandy were recording tracks for the Electric Dreams soundtrack under Jeff Lynne's name, and, with Groucutt's departure, ELO was assumed to be finished. However, Lynne was contractually obligated to make one more ELO album. Lynne, Bevan and Tandy returned to the studio in 1985 as a three-piece to record ELO's final album of the 20th century, Balance of Power, released early in 1986. Save the single "Calling America" placed in the Top 30, subsequent singles failed to chart.

However, as Electric Light Orchestra's career descended, Lynne emerged as a sought-after producer, helming well-received comebacks from George Harrison (1987's Cloud Nine) and Roy Orbison (1989's Mystery Girl) and additionally re-teaming with both rock legends as well as Bob Dylan and Tom Petty in the hit supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. Lynne made his solo debut in 1990 with Armchair Theatre but otherwise spent the decade out of the limelight, instead producing material for Joe Cocker, Tom Jones, and Paul McCartney in addition to working on the Beatles' Anthology project. Meanwhile Bevan formed his own band titled ELO Part II, initially with no other former ELO members except Clark. ELO Part II released their debut album Electric Light Orchestra Part Two in 1990. Mik Kaminski, Kelly Groucutt and Hugh McDowell joined the band for the first tour in 1991. Bevan, Groucutt, Kaminski and Clark recorded a second album in 1994 and toured extensively until 1999. Bevan retired from the lineup in 1999 and sold his share of the ELO name to Jeff Lynne in 2000. The remaining members continue to tour and record, renamed as The Orchestra.

In 2001, Zoom, ELO's first album since 1986, was released. Though billed and marketed as an ELO album, the only returning member other than Jeff Lynne was Richard Tandy. Zoom took on a more organic sound, with less emphasis on strings and electronic effects. Upon completion of the album Lynne reformed the band with completely new members including his then-girlfriend Rosie Vela and announced that ELO would tour again. Former ELO member Richard Tandy rejoined the band a short time afterwards for two television live performances, later titled Zoom Tour Live. The planned tour was cancelled and not rescheduled due to unknown factors, in mid-August 2001. Since ELO's back catalogue has been remastered and to further cash in on the success of the remasters, some ELO compilations have been released.



01 - Eldorado Overture (2:12)
02 - Can't Get It Out Of My Head (4:22)
03 - Boy Blue (5:19)
04 - Laredo Tornado (5:30)
05 - Poorboy (The Greenwood) (2:54)
06 - Mister Kingdom (5:30)
07 - Nobody's Child (3:56)
08 - Illusions In G Major (2:37)
09 - Eldorado (5:17)
10 - Eldorado - Finale (1:29)

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Eardrum - Last Light (99 * 99mb)

Eardrum are, essentially, two percussionists: Lou Ciccotelli and Richard Olatunde Baker. Over the last decade, Ciccotelli has quietly established himself as the most interesting avant-rock drummer in London, having put in time with, among others, ground breaking jazz-trance-industrialists God, Gary Smith's avant-rock power trio Mass, psycho-hiphop outfit Ice and the woefully-underrated Laika. Baker, meantime, has played with Cath Coffey, Akure Wall and sundry On-U projects.Three years after making their 1996 debut with a 12" on Soul Static Sound, Ciccotelli and Baker issued last Light on Leaf. They're joined occasionally on their debut by Nana Tsiboe (percussion and flute), bassist and electronics manipulator Gary Jeff (Ciccotelli's colleague in both Mass and God), trumpeter Matt Barge and Ike Leo on saxophone. Eardrum's m.o. is straightforward: to record, live, grooves and atmospheres - almost entirely on percussion - then in a rigorous editing process treat them electronically out of all recognition. The results have already earned Eardrum comparisons with Jon Hassell, 23 Skidoo and African Headcharge, and not unfairly. This music takes Hassell's Fourth World gauntlet very seriously indeed, creating a fetid, tropical musical Interzone from the fragments ironically recorded in London. It rocks, as well, rarely letting go of the dark grooves that underpin it.

A year later Last Night Remixes, Vol. 1 was released, a batch of reworkings from the likes of Monolake, Ashley Beedle, and the Sofa Surfers, was released in mid-2000. The duo made a full return in 2001, a year that saw the release of Side Effects, which featured contributions from renowned engineer Guy Fixsen (My Bloody Valentine, Laika), Nii Tagoe (African Head Charge), and Jason Yarde (Manu Dibango). Delving further into African-based musics, Eardrum again demonstrated a proclivity for tightly reined chaos.



01 - Swarm (6:25)
02 - Lizard (6:35)
03 - Roach (1:48)
04 - Swamp Doctor (5:21)
05 - City Collision (7:10)
06 - Nightblind (3:04)
07 - Plummet (5:02)
08 - Nightcrawler (6:14)
09 - From The Nucleus (4:13)
10 - Low Order (7:17)

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Echoboy - Giraffe (03 ^ 99mb)

Echoboy is Richard Daniel Warren who lives in Leicestershire. He was born on the 3rd June 1973 in Sutton-In-Ashfield (Nottinghamshire). Singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Richard Warren is the driving force behind Echoboy, a psychedelic electronic project. The Nottingham, England native was also the singer/songwriter/guitarist for the Hybirds, who disbanded soon after their critically-acclaimed self-titled debut album was released in 1998. During the group's dissolution, Warren began working on Echoboy material and even handed out copies of the first single, Flashlegs, at the Hybirds' final gigs. Later that year Warren released the debut album Echoboy on his own Point Blank imprint. After releasing a 10 inch for Earworm and a 7 inch EP for the Rough Trade shop label he played an entire album of new recorded material to Daniel Miller (label boss of Mute), so he could sign a contract with Mute Records in March 1999. His label debut was the EP "Frances Says: The Knife Is Alive".In March 2000 his first album for Mute "Volume 1" followed. Just 6 months after the release of this critically acclaimed album, the follow-up "Volume 2" was published. After 2 single releases taken from "Volume 2" you didn’t hear from Echoboy for a while – til he released "Automatic Eyes" as a preceded single for his 2003 album "Giraffe".

With Giraffe, Echoboy commits to the ambitious synth pop that he flirted with on Volume One and Volume 2. While this may disappoint fans of his more experimental work, jettisoning that side of his sound gives Giraffe a focus and decisiveness that his previous albums lacked. Actually, Echoboy's more avant leanings aren't gone so much as incorporated into the album's '70s- and '80s-inspired vibe -- What makes Giraffe a subtly and increasingly compelling album is that Echoboy takes influences like Bowie, New Order, and Giorgio Moroder in a different direction than many other acts raiding synth pop for inspiration. That year's Lately Lonely EP continued in this new direction, three singles more were published but Richard thought it would be time for a change, so he left Mute and started to work on a new album. The current album "Elektrik Soul Psymphonie" was released in June 2005 on Earworm Records - he returned to his roots.



01 - Automatic Eyes (4:35)
02 - Don't Destroy Me (6:16)
03 - Comfort Of The Hum (5:01)
04 - Summer Rhythm (5:35)
05 - High Speed In Love (5:01)
06 - Fun In You (4:36)
07 - Lately Lonely (2:58)
08 - Good On T.V. (4:55)
09 - Wasted Spaces (7:21)
10 - Nearly All The Time (4:28)

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Around the World (31)

Hello, Around the Worldmusic is a bit later today..had some car troubles and thus late from returning of mothersday..so not much text..theres a lot of Tchaikovsky again and i reported on his eventful life last week..

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Millenium - Classical treasures III (99 73min ^ 164mb)




01 - P.I.Tchaikovsky - Symphony No.6 in B minor, Op.74 'Pathetique'-I (20:33)
02 - S.Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor, Op.30-III Finale (ALla breve) (13:25)
03 - A.Khachaturian - Spartacus-Adagio (Spartacus and Phrygia) (10:24)
04 - P.I.Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto in D minor, Op.35-II Canzonetta (Andante) (6:41)
05 - J.Brahms - Symphony No.3 in F major, Op.90-I Allegro con brio (10:26)
06 - P.I.Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker-Waltz of the Flowers (6:52)
07 - R.Wagner - Die Walkure-The Ride of the Valkyries (5:08)


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Foundation (III)

Hello, the Foundation saga continues..

Last weeks "The Mayors", occurs three decades after "The Encyclopedists", The Foundation's scientific understanding has given them unusual leverage over nearby planetary systems, and an artificial religion referred to as Scientism is developed. This concept allows scientific devices to be shared, while keeping its science secret. Maintenance technicians known as priests are trained on Terminus and given basic operational understanding, while being kept ignorant of scientific knowledge. This process allows the Foundation to maintain control over scientific rebellions and delocalisation of knowledge.

Mayor Salvor Hardin continues to function as Mayor of Terminus and the effective ruler of the Foundation. Prince Regent Wienis of Anacreon plans to overthrow the Foundation's power, and his plans are encouraged when he obtains an abandoned Imperial cruiser that he demands the Foundation repair. Hardin foresees Wienis's plans and arranges for the ship to be repaired his own way, incorporating some modifications. Hardin then broadcasts Wienis's attempt to the people of Anacreon under the ruse of blasphemy, leading to a revolt which results in direct control over the Four Kingdoms. Hari Seldon again confirms the actions by appearing in the "Time Vault", while also warning them that the use of Scientism is no longer necessary.

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150 years after The Foundation is established, and the powerful trading nation faces its greatest threat.

Episode 3, The Merchant Princes (57min. 35mb)


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Sundaze (31)

Hello, Sundaze today connects to yesterdays dubnology , however the BPM is reduced. One of the founders of the ambient house genre are undoubtely The Orb, after a higly acclaimed start , their work became more controversial, which i guess is expectable when a collective is at work. that and the need to develop. The British press by enlarge was critical of The Orbs output between 94 and 04. Nevertheless the rest of the world remained more enthousiastic.Here i post their acclaimed debut, Orbus Terrarum, the first album that displayed that rift and which was to The Orb a new direction..finally the return to overall acclaim with Okie Dokie (05).

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Alex Paterson began his music career in the early 1980s as a roadie for the post-punk rock band Killing Joke, for whom his childhood friend Martin "Youth" Glover played bass. After leaving Killing Joke in 1986, Paterson met future KLF member Jimmy Cauty and the duo began DJ-ing and producing music together under the name The Orb. Paterson and Cauty's first release was a 1988 acid house anthem track, "Tripping on Sunshine". Paterson and Cauty began DJ-ing in London and landed a deal for The Orb to play the chill out room at London nightclub Heaven. Resident DJ Paul Oakenfold brought in the duo specifically as ambient DJs for his "The Land of Oz" event at Heaven. Their "Chill Out Room" act grew popular over the course of their six month stay to the point that the small room was often packed with around 100 people(weary DJs and clubbers seeking solace from the loud, rhythmic music of the dancefloor).

Throughout 1989, The Orb, along with Martin Glover, developed the musical genre of ambient house through the use of a diverse array of samples and recordings. The culmination of their musical work came towards the end of the year when The Orb recorded a session for John Peel on BBC Radio 1. The track, then known as "Loving You", was largely improvisational and featured a wealth of sound effects and samples from science fiction radio plays, nature sounds, and Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You". For its release as a single on record label Big Life, The Orb changed the title to "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld".

In 1990, Paterson and Cauty held several recording sessions at Cauty's studio, Trancentral. When offered an album deal by Big Life, The Orb found themselves at a crossroads: Cauty preferred that The Orb release their music through his KLF Communications label, whereas Paterson wanted to ensure that The Orb did not become a side-project of The KLF.[Due to these issues, Cauty and Paterson split in April 1990, with Paterson keeping the name The Orb. As a result of the break-up, Cauty removed Paterson's contributions from the in-progress recordings and released the album as Space on KLF Communications. Also out of these sessions came The KLF album Chill Out, on which Paterson appeared in an uncredited role. Following the split, Paterson began working with Youth on the track "Little Fluffy Clouds". They incorporated samples from Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint and vocal clips from an interview with Rickie Lee Jones in which she recalls picturesque images from her childhood.While Reich was flattered by The Orb's use of his work, Jones pursued the issue in the legal system.

In 1991, Paterson invited energetic studio engineer Kris "Thrash" Weston to join The Orb. Steve Hillage, whom Patterson had met while DJ-ing in London, also joined as a contributing guitarist. Along with producer Thomas Fehlmann and audio engineer Andy Falconer, The Orb completed several additional tracks for their first album. The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld sold well in the UK and received praise for its balance of ambient music, house music, and sampling. In late 1991 and early 1992, Paterson and Weston wrote their next single, "Blue Room". Assisting with the recording was bassist Jah Wobble, keyboardist Miquette Giraudy, and guitarist Hillage. Despite its playing time of almost 40 minutes, "Blue Room" entered the UK charts at #12 and peaked at #8, making it the longest track to reach the UK singles chart. In July 1992, U.F.Orb was released featuring "Blue Room", it reached #1 on the UK Albums Chart to the shock of critics, who were surprised that fans had embraced what journalists, noticing Steve Hillage, considered to be progressive rock.

Disagreements with their label , Big Life, led to signing to Island where they released a life album, Live 93, which gathered highlights from The Orb's recent performances in Europe and Asia. The Orb's first studio production on Island Records was Pomme Fritz, a chaotic EP noted for its heavy use of strange samples and its lack of conventional harmonies, the critics panned it as "doodling". Soon after, Paterson, Weston, and Thomas Fehlmann joined with Robert Fripp to form the group FFWD as a side project. FFWD released a single self-titled album on Paterson's Inter-Modo label, which Fehlmann later described as "an Orb track which became so long that it became a whole album!". Following Weston's departure from The Orb, Thomas Fehlmann joined as a full-time studio member, though he would not always participate in live performances. Paterson, Hughes, and Fehlmann then finished producing the album Orbus Terrarum, on which Paterson and Weston had been working. Orbus Terrarum, released in 1995, featured more "earthbound" and "organic" sounds than their previous trippy science fiction themed music.

After a long world tour, The Orb, with Andy Hughes and Steve Hillage, settled down to produce their next album, Orblivion—the process of which saw a return to their spacy sounds. Though Orblivion was recorded in May 1996, it was not released until almost a year later, the first single, "Toxygene", was the highest charting single by The Orb, reaching #4 in the UK. Paterson and Fehlmann, wrote and produced Cydonia for a planned 1999 release. Paterson felt that this new direction of songwriting for The Orb was more similar to the experimental work of Orbus Terrarum than to the techno-pop of Orblivion. As Island Records was in a period of restructuring due to its recent purchase by Universal Music Group, Cydonia was not released until 2001. It was not well recieved, the UK press regarded them as past their prime and an "ambient dinosaur" out of place in the current dance music environment.

Paterson and Fehlmann chose to make their next releases a series of several low-key EPs for German label Kompakt in 2002.these were were well recieved and released later, slightly remixed on the 2005 Okie Dokie album . The Orb continued to use their odd synthetic sounds on 2004's Bicycles & Tricycles, to mixed reviews. Like Cydonia, Bicycles & Tricycles featured vocals, including female rapper MC Soom-T who added a hip hop twist to the album.The Orb left Island Records and released the album on Cooking Vinyl . After two more EPs on Kompakt, The Orb (now composed of only Paterson and Fehlmann) released Okie Dokie It's The Orb on Kompakt, which featured new material in addition to tweaked versions of their previous Kompakt output. In August 2006, the founders of The Orb - Paterson and Cauty - released Living in a Giant Candle Winking at God, their debut album as the Transit Kings with Guy Pratt and Pratt's associate, Dom Beken. Living had been in production since 2001, but due to members' other obligations, it was delayed for several years. The album received mix critical reactions,
soon after the album's release, Cauty left the Transit Kings on "extended leave", leaving the project in indefinite limbo.

Think, you know enough of the Orb now ? Wrong ! Here's a very extensive article on The Orb @ Wiki

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Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (91, flac ^ 695mb )

Retrospectively, Adventures is considered ground-breaking for changing the way musicians view sampling and as a seminal work for the genres of ambient and dance music. The album's framework is of a two-hour psychedelic trip though music genres and studio electronics, pushing the threshold of live stage performance. Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld simulates a journey through the outer realms -- progressing from the soaring ambient-pop of "Little Fluffy Clouds" and the stoned "Back Side of the Moon" to "Into the Fourth Dimension" and ending (after almost two hours) with the glorious live mix of "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain.




Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld    (flac  333mb)

01 - Little Fluffy Clouds (4:26)
02 - Earth (Gaia) (9:48)
03 - Supernova At The End Of The Universe (11:56)
04 - Back Side Of The Moon (14:15)
05 - Spanish Castles In Space (15:06)

Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld II    (flac  362mb)

06 - Perpetual Dawn (9:30)
07 - Into The Fourth Dimension (9:16)
08 - Outlands (8:23)
09 - Star 6 & 7 8 9 (8:10)
10 - A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld: Live Mix Mk 10 (18:43)

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Orb - Orbus Terrarum (95 flsc 444mb)

Before leaving The Orb, member Kris Weston had begun work on Orbus Terrarum. However, when he left The Orb, German producer Thomas Fehlmann joined as a full-time studio member. The Orb, now consisting of Alex Paterson, Andy Hughes, and Fehlmann, finished producing Orbus Terrarum. Unlike previous albums by The Orb, Orbus Terrarum featured more "earthbound" and "organic" sounds instead of the trippy science fiction themed music they had previously written. The UK wasnt impressed unlike the other side of the big pond where Orbus Terrarum was recieved much better. Orbus Terrarum brings the mothership back to earth for a collision with some surprisingly harsh percussion and noisy synth. However the melodies and dub lines of previous Orb recordings are still in the mix.



1 - Valley (7:36)
2 - Plateau (12:49)
3 - Oxbow Lakes (7:28)
4 - Montagne D'Or (Der Gute Berg) (10:41)
5 - White River Junction (9:36)
6 - Occidental (13:54)
7 - Slug Dub (15:49)

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Orb - Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt (05, flac 354mb)

Okie Dokie marks the Orb's absolute absorption into Cologne's Kompakt label. It features new material in addition to tweaked versions of their previous Kompakt releases. Thomas Fehlmann on hometurf as the primary creative figure, "inhibiting Alex Paterson's impulses". It makes the album considerably more focused, and less "goofy" than Cydonia and Bicycles & Tricycles. There are no incongruous vocal appearances, silly spoken bits, or lumbering dubwise squibs. In fact, Fehlmann's trademark hypnotic loops and delays made him the center of Okie Dokie production . The Orb's assimilation into the Kompakt label is such that the best cross references aren't their albums of the recent past, but Kompakt's Pop Ambient series. Besides Paterson and Fehlmann, Okie Dokie featured Ulf Lohmann as a co-writer on a track as well as Schneider TM performing vocals for another.Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt gained them back much of their musical credibility with the press and showed that they are still with it..



01 - Komplikation (3:55)
02 - Lunik TM (5:50)
03 - Ripples (5:51)
04 - Captain Korma (4:13)
05 - Kan Kan (4:43)
06 - Rolo (2:36)
07 - Beatitude (2:43)
08 - Cool Harbour (5:11)
09 - Traumvogel (6:24)
10 - Because/Before (Sibirische Musik) (4:40)
11 - Tin Kan (4:31)
12 - Kompagna (Zandic Mix) (3:53)
13 - Falkenbrück (3:29)
14 - Snowbow (2:16)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !

Rhotation (31) Into BPM

Hello Rhotation 31 this week and as always it kicks off Into BPM. Now as announced last week part 2 of the Dubnology series, again a double bill split into 3 easy to digest parts, 2,5 hours to spliff away....First came after but then this came before he released Endtroducing..which had the musicpress fall over eachother for praise as..this guy didnt play an instrument either..and he used that which those guys of the press have in abundance..records..finally here was a guy that knew what to do with them ! All they could come up with was a review for maybe one in twenty they got send. The rest ended up..well you get that picture on the cover. Indeed i have a cynical view on the musicpress..anyway you wont get Endtroducing now, but the work that preceded it..though in the album format it got released a year after..confused ? Don't be it's only music...without instruments...and even that is a matter of opinion...

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DJ Shadow - Preemptive Strike ( 97 ^ 317mb)

Davis grew up in Hayward, CA, a predominantly lower-middle-class suburb of San Francisco. The odd white suburban hip-hop fan in the hard rock-dominated early '80s, Davis gravitated toward the turntable/mixer setup of the hip-hop DJ over the guitars, bass, and drums of his peers. He worked his way through hip-hop's early years into the heyday of crews like Eric B. & Rakim, Ultramagnetic MC's, and Public Enemy, groups that prominently featured DJs in their ranks.

DJ Shadow began his music career as a disc jockey for the UC Davis radio station KDVS. Through the college radio station, Shadow began releasing the Reconstructed from the Ground Up mixtapes in 1991 and pressed his 17-minute hip-hop symphony "Entropy" in 1993. His tracks spread widely through the DJ-strong hip-hop underground, eventually catching the attention of Mo' Wax. During this period he was significant in developing the experimental hip hop style associated with the California-based Solesides record label. His early singles for the label, including In Flux and Lost and Found (S.F.L.), were genre-bending works of art merging elements of funk, rock, hip hop, ambient, jazz, soul, and used-bin found records.

Although he previously released several original works (during 1991-1992 for Hollywood Records) by the time Mo' Wax's James Lavelle contacted him about releasing In/Flux on the fledgling imprint, it wasn't until his association with Mo' Wax that his sound began to mature and cohere. Mo' Wax released a longer work in 1995 -- the 40-minute single in four movements "What Does Your Soul Look Like," which topped the British indie charts -- and Davis went on to co-write, remix, and produce tracks for labelmates DJ Krush and Dr. Octagon plus the Mo' trip-hop supergroup UNKLE. He eventually formed the label Quannum Projects in 1999 out of the previous label Solesides. Shadow's first full-length work, Endtroducing....., was released in late 1996 to immense critical acclaim, in fact the music press fell over eachother like lemmings in praising Shadow. Endtroducing would make the Guinness World Records book for "First Completely Sampled Album" in 2001. The only pieces of equipment Shadow used to produce the album are the AKAI MPC60 12-bit sampling drum machine.

Given that Endtroducing was a masterpiece of subtly shifting texture, Preemptive Strike almost seems purposely incoherent, even though the tracks are sequenced chronologically. The jerky flow can make the album a little difficult to assimilate on first listen, but it soon begins to make sense, even if it never achieves the graceful flow of the album. Several of the selections on Preemptive Strike were available in different forms on Endtroducing -- parts four and one of "What Does Your Soul Look Like" are in their original forms here, presented along with one and three, and there's the "extended overhaul" of "Organ Donor." All of these are significantly different than the LP versions, and "What Does Your Soul Look Like" is necessary in its original, half-hour, four-part incarnation. But the key moments are the seminal "In/Flux," which arguably created trip-hop, and "High Noon," the dynamic, fuzz-drenched single that was his first single release since Endtroducing. Those three A-sides are reason enough for any serious fan of the debut to pick up Preemptive Strike, but the B-sides and "Camel Bobsled Race" are equally intriguing, making the package a nice summation of DJ Shadow's most important singles through the end of 1997.

Nearly six years after his debut production album, the proper follow-up, The Private Press, was released in June 2002. The following year Shadow released a mix album, Diminishing Returns, and in 2004 he released a live album and DVD, Live! In Tune and on Time. In 2006, he signed a deal with Universal Records, and released his long-awaited third solo album, The Outsider, but instead of following the blueprint he used on his past two records, Shadow enlisted help from Bay Area rappers. DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist have created three popular mixtapes entitled Brainfreeze, Product Placement, and the recent The Hard Sell. These mixes fuse jazz, funk, and soul in the framework of a cohesive concept. They toured in 2008 in support of their mixtape The Hard Sell with Kid Koala opening for them.



01 - Strike 1 (0:26)
02 - In/Flux (12:12)
03 - Hindsight (6:52)
04 - Strike 2 (0:15)
05 - What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 2) (13:51)
06 - What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 3) (5:12)
07 - What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4) (7:12)
08 - What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 1) (6:21)
09 - Strike 3 (And I'm Out) (0:26)
10 - High Noon (3:57)
11- Organ Donor (Extended Overhaul) (4:26)

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Various - Dubnology, Lost In Bass ( 96, 154min ^ 885mb)

The Lost In Bass compilation is a two-disc, 24-track collection of spacy mid '90s electronic ethno dub, The utility of dubnology, lies in its ability to appeal to altered states of consciousness, as well providing some of the best chill music going, without completely going into floating mode. There's still something going on and thru out some harder breaks to keep your attention..



Various - Dubnology 2: Lost In Bass ( ^445mb)

01 - Funki Porcini - Dubble (6:35)
02 - Zion Train - Fear The Bass (4:28)
03 - Dreadzone - Skeleton At The Feast (5:39)
04 - Loop Guru - Shrine Kaya Dub (Zion Train Mix) (5:47)
05 - Massive Attack vs. Mad Professor - Eternal Feed Back (6:19)
06 - Transglobal Underground - Lookee Here (Dread At The Controls Mix) (9:20)
07 - Knights Of The Occasional Table, The - Bowl (6:14)
08 - Death In Vegas - GBH (Dub) (3:40)
09 - Ruby - Paraffin (Richard Fearless Dub) (8:07)
10 - Dubstar - Stars (Mother Dub) (6:24)
11 - Children Of Dub - Nemesis (Bumpy Bosh Remix) (5:48)
12 - Sabres Of Paradise, The - Ysaebud (6:07)
13 - African Head Charge - Orderliness, Godliness, Discipline And Dignity (3:21)

Various - Dubnology 2: Lost In Bass ( ^ 440mb)

14 - Main - VIII (6:33)
15 - Blue - Diamanda (9:07)
16 - Alien - Xyloid (6:31)
17 - Underworld - Born Slippy (Tel Ematic) (9:39)
18 - Acacia - Hate (Nico Dark Matter Mix) (7:38)
19 - Seefeel - Gatha (5:59)
20 - Mr. Night & Mr. Day - We Are On Earth To Learn (7:17)
21 - Test Dept. - Critical Dub (5:42)
22 - Dub Syndicate - Hey Ho (Tribal Drift Mix) (4:54)
23 - Fun-Da-Mental - Mother India (Sabres At Dawn Mix) (7:59)
24 - V-Human - Viv Dogana (5:46)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !

Into The Groove (30)

Hello, more soulmen at Into The Groove today, in fact the man at the root is here Sam Cooke, he was the most important soul singer in history -- he was also the inventor of soul music, and its most popular and beloved performer in both the black and white communities. Equally important, he was among the first modern black performers and composers to attend to the business side of the music business, and founded both a record label and a publishing company as an extension of his careers as a singer and composer. Cooke appealed to all, and the parents of those white teenagers as well -- yet he never lost his credibility with his core black audience. His murder was a big boon for the forces of division. What to say about the next soul man he got 4,000 ! songs to his name, won every award applicable and still enjoys his days, acclaimed by Dylan and The Beatles, and ABC had a hit with "when Smokey Sings"


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Sam Cooke - A Man And His Music ( 86, 70 min ^ 374mb)

"Sam was a singer's singer who strongly influenced many male vocalists of the '50s, '60s and '70s, who was loved, respected and revered by artists in the pop and gospel field of music, as well as by his audience, as a unique and extraordinairy artist and person" Aretha Franklin

Sam Cooke was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He added an "e" onto the end of his name because he thought it added a touch of class. He was one of seven children of Annie Mae and the Reverend Charles Cook, a Baptist minister. The family moved to Chicago in 1933. Cooke began his musical career as a member of a quartet with his siblings, The Singing Children, and, as a teenager, he was a member of the Highway QCs, a gospel group. In 1950, at the age of 19, he joined The Soul Stirrers and achieved significant success and fame within the gospel community. His first pop single, "Lovable" (1956), was released under the alias of "Dale Cooke" in order to not alienate his fan base; there was a considerable taboo against gospel singers performing secular music. However, the alias failed to hide Cooke's unique and distinctive vocals. No one was fooled.

In 1957, Cooke signed with Keen Records. His first release was "You Send Me", the B-side of his first Keen Single (the A-side was a reworking of George Gershwin's "Summertime".) which spent six weeks at #1 on the Billboard R&B chart. The song also had massive mainstream success, spending three weeks at #1 on the Billboard pop chart. In addition to his success in writing his own songs and achieving mainstream fame — a truly remarkable accomplishment for an R&B singer at that time — Cooke continued to astonish the music business in the 1960s with the founding of his own label, SAR Records, which soon included The Simms Twins, The Valentinos, Bobby Womack, and Johnnie Taylor. Subsequently Cooke created a publishing imprint and management firm, then left Keen to sign with RCA Victor.

One of his first RCA singles was the hit "Chain Gang. Like most R&B artists of his time, Cooke focused on singles; in all he had 29 top 40 hits on the pop charts, and more on the R&B charts. In spite of this, he released a well received blues-inflected LP in 1963, Night Beat, and his most critically-acclaimed studio album Ain't That Good News, which featured five singles, in 1964. He was known for having written many of the most popular songs of all time in the genre, and is often unaccredited for many of them by the general public .The drowning death of his infant son in mid-1963 had made it impossible for Cooke to work in the studio until the end of that year. During that time, however, with Allen Klein now managing his business affairs, Cooke did achieve the financial and creative independence that he'd wanted, including more money than any black performer had ever been advanced before, and the eventual ownership of his recordings beginning in November of 1963 -- he had achieved creative control of his recordings as well, and seemed poised for a breakthrough.

Cooke was keenly aware of the music around him, and was particularly entranced by Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind," its treatment of the plight of black Americans and other politically oppressed minorities, he sang the song himself but more importantly he felt he should write an answere to it , which became "A Change Is Gonna Come," perhaps the greatest song to come out of the civil rights struggle, and one that seemed to close and seal the gap between the two directions of Cooke's career, from gospel to pop. It was an artistic apotheosis for Cooke, one that shook him too and he has only performed live once or twice...as shortly after he was murdered.


Cooke died at the age of 33 under mysterious circumstances on December 11, 1964, in Los Angeles, California. Though the details of the case are still in dispute, the official story was that he was shot to death by Bertha Franklin, manager of the Hacienda Motel in South Los Angeles, who claimed that he had threatened her, and that she killed him in self-defense. The verdict was justifiable homicide, though many believe that crucial details did not come out in court, or were buried afterward.

In her autobiography, Rage To Survive, singer Etta James claimed that she viewed Cooke's body in the funeral home and that the injuries she observed were well beyond what could be explained by the official account of Franklin alone having fought with Cooke. James described Cooke as having been so badly beaten that his head was nearly separated from his shoulders, his hands were broken and crushed, and his nose was mangled. What is known is that during an after party one Elisa Boyer dragged him off, they went to a motel and next thing Cooke knew she was off with his clothes-and money. When he came to the reception desk in an angry state dressed in his overcoat, the clerk felt threatened and shot him, meanwhile the later arrested for prostitution Boyer had phoned the police with a rape claim..to me it sounds as a rip off skam (which would include an unnamed male guard).. that went wrong, certainly for Cooke. And dare i say for the world, this obviously gifted and smart man could have beaten Obama to the White House..

*****

The Man and His Music is still the only comprehensive single-volume collection of the hits and highlights of Cooke's career from the mid-'50s to his last sides in 1964. What's more, it's out of print, and it is likely to be the last such compilation that we'll ever see, because in the years since its release, the ownership of Cooke's post-1963 sides (comprising his most advanced and ambitious soul recordings) shifted from RCA to ABKCO. The Man and His Music is the only Sam Cooke compilation that covers all of the major phases of his career, from his gospel work with the Soul Stirrers through all of the early pop hits and his move into soul music, culminating with his final classic soul sides.



01 - Touch The Hem Of His Garment (2:02)
02 - That's Heaven To Me (2:01)
03 - I'll Come Running Back To You (2:12)
04 - You Send Me (2:45)
05 - Win Your Love For Me (2:54)
06 - Just For You (2:21)
07 - Chain Gang (2:34)
08 - When A Boy Falls In Love (2:32)
09 - Only Sixteen (1:54)
10 - Wonderful World (2:05)
11 - Cupid (2:30)
12 - Nothing Can Change This Love (2:36)
13 - Rome Wasn't Built In A Day (2:29)
14 - Love Will Find A Way (2:15)
15 - Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha (2:37)
16 - Another Saturday Night (2:25)
17 - Meet Me At Mary's Place (2:41)
18 - Having A Party (2:27)
19 - Good Times (2:28)
20 - Twistin' The Night Away (2:40)
21 - Shake (2:49)
22 - Somebody Have Mercy (3:03)
23 - Sad Mood (2:29)
24 - Ain't That Good News (2:31)
25 - Bring It On Home To Me (2:42)
26 - Soothe Me (2:12)
27 - That's Where It's At (2:37)
28 - A Change Is Gonna Come (3:14)

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Smokey Robinson

Robinson was born and raised in Detroit, and when still a child was nicknamed "Smokey Joe" by an uncle because of his love of cowboy movies. In his teens, this was shortened to "Smokey". In 1955, Robinson founded a group he called the Five Chimes with his best friend Ronald White. By 1957, the group was called the Matadors and included cousins Emerson and Bobby Rogers. Later Emerson was replaced by his sister Claudette Rogers who later married Robinson, and guitarist Marv Tarplin joined the group in 1958. With Robinson as lead singer, the Matadors began touring the local Detroit venues. In 1958, Robinson met songwriter Berry Gordy, who co-wrote for them the single "Got a Job. The group renamed itself the Miracles, and issued singles on both End Records and Chess Records before Robinson suggested to Gordy that he start a label of his own. In 1959, Gordy founded Tamla Records, which he soon reincorporated as Motown. The Miracles were among the label's first signees. Gordy and Robinson had a synergistic relationship, with Robinson providing a foundation for Motown's hit-making success and Gordy acting as a mentor for the budding singer and songwriter. By 1961, Gordy had appointed Robinson vice-president of Motown Records, a title Robinson held for as long as Gordy remained with the company.

The 1960 single "Shop Around" was Motown's first number one hit on the R&B singles chart, and the first big hit for The Miracles.The song was also Motown's first million-selling hit single. They scored many more hits over the years. Besides penning hits for his own group, Robinson also wrote and produced hits and album tracks for other Motown artists. Mary Wells had a big hit with the Robinson-penned "My Guy" (1964), and Robinson served as The Temptations' primary songwriter and producer from 1963 to 1966. During the course of his 50-year career in music, Robinson has accumulated more than 4,000 songs to his credit. The Miracles remained a premier Motown act through most of the 1960s. Albums were released as "Smokey Robinson & the Miracles" after 1965. By 1969, the group's fortunes began to falter, and Robinson decided to quit The Miracles so that he could remain at home with his family and concentrate on his duties as vice president. With the surprise success of the 70 re release of "The Tears of a Clown", Robinson was convinced to remain with The Miracles for a few more years. In 1972, however, he followed through on his original plans to leave the group.

Smokey Robinson began a low-key solo career while concentrating on his duties as vice president of Motown, releasing his first solo LP, Smokey, in 1973. In 1975, Robinson's solo career went into full-drive after the success of the number one R&B hit "Baby That's Backatcha". Robinson's 1976 single "Quiet Storm" and its accompanying album typified a genre of smooth, slow R&B . During the mid-1980s, Robinson fell victim to cocaine addiction. His recording slowed, and his marriage to Claudette faltered; the two were divorced in 1986. With the help of friend Leon Kennedy, Robinson was dramatically healed of his addiction at a religious service. He eventually revitalized his career, scoring hits in 1987 with the Grammy Award-winning "Just To See Her" and "One Heartbeat". In 1988, Robinson published his autobiography, Smokey, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Upon Motown's sale to MCA in 1988, Robinson resigned from his position as vice president. After one last album for Motown, Love, Smokey (1990), Robinson departed the company. Eight years later, he returned to Motown, which by then was a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, and released Intimate (1999). The same year, Robinson received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

*****

Smokey Robinson and The Miracles - Going To A Go-Go (65 ^ 209mb)

Going To A Go-Go is the first album to bill the group as Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. It includes four of the Miracles' Top 20 hits: "Ooo Baby Baby", "The Tracks of My Tears", "Going to a Go-Go", and "My Girl Has Gone". Primarily produced by Miracles lead singer Smokey Robinson, Going to a Go-Go features compositions co-written by Miracles members Robinson, Ronald White, Bobby Rogers, Pete Moore, and Marv Tarplin. The album also features two important Miracles b-sides, "Choosey Beggar" and "A Fork in the Road". Going To A Go-Go was the only Miracles studio LP to chart within the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart, where it peaked at number-eight.



01 - The Tracks Of My Tears (2:56)
02 - Going To A Go-Go (2:48)
03 - Ooo Baby Baby (2:47)
04 - My Girl Has Gone (2:53)
05 - In Case You Need Love (2:40)
06 - Choosey Beggar (2:35)
07 - Since You Won My Heart (2:18)
08 - From Head To Toe (2:26)
09 - All That's Good (3:15)
10 - My Baby Changes Like The Weather (2:49)
11 - Let Me Have Some (3:10)
12 - A Fork In The Road (3:28)

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Smokey Robinson and The Miracles - Make It Happen (67 ^ 205mb)

Make It Happen is a 1967 album by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles. It featured ballads such as the singles "The Love I Saw In You Was Just A Mirage" and "More Love", as well as the up-tempo "The Tears of a Clown" co-written by Stevie Wonder and his producer Hank Cosby. Three years after the album's release, "The Tears of a Clown" was issued as a single, and charted at number-one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. As a result, Make It Happen was reissued as The Tears of a Clown in 1970.



01 - The Soulful Shack (2:45)
02 - The Love I Saw In You Was Just A Mirage (2:58)
03 - My Love For You (2:37)
04 - I'm On The Outside (Looking In) (2:35)
05 - Don't Think It's Me (2:43)
06 - My Love Is Your Love (Forever) (2:19)
07 - More Love (2:45)
08 - After You Put Back The Pieces (I'll Still Have A Broken Heart) (2:38)
09 - It's A Good Feeling (3:09)
10 - You Must Be Love (2:31)
11 - Dancing's Alright (2:30)
12 - The Tears Of A Clown (2:59)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !

Alphabet Soup II (D)

Hello, its D Day at Alphabet Soup II no that doesnt spell out a list of D jays. First of a band who's main man got OD by his careless girlfriend and who did the same a few years later, leaving her parents with the money still generated from sales that have a dozen indiebands dont generate. Jim Morrison has been dead for almost 37 years now but Mr Mojo Risin's myth lives on. And so here today the first compilation released after his death, digitized. The Dears maybe a little pun on The Doors name wise. However, these Canadians raise their internal combustion with their moody and intense music, this musical therapy specially takes it s toll in their live shows. Hardly surprising then that A many musicians passed thru the band and B main man, Murray Lightburn ended up marrying the keyboard woman,Natalia Yanchak....Then there are Dresden Dolls, again with a The infront (that's 3D) they too share an intangible madness, rage and love with their audience, perhaps they need to be seen to be believed, but even then, it is the unseeable which makes this band magic. As for the music its hard to pigeonhole, cabaret-tinged punk, the wild twenties in Berlin..


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The origins of The Doors lay in a chance meeting between acquaintances and fellow UCLA film school alumni Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach California in July 1965. Morrison told Manzarek he had been writing songs and, at Manzarek's encouragement, sang "Moonlight Drive". Impressed by Morrison's lyrics, Manzarek suggested they form a band. Robby Krieger and John Densmore were playing with The Psychedelic Rangers and knew Manzarek from yoga and meditation classes. In August, Densmore joined the group and in september Krieger did. The group never added a bass player, and their sound was dominated by Manzarek's electric organ work and Morrison's deep, sonorous voice, with which he sang and intoned his highly poetic lyrics. The group signed to Elektra Records in 1966 and released its first album, The Doors, featuring the hit "Light My Fire," in 1967.

Like "Light My Fire," the debut album was a massive hit, and endures as one of the most exciting, groundbreaking recordings of the psychedelic era. Blending blues, classical, Eastern music, and pop into sinister but beguiling melodies, the band sounded like no other. With his rich, chilling vocals and somber poetic visions, Morrison explored the depths of the darkest and most thrilling aspects of the psychedelic experience. Their first effort was so stellar, in fact, that the Doors were hard-pressed to match it, and although their next few albums Strange Days, Waiting For The Sun contained a wealth of first-rate material, the group also began running up against the limitations of their recklessly disturbing visions. The infamous Miami concert march 69, derailed the tour and saw Morrison arrested for loosing 'coherance' on stage. The next album The Soft Parade, saw the group experimenting, with mixed results. Accused (without much merit) by much of the rock underground as pop sellouts, the group charged back hard with the final two albums they recorded with Morrison, on which they drew upon stone-cold blues for much of their inspiration, especially on 1971's L.A. Woman.

From the start, the Doors' focus was the charismatic Morrison, who proved increasingly unstable over the group's brief career. In 1969, Morrison was arrested for indecent exposure during a concert in Miami, an incident that nearly derailed the band. Nevertheless, the Doors managed to turn out a series of successful albums and singles through 1971. Following the recording of L.A. Woman, Morrison decided to take some time off and moved to Paris with girlfriend, Pamela Courson, in March. He died there the 3rd of July, apparently of a drug overdose administered by his girlfriend. Pamela ended up enheriting his estate, three years later she died of a drug overdose. The three surviving Doors tried to carry on without him, but ultimately disbanded. Yet the Doors' music and Morrison's legend continued to fascinate succeeding generations of rock fans: In the mid-'80s, Morrison was as big a star as he'd been in the mid-'60s, and Elektra has sold numerous quantities of the Doors' original albums plus reissues and releases of live material over the years, while publishers have flooded bookstores with Doors and Morrison biographies. In 1991, director Oliver Stone made The Doors, a feature film about the group starring Val Kilmer as Morrison. They have sold over 45 million albums in the US alone, and still sell approximately 1 million annually.

*****

The Doors - Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine ( 72, 97min ^ 198mb)

Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine contained the first album release of two B-sides, Willie Dixon's "(You Need Meat) Don't Go No Further," sung by Ray Manzarek, and the beautiful "Who Scared You," with Jim Morrison on vocals from a session in 1969. This compilation is a strange amalgam of their music, the LP title taken from a line in the song "The End," which concludes side two. Five of the 22 songs are from the L.A. Woman sessions, nothing from Absolutely Live is included, and surprisingly, the classic "Waiting for the Sun" is not here. The cover art pastiche by Bill Hoffman is worth the price of admission if you already have all this material, while the inside gatefold picture looks like an outtake from the first album. Bruce Harris' liner notes are truly the '60s merging with the '70s; he calls Jim Morrison "merely the index of our possibilities" and states that Morrison didn't want to be an idol "because he believed all idols were hollow."



The Doors - Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine ( 99mb)

01 - Break On Through (2:23)
02 - Strange Days (3:02)
03 - Shaman's Blues (4:42)
04 - Love Street (2:46)
05 - Peace Frog / Blue Sunday (4:53)
06 - The Wasp (Texas Radio & The Big Beat) (4:07)
07 - End Of The Night (2:48)

08 - Love Her Madly (3:12)
09 - Spanish Caravan (2:53)
10 - Ship Of Fools (3:02)
11 - The Spy (4:10)
12 - The End (11:25)

The Doors - Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine (99mb)

13 - Take It As It Comes (2:25)
14 - Running Blue (2:23)
15 - L.A. Woman (7:42)
16 - Five To One (4:20)
17 - Who Scared You (3:48)
18 - (You Need Meat) Don't Go No Further (3:35)

19 - Riders On The Storm (6:55)
20 - Maggie McGill (4:14)
21 - Horse Latitudes (1:32)
22 - When The Music's Over (10:44)

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The Dears - No Cities Left (03 ^ 154mb)

The Dears, a loose collective of Montreal-area musicians formed in 1995, are led by the charismatic Murray Lightburn. Citing Serge Gainsbourg as a major influence, the band combines cabaret-style vocals with a moody, intense brand of orchestral pop/rock. Lightburn's vision for the band is to create music out of real emotions, often giving his performances the feel of a musical therapy session. They released their debut, End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story in 2000 to critical acclaim. Their orchestral, dark pop sound and dramatic live shows cemented The Dears at the foundation of the then-pre-pubescent Canadian Indie Renaissance . In early 2001, the band entered the studio to record the follow-up, tentatively titled Deuxième Partie, but they released the EPs Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique and Protest, respectively, as well as a collection of unreleased songs, Nor the Dahlias. Then in 2003 they released their second full-length album No Cities Left in Canada, and a string of highly anticipated shows at SXSW '04 launched their international career.

After The Dears toured extensively across Canada, USA, UK, Europe, Japan and Australia supporting the international release of No Cities Left and they returned to the studio to record in 2005.That year Lightburn and longtime Dears keyboardist Natalia Yanchak were married, and in 2006 the band's Gang of Losers came out, and was well-received by the press. As of November 20, 2007, The Dears are currently working on their fourth album, as stated by Lightburn in a MySpace blog entry. The album is scheduled to be completed April, 2008.



01 - We Can Have It (5:42)
02 - Who Are You, Defenders Of The Universe (3:41)
03 - Lost In The Plot (4:48)
04 - The Second Part (5:42)
05 - Don't Lose The Faith (3:10)
06 - Expect The Worst/'Cos She's A Tourist (7:52)
07 - Pinned Together, Falling Apart (6:00)
08 - Never Destroy Us (4:27)
09 - Warm And Sunny Days (5:47)
10 - 22: The Death Of All The Romance (5:52)
11 - Postcard From Purgatory (7:53)
12 - No Cities Left (4:23)

The Dears - No Cities Left (03 * 99mb)

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The Dresden Dolls - I ( 03 ^ 99mb)

Rock bands are pigeonholed into ever-increasingly minuscule sub-categorizations, but The Dresden Dolls continue to defy explanation and classification. While some have called it theatrical rock, punk cabaret, manic-musical, neo-glam-torch,…eventually even the most clever and creative describers shrug and say: “You just have to hear it to believe it.”

The duo of The Dresden Dolls make music based around arrangements of drums (by Brian), piano and vocals (by Amanda), which they call their style of music "Brechtian Punk Cabaret". The Dolls thrive on their inherent juxtapositions. The musical-theater and New-Wave background of writer/singer/pianist Amanda Palmer mixes with drummer Brian Viglione's Heavy Metal roots to create a sonic smear of unclassifiable rock.They started in mid-2000 in Boston, Massachusetts, releasing a compilation of live tracks, then their self-titled debut album. In spring 2005, they got set up as the opening band for Nine Inch Nails', even without Reznor attending of their live shows beforehand. Dresden Dolls are dolls made from a delecate porcelain from the German city of Dresden; then there's Dresden's history of being firebombed on Churcills orders, at the end of World War II in 1945.

The Dolls’ self-titled debut has been selling strong and steady. Initially released on Palmer's own Eight Foot Records in the fall of 2003, the album was subsequently re-released upon the band's signing with Roadrunner. The release of two wildly different singles, the manic-punk “Girl Anachronism” and the cabaret-tinged and bittersweet “Coin-Operated Boy,” which debuted on KCRW via the influential DJ Nic Harcourt, swiftly went on to be the most-requested singles on a handful of stations nationwide. Both songs were showcased in wonderfully twisted videos shot and edited by Michael Pope. Airtime on MTV2 and the Internet immediately began to win the band thousands of admirers for their innovative style and “Coin-Operated Boy” received

Produced by Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, The Pixies, Hole) and recorded over several weeks at Allaire Studios, Yes, Virginia their second studioalbum is a rich tapestry that showcases the band’s road-sharpened musical chemistry and digs deep into recesses of the human heart usually considered taboo. The Dolls have not lost their sense of the absurd, however. The artwork for Yes, Virginia was culled from over 600 submissions from fans, painters and designers from around the globe. Each panel of the booklet includes original images directly inspired by the songs. It's an example of the on-going artistic collaborations between the band and their fans. Additionally, a flood of home–made films, burlesque numbers, sculptures and animations to complete plays and musicals based around the band’s songs have created a constant dialogue between band and audience. The same spirit exists at live shows, as manifested in the so-called “Brigade”, where the Dolls collaborated with hundreds of performing artists ranging from high school drama troupes to top-shelf actors and professional circus artists, including members of Montreal’s celebrated Cirque Eloize and San Fransiciso’s Vau de Vire Society. Earlier this year their third album No Virginia saw the light of day.



01 - Good Day (5:27)
02 - Girl Anachronism (2:58)
03 - Missed Me (4:51)
04 - Half Jack (5:56)
05 - 672 (1:24)
06 - Coin-Operated Boy (4:46)
07 - Gravity (4:17)
08 - Bad Habit (2:59)
09 - The Perfect Fit (5:44)
10 - The Jeep Song (4:47)
11 - Slide (4:30)
12 - Truce (8:34)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !