All Categories — CDs  

Slinky pop from Marsmobil – tunes that bubble and bristle with a bit of downtempo energy, but which have a stronger focus overall – and some compelling female vocals sung in a breathy, laidback style! The album's a joint release from G-Stone and Compost – and it's got elements that echo the presence of both – some of the mellower, moodier funk of G-Stone, and a few of the more electronic and pop-styled modes used recently by Compost. There's a strong European crossover appeal to many of the tunes – somewhat clubby, but even better as electronic pop – with a stylistic link that almost goes back to French pop of the 60s and 70s. Titles include "Magnetizing", "Call Me", "Astralbody", "Supersonic Mind", "Je Suis Lache", "Mangia Amore", and "Neon".

Loads of great electro sounds here – bassy keyboards, splashy beats, and some cool moogy moments – all wrapped up in the kind of heavy funk we've always loved from Shawn Lee! This cool collaboration with AM furthers the pair's step into the best sounds of the 80s – modes that almost feel like digging up the most underground funk of the generation at points, but which also get some pretty tuneful songwriting at others – great vocals that themselves are pretty electronic, and often echo that great moment in the years past punk and disco – when genres broke down for a bit, and music got especially wonderful! The set isn't totally retro – leave it to the pair to bring in some of their own voice as well – and titles include "Good Blood", "Suffer Like Me", "Replay", "In The Aftermath", "Two Times", "Louna", "Iron Leaf", and "Special Disco".

Brilliant music from one of our favorite artists ever – a set that features the mighty Michel Legrand in a host of different settings – all of them great! CD 1 features 20 vocal numbers by Legrand – a great reminder that although best know for his soundtracks, Michel is a hell of a singer – one with this warm, raspy voice that's as at home in scatting jazz as it is in a more lyrical interlude – beautifully displayed here on tunes from the 60s through the 21st Century – vocal numbers that include "Attendre", "Quand Ca Balance", "Elle A Elle A Pas", "Rupture", "Le Cinema", "Trombone Guitare Et Compagnie", "Edith", "La Partie De Tennis", "Les Enfants Qui Pleurent", and "Mon Dernier Concert". CD 2 features jazz tunes by Legrand and others – almost all of which are versions of Legrand's great compositions – and a few others based around his sublime arrangements! Titles include "Flight" by Stan Getz, "De Delphine A Lancien" by Bud Shank, "Vida Real" by Arturo Sandoval, "Images" by Phil Woods, "Once You've Been In Love" by Sarah Vaughan, "My Funny Valentine" by Toots Thielmans, and "I Will Wait For You" by Lena Horn. CD 3 features soundtrack material – perhaps Legrand's most famous area of expression, and for good reason too – as you'll hear on titles from films like La Piscine, Le Sauvage, Cinq Jours En Juin, La Buche, Ice Station Zebra, Cleo De 5 A 7, Dingo, The Picasso Summer, Les Demoiselles De Rochefort, and Robin & Marian. CD 4 is a rare treat – music we've never heard before, and a set of recent duets that feature Michel Legrand on piano and Cetherine Michel on harp – running through some wonderful takes on classic Legrand compositions, including "His Eyes Her Eyes", "Orson's Theme", "Au Concert", "Nobody Knows", "How Do You Keep The Music Playing", and "I Will Say Goodbye". Amazing music throughout – and a hell of a great set at this price!

A cool collection of grooves from Disques Dessinee – one of the grooviest labels going today – and an imprint that we can definitely trust to dig up tunes we've never heard before! This volume of the series is definitely in keeping with the "mellow" in the title – and features a mix of obscure late 70s numbers with a laidback disco vibe – mixed with a few other contemporary numbers that still echo older modes – particularly 70s fusion and Brazilian rhythms! As with other releases, the packaging is wonderful too – a really beautiful wrapper for rare tunes that include "No One Like" by Bjorn Gordsby, "Waiting In The Wings" by Marion Javius, "Muevete Muevete" by Black Sugar, "Do What You Will" by Amber Navran Band, "Sister Jane" by Max Greger Jr, "Easy To Love" by Tess Henley, "The Way" by Orly, "Cumuli Nimbus" by Laurie Holloway, and "Circling Numbers" by Nuela Charles.

When we were impressionable little arty tykes, this was one of our favorite soundtracks. It's got some beautiful Satie-esque tracks that feature solo piano by Vladimir Cosma, plus some weird Euro electronic stuff that has a nice cold feel to it. Also features a few tracks from the opera "La Wally", but we always skipped over these. Titles include "Voie Sans Issue", "Gorodish", "Promenade Sentimentale", "Metro Police", and "Lame De Fond".

One of Freddie Hubbard's wildest records ever – a really unique experiment with electronics, and a set that sounds way different than his other albums for Atlantic, Blue Note, or CTI! The key factor here is experimentalist Ilhan Mimaroglu – who adds lots of electronics and processed sounds to the set – blended with Freddie's more soulful lines on trumpet – to create a style that's almost a jazz version of musique concrete! In fact, at times, you forget that Hubbard's playing at all, as the wash of noise overtakes the force of some of his solos – and titles include "Threnody For Sharon Tate", "The Crowd", and "What A Good Time For Kent State".

Incredible work from Sory Kandia Kouyate – not just an amazing singer, but also a powerful political force in independent Guinea as well! This 2CD collection brings together music from Sory's best period – very heavy on early 70s numbers that feature enigmatic instrumentation on kora, tenor sax, balafon, and percussion – with accompaniment by either the Trio De Musique, Ensemble National Djoiba, or Keltgui Et Ses Tambourinis – all groups who create these amazingly-woven backdrops that are perfect for Koyate's long-spun style of storytelling singing! The whole thing is captivating right from the start – with that incredible freshness we first felt when hearing the Ethiopiques series – a great reminder that there's still a hell of a lot of African music for our ears to discover. Wonderfully packaged by Sterns, with notes in French and English –a nd tracks that include "Kedo", "Douga", "Toubaka", "Siiba", "Nina", "Souaressi", "Minawa", "Djoliba", "Fouaba", "Tara", and "N'Na".

Amazing work from French film composer Michel Magne – a set of more serious compositions, but all of which still have the great ear for odd sounds and subtle humor we love in his soundtracks! The centerpiece of the set is his "Musique Tachiste" suite from 1959 – an extended composition that features voices, instruments, and noises all coming together in a really wonderful way! Christiane Legrand handles the "voix chantee" – a wordless singing vocal – and Jaqueline Dano does the "voix expression", the more dramatic one in the set. Piano is by Paul Castanier, who figures heavily – and other instrumentation includes vibes from Geo Daly, plus some spare but effective use of odd noises that really come off well. After that selection, the CD moves onto a series of 1968 recordings in which pianist Martial Solal plays the music of Magne – set to arrangements from the legendary Jean-Claude Vannier! The sound is amazing – jazzy, but always veering outside – not just on Solal's trademark angular piano lines, but also in Vannier's complex shifting colors in the backdrops! Titles include "Air Liquide", "Rose Des Vents", "Clair Obscur", and "Organique". The CD features 2 more rare experimental works – "Echellses Mobiles" from 1970, and "Mozart En Afrique" from 1972. The whole thing's great – never too cerebral or academic, and always with a nice sense of wit.

An amazing collection of experimental sounds from the European scene of the postwar years – key electronic and musique concrete recordings from some of the most important composers of the 20th Century! The package is a great introduction to this important stretch in music – and features recordings that are every bit as mindblowing now as they were over 50 years ago – really revolutionary sounds and tones that went onto have an undeniable impact on modern music, yet which still sound even more amazing here in the original source recordings. Includes "Poeme Electronique" by Edgard Varese, "Voile D'Orphee" by Pierre Henre, "Diamorphoses" and "Concret PH" by Iannis Xenakis, "Studie Nr 1" and "Gesang Der Junglinge" by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and "Cinq Etudes De Bruits" by Pierre Schaeffer.

One of Freddie Hubbard's wildest records ever – a really unique experiment with electronics, and a set that sounds way different than his other albums for Atlantic, Blue Note, or CTI! The key factor here is experimentalist Ilhan Mimaroglu – who adds lots of electronics and processed sounds to the set – blended with Freddie's more soulful lines on trumpet – to create a style that's almost a jazz version of musique concrete! In fact, at times, you forget that Hubbard's playing at all, as the wash of noise overtakes the force of some of his solos – and titles include "Threnody For Sharon Tate", "The Crowd", and "What A Good Time For Kent State".

A tremendous collection of French film soundtracks – all penned to accompany the famous work of Jean-Pierre Melville, and all nearly as integral to the movies as the image itself! Melville is a very sound-conscious director, and the music for his films is a key force in guiding the actions of the camera – as much a narrative force as a scene-setting device, as you'll hear in the wonderful music on this set! The package features work from 10 different Melville films from the years 1959 to 1972 – and is presented with great notes in both English and France, with some key images from the movies too. Includes material from Bob Le Flambeur by Jo Boyer, Deux Hommes Dans Manhattan by Christian Chevallier, Leon Morin Pretre by Martial Solal, Le Doulos by Paul Misraki, L'Aine Des Ferchaux by Georges Delerue, Le Samourai by Francois De Roubaix, L'Armee Des Ombres by Eric Demarsan, Le Cercle Rouge by Eric Demarsan, Un Flic by Michel Colombier, and Musique Inedit Pour Le Cercle Rouge by Michel Legrand.

One of the hippest, deepest collections of European jazz we've ever heard – a really wonderful set that opens up a whole new side of the French scene of the 60s, 70s, and 80s – filled with music that we've never heard before! Unlike other sets of this nature, which focus on American players overseas – this one is filled with homegrown talent, often working in styles that echo the spiritual and modal sounds of the US underground of the post-Coltrane years – very rich in feeling and righteous in message – freely expressive, but never going too far out to lose their groove! We know some artists here, but not from these recordings – and others are pulled from the kind of totally obscure French albums you'd only find after years of digging around in Paris flea markets. Titles include "Colchiques" by Eddy Louiss, "Doorstep" by Octet De Dreux, "Notes So High" by Stella Levitt, "Ricardo" by Michel Roques, "La Musique D'Orphee" by Chene Noir, "Le Musichien" by Francois Tusques, "Creole Girl" by Noah Howard, "Israel Suite" by Rupture, and "Lido" by Les Prospections.

Amazing! This is one of the coolest CDs we've seen in years – and everything about it is fantastic, from the package right down to the double-length set of music! The set features rare unreleased recordings from Raymond Scott's legendary Manhattan Research electronic music studios – originally set up in 1946, and home to some of Scott's landmark early work on non-acoustic music during the 50s and 60s. Far from being the sort of turgid, dark knob-twiddling that computer music later became in the academy, Scott's early experiments are filled with a sense of whimsy and joy – exported directly from his early cartoon-based work, and applied in a fantastic way to his evolving musical inventions! Plus, the whole thing's packaged in this super-cool hardcover book, with a whopping 140 pages of notes, photographs, old advertisements, and interviews – all done in a brilliant graphic style that complements the package even further! Don't forget the music, though – because it's totally fantastic – and kind of reminds us of bits of Jon Appleton's Syntonic Menagerie, Pierre Henry's early Musique Concrete, and later punk-era DIY electronics. That doesn't even come close to pinning it down, though – and with 2 CDs worth of material, the scope of the work is amazing!

Rare music composed by Maurice Jarre – done relatively early in his career of work for feature films, but also some of his best! The album features new recordings of music from four early 60s movies – Pleins Feux Sur L'Assassin, Les Dimanches De Ville D'Avray, Judex, and Les Animaux – all Jarre music that was never issued on older soundtrack albums – which makes this collection even more essential! The recording is quite faithful to the spirit of older soundtrack music – nothing too contemporary at all, which means that all the tracks here definitely feel as if they were lifted from early 60s films – although with arguably better sound overall. The package features full notes in English and French – and the depth of Jarre's music is wonderful – far past what we might have expected from his bigger hits of later years.

The music of the French New Wave – brought out beautifully in an overstuffed 3CD set! The late 50s shift in French cinema is arguably one of the most important film moments in the 20th century – and although the movies are best remembered for their directors, stars, and striking images – most of the films also had some pretty amazing music as well! In fact, we've always felt that the music was integral to the Nouvelle Vague – from famous jazz scores, to lovely lyrical passages, to bold orchestral arrangements that also ended up having a huge impact on wider European music as well. This package is the first we've ever seen to really dig deep into the New Wave – and it brings together 80 tracks from dozens of films – a really wide variety of music, provided by artists who include Michel Legrand, Georges Delerue, Paul Misraki, Pierre Jansen, Miles Davis, Maurice Jarre, Jean Constantin, Martial Solal, Michel Magne, Antoine Duhamel, Alain Romans, and others – from movies that include 400 Blows, Jules & Jim, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Les Bonnes Femmes, Une Femme Est Une Femme, Breathless, Weekend, Lola, Cleo De 5 A 7, Le Bonheur, Alphaville, and many others! Some films are represented by a few tracks, others by famous themes – and the package also features a booklet with notes in French and English too.