Category Archives: Music

Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session

Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session was pretty revolutionary when it was first released in November 1988. Their second release, it was recorded pretty much “live” and pretty much in one day, in a Toronto church, around a single microphone. It … Continue reading →

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Rhiannon Giddens’ Freedom Highway

Rhiannon Giddens’ Freedom Highway is one of those rare recordings that grabs your attention right from the first note and won’t let go. Giddens was one of the founders of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a seminal folk group that brought … Continue reading →

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Craig Taborn’s Daylight Ghosts

For his third outing as a leader on ECM, pianist Craig Taborn is fronting a quartet and playing more within the contemporary jazz idiom than on his previous releases with that label. The quartet includes Chris Lightcap on bass and … Continue reading →

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Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge’s Mount Royal

I’m still wringing major bits of pleasure out of last year’s electric Julian Lage Trio release Arclight, when here comes this splendid acoustic offering from Lage and Chris Eldridge. Mount Royal is the second full-length by this duo, following Avalon … Continue reading →

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SVER’s Fryd

SVER is a Norwegian five piece group boasting two fiddlers, a 2-row accordionist, a guitarist and a percussionist. They started out as a group in 2008, but fiddler Olav Luksengård Mjelva and accordionist Leif Ingvar Ranöjen had been playing as … Continue reading →

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Scott Allen Nollen’s Jethro Tull: A History of the Band, 1968-2001

Kate Brown penned this review. Scott Allen Nollen has proven his devotion as a Tull fan in the countless miles travelled and the hours passed collecting details and interviewing band members and other associates. He has included nostalgic pictures of … Continue reading →

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Various Artists’ Gamelan of Central Java XII: Pangkur One/XIII: Pangkur Two

“Pangkur” denotes a kind of music in the Javanese classical canon that can take many forms — sung poetry, court dances, and many other idioms — and can be performed in either slendro or pelog scales. It is perhaps the … Continue reading →

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Robert Sandall’s The Penguin Café Orchestra: A History

The Penguin Café Orchestra: A History is just that (although arguably it is as much a history of Simon Jeffes, but Jeffes and the Orchestra are so inextricably intertwined that I’m not prepared to argue the matter). The meat of … Continue reading →

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Michael Chapman’s 50

I’m a little embarrassed to say that Michael Chapman’s new album 50 is my first exposure to this nonpariel British guitarist, singer and songwriter. After all, he gets name-checked alongside such greats as Richard Thompson, Bert Jansch and Davy Graham, … Continue reading →

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Pandit Ram Narayan’s Raga Puria-Kalyan

Pandit Ram Narayan was born in 1927 in Rajasthan, the fifth generation of a family of musicians. At the age of seven he began formal training on the sarangi, a bowed string instrument traditionally played to accompany singers. Narayan was … Continue reading →

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