Johnny Cash is a country music icon. His best period, of course, was probably on the Columbia label. This one picks up after he left Columbia in 1986 and signed with Mercury. Still, this isn't a bad set at all. This is another great disc in UMG's 20th Century Masters series. If your a huge Johnny Cash fan like I am, than this is a welcome member to your Cash collection. But, if your new or just a casual fan to Cash's music, buy this along with Sony's '16 Biggest Hits' and you are off to a great start.

Blast First Petite’s new publication gathers text, images and live music about the late Finnish musician, including Wire contributor Jennifer Lucy Allan's Invisible Jukebox transcript. Blast First Petite have published a book and CD package in memory of the late Mika Vainio. Produced in a limited edition of 1000, the 260 page MTV 15.05.63–12.04.2017 isn’t so much a biography or monograph as a “psychopomp” for Mika Tapio Vainio, declares the label – psychopomp meaning “a guide of souls”.

The Millennium Collection: The Best of Smokey Robinson collects the highlights of Robinson's career after the Miracles, including "Quiet Storm," "Being With You," "One Heartbeat," and "Cruisin'." "Let Me Be the Clock," "Baby Come Close," and a live version of "Ooo Baby Baby" round out this portrait of Robinson's sweet, sensual, maturing style.

The French-Afropean duo is back with a new funky masterpiece album, Aimez Ces Airs. DjeuhDjoah & Lieutenant Nicholson are French composers and Afro-soul singers. The duo is creating a new vibe with French sounds and mixing it with jazz, Afrobeat, electronic, and soul. T'es Qui? (HC 034CD, 2015) was their first album released in 2015 and re-released a year later under the name Remets T'es Qui? (HC 044CD/LP, 2016). It was result of an intense collaboration that has lasted many years, on stage and in the studio. They call their music "Afropean songs", a collection of jazzy-pop melodies, Afro-soul, and funk arrangements. This album has 15 songs and features a tribute to the famous poet Aimé Césaire on the title.

Wear Your Wounds was created by Converge founder Jacob Bannon. Initially conceived as a solo project, it evolved into a five-piece band that often works with collaborating musicians. In 2017 Wear Your Wounds released "WYW" (the debut double album) and "Arthritic Heart" (a New Noise Magazine single). A live band was then assembled for a number of shows including Roadburn Festival 2017 and Desert Festival UK. Later on that year their "Dunedevil" (an experimental album) was released; a companion piece to Bannon's abstract art book of the same name. In 2018 Wear Your Wounds released their "Live at the BBC" 12" LP at Maida Vale Studio (MV4). That year Wear Your Wounds also played select shows on the East Coast and Europe including an appearance at Roadburn Festival 2018, which was also curated by Bannon.

Universal's ubiquitous Twentieth Century Masters series is mostly oriented toward popular music, offering no-frills but generally reliable greatest-hits collections for artists whose catalogs may often present a variety of compilations, confusing for the buyer. There's nothing really wrong with this group of Luciano Pavarotti selections, but the great Italian tenor is not especially accurately represented here. Nearly half the selections are Neapolitan songs or come from related semi-popular genres. Pavarotti has a good time with these, but he is less noted for singing them than are other operatic figures.

Gil Evans - There Comes a Time (1975) {2014 Japan Jazz Collection 1000 Columbia-RCA Series SICP 4045}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 492 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 186 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 12 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1975, 2014 RCA / Sony Music Japan | SICP 4045
Jazz / Post Bop / Progressive Jazz / Modern Post-Bebop / Experimental Big Band

Reissue with latest remastering. Comes with liner notes. There Comes a Time is an album by the jazz composer, arranger, conductor and pianist Gil Evans, recorded in 1975 and performed by Evans with an orchestra featuring David Sanborn, Howard Johnson, Billy Harper. So, in a rather silent way, we've got a FULL version of this album. There Comes A Time comes not only with a 3 bonus tracks (that are marked jsut modestly somewhere on the obi), but with a full, over 19-minutes version of "The Meaning Of The Blues", that originaly take not even 6 minutes. Absolute must for a fusion fan, great guitar solos by Kawasaki ("There Comes A Time" sounds like a hell of tribute to Mahavishnu Orchestra) and horns.

Add History, Hits, and Highlights '68-'76 to the long list of recently released Deep Purple DVDs from Eagle Rock Entertainment. This one takes a look at the beginning of the band through to their first break-up in 1976, and features a host of archival footage, some that has already been officially released, and some that hasn't. For fans of the band, especially their earliest incarnations, this will be a treasure chest of goodies and should warrant repeated viewings…

Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Roach, Mingus - The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall (1953) {OJC Remasters Complete Series rel 2012, item 22of33}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 193 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 111 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 144 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24-bit remaster
© 1953, 2012 Debut / Riverside / Concord | 0888072337220
Jazz / Bebop / Bop

Concord Music Group releases three new titles in its Original Jazz Classics Remasters series. Enhanced with 24-bit remastering by Joe Tarantino, bonus tracks on each release (some previously unissued), and new liner notes to provide historical context to the originally released material, the series showcases pivotal recordings of the past several decades by artists whose influence on the jazz tradition continues to reverberate among jazz musicians and audiences well into the 21st Century.

The Sabbath Collection is a compilation album released in 1985 by the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. The album was released without the consent of the band, and is therefore considered "unofficial"…

Ketil Bjørnstad - Rainbow Sessions: New Edition (2019) {4CD Box Set Grappa GRCD 4630}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.01 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 701 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 2019 Grappa | GRCD 4630
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Post Bop / Folk Jazz / Piano

Ketil Bjørnstad celebrates 50 years as a musician and artist in 2019. Bjørnstad’s 50th anniversary as an artist kicks off with a reissue of “Rainbow Sessions”, earlier released as a limited edition in 2006. This is Ketil Bjørnstad’s homage to the world known Rainbow Studios and the Steinway grand piano. When studio owner and sound guru Jan Erik Kongshaug in 2004 was moving the studio to a new location, the idea to make the last to record in the old studio and the first to play in the new, was born. Two solo piano albums were planned, at the time it turned into three, and for this release evolves into four. This celebratory edition consists of five different Rainbow sessions recorded in the period 2013-2017, which Bjørnstad has put together into a fourth bonus CD.