In the late 1960s, when acid rock reigned and the British Invasion was still raging, Carlos Santana and his band introduced a Latin-based rock sound featuring an Afro-Cuban beat. Carlos Santana was a fourth-generation musician and the son of a violinist who played mariachi music. His father tried for many years to teach him violin, but at age eight, Santana discovered the guitar and started listening to the electric blues of B.B. King and John Lee Hooker and that was the end of it. During his long-lasting career, Carlos Santana’s name has become synonymous with some of the most important genres of music today - jazz, Latin, salsa, blues and rock.

Gaucho is the seventh studio album by the American jazz rock band Steely Dan, released on November 21, 1980 by MCA Records. The sessions for Gaucho represent the band's typical penchant for studio perfectionism and obsessive recording technique. To record the album, the band used at least 42 different musicians, spent over a year in the studio, and far exceeded the original monetary advance given by the record label. Gaucho marked a significant stylistic change for Steely Dan, introducing a more minimal, groove and atmosphere-based format. The harmonically complex chord changes that were a distinctive mark of earlier Steely Dan songs are less prominent on Gaucho, with the record's songs tending to revolve around a single rhythm or mood, although complex chord progressions were still present particularly in "Babylon Sisters" and "Glamour Profession". Gaucho proved to be Steely Dan's final studio album before a 20-year hiatus from the recording industry.

Neatly recorded in February 1976, it was released on LP in 1977, but has not yet appeared as CD. The gig had taken place in a town near Munich. The album features the jazz-rock typical of Embryo, influenced by ethnic music, with scarce vocals and some unusual instruments like marimba, dilruba, oud, and nagasuram. Christian Burchard and Roman Bunka wrote most of the songs together. Only "The orange man" was written by Charlie Mariano. The long CD bonus track "Just arrived" was recorded in Northern Italy on March 6th, 1976, by the very same Embryo line-up and was as yet unreleased. The cover was then designed by Roman Bunka and was used for the CD without any changes.

One of the most original and innovative Krautrock bands, Embryo fused traditional ethnic music with their own jazzy space rock style. Over their 30-year existence, during which Christian Burchard has been the only consistent member, the group has traveled the world, playing with hundreds of different musicians and releasing over 20 records.
This 1979 live album brings together recordings from an Asian and Indian tour featuring the Embryo sextet with saxophonist Edgar Hofmann, guitarist Jay Zier, bassist Uwe Mullrich, Friedemann Josch on flutes, Michael Wehemeyer on harmonium, and Burchard on marimbas, along with special guest and Embryo alumnus Charlie Mariano on soprano saxophone…

Featuring some of the finest avant-garde jazz players from Germany and beyond, the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble began life as a loose studio aggregation assembled for a youth-oriented German television show in 1975. Hoping for a contemporary balance between rock and jazz, producer Werner Schretzmeier called upon pianist Wolfgang Dauner, the former leader of Et Cetera, an avant-garde jazz group Schretzmeier had managed until their breakup in 1972. Initially recruiting musicians from his home base of Stuttgart (then a hotbed of avant-garde jazz), Dauner put together a rotating cast of musicians that were at first dubbed the Eleven and a Half Ensemble (after the program's airtime); this group featured guitarist Volker Kriegel (who shared writing and arranging duties with Dauner), drummer Jon Hiseman, trumpeter Ack Van Rooyen, and trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff…

Galliard were in on the ground floor of the British progressive rock movement, releasing their debut album, Strange Pleasure, in 1969 and mixing jazz, rock, folk, and psychedelic influences. The following year, New Dawn pretty much picked up where its predecessor left off, with one key exception. The band had initially featured two wind players, Dave Caswell and John Smith; though Smith was absent from New Dawn, a whole brace of additional horn players had been brought in to augment the sound. This was during the period when the likes of Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears (and their British equivalents) were starting out, and brass-rock was all the rage.

Galliard is a sextet formed in the summer of 68, and developed a psychedelic type of brass rock, fronted by twin wind players Caswell and Smith and singer Geoff Brown. They recorded two albums on the Deram Nova label (the subsidiary prog label of Decca records) around the turn of the 70's decade, when brass rock was the rage. Their first album Strange Pleasure By Galliard, released in 69, was quite eclectic, ranging from Medieval to Flamenco/Spanish music. For their second album New Dawn, wind player John Smith was gone, but the group adjoined a mega brass section of four player, plus keyboardist Morton.

From 1975 until 1978, Embryo played at the Vlotho ”Umsonst und draussen” festival every year. Their concert from July 1977 on the sports ground, figuring as festival site, in front of about 26,000 people was recorded professionally by Ulrich Wilkening, operating the soundboard. The recording has been preserved till this day. In fact unreleased, except for the track, ”Getalongwithasong”, which appeared on the double LP ”Umsonst und draußen - Vlotho 77” back then, and later as well on the 4CD box “Aufbrüche”. Here is now the whole Embryo gig of that festival, in the well-known Embryo style: jazz-rock influenced by world music. The sound is excellent, as is to be expected from an expert.

Roaring out of the gates is the 15th full-length album by no wave/punk jazz/brutal prog iconoclasts The Flying Luttenbachers, led by founding member and main composer Weasel Walter. There's a few special twists this time, friends. The last two albums, "Shattered Dimension" and "Imminent Death", both epic double-length affairs released in 2019, focused on open ended, improvisational approaches more so than heavily structured ones. "Negative Infinity" is a sort of return-to-form in a regard, featuring 6 tightly scripted doses of what they call "Brutal Prog" - the tag Weasel coined in the early 2000s to describe an elite breed of intense, complex bands who emphasised harshness and intensity over the typical prog-rock flutes and fairies positivity. This is prog for THE APOCALYPSE, not your uncle.

this is ruphus`s swan song, and it features Gudny Aspaas again on lead vocals, and that very refreshing after two albums with Sylvi who sang a bit strained and uptight in places, Gudny is smooth and chilled and delivers very strong vocals here…

Ruphus managed to keep the same lineup on consecutive albums for the first time with 'Flying Colours' but once again the group seems to be searching for a sound, which generally means in search of commercial success…