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Music Reviews: CD

March 19th, 2023

‘Fragments’: Bob Dylan’s ‘Time Out Of Mind’ Restored

Volume 17 of 'The Bootleg Series' is a thoroughly fascinating listen

By: Malachi Lui

The best reissues provide fuller context to the material, guiding listeners to (even) more favorably reassess the work without seeming forceful. As more recent installments have generally grown in size and curation quality, the series has become essential for anyone with more than a passing interest in Dylan. The latest set, 'Fragments: The Bootleg Series Vol. 17,' is the definitive collection of session material and tour recordings surrounding 1997's 'Time Out Of Mind.'

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genre Rock format CD

February 28th, 2023

Jason Moran's Voyage From the Ancient to the Future

The pianist's brilliant revival-tribute to bandleader-composer James Reese Europe

By: Fred Kaplan

Jason Moran’s latest album, From the Dancehall to the Battlefield, is a staggeringly ambitious work, nothing less than a stab at reconceptualizing jazz history, hoisting a fairly obscure figure—the composer-bandleader James Reese Europe (1881-1919)—onto the pantheon of major innovators, a project that forges new links and traces a new path of the music’s evolution, with Lt. Jim Europe (as he was also known) at the—or at least a—center.

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genre Jazz format CD

February 4th, 2023

World Pacific Reissues An Essential Lenny Bruce Recording

From the archives: On this recording, Lenny Bruce riffs off of set pieces, going wherever his mind leads

By: Michael Fremer

(This review originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)This 2CD set documenting comedian Lenny Bruce’s legendary February 4th, 1961 midnight concert at Carnegie Hall is a slightly expanded version of what was originally issued in 1972 as an attractively packaged 3LP set by United Artists (UAS 8900). The concert took place the night after a gigantic blizzard had literally closed down New York City. Bruce almost didn’t make it into town, and when he did, he hardly... Read More

genre Comedy format CD

January 25th, 2023

Diving Deep into the John Williams' Harry Potter Film Scores

La-La Land Records’ Essential Deluxe Limited Edition is Back In Stock!

By: Mark Ward

John WilliamsEven within the context of his catalogue of one classic film score after another, the three films that John Williams scored for the Harry Potter franchise - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) - occupy a very special place. But you wouldn’t necessarily have known that to judge from the somewhat parsimonious manner in which the soundtrack scores... Read More

January 24th, 2023

How Best to Hear Patricia Barber's "Clique!"

some Tracking Angle readers might be surprised

By: Michael Fremer

Patricia Barber albums take up a lot of shelf space real estate here. Over the years her many albums have been issued and reissued on vinyl with every reissue sounding better than the previous one, though of course Jim Anderson recorded all of them digitally. Nightclub was recorded to 3348 multi-track and mixed through a Neve analog desk to both digital and analog mix down masters. Anderson said in an email that "....we've always run digital and analogue on... Read More

genre Jazz Vocal Jazz format CD

December 24th, 2022

John Zorn Keeps Evolving

The impresario of New York new music's new piano quartet

By: Fred Kaplan

Years (it feels like eons) have passed since John Zorn filled his bill as the Angry Young Man of New York’s Downtown jazz scene. (In a bit of etymology right out of a Terry Southern novel, "Zorn" in German means “anger.”) Nearly a decade ago, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, he was touted in tributes and concerts by such exemplars of Uptown culture as the Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, and Columbia University. Now recognized as... Read More

genre Jazz format CD