Holanda 2 ( no completo el marcador)

Riding on the success of their hit single "Hocus Pocus" from the revolutionary Moving Waves album, Focus got to work on this, their third LP in four years. While the debut album featured a style not too dissimilar to the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Focus' second LP, Moving Waves, was purely instrumental and wholly serious-minded. Focus III kept this same sound, but approached it with a jollier, more accessible tone. As with its predecessor, Focus III featured only one tune that would have a chance of being a hit single. The enjoyable rhythm of "Sylvia," partnered with Jan Akkerman's victorious guitar solo, some of Van Leer's finest organ work, Bert Ruiter's tight basslines, and Pierre Van Der Linden's mellow drumming, assured the track classic status. "Sylvia" found worldwide success and gained the band valuable radio and press exposure. The song remains one of the most loved and best remembered songs fromFocus' catalog. The consistency in musical quality throughout Focus III is enough to merit any listeners' respect. To be frank, this LP has it all: diverse songs, astounding musicianship, one of the finest singles ever released -- Focus IIIshould unquestionably be ranked alongside the likes of Revolver, Dark Side of the Moon, and any others of rock's greatest.

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Holanda 1

The album that boosted Focus into at least semi-fame outside of continental Europe, Moving Waves blasts off with their hit single, "Hocus Pocus." Built around a killer guitar hook by Jan Akkerman and a series of solo turns by the band, this instrumental replaced "Wipeout" as a staple of FM radio. The bizarrely hilarious vocal and accordion solos by Thijs van Leer -- one of which absurdly concludes with rousing stadium cheers -- have to be heard to be believed. After this over-the-top performance, the other tracks seem comparatively constrained: the gentle "Le Clochard" features some gorgeous classical guitar over Mellotron strings. The album concludes with "Eruption," which while mimicking the multi-suite nomenclature of Yes and King Crimson, is essentially a side-long jam session. Stop-time Emersonianorgan solos alternate with languid sections of jazzy guitar redolent of Santana, while still other sections are flat-out electric blues-rock stomps. It's impressive playing, though it comes off as a bit meandering after the tightly structured solos that began the album.

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El que avisa no es traidor

Comunicamos a nuestros seguidores e interesados de todo el mundo que el servicio de este blog se verá seriamente afectado durante el transcurso de la copa del mundo.
Independientemente de la performance celeste.

Miércoles de novedad 2 Jack

Like "blunderbuss," a "lazaretto" is an ancient reference that means little in the modern world, a fact that does not escape Jack White, a musician who specializes in blurring lines between past and present. Contrary to his carefully cultivated persona as a raider of lost Americana, White never, ever was a purist: he thrived upon seizing the precise moment when accepted definitions lose all meanings and turn into something new. This tension surfaces onLazaretto, his second solo album, a record that lives upon the edges of his interests. There is a fair share of blues bluster -- via Zeppelin riffs and huffed references to digital cameras, the opener "Three Women" modernizes Blind Willie McTell, while he twists a refrain from Howlin' Wolf's "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" on "Just One Drink" -- but Lillie Mae Rische's violin occupies nearly as much space as his own howling guitars, pushing White into the left field where he prefers to reside. That eccentricity is the pleasure of Lazaretto, which is by every measure the strangest record associated with White since 2005's Get Behind Me Satan, a record that found Jack tackling the aftermath of fame by turning gothic. He's since lightened his outlook -- all the restored recording booths and trickster vinyl coming out of Third Man Records in Nashville show the heart of a prankster -- but he retains the itch of an artist, thriving upon self-imposed limitations. With Lazaretto, that amounted to adapting a clutch of fiction he wrote when he was 19, using the themes of these stories and plays to not only fuel the topics, but to freshen his songwriting, which was veering ever so slightly toward craftsmanship on Blunderbuss. Here, White kicks the legs out from under himself, allowing himself some signature indulgences -- the aforementioned blues blazers, plus the unhinged "That Black Bat Licorice" -- and reviving a few forgotten sounds (the closing piano ballad "Want and Able" recalls the moody turns ofSatan), but generally he pounces upon detours, savoring the instrumental of "High Ball Stepper," demonstrating a facility with hip-hop rhythms and cadence on "Lazaretto," and lingering in dark corners for perhaps a little longer than necessary. All this sound and fury disguises how elsewhere on Lazaretto there are songs as exquisitely sculpted as those on Blunderbuss -- the heartbroken honky tonk of "Temporary Ground," the deceptively sprightly "Alone in My Home," the teasing melodrama of "Would You Fight for My Love?" -- but what makes it a better, richer work is how it simultaneously holds every side of White, existing at the crossroads where modernity, tradition, hard work, and inspiration all meet.

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Miércoles de novedad 1 Diosa

Some 35 years after the Pretenders' debut, Chrissie Hynde steps out on her own with 2014's Stockholm. Its title is not a reference to the infamous "Stockholm syndrome" but rather an allusion to her chief collaborator on the project, Björn Yttling, of the Swedish pop band Peter Bjorn and John. He's the most prominent collaborator Hynde has had in a while -- she collaborated with then-lover JP Jones on the 2010 album Fidelity! and spent most of 2002's Loose Screwwriting with long-term latter-day Pretenders guitarist Adam Seymour -- but collaborators tend to fade into the background with Hynde, just like how distinctions between a band and solo performances blur with her, too. Hynde is that powerful of a presence and she remains so on Stockholm, although it is by many measures one of the lightest records she's ever made. Some of this is certainly due to Yttling, who encourages Hynde to indulge in pop inclinations she's hinted at but never explored, but it's also true she's in a fairly sunny state of mind, never dwelling on either mortality or heartbreak. This suits the glistening production, which employs several mildly modernistic techniques -- there are electronic rhythms, suggested synthesizers, sly effects, and a general bright openness that feels fresh -- and helps accentuate her sprightlier melodies, whether it's the Spector-esque spangle of "You or No One," the echoing nocturnal vistas of "A Plan Too Far," or the heady rush of "Dark Sunglasses," the cut here that comes closest to sounding like vintage Pretenders. Even if Stockholm rarely suggests either the muscle or roar of the Pretenders, it never once doesn't feel like the work of Chrissie Hynde; sonically and aesthetically, it feels like the next logical chapter after 2008's Break Up the Concrete and 2010's Fidelity! And, as it is a Chrissie Hynde project, it is a little inconsistent, sometimes sagging on ballads or dragging its feet at mid-tempos, but there are several strong additions to her canon and the overall feel is appealing and, thanks to her unexpected collaborator, fresher than expected.

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add 1052 el madmo

Say this for Norah Jones: she's determined to shake her reputation as a coffeehouse chanteuse. She only spent one album refining the jazz-folk of her unexpected blockbuster 2002 debut, Come Away with Me, before she started to stray off the reservation, singing country cabaret with the Little Willies in 2006; penning all the songs on her thick hazy 2007 album, Not Too Late; and following that with the alt-rock jape El Madmo in 2008. As the trio members -- Norahsupported by Daru Oda and Andrew Borger of her backing group the Handsome Band -- adopt stage names, sport shock wigs, smear their eyes with heavy makeup, and sing songs called "Rock Yer Balls Off," they're easy to tag as "punk," but that label doesn't quite fit, even if their self-titled debut opens with a rash of songs littered with curses. There are no frantic rhythms, the guitars are always in clean, crisp tones, and by the time El Madmo hits its midpoint, the trio is already dipping into a slow groove for "I Like It Low," a song smoky enough to be an eccentric tune on a proper Norah Jones album. Here, it's a bit of an exception to the rule, but El Madmo are simply not punks. They're imps, telling silly jokes about the cool dude with the good pot, going for obvious rhymes, rolling their tongues and singing in rastaman accents, playing songs that are deliberately amateurish but sometimes accidentally turn into very good pop songs. Sometimes all this joshing around veers toward the cutesy (how could it not?), but El Madmomanage to avoid the hipster trap of being self-satisfied, possibly because they're so goofy they refuse to be taken seriously, possibly because they're skilled musicians who still can sound good when they're striving to be sloppy, possibly because Norah Jones remains a compelling vocalist even when she's singing nonsense. Any way you look at it, El Madmo isn't meant to be taken seriously; it's just a lark, but surprisingly it's almost as much fun for the listener as it is for the band.

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add 1051 Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder has always been a musical storyteller, from his self-titled debut album (which featured both well-known and under-recognized folk, blues, swing, and jug tunes) to Boomer's Story, his last two offerings for Nonesuch (Chavez Ravine and My Name Is Buddy), and his many film scores (including those for The Long Riders, Paris, Texas, Last Man Standing, Geronimo, and The End of Violence, just to mention a few). When his contributions as a musicologist, producer, and collaborator -- such as his contributions to the various Buena Vista Social Club recordings (including the film score) and his work with V.M. Bhatt, Pops Staples, Ersi Arvizu, and guitarist Manuel Galbán of Los Zafiros -- are included, he becomes a genuine mythmaker. I, Flathead contributes to the weight of Cooder's legend in many ways. First, there's the title, an obvious nod to the late Isaac Asimov's I, Robot; then there's the legend -- the entire story is told in a 100-page, hardbound novella that accompanies the Deluxe Edition -- about beatnik, country music nut, and salt-flats racer Kash Buk, his band the Klowns, the strange and wonderful extraterrestrial visitor called Shakey, and the Passenger who pursues him. It's even subtitled "The Songs of Kash Buk and the Klowns." Finally, there's the music; it's a set of 14 original tunes that employ everything from country rockabilly to blues; strange, shimmering exotica; and Latin-influenced rock, swing, and mariachi music.

Musically, there isn't anything here you haven't heard from Cooder before, but it's shaken and stirred differently and owes a nod or two to Tom Waits' deadpan storytelling manner. This album doesn't have the futuristic Latin groove ofChavez Ravine or the traveling dust-bowl balladic country and folk that was on My Name Is Buddy, but it is simultaneously as welcoming and off-putting as both those earlier records. The songs can be enjoyed with or without the novella, as they were meant to stand apart. The story in it is directly related, but there is a story the recording tells on its own. The sound of the record is frighteningly crystalline for roots-oriented music -- the dirty-assed bottleneck slide guitar-fueled "Ridin' with the Blues," with drummer Jim Keltner and guitarist Rene Camacho, feels too clean despite its tempo and loose vibe. "Pink-O Boogie" follows with the same band -- with added percussion from Joachim Cooder -- but the groove is nastier and dirtier, and feels like it could have come from the Get Rhythm album in 1987. Near the end, Jesús Guzmán arranges some crazy string work to take it out. The rootsy rocker "Waitin' for Some Girl," where Cooder plays everything but drums (courtesy of Martin Pradler) sounds like a lost John Hiatt tune from Ry'sSlide Area period (it's also better than anything that Hiatt has come up with himself in ages). Old pal Flaco Jiménezlends his accordion to "Filipino Dancehall Girl," a beautiful norteño tune that is kissed by cha-cha in Joachim's rhythms. "Spayed Kooley" is, as one might expect, a humorous Western swing jam, but played by a basic rock trio. And then there's the beautifully articulated swing ballad "My Dwarf Is Getting Tired," one of the more beautifully warm broken love songs Cooder has ever written -- and the string touches by Guzmán make it a shuffling lounge fave. Ultimately, "quirky" doesn't begin to describe I, Flathead, but it doesn't have to: this disc is simultaneously both vintage and futuristic Cooder doing what he does best, offering listeners ghost traces of the past as they materialize on the dusty desert horizon like a mirage.

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