Hi-Res Downloads

This set by Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle started life as a series of gigs back in late 2014, and while it’s somewhat alarming to discover that the two performers are now heading for their bus-passes – both have hit the big six-oh – there’s an easygoing rapport between the two on this upbeat set of mainly jointly penned tracks. What’s even more remarkable is the way the two voices mesh together in flawless harmonies: they just fit like they’ve been doing this all of their professional lives. Even the cover versions here – among them Jagger and Richards’s ‘Ruby Tuesday’ – bring a fresh perspective to the songs, and while the recording isn’t by any means state-of-the-art or demo-quality, having a decidedly rough edge to it, it’s hard not to enjoy the ‘let’s just get together and share some songs’ freshness about it. It’s an album that’s difficult not to like.

Reviewed as an SACD in HFN Jul ’16, these are string orchestra transcriptions recorded at The Barbican (as DSD128 – might we hear this in the future?) on 26th April 2015. The Schubert Quartet was partly adapted by Mahler, and completed here by Donald Mitchell and David Matthews, while Shostakovich’s powerful Eighth was expanded, with the composer’s approval, by Rudol Barshai in 1974. It contains quotations from earlier works, from Tchaikovsky and the ‘DSCH’ motif. Such is the sensitivity of the 24 LSO string players that much of the intimacy of the Schubert prevails, and while I prefer the Shostakovich in its original form (we reviewed it herewith the Quatuor Debussy) the performance here has an admirably stark impact and presence in this dry acoustic setting.

Don’t panic: this may be Euro-jazz – how else do you explain a lineup of trumpet, piano and accordians? – but it’s both persuasive and highly approachable, at least when you acclimatise to the slightly unfamiliar tonalities here. Yes, there are times when a conventional rhythm section wouldn’t go amiss, for example in the take on Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No 1, but it’s clear how well the three musicians work together on this, their second Mare Nostrum outing, recorded some seven years after the original. It’s an interesting mix of Northern and Southern European styles – trumpeter Fresu is from Sardinia, Galliano is French and pianist Lundgren Swedish – but the light and shade work well together, whether in the original tunes or the trio’s take on a Monteverdi madrigal, and is well served by a fine recording. AE Sound Quality: 85% Hi-Fi News Lab Report All the tracks here have a spurious tone at ~19.

192kHz/24-bit, FLAC/ALAC; CKD512 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) Three string orchestra transcriptions of Debussy (the Quartet arranged by the SE’s leader Jonathan Morton, the ‘Girl With The Flaxen Hair’ by Colin Matthews, and ‘Jimbo’s Lullaby’ from the Children’s Corner Suite by bassist James Manson – he plays on the recording too) alternate with film-associated music tracks by Takemitsu. His funeral march from Black Rain (emphatically not the Michael Douglas film) is followed by music for a boxer documentary, then Nostalghia, a homage to Tarkovsky.

The cover bears the name of pianist/synth player Motschmann alone, but here he’s joined by Boris Bolles on more synths and violins, and percussionist David Panzl, with Bolles also recording and mixing the album. The opening is all very ‘Berlin’, hitting you with a burst of white noise sufficient to convince you that your digital playback has gone skew-whiff, then continues into washes of electronica. However, by the second track, ‘Parhelia’, we’re into a juddering, compelling rhythm, echoed in ‘Flow Expansion’, and on we go – a foot-tapping bass line here, a swirly wash of synthefication there, sometime meditative, sometimes jarringly atonal. The sound is certainly powerful when it needs to be, with some evil bass in there, and clean even when it’s pushing hard, meaning the album rewards at least a second listen.

Ummm, yes, so it’s a children’s album – and one the Canadian jazz singer (and high-school French teacher) says she made because some of her fans were already playing her music to their kids. So you have a set that’s pitched at the younger end of the ‘kids’ brief, and featuring the likes of Muppet favourite ‘The Rainbow Connection’ (which arguably Kermit performed better), ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’, a setting of A A Milne’s ‘Halfway Down The Stairs’, and the lullaby ‘Hushabye Mountain’, from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. There are probably ad types already getting misty-eyed and visualising Christmas campaigns while listening to this album, as Panton has just the right fragility and breathiness of voice. However, for all the lushness of the sound here – and it is beautifully recorded – I found the whole saccharine enterprise sleep-inducing.

Borich has four decades of work behind him, including supporting the likes of Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy and appearing with Bo Diddley, Taj Mahal and Joe Walsh. What’s on offer here is a no-nonsense mix of mainstream rock/blues, and if that has you thinking you know what to expect, you’re probably bang on the money. There’s something very old-fashioned (classic?) about this set, from the content to the recorded sound, which is all great swathes of grumbling bass, distorted guitars, tub-thumping drums: one minute it’s all a bit ‘Smoke On The Water’, the next it’s attacking weasel politicians and bankers on the revealingly-titled ‘SoapBoxBitchinBlues’. If you’ve a hankering for an album sounding like it was recorded in the ’70s, this is it – just don’t be too confused by the last three bonus tracks as it all goes at turns jazzy and then gets deeply, oddly New Age.