Vinyl LP pressing. 2024 release. 18 Brenton Wood classics in one album! Featuring hits like "The Oogum Boogum Song," "Gimme Little Sign," "Baby You Got It," and many more, the quintessential compilation Brenton Wood's 18 Best was initially released in 1992 and serves as a showcase of Wood's smooth, sure-handed delivery that cemented his place as one of the finest soul singers of his generation. [All tracks Remastered 2024]
2024 release. 18 Brenton Wood classics in one album! Featuring hits like "The Oogum Boogum Song," "Gimme Little Sign," "Baby You Got It," and many more, the quintessential compilation Brenton Wood's 18 Best was initially released in 1992 and serves as a showcase of Wood's smooth, sure-handed delivery that cemented his place as one of the finest soul singers of his generation.
This double disc compilation album presents the best of English folk, where artists such as Eliza Carthy, The Demon Barbers, Bellowhead and Kate Rusby amongst others have revived traditional English folklore penned over a century ago, bringing it back to the forefront of the folk scene. The fourth in the series of ARC Music’s exclusive Ultimate Guide albums, this is an exciting and superb collection of 35 songs that steeps the listener in history from all corners of England. “There cannot be many examples in history of an obsolete art form reaching the verge of extinction only to rise phoenix-like from the ashes and come to dominate popular culture, yet such is the story of English folk…” (Jon Boden)
St. Augustine advised his coevals to seek the truth in the "inner man." Such inwardness seems far removed from the reality of life in the twenty-first century. Perhaps that is why a tendency to focus on internal processes has emerged in the music of the last few decades-not in the sense of a new subjectivity, in which sentimental private matters are put on display, but rather in the sense of an exploratory introspection: It's a question of increasing the intensity. Mark Andre seeks existential sonic situations on his path "toward the inside" (nach innen, to quote the fully written-out title of his piece "ni"). Like Andre, the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho has also delved into the internal nature of sound. Her music originates in the rich variety of spectral harmonies, and it sets itself the task of telling a very old story in a new way: a violin concerto as the legend of the grail. An entirely different aspect of inner life manifests itself in Ian Willcock's piece. He visits the discoverer of the unconscious, Sigmund Freud, on his deathbed. At the start of the twentieth century, Freud's glimpses of the "inside" showed that there is more to be found there than the truth: the phantasm.
Black is the color of the bile said to induce a state of gloom. In the form of "melancholia," it has become an allegory of the artistic imagination. The hour of melancholy strikes at night, when the sleep of reason brings forth it's monsters. This CD takes us on a foray into the land of shadows: it's compositions make remarkable use of light and shadow effects while simultaneously recalibrating the relationship between ensemble and soloist in unique ways. Michael Jarrell's arrangement of a violin concerto for chamber orchestra refracts the solo instrument's line through the prism of the ensemble. The tale told by Stefano Gervasoni's "lowered" concerto for double bass is only superficially about dolce far niente; his music is a nocturnal creature that gathers odd sound forms - until the alarm goes off. Taking an (early-morning) look in the mirror, the solo flute in Durand's "Ombre/Miroir" finds itself still faced with shadowy creatures as well. And finally, in Brian Ferneyhough's seven tableaux vivants, the angel of history appears: in verses of poet Charles Bernstein he shows his gloomy face.
“To me the composer’s role is to comment on the things that surround us in the here and now,” says composer Martin Schuttler (b. 1974) who lives in Berlin. What surrounds us in the here and now is the reality of the street, normal life, things outside the box of our private universe, things we stumble across every day.Dirt, garbage, trash, grunge, low-tech, junk, kitsch, scrap: all of this, the profanest of the profane, finds room in and provides material for Schuttler’s music, his steely, angular compositions, which are not without their gentle, mild, dulcet, almost suave moments. Puzzlement. Disruption. An attempt to explain and enlighten. “Pelze & Restposten” (“Furs and Remainders”) is the title Schuttler chose to give to his first portrait CD. It’s a dialectical word-game on luxury items and mass commodities, on value and worthlessness, on quality and quantity, not without a touch of self-deflation. His CD presents compositions from 1998 to 2009.
