Eric Clapton & Carlos Santana

Eric Clapton & Carlos Santana - The Calling.

Live at Budokan Theatre, Tokyo, 28th April 2000.

Carlos Santana’s Latin infused style of guitar playing blended with Eric Clapton’s blues infused style, become the musical experience of every fan’s dreams. Clapton and Santana have jammed together for many times through the decades, prove that they’re absolutely unstoppable. On 15 June 1999, Santana band released their seventeenth studio album, Supernatural. It is the most successful album by Santana, hitting the number one spot in ten countries. It included the hit singles and songs which featured incredible musicians. Clapton is among the other guest artists. The album closed with "The Calling" that had Carlos Santana and Clapton stretching out in a guitar tour-de-force.

Eric Clapton & Carlos Santana - 2000 - The Calling

Jean-Jacques Perrey & Luke Vibert - The Moog Experience

It's hard to imagine a better old-school/new-school collaboration in electronic music than Jean-Jacques Perrey and Luke Vibert. Hardly needing an introduction, the first is a French musique concrète expert who began dabbling with tape and electronics back in the '50s, the second only one of the brightest electronica producers to emerge in the early '90s -- with a production style that marked him as one of the few who bridged the gap between techno and trip-hop without being overly academic or merely layering some old Roy Ayers samples over a stray breakbeat. (As if the accumulation of talent wasn't already concentrated, Jon Tye of Twisted Science helps out on most tracks.) And, as could be expected, the two prove to be a good match. Although it's easy to see who's handling the Moog and who's handling the acid, the two have virtually identical working philosophies -- slight academic leanings, but always within the context of relatively straight-ahead arrangements. (Perrey's "Psyche Rock" was poppy enough to serve as one of the catchiest television themes of the '90s, for Futurama.) Vibert and Perrey also have plenty of humor and an affinity for bemusing music; Perrey takes the occasional poetic license to deliver readings from The Book of Enoch over the music, or his beliefs regarding communication with dolphins. Also, he uncannily conjures the rather eerie ghosts of musique concrète's past, while Vibert anchors them with expert productions. Aside from the mystical flavor, the duo aren't exactly reaching for the stars with these productions. The tracks are more the 21st century equivalent of Perrey-Kingsley's vision of lock-solid arrangements accompanied by the far-out sound of the Moog as a lead voice.

Moog Acid (2006)

GARDEN WALL - Progressive Metal • Italy

Garden Wall biography (http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=124)

Alessandro Seravalle started GARDEN WALL's journey at the end of the Eighties. 

Through the usual line-up changes, the band realized its first demo-tape, simply titled ''Garden Wall'', in 1992. The following year the German producer Peter Wustmann, well-impressed by the tape, decided to offer GARDEN WALL the chance to sign for his independent label WMMS. So in May 1993 the band was in Stuttgart to record its debut CD ''Principium'', seven tracks spanning between modern symphonic prog and heavy prog. The album met the interest and strong approval of the specialized press. 

One year later GARDEN WALL went back to the same studio to lay down their second effort, ''Path of Dreams'', a work that radicalized in some way the approach of the first album and allowed GARDEN WALL to spread their music also outside Italy (the band's website was created by Vitaly Menshikov, a fan from Uzbekistan as well as co-founder of the Progressor.net webzine).

In 1995 the well-known drummer Camillo Colleluori joined the band and, also thanks to his ''parossistic drumming'', the band's sound became more aggressive and the rhythmical-harmonical research became extremely advanced, as witnessed by the very heavy yet very experimental third release of the band ''The Seduction of Madness''. 

In 1997 GARDEN WALL released ''Chimica'', a sort of personal interpretation of the progmetal paradigm filtered through all the band's influences, featuring the 34 minutes suite ''Chemotaxis''. The album gained great success and response amidst journalists and critics. The live activity of the band increased too, bringing them to play all over Italy and also in Germany and Netherlands.

In 2000, after some troubles with the label that produced the first four works, GARDEN WALL realized the self-produced demo-CD ''Aliena(c)tion'', a sort of ''manifesto'' of their sound, based on the fusion of highly heterogeneous elements melted together in an extremely violent and heavy rock. 

In 2001 GARDEN WALL signed a new contract with the Italian indie Mellow Records, which released their fifth full-length CD ''Forget the Colours''. The band introduced in its sound a melting-pot of styles including extreme metal, typical progressive solutions, classic contemporary suggestions and moments of ethno-jazz rock. 

The sixth work of the band ''Towards the Silence'' (a sort of Chapter II of some kind of trilogy begun with ''Forget the Colours'') saw the light in 2004. It followed the musical path of the previous album, even if with kind of more ''linear'' structures. 

After a hiatus of four years, in 2008 Mellow Records released the seventh album of the band, called ''Aliena(c)tion''. It featured three unreleased tracks from the 2000 self-produced demo plus some live material from the noise-theatrical-metal years. The band signed also a deal with the Russian label MALS Records for the reissue and distribution in the ex-USSR of their entire back catalogue. 

In the meantime GARDEN WALL, after some lineup changes, kept on working on ''Assurdo'', the third and closing chapter of the trilogy begun with ''Forget the Colours'' and a new turning point in the band's sound: clean but strange guitar sounds, massive amounts of electronics, lots of acoustic instruments (such as violin, clarinet, vibraphone, flute and so on.), theatrical vocals, bizarre harmonies, contemporary classic music structures, jazz, funk and post-rock injections. 

In 2010 Mellow Records released the triple CD ''Recital for a season's end - A tribute to Marillion'', which featured GARDEN WALL's personal interpretation of the British band's classic ''Incubus'', from the 1984 ''Fugazi'' album. Shortly after GARDEN WALL faced the second change of label of its career, leaving Mellow and signing with Lizard Records. 

On July 7, 2011 the eighth album ''Assurdo'', the band's more ambitious and stylistically complex effort so far, has been finally released by Lizard Records. And so a new page has been written...

== Written by GARDEN WALL bass guitarist William Toson and published on Prog Archives by the band's permission ==

1993 - Principium

Thanks Magal

Ken Hensley (Uriah Heep) - Rock

Kenneth William David Hensley (born 24 August 1945) is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, best known for his work with Uriah Heep during the 1970s. He wrote or co-wrote the majority of Uriah Heep's songs during this period, including the hit singles "Lady in Black" (on which he sang lead vocals), "Easy Livin'" and "Stealin'", as well as "Look at Yourself", on which he also sang lead vocals, and "Free Me". Ken Hensley, the mastermind behind classic hard rock group Uriah Heep’s heyday releases, always knew how to write good songs. It’s easy to say it’s greatly thanks to him that Heep ever rose to the classic status the band has held for years and years already. Although the guitars of Mick Box and legendary vocals of David Byron played a huge part in band’s early success, it was Hensley’s brilliance in songwriting that brought forth such hard rock gems as “Lady In Black”, “Look At Yourself”, “Sunrise” or “Easy Livin'” …to start dropping names with the band’s better known creations.

Blood On The Highway

 “Blood On The Highway” is the best Ken Hensley album since his time with Uriah Heep. The combination of fine songwriting and delivery makes up an album that recreates the best Ken Hensley magic and is an excellent hard rock record on it’s own right regardless whether you reflect it on Hensley’s past creations or not. If you like quality classic hard rock – here’s a real good one for you.

Thanks Magal

Jimmy Smith - B-3 Organ Jazz

James Oscar Smith (December 8, 1925 – February 8, 2005) was an American jazz musician who achieved the rare distinction of releasing a series of instrumental jazz albums that often charted on Billboard. Smith helped popularize the Hammond B-3 electric organ, creating an indelible link between 1960s soul and jazz improvisation.

In 2005, Smith was awarded the NEA Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor that America bestows upon jazz musicians.

The Cat (1964)

The Cat is a 1964 album by Jimmy Smith. It features the sound of Smith's Hammond B-3 organ with big band arrangements by composer Lalo Schifrin. The album reached number 12 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.

The track "The Cat" has been sampled by Pizzicato 5 Twiggy Twiggy and The Orb Perpetual Dawn (Ultrabass 2).

Acid Jazz Guitarist - Electronic Instrumental Acid Jazz

"Music is a spiritual language...and it represents the people of earth."

SunRa

Ascension

 jazz smooth jazz acid jazz acidjazzguitarist beat-tape beats downtempo electronic-beats guitar instrumental hip hop instrumentals hip-hop hiphop-instrumentals jazzy-beats Savannah

AGORA - Jazz Rock/Fusion • Italy

Agora were a semi-obscure Italian jazz rock band of the mid 1970s, who released two albums, Live In Montreux (1975) and Agora 2 (1976), and then faded away in 1978. Their work was excellent quality Italian jazz rock a la Perigeo, Il Baricentro, Weather Report and Return To Forever. The band got back together in 2002. During different stages of recordings - which started in June 2003 and ended in May 2013 - they succeeded to release a new album which they named Ichinen.  

However, you can't really say this is a brand new album for them. Instead it's a collection of rarities from their initial period and their lost period, after their record deal was lost, as well as some current recordings. You could say that Ichinen is the synthesis of the band's previous work. Even recording of 1978 are included. 

What you get are seventy minutes of acoustic versions of songs taken from their back catalogue, mixed with songs that were written more recently. It's primarily the acoustic guitars, played by Renato Gasparini and Gabriel Possenti, that are in the spotlight most of the time. Occasionally, the piano played by Giovanni Ceccarelli and the soprano sax played by Ovidio Urbani, take the lead as well. Well, that they master their instruments is something you can't argue about. It's obvious that the entire album sounds rather mellow and laidback when you perform on acoustic instruments. Most of the music is instrumental and when you hear the female voice of Alessandra Pacheco, you can hear that she uses it as yet another instrument. Music wise, you could say that they create a Mediterranean atmosphere combined with ethnic and meditative tones on this album. Full of warm melodic themes and intense improvisations. Their early jazz rock sound can be discovered every now and then as well, however everything is done more laidback than in the seventies. The more progressive rock- oriented songs are Progressive Suite and Costa Dell'est. The tempo is a little bit higher and the electric instruments are plugged in this time. 

The music on Ichinen most of all was inspired by the readings of the Nichiren Buddhist principles (Monaco Buddhist founder of one of the major currents of Japanese Buddhism), that captured the confidence in "human revolution" individual as a means to create value in respect of the sacredness of life and the environment.

Ichinen is an album that highlights the unique, intense musicality and sound of a band that has been out of the limelight for much too long. On this album they created an innovative and creative landscape in the Italian progressive rock community that you don't hear every day. Their blend of Mediterranean music with jazz rock and progressive rock played in a laidback style, worked very well for me! Maybe it's your cup of tea too. So try it, if you dare! 

 Ichinen (2014)