Dean Martin - My Kind of Christmas download album

Dean Martin - My Kind of Christmas

Artist: Dean Martin

Album: My Kind of Christmas

Release Date: October 6, 2009

Genre: Vocal

Format: mp3 / FLAC

My Kind of Christmas includes a variety of holiday favorites performed in Dean Martin's inimitable, easygoing style. Among the 14 cuts are "Blue Christmas," "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!," and "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Also featured is a newly recorded duet with actress/singer Scarlett Johansson crooning along with Dino’s voice on “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Those who appreciate Martin’s laid-back vocals should find this disc a welcome addition to their holiday music collections.

Owen Pallett - Heartland download album

Owen Pallett - Heartland

Artist: Owen Pallett

Album: Heartland

Release Date: January 12, 2010

Genre: Pop/Rock

Format: mp3 / FLAC

Toronto-based singer/songwriter/composer/violinist Owen Pallett’s Final Fantasy project officially ended its public affair with the beloved Japanese video game of the same name (he has promised to release subsequent albums under his legal name) with Heartland, a 12-song conceptual piece concerning “a young, ultra-violent farmer named Lewis set in the imaginary landscape of Spectrum.” To be fair, Pallett’s last release, the superb He Poos Clouds was an “an eight-song cycle about the eight schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons” adorned with a cover that included a hand-drawn rendering of the action described in the title. As with all of his works, Heartland wears its absurd premise high and proud, allowing its creator the freedom to explore the entire spectrum of human emotion without ever succumbing to hipster irony. Pallett, the shifty, strung-out composition major in the back of the class, bored to tears and three steps ahead of the professor, chose to go the orchestral route this time around, utilizing the talented Czech Philharmonic in Prague. Fans of He Poos Clouds’ long, dissonant motifs, odd, symphonic percussion, and slightly skewed, indie-prog-rock vibe will find Heartland a bigger, better, and more streamlined collection than the latter was, boasting more than its share of left-field singles ("Midnight Directives" and "Tryst with Mephistopheles" are instant keepers) -- think Grizzly Bear, Patrick Wolf, and Rufus Wainwright attempting an alternate universe mash-up of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Flaming Lips’ Soft Bulletin. It’s a wide, spacious, summer storm of a record that bounces around genres like an open-world RPG game, and while there may be only 12 locations you can fast-travel to, there is enough treasure in each to keep the adventurer occupied for a month of afternoons.

Brenda Lee - Little Miss Dynamite [Bear Family] download album

Brenda Lee - Little Miss Dynamite [Bear Family]

Artist: Brenda Lee

Album: Little Miss Dynamite [Bear Family]

Release Date: 1997

Genre: Country

Format: mp3 / FLAC

Five hours of pure gold on four CDs, covering the 127 songs that Brenda Lee recorded during the years 1956 through 1962, with the added allure of an 84-page hardcover book. What's more, there's hardly a second-rate song or performance here, and Lee's singing style evolved so far that there are surprises throughout. Her early rockabilly sides are among the best in the field, and Disc One covers her evolution from country-rockin' teen rockabilly queen to an astonishingly precocious pop star with rock roots. Even Lee's early sides, whether hot rockabilly or slow ballads, are all intense experiences -- there's just something eerily compelling about 12-year-old Brenda Lee delivering "Your Cheatin' Heart" and sounding like she means all of the yearning and torment behind it. By 1957, her voice and her style had evolved more toward mainstream pop, virtually paralleling Elvis Presley's musical moves of the same era, but, like Elvis, Lee occasionally burst out with hard-rocking sides as late as 1959. Disc Two shows off Lee's mid-teen years, when she was doing pop standards that shouldn't have worked with anyone less than 30, but making them pay off -- her hot, raspy voice made even her pop stuff work better than Elvis's and outclassed the work of any other female singer who made that same jump to mainstream music. Disc Three may be the best of the four here, her rock sides alternating with equally compelling pop performances. Much of Disc Four is on the softer side, but even here she comes up with exciting pop/rock songs. By this time, she was nearing 18 years old, and already had a catalog of recordings behind her that would have been the envy of any veteran. As usual with Bear Family, the book is as fascinating as the music.

Markellos Chryssicos / Venice Baroque Orchestra - L' Olympiade: The Opera download album

Markellos Chryssicos / Venice Baroque Orchestra - L' Olympiade: The Opera

Artist: Markellos Chryssicos / Venice Baroque Orchestra

Album: L' Olympiade: The Opera

Release Date: May 1, 2012

Genre: Classical

Format: mp3 / FLAC

Given Pietro Metastasio's enormous popularity in the 17th and early 18th centuries and his significance as a librettist for opera seria, and the fact that there are well over 1,000 known settings of his texts, it's perhaps surprising that his work is so rarely seen or heard today. A few works, most notably Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and perhaps Il rè pastore and Il sogno di Scipione, hover around the fringe of the repertoire, but the strict and artificial conventions of opera seria are so much scorned by modern audiences that these works are probably only ever performed because their dramatic stiffness can be forgiven for the sake of Mozart's music. There were well over 50 settings of L'Olimpiade, and the music directors of the Venice Baroque Orchestra drew on the settings of 16 composers for this pasticcio. The intent was to include all the arias, ensembles, and choruses that Metastasio wrote for the opera in order to showcase the variety of composers, mostly somewhat obscure (with some extremely obscure), who set the text, ranging in familiarity from Vivaldi to the virtually unknown David Perez. The recitatives are omitted, probably a very smart move in this case, and there is enough separation between tracks that the result comes off less as an opera than as a Baroque and early Classical recital shared by six absolutely outstanding singers. They all sing with phenomenal agility and toss off the dazzling coloratura demands with apparent ease. The men have the smallest roles; countertenor Nicholas Spanos and tenor Nicholas Phan, respectively, have two and three arias, which they dispatch with finesse. The women carry the substance of the opera. Mezzo-sopranos Romina Basso and Franziska Gottwald sing with great warmth and intensity. Sopranos Karina Gauvin and Ruth Rosique, whose voices are very distinctly differentiated, are especially impressive in the shimmering colors of their voices and the expressive range of their characterizations; they are possibly standouts in an already exceptional cast. Markellos Chryssicos leads an exceptionally lively, propulsively energetic but elegant performance. The Venice Baroque Orchestra plays with gorgeous, colorful tone and high spirits. The sound is utterly clean, balanced, and realistic. Fans of Baroque opera and vocal pyrotechnics will not want to miss this terrific release.

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica download album

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

Artist: Oneohtrix Point Never

Album: Replica

Release Date: November 5, 2011

Genre: Electronic

Format: mp3 / FLAC

Replica, retro-synth drone maven Daniel Lopatin's return as Oneohtrix Point Never following his critically adored, profile-rocketing 2010 album Returnal (and his equally estimable work with Ford & Lopatin), offers repeat customers both familiarity and surprise in roughly equal measure. In the former column, Lopatin still grounds his creations in conspicuously beautiful, buzzing, humming, and twinkling Kosmiche synthscapes; once again, everything feels draped in a syrupy, soft-focus analog glaze. But only one track, the aptly titled "Submersible," sustains itself on warmly drifting, rhythmically unfettered synthetic sound washes alone. Elsewhere, gentle waves of gauziness give way, more or less gradually, to more dynamic elements: on "Remember," an intertwined pair of looped vocal snippets (one speaking the track's title, the other a muffled, mutilated moan) slowly emerges from the amniotic haze; dappled pace-setter "Andro"'s undercurrent of murmuring, garbled sound scraps flips in the final 30 seconds into a stuttered, ritualistic outburst of hand percussion and jungle screeches. By and large, though, rhythm is not merely appended to but fully foregrounded in these compositions, in a way that's essentially new for Oneohtrix -- rarely in the conventional guise of drum tracks and "beats" (though there is a stark, rudimentary one anchoring the first two minutes of "Up," which might be approximately danceable if it weren't in 7/8), but often in the form of sampled loops, creating a definite rhythmic structure without (in most cases) the use of "percussion" per se, a much calmer variation of the micro-sampling methods of Akufen and Matthew Herbert. "Power of Persuasion" introduces this approach with a shifting series of classical-sounding (acoustic) piano figures stuck on short-circuit repeat, to placid, gently numbing effect, while the rather less somnolent "Sleep Dealer" lassoes in a wider array of thuds, groans, and whirrs along with a perky keyboard fillip, indecipherable spoken bits, and a satisfied-sounding exhalation to form a pleasantly cheery little jaunt, and the gently erratic "Nassau" adds some rustling, shuffling footsteps that sound a bit like soft-shoe tap dancing. Even the lovely, lulling title track, which combines static buzzes and fluid, meandering melodic tones with no regular rhythmic matrix to speak of, creates a sense of gentle groove and motion in its soft, patient new age piano chords. Apart from his usual battery of analog keyboards (and a considerable amount of actual acoustic piano), Lopatin apparently culled much of the sound for this album from a DVD compilation of TV commercials dating from 1985 to 1993. Though it makes for an intriguing compositional back-story -- and it clearly provided him a rich sound palette from which to draw -- it's rare that that source material is specifically evident while listening; at best it functions on a more energetic, subconscious level, making the typically nebulous sonic nostalgia of the chillwave/hypnagogic pop movement -- with which these productions bear some strong commonalities -- more literally (if still somewhat imperceptibly) manifest.

Irresistible Force - Flying High download album

Irresistible Force - Flying High

Artist: Irresistible Force

Album: Flying High

Release Date: 1993

Genre: Electronic

Format: mp3 / FLAC

Along with the Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and the KLF's Chill Out, Irresistible Force's Flying High is one of the first and finest of the new ambient crop. Mixmaster Morris' mix of electronic and organic textures and epic song lengths helped set the standard (and was responsible for more than a few clichés). All but one track, tellingly, features the word "high" in the title; the one that doesn't is called "Symphony in E." Essential.

Scott Joplin - Scott Joplin: King Of Ragtime Writers download album

Scott Joplin - Scott Joplin: King Of Ragtime Writers

Artist: Scott Joplin

Album: Scott Joplin: King Of Ragtime Writers

Release Date: February 28, 1992

Genre: Jazz

Format: mp3 / FLAC

Scott Joplin began writing "rags" in the late 1890s, and would later be known as -- thanks to compositions like "Maple Leaf Rag" -- the King of the Ragtime Writers. Like other writers of ragtime, his music featured heavily syncopated rhythms, often designed for a solo piano. Unlike the other writers, Joplin's ambition led him to compose rags that were more complex than the average player piano product. "Cascades" darts this way and that, never settling into a predictable pattern, while "Search-Light Rag" sweeps gracefully across open expanses. There are also fascinating oddities like "Rag Medley No. 6: Pineapple Rag/Euphonic Sounds" that hint at Joplin's reach toward classical strains. "Something Doing" suggests that even the greatest writers eventually ran out of titles for their creations. These pieces have been taken from piano rolls and reveal that ragtime wasn't necessarily played at breakneck speed. Many of Joplin's compositions, in fact, came with the instructions "Do not play fast." The collection comes to a fitting close with Ernest L. Stevens' rendition of the most popular of all ragtime tunes, "Maple Leaf Rag." King of the Ragtime Writers offers a nice portrait of a composer grown into a mature artist, and the 17 pieces provide a good overview of the happiest of styles.

Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire De Melody Nelson - 40ème Anniversaire download album

Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire De Melody Nelson - 40ème Anniversaire

Artist: Serge Gainsbourg

Album: Histoire De Melody Nelson - 40ème Anniversaire

Release Date: 1971

Genre: Pop/Rock

Format: mp3 / FLAC

You don't need to speak a word of French to understand Histoire de Melody Nelson -- one needs only to look at the front cover (with its nearly pornographic portrait of a half-naked nymphet clutching a rag doll) or hear the lechery virtually dripping from Serge Gainsbourg's sleazily seductive voice to realize that this is the record your mother always warned you about, a masterpiece of perversion and corruption. A concept record exploring the story of -- and Gainsbourg's lust for -- the titular teen heroine, Histoire de Melody Nelson is arguably his most coherent and perfectly realized studio album, with the lush arrangements which characterize the majority of his work often mixed here with funky rhythm lines which underscore the musky allure of the music. Perhaps best described as a dirty old bastard's attempt to make his own R&B love-man's record along the lines of a Let's Get It On (itself still two years away from release), it's by turns fascinating and repellent, hilarious and grim, but never dull -- which, in Gainsbourg's world, would be the ultimate (and quite possibly the only) sin.

DJ Cam - The Loa Project, Vol. 2 download album

DJ Cam - The Loa Project, Vol. 2

Artist: DJ Cam

Album: The Loa Project, Vol. 2

Release Date: July 11, 2000

Genre: Electronic

Format: mp3 / FLAC

For The Loa Project, Vol. 2, DJ Cam expanded his emphasis on cellar-dwelling hip-hop to embrace the legacies of disco and dub, two styles whose roots lie quite close to the beginnings of rap in the early '70s. For "Ganja Man," Cam reprises the bassline from a seminal Augustus Pablo dub version ("King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown") to create an intriguing jump-up drum'n'bass track. The French producer also salutes the disco/house axis with several tracks, including the jazzy house jam "Juliet" and the breakbeat filter-disco number "DJ Cam Sound System." Of course, ranging from genre to genre is nothing new for the vast majority of electronic producers, so the risk here becomes losing the distinctive DJ Cam sound to a wash of bland stylistic exercises. Fortunately, his production and beat-mining skills rescue any possible impression of look-what-I-can-do studio theatrics. And Cam also works through plenty of hip-hop territory. The scratchy hardcore musings of "Mental Invasion" are reminiscent of DJ Premier, one of hip-hop's best, and Cam even tips his hat to Timbaland with the hyper-breakbeat R&B of "You Do Something to Me" (featuring China). "Ghetto Love" isn't quite the G-funk jam listeners might expect, instead comprising some quintessentially cinematic dark trip-hop. Despite the diversity, The Loa Project, Vol. 2 hangs together well since DJ Cam only enlarged his focus to include styles with much kinship to his first love. Note to indie rock fans: the Franck Black who features on "Candyman" is apparently not the former Pixies frontman, though it's unclear from the track and the liner notes just who he is or what he does.

Lee "Scratch" Perry - Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle download album

Lee

Artist: Lee "Scratch" Perry

Album: Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle

Release Date: March 29, 2004

Genre: Reggae

Format: mp3 / FLAC

In the jumbled world of reggae history, Lee "Scratch" Perry's 1973 effort Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle has earned the false reputation of being the first dub album to see release. It's not. Herman Chin-Loy and Clement "Coxsone" Dodd both had full-length dub albums on the shelves before Perry, but Upsetters 14 is the first album that fully dived into the possibilities of dub, creating the blueprint for a genre that could survive on its own, attract its own audience, and have its own set of masters. Of course Augustus Pablo, Scientist, Mad Professor, Mikey Dread, and Adrian Sherwood all owe something to the forefathers of reggae, but their true mentor is Perry and his early work. Adding to the mystique is the extremely limited first run of Upsetters 14 with only 300 pressed, 200 for Jamaica and 100 off to the U.K. Over the years, respect for the album would fall well behind Perry's other total masterpiece, Super Ape, thanks to the Blackboard Jungle Dub album, which featured the same recordings found here, but in a much inferior mix. This undesirable version kept reappearing, to the point where even the mighty Trojan included it in their Dub-Triptych set, but leave it to David Katz -- author of the ultimate Perry biography People Funny Boy -- to right the wrongs and unearth the impossible. With the original master tapes lost forever, Katz's reissue on the Auralux label is mastered from an original pressing and through analog equipment. The result is a true revelation. Warm and enveloping, the album has a much deeper feel than ever before, with bass that's raw, cavernous, and thunderous all at once. This is ever so important to tracks like "African Skank," an instrumental dub of "Place Called Africa" that replaces Junior Byles' sweet croon with an intoxicating bassline. The echoing trombone on "V\S Panta Rock" now flutters over a nocturnal soundscape, and strange voices that were hopelessly buried in lesser mixes of "Elephant Rock" now reveal themselves whispering through the song's tribal beat. The "Three Blind Mice" melody dissolving into the sqwonky "Jungle Jim" is a perfect early example of Perry's twisted sense of humor, while "Drum Rock" is positively twisted with Scratch offering an assortment of animal noises. In the end, what's most incredible about the album is how Perry's vision of dub as otherworldly is so sound and stable from the beginning, making Upsetters 14 that rare album that's both seminal and a prime candidate for "definitive," as well. Auralux's reissue adds four lost bonus tracks recorded years later at Perry's Black Ark studio, and while they don't match anything on the album proper, they share the same feel and make for a worthwhile addendum. Topping it all off are Katz's liner notes, which offer some insights into this landmark and captivating effort.