Simon And Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme (1966) [MFSL 2018]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 27:58 minutes | Scans included | 1,16 GB
or FLAC (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Full Scans included | 654 MB
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2199
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is the third studio album by American music duo Simon & Garfunkel. The album largely consists of acoustic pieces that were mostly written during Paul Simon’s period in England the previous year, including some recycled numbers from his debut solo record, The Paul Simon Songbook. The album includes the Garfunkel-led piece “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her”, as well as “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night”, a combination of news reports of the day (the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the death of comedian Lenny Bruce), and the Christmas carol “Silent Night”. Many critics have considered it a breakthrough in recording for the duo, and one of their best efforts.
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Helios – Espera (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 47:17 minutes | 445 MB | Genre: Electronic, Downtempo, Ambient
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ghostly International
The catalog of American composer Keith Kenniff spans over a dozen releases as Helios and nearly as many as Goldmund since 2004. Kenniff’s music deals with subtlety, and the variance between these projects loosely follows a few signifiers; Goldmund favors post-classical piano, Mint Julep, a project with his partner Hollie, is shoegaze pop, while the lines around his Helios project are intentionally hazier. Within the alias, Kenniff glides between minimal ambient electronics and more robust instrumentation, all run through his mini-cassette recorder for a distinct wobble. 2018’s Veriditas, his first Helios LP on Ghostly International, found Kenniff shaping verdant landscapes of harmonic sound, focusing on texture over structure. He followed it up in 2020 with Domicile, an even quieter synth-toned ode to the indoors. Now he returns to the electro-acoustic movement that marked much of his earlier output; the music of Espera is lush, livelier, and perhaps the most singular in his run. Titles are telling in Kenniff’s work, and Espera, a Spanish word meaning “wait,” speaks to the producer’s patient and cinematic craft. The record balances engagement and contemplation with a billowing accessible lightness, and reveals Helios at a compelling intersection, composing songs as vivid and three-dimensional as they are characteristically modernist and understated.
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Sinikka Langeland – The Half-Finished Heaven (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:22 minutes | 969 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM
The Half-Finished Heaven is the fourth ECM album from Sinikka Langeland, the kantele player, singer and composer from Finnskogen, south-eastern Norway’s “Forest of the Finns”. The music she has written for the ensemble here touches on, as she says, her “whole scale of expression”. Sinikka’s highly original and self-contained oeuvre is informed, in changing degree, by folk traditions of Norway and Finland, as well as classical and contemporary music and improvisation from jazz and other sources. Each of her gifted bandmates brings his own range of colours to the music.
This time around the ratio of vocal to instrumental music has been adjusted: after Sinikka’s first ECM recording (Starflowers in 2006), producer Manfred Eicher proposed a solo kantele album, “with three songs and the remainder instrumental”. The idea had to settle for a while, but proportions have remained, even as Sinikka’s writing for the project has expanded to embrace viola and percussion – and saxophone on some pieces – as well as her own kanteles (table harps).
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Sunroof – Electronic Music Improvisations, Vol. 2 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:19 minutes | 801 MB | Genre: Electronic, Ambient
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mute
Mute founder Daniel Miller and legendary engineer Gareth Jones (Einstürzende Neubauten, Erasure, Yann Tiersen) vibe out in enviably well-stocked studios on a 2nd batch of improvisations.
The illustrious duo have used the Sunroof moniker for remixes dating back some 25 years to their rework of Can, and finally firmed up the project with original material on 2021’s ‘Electronic Music Improvisations Vol.1’. This next volume witnesses Sunroof following their nose for curious tones and pulses across eight parts of mercurial electronics that simply revel in the thrill of creation and the strangeness of electronic music for anyone who shares their fascination with wires and knobs. There’s no narrative or concept behind the release – just the sound of two boffins who know their kit inside out and fancy making some freaky nosies.
The results come to resemble a host of possible reference points ranging from the early electronics of Stockhausen or Dick Raaijmakers to more kosmik vectors of Conrad Schnitzler and the shapehifting quality of Kay Logan’s Otherworld works. They are diaristic pieces, sketched to tape canvas in-the-moment, and sprawling between the sloshing pulses of ‘January #2’, to club-adjacent freeform techno-kosmiche on ‘October’, taking in diced-up vox and spangled darkside noise on ‘July #2’, balletic kosmiche in ‘November’, and a collage of dial-strafing radio samples and alien electronics in ‘July #1’.
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Andrew Rangell – Schubert: Piano Works (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:37 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Steinway and Sons
For his latest Steinway & Sons release, pianist Andrew Rangell presents an intimate portrait of Franz Schubert; An album that includes the expansive Sonata in G major, D 894, the late Drei Klavierstucke, D 946 and a seldom heard little gem, Variation on a waltz by Diabelli, D 718.
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Steven Isserlis – Tavener: No Longer Mourn for Me & Other Works for Cello (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:59 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
An important release which again demonstrates Steven Isserlis’s deep commitment to the music of John Tavener. The realization of the album is movingly detailed in a booklet note which provides an eloquent counterpoint and commentary to the performances.
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Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Järvi – Shostakovich: Cantatas (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:19:52 minutes | 860 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics
Estonian-born conductor Paavo Järvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra turn to rarely performed choral works by Dmitri Shostakovich: Song of the Forests Op. 81, The Sun Shines on our Motherland Op. 90, and The Execution of Stepan Razin Op. 119. The new release confirms Järvi’s reputation as a conductor with a deep understanding for the music of Shostakovich, as well as a particular affinity for choral music, which has a strong tradition in his homeland. These cantatas have a particular significance in Estonia – a former Soviet Socialist Republic under Stalinist rule. By the time Shostakovich composed The Execution of Stepan Razin for bass, concert chorus and orchestra in 1964, Stalin had died and the composer felt able to take a few risks under the regime of Nikita Khrushchev. The cantata is set to a grisly poem about a 17th-century Cossack revolutionary. Järvi calls the work an “absolute masterpiece” and a “critical view of the Soviet regime”.
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Shihad – Old Gods (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 38:21 minutes | 494 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Shihad
If anger is an energy, then Old Gods – Shihad’s 10th studio album since forming in Wellington in 1988 – could singlehandedly power our capital city for a year.
Old Gods is a step into fury for frontman Jon Toogood whose lyrics encapsulate our collective anger at recent world events.
As a new parent and convert to Islam, recently married to a Sudanese woman, Toogood begun to see perspectives other than those he’d been raised with. Add in the soul searching that came with the COVID pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement, and the band’s collective disgust at the rise of Conservative politicians such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, and he took on a new understanding of his place in the world as a privileged white male.
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Shai Wosner – Impromptu (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:41 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Onyx Classics
After his wonderfully quirky and highly praised Haydn & Ligeti album, Shai Wosner returns to solo piano repertoire for his next project. As always with this artist, there is something very different on offer – Impromptus by Chopin, Dvorak, Liszt, Gershwin, and Schubert rub shoulders with Beethoven’s Fantasy Op.77 – the nearest thing we have to a Beethoven ‘improvisation’. The composer did indeed improvise this work at a private house performance, then went home and wrote it down from memory! Ives’s Improvisations 1&3 round off an eclectic programme.
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Sam Fender – Seventeen Going Under (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 45:21 minutes | 971 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Polydor Records
The loss of youth and young manhood and the trials of adolescence have provided ample inspiration for musicians since forever. The latter, in particular, has been well encapsulated by US rockers Sharon Van Etten (‘Seventeen’, 2019) and Olivia Rodrigo (‘Brutal’, 2021) in recent years, but the former is one that Sam Fender has mastered like few others. It’s a topic that requires a delicate approach; the transition from boy to man is assumed to be dominated by bravado, and often overshadows causes that need a closer look.
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David Dondero – Immersion Therapy (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 36:41 minutes | 411 MB | Genre: Indie Folk, Alt. Country, Americana
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fluff and Gravy
Immersion in nature or immersion in something that produces anxiety for therapy. Immersion in music or immersion in crowds full of strangers. This immersive pathway can flood your mind and force a reset or an internal confrontation. What makes you panic? What makes you depressed? What brings you into the light of love and happiness? Are you lost within’ the wrinkles of your mind? Hiding inside yourself with extreme social anxiety? Did the man at the bowling alley just smile and calmly spray the shoes with a disinfectant? Have you unraveled all the way? Spun out into oblivion? Crushed by your own broken heart and the dozens that surround you. Has it made you want to escape to the outer reaches? You need your space and you like to be alone now. It’s better than being with people. People don’t call you back. They don’t follow through. You did an experiment to see if anybody would get in touch with you. There were only 2. You’ve got to do the dialing, otherwise, it’s a recipe to be lonely. It was self-inflicted. Did you enjoy the loneliness of the pandemic? Being forced into desolation when you were that way all along. After the pandemic, we will get together again. Does that idea horrify you? Have you followed your heart and realized it took you down the darkest alley. Is the tombstone really a sand sculpture being washed into the sea? I’ve got to pay one last respect before the tide rolls in. Remember the people. Remember all of them who died as the whole world cried. Was it only crocodile tears that monarch butterflies drink from? They needed the sodium chloride. But the people only cried a little and then forgot about it. Like it never even happened. I drove the casket back to Kansas City to the final resting place. I was the pallbearer.
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Sally Whitwell – Philip Glass: Complete Études for Solo Piano (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:27:50 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ABC Classic
Pianist Sally Whitwell returns to the music of minimalist master Philip Glass in her latest album on ABC Classics, presenting a monumental and immersive journey for solo piano.
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Simon & Garfunkel – The Complete Studio Albums Collection (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 02:37:03 minutes | 5,71 GB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia/Legacy
This collection includes all duo’s five studio albums, released between 1964 and 1970, all remastered from first generation analog sources. The albums are: “Wednesday Morning, 3AM”, “Sounds Of Silence”, “Parsely, Sage Rosemary And Thyme”, “Bookends”, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.
The most successful folk-rock duo of the 1960s, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel crafted a series of memorable hit albums and singles featuring their choirboy harmonies, ringing acoustic and electric guitars, and Simon’s acute, finely wrought songwriting. The pair always inhabited the more polished end of the folk-rock spectrum and was sometimes criticized for a certain collegiate sterility. Many also feel that Simon, as both a singer and songwriter, didn’t truly blossom until he began his own hugely successful solo career in the 1970s.
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Simon & Garfunkel – Sounds Of Silence (1966/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 29:28 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Pop Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia
Following the success of The Sound Of Silence, which was transformed into a folk-rock hit, Simon & Garfunkel returned to the studio in 1965 to record their second album. Sounds Of Silence includes the title track as well as other songs that have stood the test of time, including: “I Am a Rock”, “Richard Cory” and “Anji”. The record peaked at number 13 on the UK albums chart and 21 on the US charts in 1966.
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Simon & Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme (1966/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 28:47 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy
After the release of Sounds Of Silence, Simon & Garfunkel spent more time developing their next album. The result was Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, a music masterpiece. On “Scarborough Fair/Canticle,” the duo used vocal overdubs and instrumentation to weave together a traditional song and anti-war protest to stunning effect. The album also includes classics like “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy),” “Cloudy,” “Homeward Bound,” and “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her.” Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme reached number 4 on the US Billboard 200 chart in 1966.
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