Lee Ranaldo - The System - VINYL LP

Limited vinyl LP pressing. Beck kept fans and critics guessing about how he'd follow up Sea Change and in 2005 released the genre-mashing Guero which shot to #2 on the Billboard Top 200-his highest charting album to date. Beck's eighth album saw him reuniting with the Dust Brothers with an assist from producer Tony Hoffer (Midnite Vultures), for a tour de force of Latin rhythms, rhymes, guitars, beats, samples, 8-bit electronics, turntables and vocoder for a fun and freewheeling ride through rock, hip-hop, boss nova, country-blues and soul. Album opener and lead single, 'E-Pro' went to # 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart, while 'Girl, Hell Yes, Go It Alone' (featuring Jack White on bass) and more became instant fan favorites. The album was a hit with critics as well with New York magazine enthusing, 'Beck integrates his personae into a fairly seamless whole, and his knack for synthesizing disparate musical elements (hip-hop, robot funk, blues, country, jazz, garage rock, etc.) extends beyond samples and individual tracks. The songs migrate smoothly from one to the next; there aren't any throwaway numbers to sabotage the album's momentum; the whole thing coheres,' while Rolling Stone dubbed it 'his liveliest and jumpiest music in years.'

Duarte's Partita was completed in 1974. It's a substantial work in four movements, using all original material. As in the Variations on a Theme of Štepan Rak he adopts a four-note motif, which may be heard forwards, backwards, inverted and stretched. Variations on an Italian Folk Song Op. 139 was written in 2000. It draws on the second movement, InchCanzonaInch, of Duarte's prior Suite piemontese, which was based on a combination of two tunes Il testamento dell'avvelenato and Re Gilardin. This gentle theme is characterised by simple movements of a step or a fourth. The six variations all begin with this stepwise movement but they quickly gain individual characters. Valse lyrique (2000) is one of the three short dances Duarte wrote late in his career. The second theme, clearly derived from the first, includes some hemiolas as well as combined harmonics and natural notes. The central section features the melody in the bass. Valse en rondeau was written in 1997 for the American guitarist David Starobin. Duarte stated InchI decided to make reference to my origin as a jazz musician and to my interest in early music (the Rondeau form) and to exercise my unshakeable belief in melody.Inch The origin of the Variations on a Theme of Štepan Rak Op. 100 is unique. In 1984, Rak was staying with Duarte when Vladimir Mikulka performed a lunchtime concert in London. At the end of the concert, Mikulka announced that he was going to perform an unusual encore - a theme, but without variations that had yet to be written. Afterwards he announced that Rak, Koshkin and Duarte should exchange themes with each other to create six new variation works, and he presented Duarte with Rak's theme on a piece of manuscript paper. Andres Segovia, a supreme Anglophile, married his third wife in Gibraltar (Inchunder the British flag, on Spanish soilInch), and their son was born in London. Duarte's 3 S

Dark Horse Records is proud to Leon Russell's Signature Songs, a collection of intimate, stripped-down piano and vocal recordings, including takes on his timeless songs InchA Song for You,Inch InchTight Rope,Inch InchStranger in a Strange LandInch and InchHummingbird.Inch Originally released in 2001 and long out of print, it is being pressed for the very first time on vinyl. Leon's friendship with George Harrison is well documented, including his profound contribution to Concert for Bangladesh, so it's only appropriate that his catalog has found a home with Harrison's Dark Horse Records.