Marina Allen - Centrifics - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Marina Allen glides on angelic highs, surfing the husky deep; she is one of the great new voices of her generation. Writing songs that carry notes from other realms; these are kitchen table tales about love and fear, the capturing of the wild heart, sketching the breaking of dawn, bringing real life back to life. Every song on stunning debut album Candlepower is a tick box of influences, asides, inspirations, quickfire theories, storylines and melodic progressions that galvanise a chemical reaction for each dramatic scene that unfolds on this genre-traversing seven song epic.

The third album of powerfully vivid songwriting from Marina Allen. Beautifully orchestrated, highly melodic and delivered with unrivalled lyrical perspective. Across two acclaimed records, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter has ripened a rare harvest, but her third studio album is an arrival home.Taking fragments and stories from Marina's past, Eight-Pointed Star deftly weaves together a new future, in what feels for all the world like a glittering, clear-eyed modern classic of alternative folk and Americana. For fans of Aldous Harding, Fiona Apple and Waxahatchee.Ineffable and timeless, this collection of songs holds a curiosity that's as open to you as you are to them. Compared to the soaring and swelling compositions of Allen's second album Centrifics or the innocent tranquillity of Candlepower, the world of Eight Pointed Star is more deeply addressing and open-armed. It favours a type of soul-searching that doesn't dwell in complications, and is open to answers. Rolling guitars rise and fall with the canyons and dust is kicked-up from the red scarred earth. Allen's vocals pure and crystalline whilst the instrumentation is rich and bursting with brightness. You can hear contentment radiating from the music, with Chris Cohen's production offering a full-band affair.Allen's affection runs deepest for singers who in her words can really sing, from The Roches to Karen Dalton, Joanna Newsom to Meredith Monk. But these influences vanish like ghosts in the attic when she starts to sing herself. Allen has a voice that stands up to the canon - inimitable - and it's never sounded more resolute than it does here.

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra - Concerto for 4 Percussion Soloists [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/26/1994