Album Reviews

Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas album is a secular holiday delight sure to please every listener, even atheists and agnostics. Originally released in 1960, the sound here is warm and inviting as a Yule log burning in the fireplace—once you get past the opener "Jingle Bells", which is somewhat brighter, brasher and more in your face than the rest, though having Ella in your face is hardly problematic.

(photo: Jeremy Neech)
The blank white The Beatles double LP gatefold jacket intended to show the world that the group was finished with busy, production heavy studio creations that relied for completion upon production tricks and gimmickry. Instead, the group wanted to emphasize musicianship and “live play”.

Never mind that the songs sometimes ended up being more individual than group efforts and that squabbling and disagreement led to acrimony as well as long time engineer Geoff Emerick exiting, producer George Martin going on holiday and even Ringo Starr walking out for a few weeks.

DJ Format (aka Matt Ford) is a hiphop DJ and producer from Brighton, England. DJ Shadow (aka Josh Davis) is a hiphop DJ and producer from Sacramento, California. Brighton and Sacramento; not the first urban centers you think of in relation to groundbreaking hiphop production. Format and Shadow, however, are at either end of a 25 year continuum of atmospheric instrumental beats. DJ Shadow’s 1996 debut Endtroducing….. which got a half-speed remastered 25th anniversary edition last month, was composed completely from samples, a methodology shared with DJ Format’s latest LP from 2021 Devil’s Workshop.

Everything is true that you might have heard or read about this “off the beaten Tone Poet path” release.

The original McCartney III disappointed. Overall, I felt it was musically and lyrically weak. Fellow analogPlanet reviewers agreed, though those opinions were expressed in private communications and not published on the site. Then, on March 22nd, Paul McCartney announced McCartney III Imagined, where artists including Beck, Dominic Fike, Khruangbin, St. Vincent, Blood Orange, Phoebe Bridgers, EOB, Damon Albarn, Joshua Homme, Anderson .Paak, 3D RDN, and Idris Elba cover or remix original McCartney III tracks. McCartney himself handpicked the selections, taking a second crack at his self-titled trilogy’s third installment, though it seems he’ll require another layer of polish before this record rivals its predecessors. The old saying rings true; the third time’s the charm, and unfortunately McCartney III Imagined is merely the second.