England
Is Mine (On Becoming Morrissey)
(2017/MVD Visual/Cleopatra Blu-ray)/Herbie
Hancock: River - The Joni Letters
(2007/2017 Expanded Edition/Universal/Verve CD Set)/Leslie
Pintchik: You Eat My Food, You Drink My Wine, You Steal My Girl!
(2017/Pintch Hard CD)/Rozsa
Conducts Rozsa
(1965/RCA/Sony/Vocalion Quadraphonic SA-CD/SACD/Super Audio CD)
Blu-ray
Picture: B Sound: B/B/B/B- & B & B+ Extras: C+/C/C-/C-
Main Programs: C+/B/B/B
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Rozsa
Conducts Rozsa
Super Audio CD is now only available from our friends at the fine
Vocalion label and can be ordered from the link below.
Here's
more music, a biopic and three albums you should know about,
including two vital reissues...
If
you're a fan of musician Morrissey and/or The Smiths, then you'll be
interested to see this well made biopic on the early years of his
life... England
Is Mine (On Becoming Morrissey)
(2017).
Directed
by Mark Gill (London
Has Fallen
films, The
Rebound)
and starring Jack Lowden (Dunkirk)
as Steven aka Morrissey, the portrayal and overall bleak tone is
appropriate considering the character and paints an accurate picture
of the time period, tone, and setting.
England
is Mine
also stars Jessica Brown Findlay, Jodie Comer, Peter McDonald, Finney
Cassidy, Simone Kirby, and Laurie Kynaston.
Set
in Thatcher's Britain in the '70s and '80s, a struggling 17 year old
aspiring writer named Steven Morrissey (Lowden) has started out like
a simple starving artist like the rest of us, writing about the
struggling music scene and low employment opportunities, but when he
catches the attention of Linder Sterling (Findlay), a painter, he
soon gets a break and starts getting some wide recognition for his
work... soon finding his destiny on stage with a band and live
audience.
What's
interesting about the film its the portrayal of Morrissey, a loner
whose appropriately intelligent, grim, and somewhat charming. It's
also fun to see a 'rags to recognition story' of an accomplished
artist and while this one isn't too grand in scale or Hollywood-ized
like Walk
The Line
was to Johnny Cash, this is a pretty down to earth period piece.
Special
Features include...
Sad
Facts Widely Known
Smoke
and Mirrors - Cinematography Spot
Director
and Actor Commentary
and
a Still Gallery
The
rest of our coverage are of audio-only releases, so none have picture
of course and we'll take on their technical playback at the end of
the coverage...
Herbie
Hancock: River - The Joni Letters
(2007) won the Album Of The Year Grammy and its hard to believe its
already 10 years, but it is that long and now,
the unexpected critical and commercial success has been issued as an
Expanded Edition. A mix of instrumental and vocal remakes, the
tracks are as follows...
Disc
1
Court
and Spark (featuring Norah Jones)
Edith
And The Kingpin (featuring Tina Turner)
Both
Sides Now
River
(featuring Corinne Bailey Rae)
Sweet
Bird
Tea
Leaf Prophecy (featuring Joni Mitchell)
Solitude
Amelia
(featuring Luciana Souza)
Nefertiti
The
Jungle Line (featuring Leonard Cohen)
Disc
2/all Bonus Tracks
A
Case Of You
All
I Want (featuring Sonya Kitchell)
Harlem
In Havana
I
Had A King
It
is an amazing tribute form one great artist to another, Mitchell one
of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time by a musician
extraordinaire as innovative, groundbreaking and important as the
other. The guest vocals are a plus and great choices and like the
Trio
albums with Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, a
special music event we see too little of, but one born of love of
music, art and the great resulting community and the music industry
at its best, a best that needs a renaissance. Some covers are better
than others and some purists might not like some or all of the songs
here. That's fine. It still stands on its own as a special release
and its nice to see it got the respect and success it deserved. This
is a great way to remember and reissue it.
Leslie
Pintchik: You Eat My Food, You Drink My Wine, You Steal My Girl!
(2017) has the underrated Jazz Pianist
back with another solid album of mostly new songs, though she can
cover a classic as well as anyone. The Jazz genre never went away,
has always been alive since its debut and is more than kept alive by
talents like herself who love the music. Good thing she plays it so
well. The songs this songs this time out are...
You
Eat My Food, You Drink My Wine, You Steal My Girl!
I'm
Glad There Is You (J. Dorsey, P. Madeira)
Smoke
Gets In Your Eyes (J. Kern, O. Harbach)
Mortal
Your
call will be answered by our next available representative, in the
order it was received. Please stay on the line; your call is
important to us.
Hopperesque
Happy
Dog
A
Simpler Time
it
is always a pleasure like a special event not enough people know
about when a new album is issued by Miss Pintchik, so intimate are
the songs, so consistent is the quality and so palpable is its
musicalness. Not that she is alone. She has a longtime band and
most of the members are still with her, plus a new member, including
Steve Wilson, Ron Horton, Shoko Nagai, Scott Hardy, Michael Sarin,
and Satoshi Takeishi. If I never got to acknowledge, recognize or
thank them for their work, let me do so now. It is not easy to meld
as a musical unit so often and sound so good and authentic as they
do, but their chemistry is undeniable and the density of the
resulting world is as good as any Jazz recoding going on today.
I
also like the occasional sly irony and even humor (love the title for
the fifth track) we get, making each album a special experience and
somehow taking what is impressive talent live and keeping the life in
the studio recordings. The superior recording we get in every single
release does not hurt and even non-Jazz fans will be impressed by the
level of talent and professional presentation, the kind that drive
audiophiles to splurge on their systems.
She
just cannot record a bad song or album, so we highly recommend this
one too!
Finally,
works not heard enough by one of the greatest film music composers of
all time, Miklos Rozsa. Despite the commercial success of so many of
the films he scored and even the hit soundtracks some resulted in,
the composer of music for all-time cinema classics like Double
Indemnity,
the innovative & suspenseful work on Hitchcock's Spellbound,
The
Naked City,
The
Lost Weekend,
Adam's
Rib,
The
Asphalt Jungle,
Ivanhoe,
Quo
Vadis,
Knights
Of The Round Table,
Moonfleet,
Lust
For Life,
Ben-Hur
with Charlton Heston, King
Of Kings,
El
Cid,
The
V.I.P.s,
The
Power,
the underrated Private
Life Of Sherlock Holmes,
The
Golden Voyage Of Sinbad,
Providence,
Dead
Men Don't Wear Plaid,
Eye Of
The Needle
and Time
After Time.
Those
films are not even all the films he made music for, plus he did tons
of work on even more films he as not credited for, so you can see why
he lasted in the business for his lifetime and why he was chosen for
so very many big, major, key feature film releases. He could deliver
the music, the goods and in ways most composers then and now could
and would not think to. But that is still not all of his work. He
also made music that was of his own unconnected to film, television
or any other medium, just music for the sake of music. His own
private ideas of music unto itself.
Rozsa
Conducts Rozsa
(1965) is a compilation of his works from the golden days of such
music being more respected and recorded. When RCA was still on its
own as a major in its prime, they had a very active classical music
arm and this is the album that resulted. Best of all, it has now
been reissued by the underrated
Vocalion record label and not just as a mere compact disc, but a
Super Audio CD with regular PCM CD stereo tracks, ultra high
definition 2-track stereo and best of all, Quadraphonic 4.0 sound in
the Direct Stream Digital, ultra high definition all-audio format.
This is a real treat and for film fans, music fans, Rozsa fans and
audiophiles, a serious sonic event. The tracks here include...
Overture
to a Symphony Concert, Op. 26/a (1956)
Three
Hungarian Sketches, Op. 14 (1938): Capriccio - Pastorale – Danza
Notturno
Ungherese, Op. 28 (1962)
Theme,
Variations and Finale, Op. 13 (1933): Theme - Variation 1 -
Variation 2 - Variation 3 - Variation 4 - Variation 5 - Variation 6
- Variation 7 - Variation 8 - Finale
Though
the age of the recordings can be heard to some extent, the transfer
is impressive throughout, you can hear the detail, depth and richness
of the recordings as well as you would ever expect and it just adds
to the legend and legacy that Rozsa left behind. That this is the
only way (and this new edition, the best way) to hear this music is
something special and I hope this encourages more record labels and
composer estates to issue music by composers most associated with
motion pictures to issue their non-motion picture music. It just
shows how smart, clever and incredible Rozsa really was, if there was
still no doubt.
The
4.0 DSD
(Direct Stream Digital) mixes may be of the oldest recordings in this
whole review, but they still tend to have some great sonic moments
and are the best performers here, followed by the 2.0 DSD. The
regular PCM CD 16/44.1 2.0 sound is passable, but holds back the
soundmasters and they cannot compete with the DSD tracks.
England
Is Mine
is presented nicely in 1080p high definition on Blu-ray disc with a
2.40:1 widescreen aspect ratio and a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
lossless 5.1 track. Slight yellow tones are predominated throughout
the nicely shot film with high class editing and a look that feels
bigger than it likely was. Aiding the picture is, of course, an
interesting soundtrack. No digital copy.
That
leaves the PCM CD 16/44.1 2.0 Stereo on the Hancock/Joni
CDs and Pintchik
CD, which sound fine for the format, both better than the CD Rozsa
tracks and reflect as best they can the impressive soundmasters
obviously recorded at a high level of excellence in both cases. It
is CD releases like these that are keeping the old format alive,
though I bet SA-CDs or lossless audio-only Blu-rays of both would be
more stunning still.
That
still means great music all around here!
You
can order the Miklos
Rozsa
Super Audio CD, compatible with all CD, DVD and Blu-ray players, at
this link...
https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=CDLK4590
-
Nicholas Sheffo & and James
Lockhart (England
Is Mine)
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/
