News - Page 287

ZZ Top guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons has released his first solo album, Perfectamundo, as Billy Gibbons and The BFG’s. Gibbons co-produced the record of Afro-Cuban tinged blues rock with Joe Hardy (who also contributes some bass). Houston, Texas vocalist/bassist Alex Garza also appears on the record inspired by an invitation to play the 2014 Havana Jazz Festival that Gibbons was unable...

As Yes fans continue to mourn the June death of bassist Chris Squire, his music lives on, in pristine condition, in packages like a limited edition CD/Blu-ray version of the progressive rock band’s classic 1971 album, Fragile. The Fragile release is the fourth in a series of remixed and expanded packages from Yes. Here, the album has been mixed for...

Bass legend Victor Bailey has been battling a form of muscular dystrophy called Charcott Marie Tooth disease for the past two decades. After announcing that his condition has worsened, the former Weather Report member checked in on his Facebook page to update his fans. A series of tests revealed that there is no outside factor affecting his health decline, indicating...

Prolific progressive rock bassist Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree, Metallic Taste of Blood) has joined up with a new group of players in the group O.R.k., which has released its first album, Inflamed Rides. “It was great to get stuck in to more arranged, song-based material after being recently focussed on purely instrumental material with Twinscapes [with bassist Lorenzo Feliciati] and...

Jazz bassist Ameen Saleem has released a genre-mixing album, The Groove Lab. Saleem (Roy Hargrove Quintet and the Roy Hargrove Big Band — Hargrove plays trumpet and flugelhorn on The Groove Lab) says only plays jazz, but also funk. Really, if a bass is available, he’ll play it. However, the sound of the album, and the thought process behind it,...

Def Leppard’s 11th studio album is a self-titled one that opens with a sound reminiscent of the band’s massive 80’s hit, “Pour Some Sugar on Me” off the equally huge 1987 album, Hysteria. The album is, according to guitarist Phil Collen, in an interview with Billboard, “the freest, most liberating thing we’ve ever done.” He also notes in the piece...

Retro-soul group Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings has put its own twist on the holidays with its new album, It’s a Holiday Soul Party. The group, led by bass player, primary songwriter, and producer Bosco Mann (real name Gabriel Roth) melds original and traditional holiday tunes. One of the originals has been floating around in the band’s repertoire for years...

Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo’s documentary about the late Jaco Pastorius, who revolutionized electric bass playing, before dying tragically at age 35, is almost here — the film and its soundtrack are set for a Nov. 27 release. The first single from the Jaco soundtrack is Trujillo side project Mass Mental’s version of “Come On Come Over” from Pastorius’ 1976 debut...

Loaded, The Velvet Underground’s last studio album with Lou Reed, is now available in a deluxe six-disc box set called Loaded: Re-Loaded 45th Anniversary Edition. The set features the original 1970 album, remastered in stereo and mono, demos and alternate mixes, a remastered/re-edited version of Live at Max’s Kansas City (recorded during the band’s stand at the venue, which occurred...

Weeks after leaving her longtime post in All That Remains, Jeanne Sagan is back on the scene with Crossing Rubicon. The Connecticut-based hard rock band, which is fronted by Sagan’s fiancé Scotty Anarchy, has announced their next album, No Less Than Everything, will be released in early 2016. The rest of the band includes guitarists Zach Lambert and Steven Riccio...

The second album from the bass duo EchoTest, featuring Julie Slick (Adrian Belew Power Trio, Crimson ProjeKct) and Marco Machera has arrived. Le Fil Rouge, recorded at The Bunker Home Studio in Latina, Italy, during the summer of 2014 and mixed and mastered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in January, is billed as blending trip-hop and post-rock elements to progressive rock, creating...

Status Quo bassist John “Rhino” Edwards has released his second album with his side band, Rhino’s Revenge, called Rhino’s Revenge II. The album comes 15 years after the original Rhino’s Revenge, released in 2000. “By any standards, that’s a long time between albums,” Rhino said, “but when you’re fortunate enough to be in a band like Quo, you’d don’t get...