4 stars out of 5 -- "AVENTINE is a strikingly spare album of great, but frosty, beauty."© TiVo

History will undoubtedly enshrine this disc as a watershed the likes of which may never truly be appreciated. Giant Steps bore the double-edged sword of furthering the cause of the music as well as delivering it to an increasingly mainstream audience. Although this was John Coltrane's debut for Atlantic, he was concurrently performing and recording with Miles Davis. Within the space of less than three weeks, Coltrane would complete his work with Davis and company on another genre-defining disc, Kind of Blue, before commencing his efforts on this one. Coltrane (tenor sax) is flanked by essentially two different trios. Recording commenced in early May of 1959 with a pair of sessions that featured Tommy Flanagan (piano) and Art Taylor (drums), as well as Paul Chambers -- who was the only bandmember other than Coltrane to have performed on every date. When recording resumed in December of that year, Wynton Kelly (piano) and Jimmy Cobb (drums) were instated -- replicating the alternate non-Bill Evans lineup featured on "Freddie the Freeloader" on Kind of Blue, sans Miles Davis of course. At the heart of these recordings, however, is the laser-beam focus of Coltrane's tenor solos. All seven pieces issued on the original Giant Steps are likewise Coltrane compositions. He was, in essence, beginning to rewrite the jazz canon with material that would be centered on solos -- the 180-degree antithesis of the art form up to that point. These arrangements would create a place for the solo to become infinitely more compelling. This would culminate in a frenetic performance style that noted jazz journalist Ira Gitler accurately dubbed "sheets of sound." Coltrane's polytonal torrents extricate the amicable and otherwise cordial solos that had begun decaying the very exigency of the genre -- turning it into the equivalent of easy listening. He wastes no time as the disc's title track immediately indicates a progression from which there would be no looking back. Line upon line of highly cerebral improvisation snake between the melody and solos, practically fusing the two. The resolute intensity of "Countdown" does more to modernize jazz in 141 seconds than many artists do in their entire careers. Tellingly, the contrasting and ultimately pastoral "Naima" was the last tune to be recorded, and is the only track on the original long-player to feature the Kelly-version of the Kind of Blue quartet. What is lost in tempo is more than recouped in intrinsic melodic beauty. Both Giant Steps [Deluxe Edition] and the seven-disc Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings offer more comprehensive presentations of these sessions.© Lindsay Planer /TiVo

With the frenzied knocking of what sounds like a clock shop gone berserk, Crossings takes the Herbie Hancock Sextet even further into the electric avant-garde, creating its own idiom. Now, however, the sextet has become a septet with the addition of Dr. Patrick Gleeson on Moog synthesizer, whose electronic decorations, pitchless and not, give the band an even spacier edge. Again, there are only three tracks -- the centerpiece being Hancock's multi-faceted, open-structured suite in five parts called "Sleeping Giant." Nearly 25 minutes long yet amazingly cohesive, "Sleeping Giant" gathers a lot of its strength from a series of funky grooves -- the most potent of which explodes at the tail-end of Part Two -- and Hancock's on-edge Fender Rhodes electric piano solos anticipate his funk adventures later in the '70s. Bennie Maupin's "Quasar" pushes the session into extraterrestrial territory, dominated by Gleeson's wild Moog effects and trumpeter Eddie Henderson's patented fluttering air trumpet. Even stranger is Maupin's "Water Torture," which saunters along freely with splashes of color from Hancock's spooky Mellotron and fuzz-wah-pedaled Fender Rhodes piano, Gleeson's electronics, and a quintet of voices. Still a challenging sonic experience, this music (which can be heard on Warners' Mwandishi two-CD set) has yet to find its audience, though the electronica-minded youth ought to find it dazzling.© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo

None can argue that Herbie Hancock's Blue Note recordings are mostly jazz milestones, the somewhat overlooked Warner Bros. period remains one of his most creatively adventurous, and enduring. The three albums presented here all offer different sides of Hancock after he left Miles Davis. All are presented here in their entirety, with copious notes by Bob Blumenthal, who interviewed Hancock for the package. The set begins with the wildly joyous, deep, funky groove of Fat Albert's Groove, the music Hancock recorded for Bill Cosby's Saturday morning cartoon show. These seven tracks, with their three-horn front line (originated for Hancock on his final Blue Note album, Speak Like a Child) of Joe Henderson on flute and tenor, Johnny Coles' trumpet, and Garnett Brown's trombone, are singing, lyrical funk grooves that predated Headhunters by a few years and swung way harder by sticking back and lying in the groove as much as possible. Hancock's electric piano teamed with Tootie Heath and Buster Williams to form an unbeatable, gutsy, and stomping rhythm section. The band was fleshed out on a couple of tracks by additional horns, additional drums and percussion, and electric guitars. After such a melodic entry, Warners' executives must have been shocked when Hancock brought them the abstract funkified impressionism of his emerging Mwandishi band on its selftitled offering. Comprised of three long tracks, the album showcased Hancock's use of free jazz and long intervallic inventions on modal frames. Only Buster Williams remained from the previous set. The rest of the sextet includes Billy Hart, Eddie Henderson, Julian Priester, and Bennie Maupin. also This same band with the addition of a few sidemen recorded the Crossings with the addition of synthesizer player Patrick Gleeson. This final record sank from the market like a stone; it found some success a year later, after Hancock had moved to Columbia, to issue Sextant and then Headhunters. Crossings melds street music, modal jazz and the expansive sonic approach of Sun Ra fom this same period; it's approach keeps jazz close to the street while fully exploring the varying tonal and rhythmic changes that were going on post-Coltrane. Again, only three tracks appear, though the first is a long, brazen expressionistic suite ("Sleeping Giant"). The musical evolution present in this double set reveals the composer, arranger, and pianist as a large scale visionary.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Throughout her career, Natalie Merchant has thrived on exceeding only her own expectations. Her last album, 2003’s The House Carpenter’s Daughter, rooted in American and British Isles folk traditions, was a stepping stone toward Leave Your Sleep. Where the former's songs were made of originals and covers, the latter marries them in sung poetry and original music from various traditions.Co-produced by Merchant and Andres Levin, the double-disc Leave Your Sleep contains 26 new songs recorded live in the studio. She used the poems, anonymous nursery rhymes, and lullabies of 19th and 20th century British and American writers as source material and set them to original music. Among the authors included are Ogden Nash, e.e. cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mervyn Peake, Eleanor Farjeon, Nathalia Crane, and Robert Graves. Poetry is but one part of the story, however. Merchant composed music from across the genre spectrum: New Orleans swing on “Bleezer’s Ice Cream” (Jack Prelutsky) and Crane’s “The Janitor’s Boy” are performed by Merchant fronting the Wynton Marsalis Orchestra; the Yiddish folk music of “Dancing Bear” (Albert Bigelow Paine) pairs her with the Klezmatics; Peake’s “It Makes a Change” is performed by Medeski, Martin & Wood with a horn section; “If No One Ever Marries Me” (Laurence Alan-Tameda) is Appalachian backporch music with hammered dulcimer, banjo, upright bass, and guitar. “The Blind Men and the Elephant” (John Godfrey Saxe) is cabaret jazz played by Hazmat Modine with the Fairfield Four and the Ditty Bops on backing vocals. Stevenson’s “Land of Nod” is a gorgeous orchestral piece with a Celtic flavor. Speaking of Celtic, Rosetti’s “Crying, My Little One" is performed by Lunasa backing Merchant. Through it all, of course, is that voice, Merchant’s throaty trademark. It expresses itself emotionally, honestly, and precisely, without resorting to dramatic tropes to get meaning across. The album closes first with Hopkins' contemplative, melancholy “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child,” with a symphony orchestrated by Merchant and Sean O’Loughlin, and finally with Lydia Huntley Sigourney's haunting “Indian Names” by a string quartet accompanied by Joseph Fire Crow on Native American flutes, drums, rattles, and narrative, with chanting by Jennifer Kreisberg. It sends the set off much where it begins, illustrating poetry's ability to provide its own musical instruction, comfort, poignancy, and sense of wonder to the experience of everyday living. Merchant succeeds in spades; the extensive research and discipline pay off handsomely. Leave Your Sleep is easily her most ambitious work, yet because of that welcoming voice, it provides familiarity enough to gather listeners inside this world of sound.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Benny Carter had already been a major jazz musician for nearly 30 years when he recorded this particularly strong septet session for Contemporary. With notable contributions from tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, trombonist Frank Rosolino and guitarist Barney Kessel, Carter (who plays a bit of trumpet on "How Can You Lose") is in superb form on a set of five standards and two of his originals. This timeless music is beyond the simple categories of "swing" or "bop" and should just be called "classic."© Scott Yanow /TiVo

If Genesis truly established themselves as progressive rockers on Trespass, Nursery Cryme is where their signature persona was unveiled: true English eccentrics, one part Lewis Carroll and one part Syd Barrett, creating a fanciful world that emphasized the band's instrumental prowess as much as Peter Gabriel's theatricality. Which isn't to say that all of Nursery Cryme works. There are times when the whimsy is overwhelming, just as there are periods when there's too much instrumental indulgence, yet there's a charm to this indulgence, since the group is letting itself run wild. Even if they've yet to find the furthest reaches of their imagination, part of the charm is hearing them test out its limits, something that does result in genuine masterpieces, as on "The Musical Box" and "The Return of the Giant Hogweed," two epics that dominate the first side of the album and give it its foundation. If the second side isn't quite as compelling or quite as structured, it doesn't quite matter because these are the songs that showed what Genesis could do, and they still stand as pinnacles of what the band could achieve.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Although Alice In Chains wasn’t spared by the hecatomb that decimated the current to which it was somewhat hastily affiliated, they’re back − against all odds − with a sixth album that worthily celebrates their thirty-first anniversary. Way heavier than most of their peers, Jerry Cantrell’s band wasn’t necessarily delighted to be associated with Nirvana or Pearl Jam. To Soundgarden, why not… But they felt compelled to record their most grunge album to date, Rainier Fog being a heartfelt tribute to the Seattle scene. The musicians even went back to the “scene of the crime”, the former studio Bad Animals where they had recorded their last album (Alice In Chains) with the late Layne Staley in 1995 − putting aside the live Unplugged and the subsequent live and compilation albums. Without going as far as asserting that William DuVall, “guitarist and co-singer” (with Cantrell) merely imitates his predecessor – whose longevity in the band he now matches with this album −, one cannot but recognize that he’s been able to adapt and add a strong dose of emotion in often severe and heavy compositions. The vocal harmonies, wonderfully packaged by the faithful Nick Rasculinecz (Rush, Food Fighters), work wonders throughout the album. That being said, Cantrell’s role is more obvious than ever. On multiple occasions, Rainier Fog starts resembling his solo albums Degradation Trip Vol. 1&2.Probably distressed by Chris Cornell’s passing, like he was for Staley’s, Cantrell has embarked his band in a sort of remembrance ceremony, with a shade of Soundgarden (The One You Know, All I Am), echoes of Nirvana (Rainier Fog), fragrances of Temple Of The Dog (Drone), and even a slight mention of the cursed Stone Temple Pilots (Fly)… A few lighter or seventies rock titles, like Maybe or the effective Never Fade (whose chorus will certainly remind Skunk Anansie’s I Can Dream to some) are much welcomed to compensate for the somewhat gloomy and painful aspect of the whole. © Jean-Pierre Sabouret/Qobuz

Gentle Giant was reduced to a quintet on In a Glass House with the departure of elder brother Phil Shulman, but its sound is unchanged, and the group may actually be tighter without the presence of his saxophones. The time signatures are still really strange, and the tempo changes are sometimes jarring, as is the wide range of dynamics, but this is also one of the group's most pleasing records -- they rock out in various places, and elsewhere perform all kinds of little experiments with percussion instruments ("An Inmate's Lullaby"), or create a strange, otherworldly sort of modern medieval-style music ("Way of Life"). None of it except possibly "A Reunion" is light listening, but the challenge does yield some rewarding sounds. © Bruce Eder /TiVo

Returning to Gentle Giant's fourth album after any kind of lengthy absence, it's astonishing just how little Octopus has dated. Often written off at the time as a pale reflection of the truly gargantuan steps being taken by the likes of Jethro Tull and Barclay James Harvest, the band's closest relatives in the tangled skein of period prog, Gentle Giant often seemed more notable for its album art than its music. Octopus, however, marries the two seamlessly, with the cover speaking for itself, of course. And the mood continues within, the deliciously convoluted opening "The Advent of Panurge" itself riding waves of sonic tentacles as Gary Green's guitar shrieks short but so effective bursts around the thundering bass and, occasionally, churchy organ. Against the pulsating volume of the album's heavier tracks -- "Panurge" is joined by "A Cry for Everyone" -- the band's excursions into less excitable territory are never less than captivating. Twiddly though they are, the sometimes a cappella "Knots," the lilting "Dog's Life," and the Yes-with-fiddles-ish "Raconteur Troubadour" all have moments of sublime sweetness, while the instrumental "The Boys in the Band" is a succession of quirky showcases for, indeed, all the boys. Occasionally arrangements do get overly cluttered -- with each of the six bandmembers doubling up on at least three different instruments, there's a distinct sense of overdubs for overdubbing's sake. Follow the key instruments alone, however, and the soundscapes not only make perfect sense, but so do the flourishes and intrusions that rattle around. And the end result is an album that has withstood the test of time a lot better than anyone might have expected. © Dave Thompson /TiVo