Superstars: new albums by The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple have been released

The most important events of July in terms of music were, of course, the new albums of great veterans — The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple. However, the younger representatives of the rock scene had quite interesting things, jazz fans were invited to recall the pearls of the Soviet scene of the 1970s. Izvestia — about the most interesting albums of July.

The Rolling Stones

Foreign Tongues

British rock band The Rolling Stones

Photo: Global Look Press/Pic One

The elders who are engaged in rock music have not surprised anyone for a long time - the famous Captain Kirk from Star Trek, William Shatner, for example, recently recorded an album of metal and is going to perform live, and he's 95 for a minute! However, when it comes to The Rolling Stones, who are only 243 on three of them, we still have to be surprised. Everyone, in principle, understood that the new one was the 25th in a row, and as Mick Jagger promised (not for the first time, however), the final studio album of the greatest rock band of all time was mostly recorded while working on the previous one, Hackney Diamonds. But Foreign Tongues turned out to be not a set of "sweet remnants", but perhaps the best creation of the Stones over the past two decades.

The newly engaged producer Andrew Watt took into account the critical comments and abandoned the smooth, polished style of "Diamonds", returning Jagger, Richards, Wood and the company (which this time included, among others, Robert Smith from The Cure and Steve Winwood) the lax sound of the times of Some Girls, Tattoo You and Undercover of the Night. And it didn't matter that Watt, who was old enough to be a musician's grandson, hadn't even been born yet-as it turned out, he feels the material on an instinctive level. And most importantly, Jagger's voice makes it seem like he's not 82, but 28 again, the riffs of Wood and Richards' guitars are tearing up the speakers, and rock and roll, as it turns out, is not just alive. He seems to be just unkillable.

Deep Purple

British rock band Deep Purple

Photo: Global Look Press/Noelia Plaza

Splat!

Honored veterans of hard rock with the arrival of a young one three years ago (by Deep Purple standards, of course. — some 47 years old) guitarist Simon McBride finally got rid of the feeling of a prolonged transition period. McBride basically does not copy either Richie Blackmore or Steve Morse, but adds a new elasticity and even a certain youthfulness to the music. However, alas and ah, but the 24th studio album "paplov" still immediately reveals the age of the main participants. If, in the case of The Rolling Stones, one can, at least theoretically, imagine a buzzer who has never heard of Jagger and Richards (in the age of information technology, this is more than possible) and accepts Foreign Tongues for the creation of young and early, then from the very first chord of Splat! It's clear: pensioners are getting fired up.

Nevertheless, this is probably the heaviest and most collected album by Deep Purple in recent years. Ian Gillan's concept of the end of humanity not as an apocalypse, but as a form of metamorphosis, remains more of a backdrop than an obsessive storyline. More importantly, the band once again trusts the power of the riff, Don Airy's organ, and the rare ability to build tension without excessive pathos. Arrogant Boy and Diablo recall the golden era of Deep Purple, but do not turn into self-parody, whereas Guilty Trippin’ unexpectedly combines philosophical irony with an almost prog-rock structure.

Moonspell

Portuguese metal band Moonspell

Photo: Getty Images/NurPhoto

Far From God

Over the three decades of its existence, the Portuguese quintet has changed shape many times, from the black metal fury of Wolfheart to the theatrical Gothic of Irreligious, from the historical scale of 1755 to the contemplation of Hermitage. But all these metamorphoses had one thing in common: Fernando Ribeiro always sang as if he were talking not to the listener, but to the ruins of a vanished civilization. As a result, Moonspell were able to assemble their own set of aesthetic cliches, allowing, on the one hand, to catalog their music as "gothic metal", on the other — to play within this framework with styles, without much regard for critics.

"Far from God" is perhaps the band's most restrained album in a long time. Instead of a symphonic scale, there are heavy basslines, atmospheric guitars and Ribeiro's almost monastic-sounding baritone. The songs don't aim for an instant climax — they slowly immerse the listener in a state of semi-mystical trance. However, the measured pace sometimes turns hypnosis into monotony. But here, probably, old fans will object that this is how it has been since time immemorial. Well, they obviously know better.

No Cure

American metal band No Cure

Photo: x.com/nocurexxx

It Is Going To Get Dark

The Alabama-based No Cure team appeared at a time when it seemed that modern hardcore had finally lost to its own nostalgia. However, they did not get confused or lost — their hybrid style, with a bias towards "death metal", literally knocks the listener off his feet, not giving much thought to quoting and allusions. Their songs rarely last up to three minutes, but they manage to say more in that time than many concept albums do in an hour.

No Cure is fundamentally not interested in being understandable to the general listener — their music exists "for their own", but it was this uncompromising attitude that gradually brought the band from the underground to one of the most discussed names of the new heavy scene. The new album sounds like a half-hour fit of rage, in which there is not a single superfluous movement: guitars cut the air with short, almost mechanical riffs, drums work with the precision of an industrial press, and Blate Stoyer's vocals balance between a desperate scream and a threat.

Vagif Mustafa-zadeh

Photo: TASS/Sergey Fadeichev

"Seville"

Pianist and composer Vagif Mustafa-zadeh lived for only 39 years, but he managed to do the almost impossible — combine American jazz with Azerbaijani mugham, creating his own musical language. His improvisations never looked like an exotic stylization: oriental melody and a complex fret system became a natural part of modern jazz thinking. Reissue of the album "Sevil. Jazz Compositions", first released by Melodiya in 1976, returns to circulation one of the key recordings of Soviet jazz, while preserving the original text on the envelope, which is perceived as an important historical document of the era.

Already in the title of two plays — "Baku" and "Seville" — one can guess Mustafa-Zadeh's desire to turn music into a sound geography of his own memory. But behind the recognizable oriental intonations lies a much more complex construction: free post-bop, almost classical harmonic ingenuity and rhythmic plasticity, in which mugham is not opposed to jazz, but becomes its natural continuation. Even after half a century, these compositions do not give the impression of a museum exhibit — rather, on the contrary, they remind us how bold the search for Soviet musicians was outside the official genre framework.