Xaver Fischer Trio - Xaver Fischer Trio (1999 Unique)

I remember Xaver's first gig in Prague, a serious skinny guy hidden behind a pile of vintage keyboards, sometimes close to tears as the bush of cables in his set-up kept unplugging like it was cursed. Later that evening I threw a party for them, and while the rhythm section guys spent it blunted on the floor experimenting with big rubber ball and baby bullterrier, Xaver sat back in the corner hugging a bottle of lukewarm water and having the following conversation with my ex-wife:
"Xaver, do you want something to drink? Coffee, tea.."
"No, thanks, I don't use caffeine."
"Oh.. How about some ice cream?"
"Wow! What flavour?"
"Uhm.. coffee.."
"No, thanks, I don't use caffeine."
What a cool guy. What a cool album. Enjoy it and stay tuned.

mp3 I 320kbps I 54 minutes I 123mb I link in comments

Hefner - Residue (2000 Inertia)

Another one I've promised earlier and once again the only great album by great project. I still miss his early Inertia EP, so please, if you have them share them.

mp3 I 320kbps I 54 minutes I 124mb I link in comments

Coco And The Bean - Tales From The Mouse House (1997 Mantra)

Yes, I've promised to post this album quite some time ago, so here comes the funky soul trip hop gem, and thank you for your kind reminders ;-)

mp3 I 320kbps I 46 minutes I 107mb I link in comments

Kosma - Universal (1996 INFRACom!)

Let's finish our little trip to Germany with one of my all time favs - Universal by Roskow Kretschmann AKA Intega AKA Sygaire AKA Kosma. Yep, this guy was also founding member of Jazzanova and if you compare Universal with the legendary Jazzanova EP, you'll see how influential he was. This collection of sophisticated jazzy moods is so good they released it twice; it's also available as Early Works with two extra tracks.

mp3 I 320kbps I 58 minutes I 133mb I link in comments

A Forest Mighty Black - Mellowdramatic (1997 Compost)

Same year, same label, but rather different approach - the debut album Mellowdramatic by A Forest Mighty Black is a true classic from the early years of Compost. Too bad that this collection of mellow jazzy tracks remained their only long player, or maybe not, because this is what our kids will collect and call rare groove.

mp3 I 320kbps I 52 minutes I 121mb I link in comments

Fauna Flash - Aquarius (1997 Compost)

Alright, enough mourning, let's move on to some serious blogging. Roland Appel and Christian Prommer AKA Fauna Flash deliver some heavy drum'n'bass beats and atmospheric soundscapes on their debut album Aquarius. These nine tracks will probably please fans of Dom & Roland or Photek more than the usual Compost crowd.
mp3 I 320kbps I 55 minutes I 126mb I link in comments

I fought the law.. and the law won

As hundreds of my faithfull readers already noticed, my popular blog The CTI Never Sleeps is no more. After several weeks of continuous rififi with G**gle and despite the fact that I obeyed every single one of the DMCA complaints avalanche, the blog has been finally taken down yesterday. Can't say I didn't see the pendulum swing and in fact I was about to radically transform or even close the blog myself after it reached 1.000.000 visitors. The ticker finally stopped at 968,209.

No doubt that the golden days of crate-digging blogs are over. It's small wonder that The CTI Never Sleeps survived the first waves of blog-killing spree of this year, which affected many great jazz blogs including Smooth's My Jazz World, El Reza, BeeQ, Jazzever or Call It Anything. We've been through thick and thin and the last months were flawed by post take-downs, comments sections spammed by chinese nogoodniks and also total lack of donations (which I didn't let affect the blog contents), so the situation wasn't bearable any longer.

I'd like to say thank you to all the concerned The CTI Never Sleeps readers who kept coming in thousands every day and who literally flooded my email today with condolations and questions regarding the future of the blog. Frankly I do not see it in bright colours as The Man had not only taken the blog down but also depraved me of all the content including hundreds of posts and thousands of your lovely comments. As there is no backup and the blog was deleted even from G**gle archive cache, I can't imagine how could I restore almost 3 years of work on another server just to wait for the pendulum to swing again.

What I can imagine is some small-scale under-the-radar version of The CTI Never Sleeps with link to my extensive password-protected RS Link List. I've put quite some time into re-ripping the site content into lossless formats so there's still a lot of stuff that would surely please the readers and wasn't posted due to the DMCA notifications shower. No need to say that readers who donate will be given premium access. Please allow me a couple of days to sort it out and come with some reasonable compromise.

Stay tuned!