Dry Cleaning Ray - No-Man

Advantages: Ray's voice, use of different song structures
Disadvantages: Has to be listened to with no distractions to fully appreciate

...-The Man- RayCharles 'Ray' Lamontagne was born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1974. His mother was constantly travelling, and his father a musician. His parents separated whilst his father was on tour, and Lamontagne went with his mother and his siblings up north. Due to stories told about his father, Ray was not a musician as a child. He was moved about constantly to wherever his mother could find work, so did not really have a chance to become friends with other children. After he graduated from high school, Ray moved away from his family to Lewiston, where he found himself a job working in a shoe factory. It was whilst doing this job that the song 'Treetop Flyer' by Stephen stills woke him at 4am ready for an early shift. After buying the Stills Alone album, he decided to quit his job and become a singer songwriter. Ray... Read review

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Advantages: Stunning vocals, Hypnotic songs, very original
Disadvantages: Lack of original songs, touch of nervousness in recordings

...Ray Quinn, as you may know was one of the runner-ups of The X Factor, a UK 'talent' show. Normally, I'd disregard the 'talent' bit as this is the show that gave us Chico but when i heard of Ray I decided to have a little look myself. Coem on, it's a swing/jazz album sung by a 19 year old Brit - It's not something you see everyday. Strangely though, i have never called it a novelty album. From song one (Ain't That a Kick In The Head) you can see why: Ray Quinn can sing. And he can sing flipping well to be honest! Normally I'm not the biggest swing fan but this album is a ray of light for two reasons - Firstly, it's really incroduced me into the world of jazz/swing music and perhaps even more importantly, it has proven that Britain does have talent! The songs are mostly covers with notable songs like New York, New York and My Life... Read review

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Advantages: Very catchy songs.
Disadvantages: The production is not perfect.

...The year is 1993, 5 years has passed since Kai Hansen, the mastermind behind this band, left Helloween to create his very own band. This is their 3rd effort and despite their previous album, Sigh no more, was more a melodic commercial hardrock album than heavy metal, this record is once again a melodic metal like their first record "Heading for tomorrow". The guys who are also currently playing in Gamma Ray on this record are Kai Hansen on guitars(later he done vocals too)and Dirk Schläter (who place guitars here, but now he plays bass). On this record Ralf Scheepers does the vocals who is nowadays the leadsinger for Primal Fear, Thomas Nack does the drums who nowadays is the drummer for Iron Savior. For people who never heard of these bands, I could say that the music sound a bit like Iron Maiden with typical vocals of Queen. Generally... Read review

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