American producer Hal Willner is known for his tasteful themed albums. As a successful producer, he always managed to get a variety of great artists to record music by, for example, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Kurt Weil and Leonard Cohen, under his production direction, and stage this into balanced concept albums. Willner died on April 7, 2020 in New York from COVID-19. Interestingly, his latest
… project was devoted to British rock star and his band . In the early 1970s he was at the forefront of glam rock with his androgynous looks and songs in which he combined pounding boogie with cosmic lyrics. In the Netherlands Bolan, who died in a car accident in 1977, was hardly taken seriously and only in England was he a real superstar for a short time. A diverse cast of performers now honors him on AngelHeaded Hipster, from Kesha and Nena to Nick Cave and Lucinda Williams. It is great how Willner lets all these names shine in Bolan songs and then manages to connect the tracks into an equally contrasting and coherent whole. A fine tribute to Bolan and a worthy farewell to Willner. (MR)more
