Essential: a masterpiece of country folk music
17 hits! Almost 1 hour of successes of Simon & Garfunkel, there will be no disappointment for purists, this is a compilation with its original tracks.

The singer/songwriter grew up all around the world before settling down in Denver and has been flying quietly under the radar for a while. Citing influences such as Van Morrison, John Mayer, Amos Lee and BB King, his soulful sound and evocative lyrics keep his listeners hooked and ready for the next story he’ll tell with his music. He’s signed with local record label Third & James, which is also home to another local star, Kayla Ruby. With his first full album release coming up in late August, he’s ready to cement his place in Denver’s music scene.

During their last tour Scouting For Girls played to more people than they’ve ever played to before. They were celebrating ten years since they first released their 2007 self-titled debut, a record that went on to become triple platinum and birthed the generation-bridging anthems of ‘She’s So Lovely’, ‘Elvis Ain’t Dead’ and ‘Heartbeat’. 2017’s accompanying ‘Ten Add Ten’ record bundled that now-classic debut with ten new songs, proving that the band’s joy, energy and ability to write an instantly catchy chorus hadn’t gone anywhere.

The album Skarbo Skulekorps comprises an ambitious nine tracks, making up a double LP and single CD). Not held back by any constraints of musical preconceptions, Skarbo is not afraid to step off the cliff into a genre-less wonderland and take chances. Right out of the gate with 1-555-3327, Skarbo treats his listeners to something he's never done on a record: vocals and lyrics! So named because the song is vaguely about inventor Nikola Tesla, known to have an obsessive-compulsive disorder around the number 3, who died in a hotel room number 3327.

Full of lush, sweeping arrangements and deeply vulnerable self-examination, ‘Desert Dove’ is Michaela’s most expansive work yet. The album, produced by Sam Outlaw and Delta Spirit’s Kelly Winrich, is still very much rooted in the classic country she’s come to be known for - but the record represents something of a sonic shift for Michaela, incorporating more modern production elements than ever before in pursuit of a sound that owes as much influence to indie rock as honky tonk. Despite the bolder, more adventurous arrangements, Michaela’s crystalline voice remains front and center, as do her subjects: complex, three-dimensional characters who, through Michaela’s empathetic portraits, revel in exploring the gray areas between good and bad, joy and pain, love and regret. In the end, that vivid grounding in real experience coupled with outstanding songwriting and musicianship is what makes ‘Desert Dove’ such an incredibly powerful record.

Essential: a masterpiece of folk music
Planxty begins its remarkable sophomore release The Well Below the Valley with the pipe-led "Cunla," an engaging round sung by founder Christy Moore.

Essential: a masterpiece of Folk music.
Let’s start by asking this: Does anyone has ever heard about a band called Planxty? If you haven’t, you have missed part of your life!

This self-titled album, Christy Moore's first on Atlantic Records, seemed intended to introduce him to a wider audience, possibly including American listeners.

Essential: a masterpiece of Folk music.
This album isn't from Planxty's discography, naturally. But we can't ignore that this album by Christy Moore is Planxty: The date 1972 (a year later published the legend, the Planxty "Black Album" ), the first song Raggle Taggle and … their members.

For this first recording, Andrea Buccarella explores the history of the most emblematic form of Baroque music, from its appearance in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century right up to its apotheosis in Johann Sebastian Bach: the toccata. With its inventiveness, its formal freedom, its contrasting effects of virtuosity and emotion, the Italian toccata – whose name probably comes from the verb toccare (to touch/play) – opened the way for the stylus fantasticus that was to dominate Germany in the late seventeenth century. In order to give each period its optimal sound, Buccarella plays copies of four different harpsichords – two Italian, one Flemish and one German – which, in their dates and types of construction, illustrate the principal stages of Baroque instrument making.

Nino Gvetadze: “Many years ago, when I studied at the Tbilisi Conservatory in Georgia, I had the privilege to be a student of a prominent Georgian composer, pianist and pedagogue, Nodar Gabunia. He was a very special, I would say exceptionally gifted person in many different ways. Every year he would present his students in a special concert that always had a very interesting and intriguing theme. On one of these evenings, this time under the name “Debussy and his contemporaries”, he entrusted me to play Lotus Land by Cyril Scott, the piece that took me under its spell from the very first bars.

Paavo Järvi inaugurates his new contract as conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich with a pogramme devoted to Messiaen. Alpha Classics will accompany this extremely promising combination: ‘I’ve always admired French music very much. (…) I think Messiaen is the most original voice, someone absolutely unique. You need only listen for three seconds to a work by Messiaen to be sure that it is by him. His style is so clear, so unmistakable. In his two early works Les Offrandes oubliées and Le Tombeau resplendissant, religion and mysticism play an important role. If you listen carefully, you will notice how a harmony is continually transformed, so that you can never predict what sound will come next. But Messiaen’s harmonic language is not experimental: it produces an inevitable meaning, and you get the feeling that the chord sequence can be that way and no other.Music is a language of its own; music begins where words leave off.’

Allegri’s Miserere, its heartbreaking harmonies, its verses alternately chanted and ornamented, its seraphic voices: sheer Baroque magic. Since its composition in Rome in 1630, the work has constantly been transformed. Le Poème Harmonique approaches the score through the prism of its metamorphoses, the ornaments and transpositions added since the time when Mozart himself transcribed the piece, then jealously guarded by the Vatican, which punished publication of it with anathema.

Widely considered one of the most exciting, inspired, and greatest shows of the Dead's final decade of performing. Featuring beloved classics such as 'Truckin' and 'Uncle John's Band' as well as rarities including 'Saint of Circumstance' the recurrence of 'Dark Star' which was woven in and out of the set list throughout the show.

Prefab Sprout was always too good for the radio. Hearing the band's immaculate, gorgeously crafted pop songs alongside disposable, unimaginative records seemed like blasphemy. Perhaps many American radio programmers felt the same way, as most of this best-of compilation is obscure to U.S. listeners. While Two Wheels Good and From Langley Park to Memphis are superior purchases, A Life of Surprises is an engaging introduction to a group that is nowhere near as bizarre as its name. Much has been said about Paddy McAloon's warm, comforting voice, but like Paul Heaton of the Housemartins and the Beautiful South, his soothing croon can sometimes hide some pretty depressing lyrics.