It seems that Les Paul had a relaxing effect on Atkins in the studio, because this disc, which compiles their two studio efforts, is charming. The production is modest and both pickers are in sharp form. The country twang added to standards like "It's Been a Long, Long Time" is irresistible.

“Orchestrating My Life – Live at the Saban” features Rick Springfield performing many of his hits and fan favorites accompanied by a 100 piece orchestra!

Like many serious musicians, John Stein was trying to find a way to reach his audience following the Covid-19 breakout. He had just released Watershed, a career- defining recording to mark his planned retirement from Berklee College of Music, where he was an acclaimed educator. Of course, as with live music in general, the tour in support of Watershed was scrapped. Prior to the pandemic, Whaling City Sound’s Neal Weiss had asked Stein to bring a trio for an outdoor September show he had booked in New Bedford. But when hell broke loose, Neal moved the show inside, to the New Bedford Art Museum, and made plans to broadcast it virtually, as well as record the audio and video. “Thanks to Neal’s ability to see other possibilities,” recalls Stein, “it would be the only public concert I played the entire year.”

"A “Monster“ of a release – 6 CD’s and 113 tracks covering the Virgin Records career of acclaimed New Wave legends the Skids.

These two last symphonies by Haydn (beautifully performed here) crown a lifetime of musical experimentation and orchestral mastery. No. 103, as the title implies, begins with a drum solo–a shocking innovation at the time, and one which "excited the deepest attention" in contemporary audiences. The creepy introduction reappears just before the end of the first movement, and it's a strategy that Haydn's pupil Beethoven immediately copied in his famous Pathetique Piano Sonata. The London Symphony had a longer reach still: The finale of Brahms' Second Symphony pays affectionate homage to one famous passage, but all of this music is just as valuable for itself as for its impact on later generations.

MTV Unplugged is the first live album by Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, released by Maverick Records in the United States on November 9, 1999 (see 1999 in music). It comprises songs performed by Morissette on the television program MTV Unplugged…

This release from 2003 offers 54 minutes of modern rock, while the second disc features 51 minutes of verbal fiction. A solid horn section augments a traditional rock ensemble: searing guitar, rumbling bass, durable drumming, and partytime keyboards. Passages of cafe piano lend a sedate romantic flair to the tunes, while sinuous electronics balance the music with futuristic embellishment. The core of power revolves around Brown's masterful vocals. His voice can be sultry and seductive one minute, only to soar to stratospheric heights the next, trembling the soul and scraping the ceiling of heaven. His soulful crooning delves past the audience's eardrums, burrowing deep into the heart to churn with evocative vigor and generate emotional responses of monumental scope…

The term “Hanseatic” in this program titled Festive Hanseatic Music originates from the word Hansa, which simply means a company of merchants trading overseas. The selections here were mostly composed during the waning years of the so-called Hanseatic league–an alliance of primarily prosperous northern European cities that began in the 13th century and ended in the 17th. While commerce for the Hanseatic league may have been on the decline during this period, the quality of the works offered on this new CPO CD clearly gives the impression that its musical life was thriving.

Meet Clifford "Boots" Douglas, a solid drummer who led a fine big band in and around San Antonio, Texas during the mid-'30s. Thanks to the efforts of the men behind Victor's budget Bluebird label, Boots managed to make no less than 42 recordings, exactly half of which are presented here, on 1935-1937. Most of the players are shrouded in obscurity. A.J. Johnson was an able pianist, Walter McHenry packed punches with his upright bass, and Baker Millian handled a tenor sax with warmth and finesse. The leader's straightforward shuffle-drumming punctuated with concisely employed cymbal strikes is delightfully consistent, and at times exciting, for example during the stomp simply known as "Riffs"…

Helloween is the upcoming self-titled sixteenth studio album by German power metal band Helloween, due to be released on 18 June 2021. The album is the first released with the "Pumpkins United" line-up, which marked the return of original member Kai Hansen on guitars and vocals and Michael Kiske on vocals in 2016, in addition to the five-member line-up active since 2005. Helloween is the first album to feature Hansen since 1988's Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part II and the first one with Kiske since 1993's Chameleon. Released six years after its predecessor My God-Given Right (the longest gap between two albums from the band), the album is also the first to feature more than one singer, as Hansen, Kiske and Andi Deris, all of whom had performed as sole lead vocalist on previous albums, share lead vocal duties.

Led by the rhythm section of Eclat (Drummer Fabrice Di Mondo and bass-player Bruno Ramousse) and helped by guest musicians such as Mirage's guitarist Stephan Forner, French band from Marseilles recorded its first eponymous album in 2005. It starts in a surprising way with a composition that may evoke Primus. A few seconds later, it is nothing but obvious: Negative Zone stands for one of the best Pink Floyd disciples. Every ingredient that made the formula successful in the early Seventies is here, in the "Atom Heart Mother" period: careful singing and Beatlesque vocal harmonies, mindblowing keyboards parts and unreal atmospheres, subtle guitar parts and refined acoustic sequences… Some sudden high temperatures and more experimental passages are also present.

The Pulse EPs gathers together some of the strongest tracks FSOL recorded before the release of Accelerator (1991). Originally pressed as four 12" EPs between 1991 and 1992, the record collects 16 pieces under the band's more well known aliases of Mental Cube, Indo Tribe, Yage and Smart Systems, plus the first ever Future Sound of London tracks (which, "Hardhead" in particular, are far removed from the layered, abstract work the name is most famous for). On that level, there is little here for those wanting another Lifeforms or Dead Cities, but any fans of Accelerator are urged to get ahold of this, and it works as a more singular and focussed effort than the similar Earthbeat compilation, which veers jarringly from vocal house to ambient breaks and acid house…

The thirty-two polyphonic madrigals by Michelangelo Rossi, which are preserved only in manuscript in a score and a set of partbooks, have only recently become known. These pieces are unusual in a number of ways: on the one hand, for music from the second quarter of the seventeenth century, they seem "conservative", composed in five parts with two tenor voices instead of two sopranos.