Over the course of the last five years, the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio have established themselves as the world's premier funky organ trio. The organ trio, along with founder and manager Amy Novo, continues to devise the perfect blend of raw, passionate music and engaging industry practices. Through a firm partnership with label Colemine Records, the trio has garnered Billboard charting albums, sold out shows, tens of thousands of albums sold, and millions of streams. Lofty accomplishments for an instrumental organ trio. Now, with permanent drummer Dan Weiss behind the kit, DLO3 is proud to present Cold As Weiss, their third studio album to date that finds them tighter than ever, and continuing to push funky instrumental music to a new generation of fans.

Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band is a pioneering American soul and funk band. Formed in the early 1960s, they had the most visibility from 1967 to 1973 when the band had 9 singles reach Billboard's pop and/or rhythm and blues charts, such as "Do Your Thing" (#11 Pop, #12 R&B), "Till You Get Enough" (#12 R&B, #67 Pop), and "Love Land" (R&B #23, Pop #16). They are best known for their biggest hit on Warner Bros. Records, 1970's "Express Yourself" (#3 R&B, #12 Pop), a song that has been sampled by rap group N.W.A and others. The original line-up comprised of bandleader Charles Wright (vocals, guitar, piano), Al McKay (guitar), Gabe Flemings (piano, trumpet), Melvin Dunlap (bass), James Gadson (drums), John Rayford and Bill Cannon (both sax), and Ray Jackson (trombone). McKay left in 1969 to join Earth, Wind & Fire and was replaced by Benorce Blackmon.

When Written on Skin had its premiere at the 2012 Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, conducted by George Benjamin himself, it received a standing ovation. The opera's arrival at Covent Garden in 2013 was eagerly anticipated, and provided audiences with the opportunity to experience the work of two of Britain's greatest living artists. Benjamin previously collaborated with playwright Martin Crimp on Into the Little Hill, a magical retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale, and for this new work they joined forces with acclaimed stage director Katie Mitchell. For all three, the production marked their main-stage debut at the Royal Opera House. The tale, inspired by a medieval legend, tells of an ill-fated troubadour, drawn into a liaison with an innocent maiden. But they are observed by the jealous eye of her protector, who wreaks a shocking revenge on the young couple.

Heading into Band of Horses’ sixth album, frontman Ben Bridwell wanted to do things differently. He’d been hanging out with some younger musicians in his adopted home of Charleston, South Carolina, and liked their style. “They were making really beautiful sounding records in, like, a storage shack, basically,” he tells Apple Music. One in particular, Wolfgang Zimmerman, had sparked Bridwell’s imagination to the point that Bridwell found himself sneaking out to make demos with Zimmerman on the sly, away from the rest of the band. “It wasn’t a plot to overthrow the record,” Bridwell says. “But in the end, it did feel a bit like a mutiny.” The result is music that feels less like a departure from the band’s core sound than a reaffirmation of it: the anthemic choruses, the windswept grit, the mix of joy and melancholy.

Alexis Koerner was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a founding father of British blues". A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, Korner was instrumental in bringing together various English blues musicians. Without Alexis Korner, there still might have been a British blues scene in the early 1960s, but chances are that it would have been very different from the one that spawned the Rolling Stones, nurtured the early talents of Eric Clapton, and made it possible for figures such as John Mayall to reach an audience.

José Montserrate Feliciano García, better known simply as José Feliciano, is a Puerto Rican singer and songwriter, best known for many international hits, including his rendition of The Doors' "Light My Fire" and the best-selling Christmas single, "Feliz Navidad". His music is known for having a mix of styles, for example including both flamenco music and mellow easy listening influences in many songs. In the US, he received widespread popularity in the 1960s, particularly after his 1968 album, Feliciano!, came out and was a number two hit. He has released many albums over the years in both English and Spanish.

This disc brings together four sacred cantatas by composers who only infrequently feature in these pages. Best known of them is Georg Anton Benda, brother of the celebrated violinist Franz, who served Frederick the Great for over half-a-century. Georg Benda made a name for himself with his Singspiels and innovative melodramas, which made a deep impression on Mozart. There is nothing innovative about either of the two cantatas with instruments performed here, though from an expressive standpoint they are far from being run-of-the-mill. Both belong to a cycle prepared in 1761 while Benda was Music Director at the Court of Gotha.

Randy Newman has been arranging and recording his own wonderful compositions for almost 40 years. For the best part of a decade before that, he was busy building his reputation as one of the greatest songwriters of his and future generations. On Vine Street is a lovingly compiled overview of what Randy Newman wrote for others in the days before he found his own voice. Concentrating on songs that Randy wrote between 1962-69, this 24-track set acquaints the listener with the original or early versions of songs that have passed into the realms of standards ('I Think It's Going to Rain Today', 'Mama Told Me Not to Come)' and more. On Vine Street also features many recordings of songs from Randy's early days as a staff writer at Metric Music that have never been reissued before in any format. Several of these appear here in stereo for the first time, too. Ace. 2008.

James Levine's is a more recent entry in the realm of Dutchman recordings, and sonically the recording is absolutely stunning, with great attention having been paid to the recording process. The casting for this Metropolitan Opera effort is also uniformly first rate, even in the less grateful roles of the hapless Erik, sung by the impressive Ben Heppner, and the scolding nurse, Mary, sung by Birgitta Svendén. Morris's brooding Dutchman is hard to match on any other available recording, and Deborah Voigt is a ravishing Senta. The chorus work is quite good, though not quite as rich as that heard in the Solti/Chicago recording. Overall, Levine does a workmanlike job of conducting these impressive forces, though there are passages in which his tempi seem to drag. This recording is a must for anyone who needs a completely up to date version of Wagner's first major opera.

Dr. John's biggest chart hits All A & B Sides from US and UK singles between 1968-1974.
Dr. John is often thought of either as an album artist or a session man, not as a musician whose medium is singles. Omnivore's 2015 compilation The Atco/Atlantic Singles 1968-1974 throws a curve to that notion, collecting the As and Bs he released on Atco/Atlantic during the height of his stardom. During this time, he sprawled out on such spooky platters as Gris-Gris but within a few years he streamlined his New Orleans funk and wound up with a genuine Top Ten hit in "Right Place Wrong Time." Both extremes are sampled here and unlike Rhino's 1995 compilation The Very Best of Dr. John, this proceeds in a chronological fashion so it's possible to hear Mac Rebennack shed the Big Easy psychedelia for smooth, rolling funk. Mac certainly did more than what can be heard in these 22 tracks – his latter-day recordings illustrated the depth of his reach, his early singles hit harder, and the full Atco/Atlantic albums show his mastery of mood – but this collection illustrates just how smart his development of the Dr. John persona was and hints at all the good music he made.

Simply calling Curtis Harding a soul man feels reductive. Harding's voice conveys pain, pleasure, longing, tenderness, sadness and strength-a full gamut of emotions. Today his voice takes on an optimistic lilt with his his new album, If Words Were Flowers. If Words Were Flowers is Harding's first new music since 2018, a follow up to his critically acclaimed 'Face Your Fears" album. It features songs like " Hopeful", where Harding croons with devotion over a classic soul groove, textured with infectious horn playing, background singers and modern psychedelic flourishes. Harding fuels his psychedelic sound with the essence of Soul but isn't bound by it. Instead, his songs convey an eclectic blend of genres leaping from the many musical lives he has lived from following his evangelical Gospel-singing mother on tour around the country as a child to rapping in Atlanta, forming a garage band with The Black Lips' Cole Alexander to singing back-up for Cee Lo Green. Through these experiences he fully embraces life's darkest intricacies and conjures dynamic, addictive melodies.

From Dream Theater’s home state of New York, a homecoming performance at The Limelight, one of NYC’s most iconic clubs of the ‘90s. Including the epic fan-favorite ‘A Change of Seasons’, this set from the quintet’s original tour supporting ‘Images and Words’ showcases one of Dream Theater’s earliest live recorded performances. Re-mastered and available for the first time on vinyl, the release of this classic 1993 concert becomes a quintessential release in the Lost Not Forgotten Archives.

A late 70s gem from Tyrone's years on Columbia Records – one that shows both sides of his talents for the label! The set starts out with an extended clubby groover called "Get On Up (Disco)" – a bumping sort of number that's clearly trying to push him into Johnnie Taylor territory, and which comes off surprisingly well. But even better are the rest of the tracks on the set – which update Tyrone's older Brunswick sound with a smoother, more sophisticated sort of style – still recorded in Chicago, and with some southern soul traces – but usually done in a warmer midtempo groove, with excellent lead vocals and great backing from The Haywood Sisters. Titles include "It's You It's You", "Bunky", "All I Ever Need", "I Can't Go On This Way", and "Can't Help But Say".

“I've always believed that the moment a song is born is the most important moment of that song's life,” Eric Church tells Apple Music. “And what normally happens, at least in Nashville, is a song is born, and we write the song, and we go home and we make a demo. And six months later, we figure out if we're going to go into a studio and cut that song. But there's so much time that the magic just starts to die away.” That isn't what happened with Heart & Soul, a trio of new albums Church wrote and recorded with his band and team of co-writers over the course of a single month at a shuttered-for-the-season restaurant in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains.

The top of the country charts features a surprising mix of material. Billboard Top Country Hits is a series of compilation albums released by Rhino Records, each featuring ten hit country music recordings from a specific year, mostly number ones on the Billboard country singles chart.