Andrea Antico was a printer from Dalmatia who obtained, through the first Medici Pope, Leo X, a monopoly on printing keyboard music. His 1517 collection of frottole – a quasi-rustic word meaning a deceitful, silly story – contains highly advanced, but textually corrupt arrangements of part-songs for keyboard made by an anonymous musician. This world première recording of the complete Frottole Intabulate incorporates a new edition by harpsichordist Glen Wilson.
Frottola means a deceitful, silly story. They were wildly popular songs in the later part of the fifteenth and the first third of the sixteenth centuries.

Créé à Paris en 1978, la même année que les Arts Florissants, l'Ensemble Clément Janequin se consacre en priorité à la musique profane et sacrée de la Renaissance, de Josquin à Monteverdi. Son inimitable interprétation de la chanson parisienne du XVIe siècle a fait redécouvrir un des âges d'Or de l'histoire de la musique française, ses enregistrements Les Cris de Paris, , , , et La Chasse chez harmonia mundi faisant figure de référence.

The album, released to coincide with Black History Month in the USA, includes several premiere recordings: three piano Nocturnes and En attente du printemps for piano and percussion by Moroccan composer Nabil Benabdeljalil, as well as Ghana-born Fred Onovwerosuoke’s Five Kaleidoscopes for Piano, commissioned by Omordia in 2013.

Moving to Capitol/EMI after a one-off record at Island/Universal, Jennifer Lopez seizes the opportunity of a new label to jump-start her career with A.K.A. It isn't quite a complete reboot, however. Its executive producer is RedOne, who worked on 2011's Love?, but this record attempts to push J-Lo further into modern dance, by having her duet with T.I., Pitbull, and Rick Ross, not to mention Iggy Azalea, who was the hottest rapper in the U.S. upon the June release of A.K.A. Iggy's showcase arrives on "Acting Like That," one of several tracks produced by Leon Youngblood, and his contributions – which also include the title track and "So Good" – are the moments on the record that get it right, balancing the heavy club throb with pop hooks that rely on feel as much as Lopez's vocals.

Two Verve albums from Johnny Hodges - both relatively obscure, and both pretty darn great! The Eleventh Hour is an overlooked gem from Johnny Hodges - a 60s session that hearkens back to the "with strings" Verve mode of the 50s - but one that also updates the approach strongly, thanks to some well crafted arrangements by Oliver Nelson! Nelson's work in the jazz backings for soloist mode during the 60s was some of the best of the big band genre - and although his work here is much more in the mellow tone mode than his backings for players like Jimmy Smith and Lou Donaldson, Hodges is still getting top shelf treatment, some really wonderful washes of sound and color that show that his tone is still very much alive…

Masters of Chant Chapter V is the seventh album by German band Gregorian. Japanese edition with bonus track.
One of the most successful pop/classical fusion projects, Gregorian mixes well-known pop and rock songs with Gregorian chants. Overseen by producer Frank Peterson, co-founder of Michael Cretu's Enigma outfit, Gregorian's first album, Masters of Chant, released in 1999 (an early 1991 Peterson album released under the name Gregorian isn't counted among the group's official releases, but already employs the same aesthetic), became a smash hit throughout Europe, entering the Top Ten in nine different countries. The following albums continued in the same vein, covering songs by Peter Gabriel, Lenny Kravitz, Coldplay, Björk, Queen, Tears for Fears, and others…

Drawn together by a shared love of heavy metal and progressive rock, Riverside emerged in the early 2000s in Warsaw, Poland. Founded by mutual friends who intended to use their backgrounds in metal to explore new territory in prog rock along the lines of Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, and Tool, the quartet began creating spacious and experimental music with a metal edge on their 2003 debut, Out of Myself. They hit their stride in the late 2000s, topping the Polish charts in 2009 with their fourth full-length outing, Anno Domini High Definition. The untimely death of guitarist Piotr Grudziński in 2016 put the band's future in jeopardy, but they reconvened in 2018 as a trio for the studio LP Wasteland.

Touring the Angel was a 2005/2006 concert tour by English electronic group Depeche Mode in support of the act's 11th studio album, Playing the Angel, which was released in October 2005.
Pioneering English band Depeche Mode took the underground electronic club sounds of the early '80s and expanded them to stadium-sized levels within a decade, becoming one of the best-selling international groups in the process. One of the first acts to establish a musical identity based completely around the use of synthesizers, they debuted with a bouncy electro-pop spirit which gradually developed into a darker, more dramatic synth-rock style that ultimately positioned them as one of the most quintessential alternative bands of their era.