Mr. Moonlight is the eighth studio album by British-American rock band Foreigner, released by Arista Records in Europe on 23 October and by BMG Entertainment in Japan on 23 November 1994. In the United States and Canada, it appeared in early 1995 on the Rhythm Safari label. Recorded at seven different studios across the States, the album was produced by Mick Jones, Lou Gramm, and Mike Stone, with an additional production by Phil and Joe Nicolo. It was Foreigner's last studio release until Can't Slow Down (2009). The album was the first since Inside Information (1987) and appeared to be the final to date full-length release with original lead singer Lou Gramm, who had left the group in 1990 but returned two years later.

In 1974, after the commercial disaster of his album Berlin, Lou Reed needed a hit, and Rock N' Roll Animal was a rare display of commercial acumen on his part, just the right album at just the right time. Recorded in concert with Reed's crack road band at the peak of their form, Rock N' Roll Animal offered a set of his most anthemic songs (most dating from his days with the Velvet Underground) in arrangements that presented his lean, effective melodies and street-level lyrics in their most user-friendly form (or at least as user friendly as an album with a song called "Heroin" can get).

No American rock group ever started with as much daring or musical promise as Blood, Sweat & Tears, or realized their potential more fully – and then blew it all as quickly. From their origins as a jazz-rock experiment that wowed critics and listeners, they went on – in a somewhat more pop vein – to sell almost six million records in three years, but ended up being dropped by their record label four years after that.

From his first appearance on the radar back at the turn of the century, when a handful of Danish blues pub-crawlers discovered a diamond in the rough on the circuit of Copenhagen, Thorbjorn Risager's meteoric rise has rarely allowed him the time to look back over his shoulder. Instead, for this critically acclaimed songwriter, once-in-a-generation singer, expressive guitarist, and bandleader of the mighty Black Tornado, it has been a career with his eyes fixed on the horizon, the next town, the next show, the next song, the next album. Comprising two volumes and 25 songs, representing the best of Risager's eleven studio and live albums to date, this compilation invites you to take the scenic route through the career of a fascinating modern bluesman.

Jan & Dean’s “Laurel & Hardy” is a bizarre, 1968 45 release that’s included here for reasons completely unknown. Bolstered by an electric sitar and a psychedelicized arrangement, the song had never appeared on an LP before showing up on The Force. Dr. Demento (Barry Hansen), who compiled and annotated this collection, calls it “an exquisite rarity,” and one can’t help but think the good Doctor included the oddity here solely for his own amusement. The song wouldn’t surface again until the 2010 ‘lost album’ issue of Jan & Dean’s Carnival Of Sound.

If the name Friedrich Kalkbrenner is familiar at all, it’s probably for his famous suggestion that Chopin would benefit from three years of study with him (a bold offer the Pole wisely turned down). But, as Hyperion’s ever-expanding Romantic Piano Concerto series has repeatedly shown, received historical opinion and musical quality don’t always go hand in hand. With Volume 56 we reach the second and final instalment of Kalkbrenner’s concertos, dazzlingly played by Howard Shelley, directing the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra from the keyboard. For all that Kalkbrenner wasn’t afraid to write big, bold orchestral introductions, it’s when the pianist makes his entry that you realize what a jawdropping player he must have been, with writing of such glittering, glistening panache that it must have had those polite salon ladies reaching for their smelling salts.

Long Years in Space Review by Cub Koda
From the opening fuzz guitar and Farfisa organ riffs of "Feeling Zero," and this is a definite step back in time to a far trippier era of rock & roll. The music contained here is largely a shamelessly derivative batch with nods to all the then-current trends; the Grace Slick-Jefferson Airplane inspired vocals on the title track and "Changes Brought to Me," the pure British pop of their hit "Please Leave Me Alone," "Happy World of Captain K" and "Hobbit's Dream," the Yardbirds-style raveup of "Chocolate Angel," and the "Paint It Black"-era Stones bounce of "Up Down Turn Around World" are all earmarks of an isolated time in rock history that, although often replicated, can never be truly duplicated. But the minor-key riffing on "Patterns," the dirgelike version of "Louie Louie," and tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top version of "Over the Rainbow" show that there was also some originality to the band's offerings as well. This retrospective includes 24 tracks, ten unissued, featuring alternate takes of "Feeling Zero" and the title track, all from the original master tapes. In light of all the retro hoopla surrounding this kind of sound, this collection stands as a small landmark to the style. Get your lava lamp warmed up for this one.

Blind Dog at St. Dunstans is the seventh studio album by Canterbury Scene rock band Caravan. It was released in 1976. This album has a lighter feel than Caravan's previous releases, shifting toward shorter, "poppier" songs. The lighter feel is due in part to the prominence of Pye Hastings on the album. He wrote and sang eight of nine songs. Moreover, Jan Schelhaas had replaced Dave Sinclair on keyboards, moving away from lengthy organ-based instrumentals toward piano and synthesizer.

Or perhaps a better title might have been The Counter-revolutionary Piano of Nicky Hopkins. For, although Nicky had already established himself as one of the greatest rock and R&B pianists in Britain via numerous sessions, this 1966 instrumental LP was dominated by easy listening arrangements of standards. Despite the production credit of Shel Talmy (Who, the Kinks), what sets the tone are the period lite soundtrack orchestration (by David Whitaker) and wordless backup vocals (by the Mike Sammes Singers). It's candlelight music with a desperately trendy edge, far removed indeed from the Who's My Generation album (which both Hopkins and Talmy had worked on extensively around this time). Nicky Hopkins doing "Goldfinger," "Love Letters," and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore"? Yep, with MOR arrangements of "Satisfaction" and "Yesterday" thrown in for good measure. It's nothing more than a curio, though with the massive easy listening revival of the mid-'90s, its day may have finally come; indeed, it was reissued on CD by Columbia in the U.K.

Songwriter is the thirteenth studio album by American singer/songwriter and record producer/arranger Richard Marx, released on September 30, 2022. Showing the range of his songwriting abilities, 'Songwriter' contains twenty tracks crossing four different musical genres so people can connect with the project and experience the 'four sides of Richard Marx'. Five pop songs, five rock songs, five country songs and five beautiful ballads. For this album, Marx worked with many other songwriters, including his sons Lucas and Jesse, Keith Urban, Darius Rucker, Burt Bacharach and Chris Daughtry among others.

Maurice Ravel took a compositional interest not only in the Spanish bolero, but also in the Viennese waltz. In March 1920, he completed the score of the work consistently entitled La Valse, about which he later remarked in an interview: "It is a dancing, spinning, almost hallucinating ecstasy, an increasingly passionate and exhausting whirl of dancers who get carried away in exuberance." But there are also some grotesque distortions. They remind us that this composition, in addition to the sonorous glorification of the Belle Époque, also represents the dance on a volcano that was already deflagrating at the time.

Despite her tragically early death at the age of 25, Vítězslava Kaprálová left a portfolio of more than 50 works of the highest craftsmanship and inspiration. This selection of her orchestral music, recorded at the Kaprálová Festival in Michigan, includes the work that won her international esteem in 1938, the Military Sinfonietta. Abounding in youthful energy and brilliant colours, the Piano Concerto marries virtuosity with lyricism, while the orchestral songs are both atmospheric and striking.

With Van Gogh in Me, the Netherlands Chamber Choir presents an experience in which the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh and Gustav Klimt come to life to the music of the great Romantic and early 20th century composers such as Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Mahler… and, in a world premiere, a transcription for a cappella choir of Satie's first Gymnopédie. Originally written for solo piano, this work, which is known and played throughout the world, finds a new magical and celestial dimension in this new version for choir. Mentioning the name of Van Gogh immediately evokes in each of us a colour, a landscape, a sensation… Hence the idea of creating an immersive audiovisual experience: the choir approached an Italian collective, fuse*, to link images and sounds to the emotions of the musicians and the audience… fuse* developed an algorithm based on the works of Van Gogh and Klimt by recording their styles, colours, brushstrokes… then, during the concert, collects the sound of the choir but also biometric data that analyses the emotional state of the audience, the singers and the conductor, and creates visuals in real time, an astonishing show of colours and shapes that mixes sound, images and emotions… The visual of the album is inspired by these experiments.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations have played a central role in harpsichordist Pierre Hantai’s musical life since his early youth. At 28 he recorded the work for the Opus 111 label (now available on Naïve), a highly acclaimed release that stands among the work’s choice versions. Over the past 11 years Hantai evidently has rethought and refined his interpretation, as revealed in this 2003 remake. There’s greater rhythmic freedom and variety of articulation, plus a more subjective approach to ornaments and agogics, especially in the repeats (he observes all but those in Variation 15, 25, and the Aria Da Capo; the 1992 recording honors all repeats save for Variation 25). Variations previously characterized through Hantai’s seamless legato technique (Nos. 3, 6, 8, 11, 17, and 18, for example) are further enlivened by detaché finger strokes and more inflected phrasings. The latter infuse Variations 7, 10, and 16 with greater resilience and rhythmic verve than their earlier counterparts.

Dave Matthews Band, still with all its founding members, toured the summer of 2005 in support of their sixth studio album, Stand Up. The Stand Up material was road tested and performed with confidence and high energy before landing at Coors Amphitheatre in Chula Vista, CA late in the summer.