For several years, the existence of "lost" material by Syd Barrett had been speculated about by the singer's vociferous cult, fueled by numerous patchy bootlegs of intriguing outtakes. The release of Opel lived up to, and perhaps exceeded, fans' expectations. With 14 tracks spanning 1968 to 1970, including six alternate takes and eight songs that had never been officially released in any form, it is equally as essential as his two 1970 LPs. The tone is very much in keeping with his pair of solo albums; ragged, predominantly acoustic, melodic, and teetering on the edge of dementia. At the same time, it's charming and lyrically pungent, with Barrett's inimitable sense of childlike whimsy. The production is generally more minimal than on his other albums, even bare-bones at times, but if anything, this adds to the music's stark power…

Few electric bluesman have been more versatile than Johnny Heartsman, and that versatility is impossible miss on The Touch. Recorded when Heartsman was 54, this unpredictable CD finds the singer incorporating soul and funk as well as rock and jazz and playing guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, and flute. Heartsman (who shouldn't be confused with the late jazz singer Johnny Hartman) gets into a soul-minded groove on "Got to Find My Baby" and "You're so Fine," while "Attitude," "Walkin' Blues," and "Paint My Mailbox Blue" favor a hard-swinging blues/jazz approach à la Jimmy Witherspoon. Those jazz-influenced selections make it sound like Heartsman is backed by a soul-jazz organ combo, but in fact, there is no organist on this CD-rather, Heartsman uses his keyboards to emulate a Jimmy Smith/Jack McDuff type of Hammond B-3 sound…

Tenor Stan Getz and valve-trombonist Bob Brookmeyer made a mutually beneficial team. Although they had not played together all that much in 1954 (Brookmeyer had left Getz's band earlier in the year to join the Gerry Mulligan Quartet), the strong musical communication between the two horns during this set is obvious. Eight of the ten selections are from a live concert (with pianist John Williams, bassist Bill Anthony, and drummer Art Mardigan) while the final two numbers (on what was originally a pair of LPs) were cut in the studio the following day with the same personnel except that Frank Isola was on drums. Highlights of this cool-toned bop music (which, in addition to the solos, has many exciting ensembles) include "Lover Man," "Pernod," "Tasty Pudding," and "It Don't Mean a Thing."

After a two-year pause following the release of Boxed, Mike Oldfield returned with a new epic project, this one spread over four vinyl sides and devoted to Native American themes rather than hewing once more toward the Celtic end of the spectrum. Included was Oldfield's musical adaptation of "The Song of Hiawatha," grandiose but empty; there was a nice sense of the dramatic when it came to dynamic range, but no sense of time – the piece ran far too long as Oldfield searched for enough musical ideas to prop the whole thing up. After this, Oldfield avoided album-length concepts for quite some time.

This debut CD from Joerg Strawe reflects many styles of electronic music. Melodic, symphonic, spacy and Berlin School sequences. After the release, Joerg Strawe was voted to be the 2nd best newcomer in the famous Radio WDR1 Airplay Schwingungen back in 1990. Nice tunes and still uptodate. A good way to get into the synthesizerworld of Joerg Strawe.