Los Angeles-based soul and jazz guitar man U-NAM (Emmanuel Abiteboul) is a busy old bee! He juggles all kinds of projects – one of which is his THE CALIFORNIA FUNK MACHINE – a soul/funk collective that features an ever-evolving raft of top musicians. The outfit have two albums to their name – imaginatively titled ‘California Funk Machine Volume 1’ and ‘California Funk Machine Volume 2’ and now, just in time for the Christmas party season, U-Nam and the gang are unleashing a third album – and guess what? Yep, it’s ‘California Funk Machine Volume 3’ Like their first two volumes this third iteration is a collection of soul and funk covers – some more well known than others.

Global cello sensation HAUSER brings his artistry and passion to a new selection of classical music’s greatest melodies with the release of his new album Classic II, a follow-up to the worldwide success of 2020’s Classic. For the new album, HAUSER has chosen and realized 18 unforgettable melodies in revelatory new arrangements, which were recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Ziegler. Classic II reimagines instantly recognizable, song-like melodies by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Donizetti, Dvorak, Mahler, Mozart, Rachmaninoff and Schubert, most of them written for solo instruments, voices or an entire orchestra and never before adapted for the "voice" of the cello. HAUSER also brings his singing style to two beloved melodies in the Baroque style - the Albinoni "Adagio" and the Adagio from Alessandro Marcello's famous Oboe Concerto - as well as a pair of contemporary pieces, Michel Colombier's "Emmanuel" and composer/pianist Yurima's "Kiss the Rain."

Halie Loren is an international, award-winning jazz vocalist/songwriter based in Eugen, Oregon. She brings a fresh and original perspective to time-honored musical paths, channeling her innate understanding of connectedness across musical boundaries to forge bonds with diverse audiences in North America, Asia, and Europe. She sings in multiple languages including; Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Korean as well as her native English. With Halie Loren's 11th album, she has concocted a blend of songs selected from the American Songbook, favorite compositions from iconic singer-songwriters, and Halie's original song repertoire that explore themes of longing, seeking, and seeing with new eyes. They speak to the falling away of old illusions and outgrown desires and finding new visions for love and life, and what it means to find a renewed sense of self through allowing some dreams to die and make space for new dreams to be born.

Humanoid is the seventeenth studio album by German heavy metal band Accept, released on 26 April 2024. It is the band's first studio album on Napalm Records, with whom Accept had signed with in February 2022, and also marks the first time since 2017's The Rise of Chaos that they had recorded as a five-piece band rather than a six-piece. Humanoid has received positive reviews from critics. Dom Lawson of Blabbermouth.net gave the album a rating of seven-and-a-half out of ten, writing, "For those who enjoyed the previous five, there is absolutely nothing here that fails to live up to expectations.

Praying Mantis are now a well-established band of melodic hard rockers. Formed by brothers Tino and Chris Troy in 1973, together with bands like Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, and others they spearheaded the NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) movement. While they did not see the same dizzying heights of success as some of their contemporaries, Praying Mantis nonetheless became one of THE most influential bands of the NWOBHM. The band has remained active over the years and still records and plays live regularly, while evolving their style from their early beginnings to a more melodic hard rock style. - Musically the new album offers the trademark Mantis sound, with twin guitar leads and sterling vocal work from Jaycee Cuijpers, but what really puts this record apart is the stunning quality of the songwriting which offers a credible mix of catchy songs along with superb epics. To round up the tracklisting the Mantis' offer their own spin to the classic Rainbow hit "I Surrender" (penned by none other than Russ Ballard).

The Tikiyaki Orchestra exist in a class by themselves. There really is no other band quite like them on the planet. They take the Exotica tradition as established by pioneers Denny, Lyman and Baxter and bring it into the 21st century. Their unmistakable sound is a blend of the coolest retro styles–exotica, lounge, space-age bachelor pad, crime jazz, spy, surf, spaghetti western and more. They headline sold out shows, have appeared at the major Tiki festivals and have had their music featured in numerous television shows and Tiki documentaries.

William Frederick Gibbons is an American rock musician who is the guitarist and primary vocalist of ZZ Top. He began his career in the Moving Sidewalks, who recorded Flash (1968) and opened four dates for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Gibbons formed ZZ Top in late 1969 and released ZZ Top's First Album in early 1971. Gibbons possesses a gravelly bass-baritone singing voice and is known for his bluesy, groove based guitar style. He is also noted, along with ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill, for his chest-length beard. Gibbons has made appearances with other artists and acted on television shows, most notably Bones. In 2001, Rolling Stone named him the 32nd greatest guitarist of all time.

When Jeff Lynne was growing up, he listened to music on longwave radio, soaking up all the sounds coming through the big radio in the living room. His 2012 tribute to these days, appropriately called Long Wave, is a far-reaching salute to the glory days of pop in the years before the Beatles. It's too easy to peg this as a standards album, a designation that isn't quite accurate. Lynne may cover many show tunes along with '50s favorites of big-band vocalists but he spends nearly as much time with rock & roll, and not just the operatic pop of his fellow Traveling Wilbury Roy Orbison, either. He cranks through Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock," slides into the silken harmonies of the Everly Brothers on "So Sad," and grooves through Don Covay's "Mercy, Mercy."

Nonetheless is the fifteenth studio album by English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, released on 26 April 2024 through the band's own label x2 and Parlophone. It was produced by James Ford and mostly recorded at his East London studio. The band's first album for Parlophone since Elysium in 2012, its four-year gap with Hotspot (2020) marks their longest period between studio albums to date. It was preceded by the single "Loneliness", released alongside the album announcement. The album was released on 26 April 2024 in a variety of formats, including digitally, and physically on CD and multiple variants of coloured vinyl. The 2-CD and double white vinyl editions include a four-track EP titled Furthermore, featuring new recordings of "Heart", "Being Boring", "Always on My Mind" and "It's a Sin".

Humanoid is the seventeenth studio album by German heavy metal band Accept, released on 26 April 2024. It is the band's first studio album on Napalm Records, with whom Accept had signed with in February 2022, and also marks the first time since 2017's The Rise of Chaos that they had recorded as a five-piece band rather than a six-piece. Humanoid has received positive reviews from critics. Dom Lawson of Blabbermouth.net gave the album a rating of seven-and-a-half out of ten, writing, "For those who enjoyed the previous five, there is absolutely nothing here that fails to live up to expectations. Accept are, and have always been, exceptionally good at heavy metal. It's their thing", and added that the album "can be devoured as another generous serving of fresh metal anthems." Lawson also referred to "Unbreakable" and "Mind Games" as "among the finest songs that the band have written since 2009", and "Straight Up Jack" as "so unapologetic about its debt to AC/DC that resistance is useless."

Given the disappointing sales of the previous two All-Starr Band live albums, Ringo's star wasn't bright enough to get this release out on a major label or even a conventional label. As a stopgap, it was available only in Blockbuster Music stores for a brief time – at the rock-bottom bargain price of 5.99 dollars – and further volumes were not forthcoming. A shame, actually, for this was the best of the three All-Starr albums up to that point, representing what was probably Ringo's finest all-around group of the 1990s.

Alone in the Universe isn't the first Jeff Lynne album of the 21st century, nor is it the first Electric Light Orchestra of the 21st century. That honor belongs to Zoom, a 2001 comeback that faded quickly into history books, its lack of success blamed in some quarters on Lynne's reluctance to tour. If Jeff didn't want to hit the road, his old bandmate Bev Bevan had no problem constituting a lineup and touring under the name ELO Part II, whose presence somewhat explains why Alone in the Universe is credited to the somewhat convoluted Jeff Lynne's ELO – a truncation of the band's full name that also assigns credit where it's due, as most listeners associate this majestic post-Abbey Road pop with Lynne alone.

Jeff Lynne revived Electric Light Orchestra in 2015 – due to legal reasons, they were now called Jeff Lynne's ELO – releasing a comeback album called Alone in the Universe and steadily mounting a return to the road. Several dates happened in 2016, but the tour reached its apex in June 2017, when the group played in front of 60,000 people at London's Wembley Stadium. Released five months after that June 24 gig, Wembley or Bust – which was accompanied by a concert film – features the entirety of the gig, and if it's not heard too closely, it could sometimes be mistaken for an ELO greatest-hits album.