Very little is known about this four-piece French set who released one album at the tail end of prog's 'golden age', and then disappeared from the map. They were: Daniel Locci on drums, Jack Mlynski on guitars and vocals, Stanislas Belloc on bass and vocals, and Alain Coupel on keyboards and vocals. Some have described the album as the French "Larks' Tongues in Aspic", no doubt thanks to guitarist Mlynski's Frippian style which (precariously) straddles the line between homage and plagiarism. Alain Coupel's synth play, however, is noticeably un-Crimson like and the band does show some originality and an obvious desire for experimentation; yet the overall feel of the album is still 100% King Crimson, especially the 16-minute epic "Artcane I".

Self-described "rural folk piano" player George Winston was among the earliest and most successful proponents of the genre of contemporary instrumental music later dubbed new age.
Signing to the Windham Hill label, between 1980 and 1982 he recorded a trilogy of albums - Autumn, December, and Winter Into Spring - of impressionistic, seasonally themed piano musings that laid much of the groundwork for the new age boom to follow.
In a sense, this second seasonal album follows an opposite direction from Autumn, its hard, isolated notes and stop-and-start style gradually giving way from the stasis of winter to the growth and movement of spring. It's a good album for beginning your day.

Imperishable cuts the fat and goes straight for the throat! Melodic Swedish Death Metal with aggressive hooks!
With their new album “Swallowing the World”, Imperishable sharpens their signature blend of melody and aggression, diving deeper into the sonic territory carved out by pioneers like Necrophobic, Death, and At the Gates. This album isn’t just a nostalgic dive; it’s a reinvention of Swedish Death Metal’s most melodic side, set to make its mark on the modern scene.
Imperishable teamed up with none other than Andy LaRocque at Sonic Train Studios (At the Gates, Lord Belial, King Diamond), who handled recording, mixing, and mastering duties. LaRocque’s production brings out the album’s intricate layers and gives its melodic elements room to breathe without sacrificing a shred of brutality…

This album is an overlooked gem in the catalog of Bonnie Raitt. On Takin' My Time, she wears her influences proudly in an eclectic musical mix containing blues, jazz, folk, New Orleans R&B, and calypso. Although she did not write her own material for this album, she demonstrates an excellent ear for songs and chooses material from some of the best songwriters of the day. She is a great interpreter, and her renditions of Jackson Browne's "I Thought I Was a Child" and Randy Newman's "Guilty" from this album are the definitive versions of these songs. The highlights of this album are the romantic ballads "I Gave My Love a Candle" and "Cry Like a Rainstorm," where Raitt adds an emotional depth to the performance unusual for such a young woman…

These sterling performances have been high among the prime available Beethoven Quartet sets since their initial appearance in the early 1970s as sought-after Telefunken LPs. Naïve’s booklet and transfers are the same as those of the 1987 Auvidis Valois set. So what’s this release got that the previous one didn’t? A bargain price, with the eight CDs marked down to the price of four. These are happy days for Beethoven Quartet lovers: my three favorite complete sets (the others are the Quartetto Italiano on Philips and the Talich on Calliope) are all now available at midprice.

Without doubt the most important qawwal is Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party – "Party" is a generic term for a qawwali ensemble but is also used in Sikhism and to describe some classical music ensembles, for example, shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan & Party. Dubbed Shahen-Shah-e-Qawwali (the Brightest Star in Qawwali), he was born on October 13, 1948, in Lyallpur in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. He made his first recording in 1973 in Pakistan and a number of early EMI (Pakistan) albums jointly billed him with his uncle Mubarak Ali Khan.

The debut domestic recording by Steps Ahead (following three sets only released in Japan) features the 1982 version of the group: vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker, pianist Eliane Elias (a young unknown at the time), bassist Eddie Gomez, and drummer Peter Erskine. The music is essentially high-quality funky fusion, with Brecker typically blowing up a storm, Mainieri often playing the synthivibe, and Elias showing some early individuality. Best known among the seven originals are Don Grolnick's "Pools" and Mainieri's "Islands." The inventive but pretty accessible set concludes with "Trio," a fairly free improvisation featuring Brecker, Gomez, and Mainieri.

The title of Anna Wilson's third album, Yule Swing!, gives an accurate indication of its contents, which consist of seasonal music in big-band (and small-band) jazz arrangements. But without the subtitle that's written vertically in script up the right side of the cover, one might expect to hear the usual perennials. That subtitle reads, "A Collection of Original Holiday Songs."

Cathedral is usually mentioned with other 70s American prog bands like Yezda Urfa and Mirthrandir. Those three bands played symphonic-prog influenced mostly by Yes and early Genesis (although Yezda Urfa showed a strong Gentle Giant influence). And it had a profound influence on Cathedral. The listener will instantly notice that Cathedral were quite aggressive for a mid-seventies prog band, and the band wastes little time exploring action-packed sections in each track. The bass/drum interplay was one of the first things to catch my attention. Not only does the bassist and drummer lock into complex and aggressive grooves, but the drummer was also allowed to fill most of the tracks with additional percussive instruments. The guitarist is the next musician to stand out. Try to imagine Robert Fripp as an American guitar player…