Octopus is the fourth studio album by British progressive rock band Gentle Giant, released in 1972. It was the band's last album which all the Shulman brothers involved together in the band, as the founding member Phil Shulman left the band after the release, and the first album with new drummer John Weathers, who remained with the band until their dissolution in 1980. Octopus remains a highly regarded example of the progressive rock genre and is generally considered to represent the start of the band's peak period.

Ella's collaboration with Nelson Riddle that is highly regarded as the pinnacle of her legendary Song Book series, will be released as a limited edition 6LP vinyl box set. A replica of the rare 5LP set originally released in 1959, the Ella 100 edition recreates for the first time since its initial release the original stereo box set on vinyl, the originally included five lithographs by French impressionist painter Bernard Buffet, as well as the hardcover book, Words And Music, which for this set has been updated with additional historical information and an afterword by noted author David Ritz.
The 2017 collection was newly mastered by Ron McMaster at Capitol Studios in Hollywood where the album was originally recorded in 1959 under the supervision of Verve Records founder Norman Granz. A sixth LP enlarges the original 10-inch instrumental EP with orchestra tracks on Side One and additional material from the sessions on Side Two. One of the bonus tracks, a mono alternate take of "Oh! Lady Be Good!" is on vinyl for the first time.

Extended Versions culls ten live tracks from the Doobie Brothers 1996 reunion show Rockin' Down the Highway: The Wildlife Concert. A similar distillation of the live show appeared on 1999's Best of the Doobie Brothers Live, a 14-track version of Rockin' Down the Highway. Hardcore fans will opt for the original, while casual listeners will most likely gravitate to one of the myriad studio collections, rendering both budget-priced renderings more or less obsolete.

There is something wistful and empowering about wanderlust pianist/composer/electronics Rachel Eckroth's acoustic sensibility that holds a lot of sway with many of her listeners. This falls into direct opposition to her electronic side which, as cool as it sounds, can lean a tad too easily into the blurry, pop-oriented tendencies of Vangelis, Kraftwerk, or Gary Newman. Sure Eckroth makes these endearing old genres sound exciting now, but it is her pure piano playing that truly does the trick.

After having scored a surprising commercial comeback with 1993's Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, his reunion with songwriter Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf tried to make it on his own, just as he had from 1983 to 1993, and with similarly disappointing results. As with albums like Bad Attitude, a couple of Steinman songs were tossed in, in this case the minor "Original Sin" (from 1989) and "Left in the Dark" (from 1980), a song previously cut by Barbra Streisand. But most of the album's songwriting was provided by a team of people, including pop songwriter Diane Warren, Van Halen lead singer Sammy Hagar, and ex-E Streeter Steven Van Zandt, plus producer Ron Nevison, trying to clone the flamboyant Steinman style and failing to do so. The Warren material especially (which sounded more like the kind of thing she tends to write for Michael Bolton) lacked Steinman's gothic excess, sly humor, and lyrical reach. Meat Loaf, as usual, sang like his life depended on it, while a band that was less distinctive than it should have been, given such notable participants as Kenny Aronoff and Kasim Sulton, churned out sub-metal riffs. The resulting sales fall-off was not as great as it had been before, but it remained true that Meat without Steinman was only half a loaf.

Apocalypse Orchestra is a Swedish metal band that masterfully blends medieval melodies with the crushing power of doom metal, creating an epic and atmospheric soundscape that transports listeners to a distant past. With their second release, ”A Plague upon Thee”, they unearth new stories from the past, with tales of walled in zealots, religion and science in medieval times, and the ransacking of hell! Apocalypse Orchestra delivers memorable live shows where the band utilizes theatrical performances, sometimes actors and dancers, fire and projected animation, thus enhancing the experience, giving the show a feel of classic storytelling.

Available for the very first time, the intergalactic icon Sun Ra and his Arkestra’s Lights On A Satellite: Live at the Left Bank was recorded on July 23, 1978 at the Famous Ballroom in Baltimore, Maryland by the Left Bank Jazz Society. The limited-edition 2-CD set contains audio from the Sun Ra Archives and was researched and compiled by Sun Ra archivist Michael D. Anderson. The critically acclaimed independent filmmaker Robert Mugge has also provided audio from the recordings he made at the Left Bank which was featured in his 1980 film Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise. The deluxe package includes liners notes by veteran music critic J.D. Considine, plus interviews with the centenarian Arkestra saxophonist Marshall Allen, NEA Jazz Master saxophonist Gary Bartz and pianist Craig Taborn.

New Morning is the eleventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on October 21, 1970 by Columbia Records. Coming only four months after the controversial Self Portrait, the more concise New Morning received a much warmer reception from fans and critics. Most welcome was the return of Dylan's familiar, nasal singing voice. While he has a slightly nasal tone to his voice on "Alberta #1" from Self Portrait, this was the first full album with his familiar voice since John Wesley Harding in 1967, when he began singing with a country croon. New Morning reached No. 7 in the United States, quickly going gold, and gave Dylan his sixth and last UK number 1 album until Together Through Life in 2009. The album's most commercially successful song is "If Not for You", which was also recorded by George Harrison, who played guitar on a version of the song released on 1991's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3, and was also an international hit for Olivia Newton-John in 1971.

This eight-disc set includes odes and theater pieces; and Gardiner's performances are more than excellent. He synthesizes the spare delicacy and ceremonial grandeur of Purcell's music in performances that are very satisfying.

Die Jahreszeiten, or The Seasons, is not as well loved as Haydn's other late oratorio, The Creation; here Haydn tried to force pastoral imagery – by 1801 a set of ideas that had been musically rehashed for centuries – into his late and in many respects proto-Romantic musical language. He resented, he wrote to a correspondent, having to compose "French trash" at one point in the score that called for frog sounds, and the score contains a menagerie of other rustic creatures and sounds – shepherds, shepherdesses, horn calls, birds, trees, bees, herbs, fish, roosters, rifle shots, thunder and lighting, stags, sunrises, and sunsets, among others. Yet the work is a strange mixture of cute and exultant.

Of the rarities presented in this unusual Russian music collection, the most tantalizing is Gliére’s Concerto for Coloratura Soprano and Orchestra. Judging by the slight surface noise, it sounds as if this transfer could have been made from an LP. No matter, the sound is fine, and Joan Sutherland sings radiantly, pouring out beguiling tone throughout her range, while her trademark trills are put to good use by Gliére’s vocal writing, which isn’t particularly original, especially considering it was composed in 1943. The same can be said for Gliére’s 1938 Harp Concerto: beguiling solo writing set against standard-fare 19th-century orchestral accompaniment.

Swedish all-female rock ‘n’ roll group Thundermother have been brought back to life, following the departures of former frontwoman Guernica Mancini, drummer Emlee Johansson, and bassist Mona Lindgren in 2023. Taking their places are current frontwoman Linnéa Vikström Egg, drummer Joan Massing, and returning bassist Majsan Lindberg. Continuing their fight for rock ‘n’ roll, their sixth studio album, Dirty & Divine (2025), is the follow-up to their previous record, Black and Gold (2022). Besides the inclusion of new members, one major difference between the two records is that all the material on Dirty & Divine was written by guitarist Filippa Nässil, who was pregnant throughout the recording process, and Vikström. It should also be noted that eight of the 10 songs were recorded in four days; according to Nässil, the album marked the quickest recording session Thundermother have ever done.

The Great Sounds Of The Elvis Sang – CDs with the greatest hits of the Love Me Tender: Elvis Sang It Too. songs by Emile Ford, The Cadets. The Button Down Brass Band and many more!

Flanked on this recording by the Missa brevis in G major, the only example of a ‘Pastoral’ Mass by Mozart, and the emotive Missa brevis in F major, the precocious Mass in C major was composed at the age of only 13. It is a dramatic setting of sizeable proportions, with the Gloria and Credo themselves the length of a Missa brevis setting. The ‘Dominicus’ Mass shows a deepening of Mozart’s contrapuntal and harmonic language, with more adventurous and memorable melodies for the soloists.

Régine Crespin Notwithstanding her great success in the German repertory, Régine Crespin was quintessentially a French artist. With an unmistakable sensuality betraying her origins in Mediterranean France, she was guided by an unfailing sense of elegance. Whether as Kundry, the Marschallin, Carmen, Didon, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, or Sieglinde, her large, lush voice was deployed with refined abandon. Her top register, powerful and soaring when it was working as the singer wished, sometimes emerged congested, as tones that began as clarion would cloud over and lose their cutting edge. As it became increasingly problematic, Crespin looked toward roles only equivocally soprano, where she could rely on the luxurious amplitude of her middle and lower registers. Her Carmen, presented at the Metropolitan Opera in 1975 after a period of vocal restudy and a loss of weight, was distinctive for its subtle danger and meticulous delivery of text and vocal line. Following studies at the Paris Conservatoire with Georges Jouatte and celebrated bass Paul Cabanel, Crespin made her debut in 1950 singing Elsa at Mulhouse. In August of that same year, she appeared for the first time at the Paris Opéra, the role once again being Elsa.