David Gilmour released his second solo venture in 1984, following the apparent dissolution of Pink Floyd. He had released a record on his own in 1978, but About Face is much more accessible. Gilmour has a stellar band backing him, including Jeff Porcaro (drums), Pino Palladino (bass), and Anne Dudley (synthesizer). The songs on About Face show a pop sensibility that Pink Floyd rarely was concerned with achieving. Although the album didn't attract the attention of a Floyd release, several cuts did manage to get airplay. "Until We Sleep" is rife with shimmering synthesizers and cavernous drums, and "Blue Light" was a minor pop hit, with Gilmour's trademark delay-drenched guitar giving way to a driving, horn-laced rocker. Pete Townshend wrote two of the tracks: "Love on the Air" and the propulsive "All Lovers Are Deranged." Of course, there's more than enough of Gilmour's fluid guitar playing to satisfy…

Originally publised as a double album including his '83 concert as well, now it's released as a single edition with remastered sound. This is the album with '87 performance of Dio at Castle Donington. It was recorded when Dream Evil went out so almost all the songs are from Dio's band unlike the '83 release with a lot of material from Black Sabbath and Rainbow.

This production has a smooth, polished, and relaxed feeling. The arrangements are heavy with vocal choruses, electric guitar and languid Latin rhythms. Sarah Vaughn's crooning glows and smolders, creating a magnificent dynamic contrast. Vaughn completely possesses the ballad "Tete," captivating the listener in much the same way she did with her hit "Misty," 20 years previously. Like all her greatest work, it's multi-textured; prolonged whispers, powerful hollering, low moaning, staccato bopping, and a myriad of other techniques she employs with facility and finesse. "Gentle Rain" finds Vaughn alone with a guitar. The spare orchestration has the profound simplicity of a haiku. Her voice is like a saxophone on this number, holding notes for lush intervals in her lower registers…

Crammed with over two hours worth of Can performing during their peak years this selection of live cuts shows just what a dazzlingly inventive outfit the German free-form pioneers could be outside of their natural studio habitat. Like many innovative groups of the 1960's and 1970's Can live were a remarkably different beast from their studio persona, many of the tracks captured on this two-disc compilation either completely unrecognisable from their original album form or simply the result of some impromptu jams between the five members. With the sonic shackles of the studio well-and-truly disposed of, this raw and powerful approach is best exemplified by the utterly extraordinary 'Colchester Finale', a fuzzy, dizzy, relentless thirty-seven minute long abstract masterpiece that brings to mind - and also surpasses - the thunderous invention of 'Tago Mago'…

Piet Blank and Jaspa Jones - the producers known worldwide. For two they have let out already many albums and tens magnificent singles, reliably having fixed in world history of dancing music. Their hits more than once appeared at tops of charts, and each new album stably got to number 50 of the best to Germany. The first release which has left in 2003 of an album "Relax: Edition One" to a descent has occupied 22 place in charts of Germany, and a chill-miss the version of track Pet Shop Boys "Love Comes Quickly" from this album became the present hit.

This CD could almost have been subtitled "The Lost Years," defining the period in which Donovan's records barely even made it into stores so that they could be ignored by the public - that had been the fate of Essence to Essence (which actually made it into stores), and 7-Tease and Slow Down World - each died an absolute commercial death in its wake. More's the pity, because there's a lot of beautiful (even gorgeous) and clever music here, a big chunk of it about as good as anything that Donovan ever put out. The zeitgeist behind the songs on these two albums may throw people who are accustomed to his '60s material, when Donovan had a wide listenership and was in sync with the times; here he's singing against his times (and mostly against indifference and self-involvement), and he is so beguiling musically and lyrically, that one feels a real sense of tragedy that these albums weren't more widely heard…

More than a quarter century after he cut his debut album, Bell recently made his finest disc to date. Boasting superior material and musicianship (guitarists Carl Weathersby and Lurrie Bell and pianist Lucky Peterson are all stellar) and a goosed-up energy level that frequently reaches incendiary heights, the disc captures Bell outdoing himself vocally on the ribald "Let Me Stir in Your Pot" and a suitably loose "When I Get Drunk" and instrumentally on the torrid "Jawbreaker." For a closer, Bell settled on the atmospheric Horton classic "Easy"; he does it full justice.

One has to admit, the German psychedelic rock reissue label Garden of Delights puts a lot of care in its sampler albums. They are generous - occasionally to the detriment of an album - and packaged with informative and lavish 16-page booklets. For every tenth release of their catalogue they pick a track from each of the nine previous releases and compile them under a volume of this series. All catalogue numbers are an integer multiple of ten. The tracks chosen for these samplers comprise recordings from the field of progressive rock music in all its different shades, ranging from psychedelic to symphonic, fusion and blues-rock, provided that there are progressive elements in it.

Every five years since 1986, the corporate custodians of Impulse! have served up batches of Coltrane reissues and unreleased tapes to commemorate a birthday ending in "0" or "5." In the year 2001, which would have been Coltrane's 75th birthday, current label owner Vivendi Universal delivered four single CDs, three of which serve tourists who want to get on the 'Trane for the first time. Standards is probably the least eventful of the lot, offering no unreleased material or particularly enticing packaging. But you won't get shortchanged by the music, which takes us from the first galvanic Impulse! album Africa/Brass ("Greensleeves") through the run of projects by Coltrane's classic quartet of the first half of the '60s (McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones)…

This is one of Heldon's most impressive recordings. It offers the continuity of a group sound throughout, with Pinhas' keyboards and guitars supported by Francois Auger playing drums and percussion on most tracks, and additional assistance from Patrick Gauthier on moog synthesizers and either Didier Batard or Janick Top on bass. Stylistically, it's a great leap forward from previous Heldon releases, and much closer to the fusion jazz of Mahavishnu Orchestra, than to conventional psychedelic or prog-rock. The five pieces (one in both a live and a studio version) have no real melodies or themes; rather, they use simple patterns and chord sequences as guidelines, and let the musicians improvise around them. The opening "Marie Virginie C." almost sounds like late Coltrane free jazz, or perhaps like Hendrix at his most frenzied, with guitars and synthesizers howling, and Auger thrashing wildly in the background…

For once, no re-release of an old record from the 70s but a more recent band. The Crabs, from the northern edge of the Black Forest in the German region of Swabia, were founded in 1986 by former members of the group Otto Rhombisch and played psychedelic with a slight New Wave or Gothic touch, which is recognizable especially in the singing. In spring 1994 they recorded a couple of songs which were intended to form the material for their first LP. But the project was left un-finished since in the summer of that year the band broke up. It would have been a pity to let the tapes rot away unused, and so they were in the end released on CD after all. But be careful - to those who are totally dedicated to the 70s it will probably sound too new. The tasteful psychedelic cover artwork was created by singer Lea Bayer.

Michael Schenker has never been one to compromise, and his new album Don’t Sell Your Soul is proof that his fire still burns at full intensity. From his first days as a teenage prodigy with Scorpions and his era-defining run with UFO, Schenker set a standard for hard rock guitarists that few have ever matched. When he formed the Michael Schenker Group in 1979, it gave him the freedom to shape heavy music on his own terms, and decades later MSG remains the canvas for his vision.
Don’t Sell Your Soul arrives as the second part of a trilogy Schenker began with My Years With UFO, which celebrated his deep history with the band that helped launch him to worldwide acclaim. That album was followed by a triumphant tour, and now this next chapter finds him pushing forward with just as much force…

In the Land of Hi-Fi is one of Sarah Vaughan's best jazz dates for EmArcy. Accompanied by an all-star orchestra arranged by Ernie Wilkins and featuring altoist Cannonball Adderley (who was near the beginning of his career), the great singer is in superior form during these concise (around three minutes apiece) performances, particularly on "Soon," "Cherokee," "I'll Never Smile Again," and "An Occasional Man." A strong session.

Osanna is classic seventies Italian prog. The basis of their sound is original heavy guitar rock often in combination with amazing flute solos. Additionally, more spacey, Pink Floydian parts and quiet interludes with acoustic guitar and flute can be heard as well. There are plenty of mood changes and surprises that make this music very dynamic and interesting. Their first three are masterpieces in their own right.

The two albums I.F. and I.F. 2 (short for Intergalactic Federation) Deep Space Network made with fellow German artist Dr Atmo for Fax Records feature longer tracks, offering a bigger canvas for Moufang and Grossmann to work on. These are true collaborations with Atmo - a lover of shadowy, cosmic Eastern melodies and percussion - where the whole ends up greater than the sum of the parts. I.F. contains the extraordinary "Ten Waves", a 25 minute psychedelic blissfest of bleeps, radio & TV samples and spacey melodies driven by a tabla drums and a steady, almost jazzy two-chord progression. This stoned masterpiece was a staple in dance party chill spaces in the 90's and stands up brilliantly today, every bit the equal of other extended chillout classics of the era.