Thomas Dolby, the iconic '80s star whose smash hits 'She Blinded Me With Science' and 'Hyperactive' helped define the MTV generation/revolution, will break his 20-year silence with A Map of the Floating City. The album, featuring appearances by special guest artists Mark Knopfler, Regina Spektor, Natalie MacMaster, Bruce Woolley, Imogen Heap and Eddi Reader, will be will be released on Lost Toy People Records as a physical CD, and in a special Deluxe Edition featuring a second disc of instrumentals and bonus tracks. Of the album, which is divided into three parts, Dolby says, "The new songs are organic and very personal. A Map of the Floating City is a travelogue across three imaginary continents: In Amerikana I'm reflecting with affection on the years I spent living in the U.S.A., and my fascination with its roots music. Urbanoia is a dark place, a little unsettling… I'm not a city person. And in Oceanea I return to my natural home on the windswept coastline."

20 great songs. 'Up Where We Belong', 'Take My Breath Away', 'I Just Called to Say I Love You', 'Time of My Life', 'Stand by Me', 'What a Wonderful World', 'It Must Have Been Love', '(Everything I Do) I Do It for You', 'The Crying Game' and more, and more…

This unique album is a wonderful snapshot of American jazz in an orchestral setting. Most classical music aficionados are familiar with George Gershwin and his works such as Rhapsody in Blue, but there are also a number of less-famous composers who wrote around the same time who are no less brilliant. These composers also interacted with and influenced each other. For example, James Price Johnson also wrote a rhapsody, entitled Yamekraw, Negro Rhapsody, which is a sophisticated work full of tempo changes, varied rhythms, and various moods and character. (William Grant Still orchestrated this piece.) Yamekraw swings and is syncopated, giving it a very dancelike feel, and the Hot Springs Music Festival Symphony Orchestra does an excellent job bringing the music alive without ever making it rigid. Not only do it play beautifully on this first piece, but also through the rest of the album, where it truly captures all the moods jazz pieces require while never losing strong classical technique. It is much to conductor Richard Rosenberg's credit that all of the pieces have energy and good musical taste.

100 tracks. Status Quo, Uriah Heep, Slade, The Allman Brothers Band, Thin Lizzy, The Guess Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Atomic Rooster, The Moody Blues, Steppenwolf, Blue Oyster Cult, Santana, Rainbow, Lou Reed, Kiss, Toto, Ted Nugent, Electric Light Orchestra, Iggy Pop, Rush, Motorhead, Cheap Trick, Judas Priest, REO Speedwagon, Yngwie Malmsteen, Soundgarden, Accept, Alice Cooper, Dio and more, and more…

Digitally remastered and expanded two CD edition of this 1986 album from the Manchester quartet, one of the most successful and consistent bands of the '80s and beyond. The rest, as they say, is history. The album contains a mixture of post-punk and electronic styles, roughly divided between the two sides. Disc One in this package contains the original album in it's digitally remastered glory. Disc Two is filled with eight non-album singles, B-sides and remixes. This is as great as it gets!

This CD's title, Messe Noire, and its dark cover art may mislead some into thinking this album is filled with evil, forbidden things; but the only selection that suggests the diabolical is Alexander Scriabin's macabre Sonata No. 9, "Black Mass," and it comes at the very end, after Igor Stravinsky's light, neo-Classical Serenade in A, Dmitry Shostakovich's sardonic Sonata No. 2, and Sergey Prokofiev's witty but brutal knuckle-buster, the Sonata No. 7, which all have their dark moments, certainly, but not the same sinister mood found in Scriabin. If pianist Aleksei Lubimov's aim in bringing these Russian masterworks together points to some other unifying idea – perhaps the significance of the piano in these composers' thinking – then some other title might have been more helpful. As it is, though, this album seems most unified in Lubimov's vigorous style of playing, brittle execution, and emphasis on the piano's percussive sonorities, evident in each performance. This spiky approach works best in Prokofiev's sonata, and fairly well in Shostakovich's and Stravinsky's pieces; but it seems too sterile in Scriabin's music, which needs more languor and sensuous writhing than clarity or crispness.

Green Linnet 20th Anniversary Collection is a double-disc collection featuring 38 tracks from the Celtic music insitution. Every one of the label's biggest artists – including Silly Wizard, Altan, Wolfstone, the Bothy Band, John Williams, Tannahill Weavers – is on the collection, giving a good representation of not only the label, but the state of Celtic music of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. It's an excellent retrospective.

In his opening remarks, Marco Blaauw admits that only latterly did he enjoy the extrovert tendencies of his instrument – and this recital “shows off” in exemplary fashion. Only Hanna Kulenty’s Brass No 1 is a truly abstract study: the first in a cycle of trumpet-centred pieces that puts the double-bell instrument as thoroughly and as scintillatingly through its paces as any music written from a non-jazz perspective.

John Lennon would have turned 67 in 2007. If alive, he could well be at the forefront of bringing peace to Darfur, where more than half a million have died from violence and disease during four years of rebel discord. So to create awareness of the ongoing conflict, Amnesty International (with permission from Yoko Ono) has mined Lennon's solo work and rounded up nearly two dozen current artists to reinterpret the music, which spans the ex-Beatle's entire post-band catalog (plus a pair from while the Fab Four were still in business). As with any attempt to cover Beatles-related music, results are hit and miss, with kudos going to Snow Patrol and the Postal Service for capturing the starkness of "Isolation" and "Grow Old with Me," respectively, Mexican rock band Jaguares for uncovering the fear and fury in "Gimme Some Truth," and (surprise!) Christina Aguilera for nailing the complex composition and mood of "Mother." Other highlights include Jackson Browne's piano-led "Oh My Love," Green Day's louder straight take on "Working Class Hero," and the Black Eyed Peas turning "Power to the People" into a gospelly protest. Will resurrecting 30-to-40-year-old messages of peace and love be enough to help end the brutalities in Darfur? That remains to be seen. But selecting John Lennon as the author of those messages will make people listen and, with this collection, may keep them listening.

2000 2-CD set featuring 39 classic timeless hits from the millennium including Queen, The Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, John Lennon, Paul McCartney & Wings, David Bowie, The Who, Elton John, The Beach Boys, Simon And Garfunkel, Derek & The Dominoes, Prince, U2, Bon Jovi, Blondie, Oasis, Lenny Kravitz, Simple Minds, Supertramp, Dire Straits, Tina Turner, Bob Marley, UB40, Kate Bush, Phil Collins, Roxy Music, Rod Stewart, Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, Abba, Janet Jackson, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Pet Shop Boys, George Michael, Massive Attack, Texas.

It goes without saying that recording has transformed music from an evanescent art to one which can be readily preserved for the study and enjoyment of future generations. the EMI Great Conductors Edition - Nikolai Golovanov Among its services is the perpetuation of the art of musicians who were barely known in their time outside their own immediate spheres of influence. Golovanov surely was among these. Although he was the dominant force in Russian opera for nearly thirty years, he was summarily purged in 1952 (literally refused admission to his opera house one morning), died the following year and was conveniently forgotten as a political imperative of Soviet rewriting of Russian cultural history. Only recently have his records resurfaced to reveal an extraordinary outsized personality, a visionary galaxies apart from the polished discipline of Mravinsky and others who better towed the party line, both politically and aesthetically, and whose art has been touted as representing the Soviet ideal. Over half this set is devoted to five Liszt tone poems from Golovanov's pioneering set.

The greatest single disc collection of Canned Heat ever assembled! Over 75 minutes of boogie rock! Includes the smash singles 'On the Road Again', 'Goin' Up the Country', 'Let's Work Together' and the previously unreleased song 'Henry's Shuffle'.

Unusually the liner note deserves a mention ahead of the music: the fine pianist Jeremy Denk, half of this regular duo, manages to encapsulate the elusiveness of French romantic music with such insight in a few sharp sentences, his words almost shape the way we listen to this superbly played disc. Saint-Saëns' wistful and emotional Sonata No 1 and Ravel's bluesy, ironic sonata have a whipped, airy quality. Joshua Bell plays with fire and finesse, with Denk a powerful ally. Franck's dark-light violin sonata, mysterious, ardent and far more than the sum of its parts when played as majestically as here, forms the centrepiece of this seriously beguiling disc.

At the Movies: Soundtrack Hits (2007) is a 19-track compilation of Van Morrison songs featured in a film at one time or another. Rather than play like an odds-and-ends compilation of soundtrack rarities as one might expect, Soundtrack Hits plays like a best-of collection, including many of Morrison's greatest solo hits along with a couple Them songs ("Gloria," "Baby Please Don't Go"). There are several live versions in place of the studio cuts. The live versions of "Moondance" and "Brown Eyed Girl" are previously unreleased.

A man with as much experience as he has ingenuity, Randall Bramblett has been a singer-songwriter, a session musician, and a hired gun for legends such as Gregg Allman and Steve Winwod. Bramblett’s latest release from his more than thirty years in the business, Devil Music, delivers the expected level of virtuosity, and surprises with a deep-fried, novel twist of Southern darkness. “Dead in the Water,” the album’s lead single is equally fulfilled through evocative lyrics, well-timed and managed effects, and instrumental superiority; a narrative of nowhere, the track is populated by dead-end characters and lowly living; fitting, for a track that Bramblett claims is inspired by William S. Burroughs. While immersing itself in the wonderfully weird, infinitely spiraling darkness of whimsy that exemplifies some of Tom Waits’ best work, “Dead in the Water” sees a guest appearance by storied axeman Mark Knopfler.