The Berkeley shows by Jimi Hendrix are fairly well known because not only were the shows filmed, but they have been bootlegged pretty extensively over the years as well. Live at Berkeley: 2nd Show marks the first official release of this material, and, like its predecessor, Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight, the show has its strengths and weaknesses. Things start loose, very loose, on "Pass It On," which is actually the music from "Straight Ahead" with some off-the-cuff lyrics, then into "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)." Hendrix's guitar tone is fantastic, and there are some fine moments of soloing, but as far as the songs go, he seems distracted. Things start to pick up with "Lover Man" (check Billy Cox's bass playing here), and Hendrix really seems to find himself while romping through some older material like "Stone Free" and "Hey Joe"…

Rammstein's second album, Sehnsucht, finds the German metal band making a great leap forward. While the group still sounds a little unfocused in places, their blend of industrial noise, grinding metal guitars, and operatic vocals is staggeringly powerful. No other European metal band sounds like Rammstein, nor does any American metal group - this is powerful, gothic metal that is unlike anything else in late-'90s metal. Sehnsucht may be an acquired taste, but it's one worth acquiring.

A fantastic electric session from the 70s Polish scene - a record that not only features freewheeling trumpet from Tomasz Stanko, and sweet Fender Rhodes from Adam Mackowicz, but also includes some very inventive work on drums and percussion from the great Czelaw Bartkowski! All three players are at the top of their game here - artists who have a strong knowledge of the outside territory of jazz, but also often work a bit more inside - so that their music here can be open and exploratory, but also come back to more soulful, swinging territory too! Most tracks are long, and have the sort of textural energy you'd know especially from Stanko's work.

UK four CD collection from the British Prog Rock band that rounds up all of their Chrysalis albums with bonus tracks including John Peel sessions, 7" mixes, live tracks, 'B' sides and more. Gentle Giant was born out of the ashes of Simon Dupree & the Big Sound, a successful UK rock and R&B-based outfit led by the Shulman Brothers. In 1970, the brothers founded Gentle Giant. Derek was lead vocalist and played alto sax and bass, Ray sang and played bass and violin, and Phil handled the saxophone and added vocals. Kerry Minnear, on keyboards, came straight from the Royal Academy of Music, and Gary Green became guitarist. John Weathers joined the band in 1972 and was the drummer for two albums. Gentle Giant's utilization of complex classical chord and time patterns, together with hard rock, blues, jazz and even medieval melodies, set them apart from other "progressive" groups of their time or since.

George Winston’s "Autumn" has served as an emotional backdrop to the change of season. A beautiful recording for solo piano, Autumn finds Winston developing simple melodic motifs with studied left-hand underpinning, on hypnotic pieces like “Woods,”, which moves from a brisk rhythmic figure to rubato minor-key runs. Leaving pauses and breaths in all the right places, Winston suggests the play of color and light, the comfortable melancholy, and the encroaching slow-down that characterizes the fall season. Full of memorable themes and moods, Autumn is a timeless album, and serves as a good introduction for someone who has not heard George Winston.

This set contains all of Sand's one and only album, Golem, from 1974, as well as whole lot of additional Golem-era tracks and three cuts from Born at Dawn, an unreleased solo effort by Sand vocalist Johannes Vester recorded shortly after Sand's demise. Golem is a strange blend of dark, off-kilter folk music with a very heavy dose of electronic effects. In fact, "Helicopter" starts off with several minutes of rotor-blade-sounding electronic pulses and other effects before heavily processed vocals and guitar strums take over. The music moves from abstract soundscapes to surreal songs, and all of it is filtered through a special artificial head recording system to make for particularly good headphone listening. With Klaus Schulze at the controls, many of the songs have a similar cosmic trippiness to his early solo stuff and Ash Ra Tempel, with lots of electronic swooshes and washes…

The Yellow Balloon was Don Grady's (Robbie on TV's My Three Sons) rock & roll group, but even more important, the brainchild of California producer Gary Zekley. Not unlike a Gary Usher, Zekley could grab a bunch of musicians and - filling in the needed holes with his own talent - produce sessions that rivaled Phil Spector or Brian Wilson for big sound and teen spirit. Grady had already been recording for the same label with his own group, the Windupwatch Band, when Zekley started climbing the charts with "Yellow Balloon," creating a need for a new group to go with the hit. Grady became the drummer and other members were recruited from various bands around the country, but in the studio, it was still Zekley's show all the way. This 20-track compilation brings together the 11 tracks from the Yellow Balloon's 1967 album, along with the Don Grady with the Windupwatch Band singles…

Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton was Eric Clapton's first fully realized album as a blues guitarist - more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Standing midway between Clapton's stint with the Yardbirds and the formation of Cream, this album featured the new guitar hero on a series of stripped-down blues standards, Mayall pieces, and one Mayall/Clapton composition, all of which had him stretching out in the idiom for the first time in the studio. This album was the culmination of a very successful year of playing with John Mayall, a fully realized blues creation, featuring sounds very close to the group's stage performances, and with no compromises…

Pianist Oscar Peterson has long been such a consistent performer that none of his records are throwaways, but this particular set is weaker than most. Since several of the songs are the type that in the mid-'60s would get requested (such as "People," "The Girl from Ipanema," and "The Days of Wine and Roses"), the program would not seem to have much potential, but Peterson mostly uplifts the material (although not much could be done with "People") and adds a few songs (such as his own "Goodbye, J.D." and John Lewis' "D & E"). Overall, this is a reasonably enjoyable Oscar Peterson session, featuring bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen.

This was the first TD album to incorporate lyrics and vocals (from Steve Jolliffe, who also contributed wind instruments and keyboards). By this point, the nucleus of the band was down to Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke, with the sound centering more on shifting arpeggiation over percussive rhythm structures, with "Madrigal Meridian" being an impressive example of this. Jolliffe's vocal contributions on "Bent Cold Sidewalk" and "Rising Runner Missed by Endless Sender" provide an aggressive edge that effectively catapults the listener from the hypnotic pulse that Tangerine Dream are best known for - still, it's by no means a failed experiment, though it does make Cyclone one of the least useful TD albums for working up a good meditative state.

Sixteen years and five albums after the Pennsylvania band’s formation, progressive death metal progenitors Rivers of Nihil are upping the ante with their 2025 self-titled album Rivers of Nihil. Traditionally, a self-titled record can signal a return to basics and/or a fresh beginning, and in 10 powerful songs, it’s clear that both those factors are in play. Founding bassist Adam Biggs became the band’s new lead vocalist/bassist in 2023; the same year marked the appearance of additional guitarist Andy Thomas (ex-Black Crown Initiate), whose vocals also play prominently on Rivers of Nihil. Producers Carson Slovak and Grant McFarland at Atrium Audio captured the new dynamics across more than 50 minutes of music…

Arriving in the wake of the success of the 2018 Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, 2019's immaculately produced box set Never Boring showcases the solo work of lead singer Freddie Mercury. Though he only ever released one proper solo album outside of Queen, 1985's Mr. Bad Guy, Mercury did record enough individual material throughout his storied career to fill the three discs that make up this collection. Included are an 11-track special edition of Mr. Bad Guy, a nine-track edition of 1988's Barcelona - his orchestral collaboration with opera diva Montserrat Caballé - and a compilation disc that brings together a handful of errant solo performances, including his 1987 cover single of the Platters' "The Great Pretender"…

Veteran Hammond B-3 master Dr. Lonnie Smith pairs with punk icon Iggy Pop on his inspired and deeply funky 2021 album Breathe. Smith initially came into his own in the 1960s, releasing a string of groove-based albums for Blue Note, including 1968's Think!, that helped define the sound of forward-thinking organ jazz. Over 30 years after his last album for Blue Note, he returned to the label with 2016's vibrant Evolution and 2018's All in My Mind; albums that found him recapturing the earthy energy of his original recordings. Continuing this latter-career resurgence, Breathe again finds him working with producer Don Was, and backed by an energetic ensemble of all-stars including guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and drummer Johnathan Blake, who make up his core trio. He also expands the group to a septet on several tracks, bringing trumpeter Sean Jones, tenor saxophonist John Ellis…

The sixties and seventies formed an unprecedentedly successful and productive period in Dutch music history. As a tribute to these glory days, a series of 2CDs of the most influential Dutch bands from these golden years have been released under the title 'The Golden Years of Dutch Pop Music'. On each CD, all original A and B sides of the singles are chronologically collected, where possible supplemented with relevant album tracks.
In their eight-year existence, Ekseption came as close as any group from the European continent ever did to stealing the thunder of early classical rock outfits such as the Nice and rivaling the early work of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In Holland, they charted singles based on classical compositions and released successful concept albums, and were - along with Focus - the top progressive rock band in the Dutch-speaking world.

Over fifteen years ago the DJ duo from Cologne (Blank & Jones) decided to strike quieter, more relaxed tones. From the passion for Ambient, Chill Out, Downbeat, Lounge Music, Beach House, Bar Grooves and Co. was created the idea of ​​Milchbar Seaside Season - a summer soundtrack for the cult Norderneyer Location milk bar. On the first compilation followed in recent years regularly further new Chillout compilation.