Disco compilation from Universal Music featuring Tavares, The Pointer Sisters, Rufus & Chaka Khan, Quincy Jones & others spread across 3 cds.

Whitney Houston's first big-screen role in 1992's The Bodyguard would generate a phenomenon. Not that the film itself was a phenomenon – it was a healthy success, due not only to Houston, but to her co-star Kevin Costner's drawing power – but the soundtrack's success was astonishing. The Bodyguard followed Houston's cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" to the top of the charts, and once they got there, neither the single nor the album budged for weeks.

While they started off being marketed as a band, past a certain point, W.A.S.P. became primarily a Blackie Lawless-led project. Which shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as it was the Lawless one that has written the vast majority of the group's tunes and has dictated their direction from the get-go. And also past a certain point, W.A.S.P. went from shock-rock poster children for the PMRC ("Animal," anyone?), and began focusing on conceptual albums and more mature lyrical subject matter. And it's the latter direction that W.A.S.P. continues with on their 2009 offering, Babylon. Supposedly based on "biblical visions of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (as confirmed by the album cover's doodle), Babylon is still metallic-based, and such tracks as "Live to Die Another Day" and "Babylon's Burning" are instant W.A.S.P. anthems…

Electronic Body Music, abbreviated as EBM, is a term whose origin stems from the Belgian group Front 242, chosen to describe their electronic music; cold and dancing, free of the dominant influences of the time. Powerful, cold and minimalist electronic rhythms were the hallmarks of this new genre.

Handels operas are now so thoroughly a part of modern musical life that you might think every major opera house welcomes them. But until November 2010, when it introduced an absorbing new production of Alcina, the Vienna Staatsoper resisted them, not having done a Baroque opera since Monteverdis Poppea in the 1960s. The present production boasted an all-star cast of Baroque specialists, a former director of the Royal Shakespeare Company Adrian Noble, the highly-acclaimed conductor Marc Minkowski and his Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble in the pit. Adrian Noble places his Alcina into a framework which begins in the magnificent ballroom of the Devonshire-House in London Piccadilly. The legendary Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, stages a play in which she is acting together with her friends, a stage on the stage. Alcina is a great musical experience geared to the Baroque curiosity. Marc Minkowski revives Handels music in an outstanding way.

Following their acclaimed 2017 album, Aeon, Switzerland-based outfit, AKKU Quintet have released their fourth record – Depart. This release contains a sequence of darkly beautiful compositions by founder and drummer Manuel Pasquinelli.

This is one of bassist Eberhard Weber's more stimulating ECM releases, due in part to his colorful sidemen: guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Lyle Mays (in a rare vacation from Pat Metheny), Paul McCandless (switching between soprano, oboe, English horn and bass clarinet) and drummer Michael DiPasqua. The quintet plays four of Weber's originals (including the 16-minute "Death in the Car Wash") and, although the music is sometimes introspective and full of space, Frisell largely keeps the proceedings unpredictable and adds some fire and otherworldly sounds.

The absence of a drummer deprives "The Following Morning" of some of the drive and rhythmic shadings of other Weber releases. In some ways this is a more contemplative work, lingering longer upon the tones of the individual instruments. The title track opens with backwards piano and slides into a pensive rumination between the piano and Weber's bass. There is only the tentative presence of orchestral instruments, and the album is quite subtle and slow to unfold. You might not pick up this album as often as some other Weber releases, but it can reward close listening.

Chandos signed Karen Geoghegan as an exclusive artist in 2007 following her appearance on BBC TV’s Classical Star programme. This is her fifth recording with the label, and the expressive maturity and sensitivity of her playing have quickly cemented her status as a rising star, Gramophone writing: ‘Name five internationally famous bassoon soloists. Archie Camden, Gwydion Brooke and, er, that’s it. Except I think we shall soon be adding the name of Karen Geoghegan to the roll call.