Brooklyn-via-Cape Cod rockers Highly Suspect continue to bang out the rollicking riffs on their second album, coming on hot and heavy with the woozy opening crunch of “My Name Is Human.” They’re positively adrenalized on the swaggering “Postres” and moved by the power of piano on “Chicago,” a dramatic stunner that showcases Johnny Stevens’ passionate vocals. They close things in grand fashion, as the wild “Wolf” eases its way from a glittery soft open to an unhinged finale of blistering, spacey guitar solos.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an extremely mesmerizing aural journey through some of Edgar Allan Poe's most renowned works. With the use of synthesizers, drums, guitar, and even a glockenspiel, Parsons' shivering effects make way for an eerie excursion into Poe's well-known classics. On the album's 1987 remix, the instrumental "Dream Within a Dream" has Orson Welles narrating in front of this wispy collaboration of guitars and keyboards (Welles also narrates "Fall of the House of Usher: Prelude"). The EMI vocoder is used throughout "The Raven" with the Westminster City School Boys Choir mixed in to add a distinct flair to its chamber-like sound.

In Traviata – You deserve a better future, the audience is invited into Violetta’s privacy to have a close look at the fire to which she abandons herself among the guests of this musical and phantasmagorical celebration that blends theatre and opera, voices that speak and sing, and where the phantoms of this Paris in full industrial boom whose future we are living at present, sing and die.

The apparently impenetrable sprawl of Peter Hammill's back catalog is one of the most challenging propositions facing any novice entrant to his world, near-annual albums ranging across so many musical shades and shadows that, as soon as you think you've got a handle on his direction, he immediately sweeps off somewhere else…

I Love Disco features some the biggest names including F.R. David, Donna Summer, A-ha, Debbie Harry, Eurythmics and Eartha Kitt to name a few. This albums is guaranteed to get you strutting your funky stuff this festive season.

The ECM folks do much better by Wadada Leo Smith than ever before with this solo recording, a true masterwork of its kind and one of the purest, most enlightening demonstrations of the connected natures of folk, blues, jazz, and creative music. That Smith is the man to do this is certainly no surprise; he laid it all down in print years before this release in his self-published books and liner notes. But the way he does it, with so much grace and style (and with the excellent production by Steve Lake), really results in a totally polished statement. It is a deep and rich recording, with Smith playing in a manner that incorporates both versatility and the genius of simplicity, sometimes all in one note. Not just for fans of "out" music, this is one to pull out when you are trying to get friends to go beyond their Phish records.

Soundboard Live At Paramount Theater, Seattle WA, USA March 24th 1976.

During the 1990s, blues legend Leroy Carr's complete recorded works were reissued in chronological sequence by Document Records Ltd. in six volumes with additional test pressings and alternate takes added to an appendix along with ultra-rare sides by Texas piano man Black Boy Shine. While later editions on other labels may boast of improved audio quality, nobody has ever covered Leroy Carr's recorded legacy more thoroughly or comprehensibly. Document's second volume contains all of his originally issued recordings dating from June 7, 1929 to January 2, 1930. Throughout this seven month stretch, Carr delivered his customary assortment of slow blues and ambling reflections, along with half a dozen upbeat boogie and hokum tunes, greatly spurred by the guitar and singing voice of Scrapper Blackwell…

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are commonly regarded as the most influential band of all time. The group were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art form. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in innovative ways; the band later explored music styles ranging from ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As pioneers in recording, songwriting and artistic presentation, the group revolutionised many aspects of the music industry and were often publicised as leaders of the era's youth and sociocultural movements…