Following on from the success of Just The Hits: 80s and Just The Hits: 90s, Just The Hits: Rock it was only right we covered off some country classics, in a jam packed two album set! We've got all angles covered with a mix of nothing but the biggest country hits from the likes of Toby Keith, Sam Hunt, Billy Ray Cyrus, Kip Moore, Canaan Smith, Sugarland, Josh Turner, Trisha Yearwood, Brothers Osborne, The McClymonts, Reba McEntire, Eric Paslay, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn and far too many more to mention! If you want the hits, then Just The Hits Country is the album for you!!

Trio Les Esprits turn their attentions to Franz Schubert. This album showcases their composer's two late masterpieces for trio, works of expansive melodic generosity. The couplings put the violin and cello in the spotlight: the group's cellist, Victor Julien-Laferrière, performs the sonata originally written for the long-extinct arpeggione, and its violinst, Mi-Sa Yang, presents the haunting Fantasie in C.

Black, red, cream and gold are the colours that define Phyllida Lloyd's Royal Opera House staging of Verdi's robust, yet penetrating setting of Shakespeare's Scottish play. Manipulated by a whole coven of cunning, scarlet-turbanned witches, the characters often evoke figures in a splendid Gothic fresco. With Simon Keenlyside making his British debut, as an athletic, brooding Macbeth and Liudmyla Monastyrska as his Lady, both imperious and subtle, this performance, masterfully conducted by Antonio Pappano, goes far beyond mere sound and fury.

"Wielding a nasty blues harp, a smokin' band and a gutsy, soulful rock and roll vocal style, Darrell Mansfield can go toe-to-toe with the best of them – and if you don't believe me, let your ears prove it to you with The Darrell Mansfield Ultimate Series Collection. In the annals of 'Christian rock' there aren't a whole lot of artists who can go up against the big boys from the other side of the fence and come away wiping the blood off their hands and smiling. You know what I mean – we're not talking about Bill Gaither here. Wielding a nasty blues harp, a smokin' band and a gutsy, soulful rock and roll vocal style, Darrell Mansfield can go toe-to-toe with the best of them – and if you don't believe me, let your ears prove it to you with The Darrell Mansfield Ultimate Series Collection.

"Wielding a nasty blues harp, a smokin' band and a gutsy, soulful rock and roll vocal style, Darrell Mansfield can go toe-to-toe with the best of them – and if you don't believe me, let your ears prove it to you with The Darrell Mansfield Ultimate Series Collection. In the annals of 'Christian rock' there aren't a whole lot of artists who can go up against the big boys from the other side of the fence and come away wiping the blood off their hands and smiling. You know what I mean – we're not talking about Bill Gaither here. Wielding a nasty blues harp, a smokin' band and a gutsy, soulful rock and roll vocal style, Darrell Mansfield can go toe-to-toe with the best of them – and if you don't believe me, let your ears prove it to you with The Darrell Mansfield Ultimate Series Collection.

I have heard for so many years that the guitar is not a true classical instrument worthy of of a place in the symphony. Here you have a masterful recording from a composer that was a contemporary of Beethoven. It trully rivals anything I have heard form that period! I have been a Carulli fan ever since I started studying classical guitar. I love either playing or listening to his works. With nearly four hundred opus numbers, he has something to offer even the most discriminating classical music lover. This particular recording has a nice mix of concertos and duets for guitar and flute that seem to be the perfect combination for music that soars along.

These are wonderful pieces, with only perhaps the Rodrigo at all well-known today, and then only because of his famous guitar concertos. Boieldieu was a very good composer, and his harp concerto is often breathtakingly beautiful; if the theme of the finale isn't the last word in elegant pathos then nothing is. The Villa-Lobos sounds just like–Villa-Lobos: rich, exotic, heavily scored, and voluptuous. It's a big work in four movements. The lively and lovely Rodrigo needs no introduction, save to note that it's one of his very best works in any medium.

Zemlinsky’s Florentine Tragedy is a disturbing, shocking piece, but to make its fullest impact it also needs to sound ravishingly beautiful. As the wealthy merchant Simone shows Count Bardi (his wife’s lover, as he already suspects) a robe of silver damask so exquisitely wrought with roses “that they lack perfume only to cheat the wanton sense” or, later, describes to him another of Venetian cut velvet patterned with pomegranates each seed of which is a pearl, we should almost be able to see these marvels. Zemlinsky’s sumptuous scoring at these points urgently needs, in short, an orchestra of the Royal Concertgebouw’s stature, and in this reading they sound quite magnificent.

Released in February 1970 on small Lizard label, the sole album of that forgotten US band contained a brilliant, heavy rock music with some blues influences dominated by loud guitars, dirty vocals and pounding rhythm section. Of the eleven tracks that make up the album, eight were originals and three were great covers, including a brutal rendition of Tobacco Road and very heavy version of Jumpin' Jack Flash. This exceptionally well-produced record has much to recommend it, particularly to fans of Frantic, Steppenwolf, Euclid and Yesterday's Children. In late 1971 reformed line-up recorded the second album, which remains unreleased. This CD has been carefully remastered from the original, analogue source.

Various Artists - The Complete Goldwax Singles, Vol. 1 1962-1966 (2009) {2CD Set Ace Records CDCH2 1226}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 466 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 321 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 39 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1962-66, 2009 Goldwax / Ace Records | CDCH2 1226
R&B / Soul / Deep Soul

The Memphis-based Goldwax label has a cult following among deep soul fans, especially for its recordings of James Carr. Still, it's fair to say that there aren't a whole lot of people fanatical enough to want a single-by-single retrospective of the company's entire 45 output, as has been produced for a couple of bigger soul labels with much bigger followings, Stax and Motown. Ace Records takes pride in tackling projects for niche collector markets, however, and for those Goldwax aficionados out there, this two-CD, 58-track set will be heartily welcomed. To be technical, some of these were issued on Goldwax subsidiaries, or labels in which Goldwax founder Quinton Claunch was involved before Goldwax started; there are also a couple of Spencer Wiggins 1968 tracks that came out on a collector-targeted bootleg single, though they didn't appear on a Goldwax 45 at the time.