Three CD set. 40 years on from the heyday of UK ska, this set is a bouncing, brilliant celebration of the one-of-a-kind genre. From it's Jamaican '60s roots to the streets of '70s England and beyond, this album is the only ska collection you'll ever need. Featuring Madness, The Specials, Toots and the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, The Upsetters, The Beat and so many more.

Amaze Me started out with the self-titled debut album on the Japanese based Alfa Brunette label in 1995. The way that it all happened gave the project it's name - Amaze Me. The Rumours of the Japanese release led to the boys landing a deal with the Now And Then label who released the second album ”Dream On” in 1997. The swedes have always been good at this thing… AOR that is. Amaze Me are no exception to the rule, they have created a good album. Most of the songs are absolute gems, like "Danger","It's All Over" and "Hold On To Love" to name a few.

One of the aspects that appeals to this listener about Nikolai Lugansky's approach to the perennial favorite piano concerti of Sergei Rachmaninov is the commitment to the organic feeling of each work. So often these concerti are served up as early career, flamboyant exercises to introduce the young pianist du jour to already accepting audiences. And at times the imprint on the works imposed by the various pianists is what remains in the hall after the performance, not Rachmaninov.

Pop trumpet icon Herb Alpert returned to regular activity after an extended hiatus with 2009's Anything Goes. Since then, he has averaged an album a year, even picking up his eighth Grammy award for 2013's Steppin' Out and a Grammy nomination for 2016's Human Nature. 2019's warmly produced Over the Rainbow keeps this latter-career streak moving as Alpert offers another set of beloved pop standards reworked in his distinctive contemporary style. Once again joining Alpert is Grammy-winning producer Jochem van der Saag, who previously helmed the trumpeter's 2017 album, Music, Vol. 1, and 2018 effort Music, Vol. 3: Herb Alpert Reimagines the Tijuana Brass. As with those productions, Over the Rainbow finds Alpert putting his bright instrumental stamp on some of his favorite songs.

This is a music of a crushed, almost desperate, elemental lyricism, a music where an intense gravitational pull wrestles with an also elemental drive or need to survive and sing. One thinks of what life might be like on the surface of Jupiter, the so-called heavy planet — should there even be life there. Or, better yet perhaps, of the episode in the book of Genesis where Jacob wrestles all night with an angel who refuses to give Jacob his name and who, at daybreak, demands to be let go, whereupon Jacob says, “Not until you bless me,” which the angel does then do. One should add that at one point in Jacob’s night-long wrestling match with his antagonist, the mighty angel touches the socket of Jacob’s hip and throws it out of joint, whereupon, we are told, Jacob will forever walk with a limp.

John Hiatt finally achieved some sort of fame in 1987, when his comeback album Bring the Family sparked a career renaissance. For the next decade, his albums sold well and his songs were continually covered by other artists, all of which earned him acclaim as one of the finest songwriters of his era. Despite its title, The Best of John Hiatt 1973-1998 is a chronicle of those successful ten years. Only two songs – "Riding With the King" and "Take Off Your Uniform" – date from before 1987, which means that the collection effectively sidesteps Hiatt's years of searching for a style; it chooses to ride with him once he settled on roots rock. Of course, that's where he did the bulk of his best work, and The Best Of does offer a good overview of his prime period. Since much of his best work was recorded for labels other than Capitol, the label releasing The Best Of, Hiatt entered the studio to record two new songs ("Love in Flames," "Don't Know Much About Love") and cut his first version of "Angel Eyes," the song he gave to Jeff Healey, who turned it into a hit in 1989. He also re-recorded "Have a Little Faith in Me" and "Drive South," two of his best songs from the late '80s. Although these new versions are OK, they don't compare with the originals and only hammer home the fact that this is merely an acceptable compilation, instead of the perfect one that it could have been. Nevertheless, it's a good sampler for the curious, and the hardcore fan will not be disappointed with the new material, even if they're frustrated that they have to purchase a whole new album to acquire it.

Maurice Ravel composed a number of works which have become classics of the repertoire both for solo piano and for orchestra. On the present disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere ‘colourized’ version. Ravel’s orchestral writing was the result of a long apprenticeship and careful study of orchestration treatises as well as scores, notably of works by Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss. Although his skills as an orchestrator are much admired today, his ability to coax new sounds out of the orchestra wasn't always appreciated in his own time, however – in 1907 the critic Pierre Lalo complained that ‘in Ravel’s orchestra, no instrument retains its natural sound…’

This 10 CD box set documenting the incredible career of Henry Mancini, one of the most important American composers, arrangers and bandleaders in the fields of jazz, easy listening and soundtracks. Includes hits from some of the most successful movies of the Fifties and early Sixties, including "Moon River" and "The Peter Gunn Theme".

This is the second concept album (made with our Tuk Music) by the composer and drummer Stefano Bagnoli, inspired by the genious of art Salvador Dalì. In this record Bagnoli meets the very young talents of Giuseppe Vitale and Stefano Zambon: the result is an explosive mix of poetry, technique, interplay and passion. We Kids Trio: Giuseppe Vitale, piano, Fender Rhodes and keyboards Stefano Zambon, double bass and electronics Stefano Bagnoli, drums and electronics.

“Looking Forward”, the second release of this Belgo-Swedish quartet, plunges us into the heart of an intimate and melodious jazz where Eve Beuvens’s poetry merges with the Nordic lyricism of Mikael Godée. Regular partners from way back, they are accompanied by an in-demand Swedish rhythm section. Since the release of her debut album ‘Noordzee’ (Igloo, 2009), Eve Beuvens has continued to search for a harmony of contrasts, moving from unadorned music to richer colors. The success of her carte blanche at the Gaume jazz Festival 2013 with her septet Heptatomic led to a first album for Igloo in 2015. Now she is back in a more intimate setting, a Nordic quartet featuring long-standing partners with whom she recorded a self-released album in 2013.

The Decca legacy of WILHELM KEMPFF, one of the last century's greatest keyboard poets. Wilhelm Kempff is known, with good reason, as a Beethoven interpreter of sublime simplicity, with several cycles of the concertos and sonatas to his credit, all of them recorded for DG. However, he began recording as early as 1918 and made records for Polydor before the war, as well as for Decca during the 1950s. While his DG recordings have rarely been out of the catalogue, his legacy on other labels has never been so comprehensively documented as it is on this newly remastered set from Eloquence. Offered as a 'historical' appendix are Kempff's Polydor recordings of Beethoven sonatas with like-minded and recreative partners including the violinist Georg Kulenkampff (the 'Kreutzer') and the cellists Pablo Casals (Cello Sonata Op. 5 No. 1) and Paul Grümmer (Cello Sonata Op. 69), better known as a long-standing member of the Busch Quartet. These pre-war and mid-war recordings, newly remastered, add significantly to our understanding of Kempff as an artist of extraordinarily wide sympathies and imagination.

This latest addition to the From The Vault series captures a truly unique event in the long and eventful history of The Rolling Stones. On the May 20th, 2015 at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, California, the band performed the entire Sticky Fingers album live in concert for the first and so far only time in their career. The show celebrated the reissue of the Sticky Fingers album and was the opening night of The Rolling Stones Zip Code Tour of North America that would run over the next two months…

Mutantes E Seus Cometas No Pais do Baurets is the fifth album by the Brazilian rock band Os Mutantes and the last to feature all three founding members. There was little sound technology available, so they had to invent their own wah-wah, flanger, and phaser pedals, sound systems, and more. The second track is an acoustic ballad where the innocent voice of Rita Lee presents the love declaration of a bitch to her dog, backed by a bumbo leguero (typical instrument of South American countries and a trademark of protesters against dictatorship). It is no surprise that they were hated by the government: censorship delayed the release of the album, due to the title and the lyrics of "Cabeludo Patriota" ("Hairy Patriot")…

"The Great Mass" is the 2011 symphonic masterpiece that constitutes a quantum leap in the art of amalgamating orchestral music with Heavy Metal. The songs are the audible evidence of guitarist Christos Antoniou finishing his studies of classical composition with academic honours and distinction. The Greeks take the next logical step in following the course they highly successfully set on their celebrated comeback-album "Communion" (2008). "The Great Mass" shows this band at the peak of their evolution over seven full-length releases since Septicflesh's founding in 1990, in which the band combines massive deadly guitars at the edge of blackness with haunting gothic melodies and cinematic symphonic arrangements…

The former Michael Bolotin changed his name but not his style on his initial effort for Columbia Records. Bolton had essayed hard-edged arena rock with his band Blackjack, and here he did much the same thing, shout-singing in his emotive whiskey bellow over slashing guitar power chords (frequently courtesy of Blackjack's Bruce Kulick and his brother Bob), icy keyboard fills, angelic backup choirs, and thundering rhythm sections, all intended to fill the hockey auditoriums of America alongside Journey and Foreigner. For all the clichés, Bolton was an undeniably involving singer, and songs like "Fools Game," the lead-off track and chart single, were satisfying pop efforts that suggested he might offer some competition to emerging mainstream rockers like Bryan Adams. As things would turn out, of course, the true key track was the cover of the Supremes' "Back in My Arms Again."