Luxury Liner ranks as Emmylou Harris' best-selling solo record to date, and it's one of her most engaging efforts as well; her Hot Band is in peak form, and the songs are even more far afield than usual, including Chuck Berry's "(You Never Can Tell) C'est la Vie" and Townes Van Zandt's painterly tale of aging outlaws, "Pancho & Lefty."

During its ten years of existence between 1972 and 1982, the New York Jazz Quartet went through a number of personnel changes, though the one constant was founder Roland Hanna at the piano. This 1977 studio session includes Frank Wess, George Mraz, and a somewhat obscure drummer, Richard Pratt, who evidently didn't record many jazz sessions at all during his rather brief musical career. Like many of the group's efforts, this album sticks exclusively to originals by the band. Wess' flute is the focus of the hard-driving title track, and another of his compositions, the gorgeous ballad "Placitude," features the veteran playing alto flute in alternate choruses with Hanna. The leader contributed the funky "Big Band Henry" and the brisk post-bop "Tee Piece," the latter featuring Wess' hard-blowing tenor sax. The individual pieces written by Mraz and Pratt also measure up to those of the front line.

Dark, disturbing, percussive, and theatrical are words that come to mind when listening to this unique album from the mid 70's. Influences include early Peter Gabriel, Gentle Giant, Il Balletto di Bronzo, ELP, and even John Cage. "Empty Bottles", the 23-minute bonus track, is almost worth the price of the CD. It is quite different from the first 5 tracks, and emphasizes complex jamming (improvised?). A couple of the last tracks from the original album tend to drag a bit due to slow tempos. But, after the complex sections in the first 4 tracks, the slower tempos at the end of the album are more than a welcome relief.

Neatly recorded in February 1976, it was released on LP in 1977, but has not yet appeared as CD. The gig had taken place in a town near Munich. The album features the jazz-rock typical of Embryo, influenced by ethnic music, with scarce vocals and some unusual instruments like marimba, dilruba, oud, and nagasuram. Christian Burchard and Roman Bunka wrote most of the songs together. Only "The orange man" was written by Charlie Mariano. The long CD bonus track "Just arrived" was recorded in Northern Italy on March 6th, 1976, by the very same Embryo line-up and was as yet unreleased. The cover was then designed by Roman Bunka and was used for the CD without any changes.

Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 rounds up the handful of singles that weren't included on Elton John's first Greatest Hits collection ("Levon," "Tiny Dancer") and adds the highlights from Caribou, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and Rock of the Westies ("The Bitch Is Back," "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," "Island Girl," "Grow Some Funk of Your Own," "I Feel Like a Bullet [In the Gun of Robert Ford]"), plus two non-LP hit singles ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Philadelphia Freedom") and John's version of "Pinball Wizard," taken from the soundtrack to Tommy…

During the mid-seventies, the Hamburg-based band Novalis established themselves as leaders in the field of German-language romantic rock. The quartet called itself Novalis after the most important German poet of early romanticism. They created a rock music of poetic, lyrical with german lyrics and instrumental beauty. Their music, a heavy organ rock, was compared to the sounds of bands such King Crimson and Pink Floyd. They released a few albums of lush, keyboard-dominant prog rock during the seventies. The keyboards created majestic layers on which the guitar builds airy melodies…

The title of Even in the Quietest Moments… isn't much of an exaggeration – this 1977 album finds Supertramp indulging in some of their quietest moments, spending almost the album in a subdued mood…

Featuring some of the finest avant-garde jazz players from Germany and beyond, the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble began life as a loose studio aggregation assembled for a youth-oriented German television show in 1975. Hoping for a contemporary balance between rock and jazz, producer Werner Schretzmeier called upon pianist Wolfgang Dauner, the former leader of Et Cetera, an avant-garde jazz group Schretzmeier had managed until their breakup in 1972. Initially recruiting musicians from his home base of Stuttgart (then a hotbed of avant-garde jazz), Dauner put together a rotating cast of musicians that were at first dubbed the Eleven and a Half Ensemble (after the program's airtime); this group featured guitarist Volker Kriegel (who shared writing and arranging duties with Dauner), drummer Jon Hiseman, trumpeter Ack Van Rooyen, and trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff…

This transitional album for the group may not be one of their best, but makes up for it in historical importance. The self-created myth has that the album was intended to be the first three-sided release, what probably transpired was that the group had more songs than could be fit on a vinyl LP, so a few years later the remaining tracks were released as the Babyfingers EP. Both EP and LP tracks are on the CD reissue, however. Fingerprince is one side of songs, a melding of their earlier, primitive side (their old piano, heard so well on Meet the Residents, is still in service here) with their sinister pop side that would be perfected on Duck Stab and The Commercial Album (including their treated, cheap-sounding drum machines)…

John Renbourn - The Lady And The Unicorn (1970). The Lady and the Unicorn is the 1970 solo album by British folk musician John Renbourn. Featuring Terry Cox playing hand drums and glockenspiel, with future John Renbourn band member Tony Roberts and violinist Dave Swarbrick. The repertory consists of medieval and early classical pieces, interspersed with the expected folk material - keyboard works from the Fitzwilliam virginal book (transcribed for guitar) stand alongside traditional tunes such as "Scarborough Fair," which turns up as part of an 11-minute track that also incorporates "My Johnny Was a Shoemaker," with Swarbrick at the top of his form on violin. The album is entirely instrumental, but as with other Renbourn releases, one hardly misses the vocals…

From 1975 until 1978, Embryo played at the Vlotho ”Umsonst und draussen” festival every year. Their concert from July 1977 on the sports ground, figuring as festival site, in front of about 26,000 people was recorded professionally by Ulrich Wilkening, operating the soundboard. The recording has been preserved till this day. In fact unreleased, except for the track, ”Getalongwithasong”, which appeared on the double LP ”Umsonst und draußen - Vlotho 77” back then, and later as well on the 4CD box “Aufbrüche”. Here is now the whole Embryo gig of that festival, in the well-known Embryo style: jazz-rock influenced by world music. The sound is excellent, as is to be expected from an expert.

Werner Müller (1920-1998) was an orchestra conductor and popular music arranger during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1946 Müller joined the orchestra of Kurt Widmann, one of the most successful bands in Berlin. In 1949 Müller, age 30, started his musical activities in radio at the RIAS Berlin. He was concertmaster for RIAS radio and of Hans-Georg Arlt Tanzorchesters with 18 radio channels. After almost two decades in Berlin, he moved to Cologne, where he conducted performances of the WDR orchestra on radio and television.
He also contributed numerous albums to London's Phase Four label, the longest-running of the Space Age Bachelor Pad series.