Three-time Grammy-award-winner BRIAN SETZER’s new concert Blu-ray/CD, ROCKABILLY RIOT: OSAKA ROCKA! – LIVE IN JAPAN–filmed on February 18 at Namba Hatch in Osaka, Japan–is set for release November 4, 2016 via Surfdog Records…

All albums in this CD box are the original Dutch Shocking Blue album releases from the sixties and seventies, housed in their original covers and with original artwork, representing the band at the time. For a long time Shocking Blue was believed only to be a hit singles band but their albums have well proven to stand the test of time, not only in the Netherlands but also internationally…

In the late 1960s, when acid rock reigned and the British Invasion was still raging, Carlos Santana and his band introduced a Latin-based rock sound featuring an Afro-Cuban beat. Carlos Santana was a fourth-generation musician and the son of a violinist who played mariachi music. His father tried for many years to teach him violin, but at age eight, Santana discovered the guitar and started listening to the electric blues of B.B. King and John Lee Hooker and that was the end of it. During his long-lasting career, Carlos Santana’s name has become synonymous with some of the most important genres of music today - jazz, Latin, salsa, blues and rock.

The English, historical-instrument, Baroque ensemble La Serenissima (the term was a nickname for the city of Venice) has specialized in somewhat scholarly recordings that nevertheless retain considerable general appeal, and the group does it again with this release. The program offers some lesser-known composers, and some lesser-known pieces by famous composers like the tiny and fascinating Concerto alla rustica for two oboes, bassoon, strings, and continuo, RV 151. What ties the program together formally is that it covers a range of Italian cities that were becoming cultural centers as they declined in political power: not only Venice (Vivaldi, Albinoni, Caldara), but also Padua (Tartini), Bologna (Torelli), and Rome (Corelli). There are several works by composers known only for one or two big hits, and these are especially rewarding. Sample the opening movement of Tartini's Violin Concerto E major, DS 51, with its unusual phrase construction and daringly chromatic cadenza passage: it has the exotic quality for which Tartini became famous, but it does not rely on sheer virtuosity. That work is played by leader Adrian Chandler himself, but he also chooses pieces for a large variety of other solo instruments: the Italian Baroque was about more than the violin. Each work on the album has something to recommend it, and collectively the performances may make up the best album of 2017 whose booklet includes footnotes.

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.

The delightful scenario of L'Apothéose de Lully imagines the composer Lully, one of François Couperin s forebears at the court of Louis XIV, being wafted up to Mount Parnassus by Apollo. There, he meets the Italian muses, and the music becomes that synthesis of the French and Italian styles which Couperin so admired. All of this is captured with grace in Arcangelo's playing under its founder, Jonathan Cohen. The other work on the disc is the sacred Leçons de ténèbres, sung with purity by sopranos Katherine Watson and Anna Dennis and revealing another side to Couperin's art.

Jet Lemon Band was born in 2014. It is an incredible combination of two Russians (Jim Aviva - lead vocal and keyboards, and Sammy Lukas - piano, saxophone back vocal), two Germans- (Benjamin Schlothauer - bass, and Jakob Kufert - drums) and South Koreans Ju Young Cheong - guitars. The initial idea was to cover songs of the great rock bands of the '70s but the inspiration morphed into a desire to honor just one legendary group Led Zeppelin II, recreating the genius of this band in the style of jazz The band welcomes the opportunity to combine two very different kinds of music - jazz and rock into one cohesive album and to capture the imagination of both fan bases.

Mark Farner calls this a bootleg put out by the people at the original label who released music by Terry Knight & the Pack, a company called Lucky Eleven; but bootleg or no, Monumental Funk is an amazing record that Don Brewer and Mark Farner have every right to be very proud of…

Both the term symphonic poem and the form itself were invented by Franz Liszt, who in works such as Les Préludes (1848; after Alphonse de Lamartine’s Méditations poétiques) used thematic transformation to parallel the poetic emotions. That’s true again with Byron (Tasso, lamento e trionfo), Schiller (Die Ideale) and Victor Hugo (Mazeppa). A winning quartet!

Golden Gems: 80's celebrates the 1980's in finesse and style in this 29-song compilation released by X5 Music Group/Warner Music Group. It includes hit songs by Chic, Chaka Khan, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Nu Shooz and many more.

Too many synth artists of the early to mid-'70s seemed more interested in demonstrating their dexterity with their instrument than actually showing why it was worth being dexterous with in the first place. The reason Tim Blake is important is because he took the opposite approach entirely. Schooled in Gong and soon to dignify Hawkwind, Blake is a composer first, a technician a very distant second. And if New Jerusalem, his solo debut, represents a peak which electronic rock in general has yet to top, Crystal Machine is at least equal to the task. In maintaining the earlier album's application of melody over mood, Blake totally separates himself from the ranks of sallow, clever souls who let their machines do all the talking – a lesson which, by year's end, both Jean Michel Jarre and Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" would both have translated into worldwide chart-toppers.

Italian multi-instrumentalist Marco De Angelis grew up listening to classic prog bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis and Yes, as well as related groups, such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. His music shows evidence of his roots, but listens might notice most a resemblance to Floyd, and also Alan Parsons. He is proficient on guitar, bass and keyboards, and is one of Italy's few Chapman Stick masters. Although he has been performing for over thirty years, as well as producing and engineering, he didn't release his first album under his own name until 2013. Marco De Angelis is an Italian solo artist, songwriter, musician, audio engineer and record producer. Started his musical journey when he was 10 and puts for the very first time his hands on a musical instrument.

Archive release from the rock/pop icon. Dion had an album ready for release at Columbia in 1965, but it never made it out of the gate until now! Recorded fifty-two years ago, it is as atom-smashing now as it was when Dion rolled tape with producer Tom Wilson at Columbia Studios in '65. Why was this album pulled from release and shelved? For that story, you'll have to consult Scott Kempner's illuminating liner notes here. Dion would be back on the Laurie label again a few years later, but this Columbia recording captures the doo-wop icon in a mid-'60s folk-rock state of mind, doing Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Farewell" and "Baby I'm in the Mood for You" plus Tom Paxton's "I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound" and the original songs "Kickin' Child" (co-written with Buddy Lucas and released as a single in '65), "Now" (featuring Al Kooper), "My Love," "Wake Up Baby," "Knowing I Won't Go Back There" and more (several of these songs were released on prior outtakes collections and retrospectives, some with different orchestrations). This is the first time that all these tracks are being issued together as the originally intended Dion album. A lost chapter in the epic story of this legendary rock 'n' roller from the Bronx finally surfaces, some 52 years later.

Sergey Prokofiev was so musically precocious that no less a figure than Reinhold Gliere was employed as his live-in tutor. Gliere’s lessons proved to be both rigorous and inspiring and the young Prokofiev wrote a delightful sequence of works for the piano. Revealing an increasing command of harmony, these miniatures show why he was, at the age of thirteen, the youngest ever student to be enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. ‘Old Grandmother’s Tales, Op. 31,’ written in New York in 1918 is suffused with nostalgia, while the ‘Six Pieces, Op. 52,’ are vivid arrangements of some of his earlier works.