Pictures in a Dream is the fourth album from Trondheim’s finest prog band Arabs in Aspic. Originally released by the Italian label Black Widow Records in 2013, the album received great immediate feedback internationally and resulted in a good amount of concerts on the continent. Their love for experimenting with sounds and recordings shines through on this album, with some rather unconventional solutions - Using lots of microphones to capture the sound of the room instead of the sources, 9 microphones for the Hammond organ, and so on… This resulted in a lot of tweaking and not so much control – but definitely a different sound than what was common in 2013. A concert with Ruphus and Høst in Bodø in 2010 resulted in legendary Ruphus singer Rune Sundby guesting on two songs on the album.

The astonishing technical variety and wide emotional range contained in Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas make each and every encounter a rewarding adventure in which the listener is seldom left untouched. This is Pierre Hantaï’s third solo disc of Scarlatti’s sonatas though only the second in his current series for the Mirare label. It contains several pieces less frequently performed than others and with which many readers may find themselves unfamiliar. The first item, in fact, is one of only seven sonatas of Scarlatti’s that is a straightforward fugue. It is an uncharacteristically didactic piece, even a shade austere compared to the rest of Hantaï’s recital which contains a kaleidoscope of colourful images. What Hantaï seems to be emphasising in his choice is that elusive, somewhat abstracted improvisatory quality present in so many of the pieces and of which the Sonata in E major K 215 provides a well-sustained example. Generally speaking, Hantaï follows Ralph Kirkpatrick’s suggestion that Scarlatti probably intended to group his sonatas into pairs or occasionally threes according to key.