The Dream Syndicate are at the foundation of contemporary alternative music because back in 1981 at a time when most bands were experimenting with new technology, they choose to bring back the guitar. Their seminal album The Days of Wine and Roses (1984) has been cited as influential by artists from Nirvana to the Black Crowes. Known for their incredible live performances, the band toured with everyone from REM to U2, before splitting up in 1988. In 2012 after years apart in solo projects, frontman Steve Wynn reunited The Dream Syndicate to perform at a charity festival in Spain. The reunited band took everything in baby steps. A few shows here and there - including a still talked-about set at Wilco's Solid Sound Festival. The shows were exciting - for both the band and the eagerly awaiting fans, many of whom weren't even alive when the band were around the first time. The next step was to see if the excitement and newfound chemistry would extend to the studio.

German progressive rock with jazz and psych touches. Originally released in 1975. English lyrics combined with the excellent guitar playing of Evert Brettschneider make this a gem of a release. For a self-released debut this album is really well done and might compete with every professional production without a doubt. Limited to 500 copies 'Broken Door' is a very rare and searched vinyl coming from the early German prog rock history. Many thanks to the Garden Of Delights label which released this diversified album on compact disc in 2003.

Duality is at once sacred and playful. It is both dark and light, organic and refined, masculine and feminine. Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard partners with Pieter Bourke, formerly of Aussie band Eden, to create this compositional dance of partnership that is classical, ancient, and thoroughly modern. Gerrard's voice is multitracked at times, conjuring a cathedral choir and the droning chants of monks. Drums and synth snake from desert to brilliant stormy sky to shaking earth and the bodies that inhabit those spaces. There are lush multiple layers of strings, bagpipe drone, and, quite literally, the laughter of children. The vocals sans "real" words and multicultural instrumentation will be familiar to Dead Can Dance listeners. Yet there is something more exclusive, more womblike about the music of Bourke and Gerrard; rather than two distinct bodies making music, like mother and in utero child sharing blood and breath, they are mutually dependent.

This 8 CD box set of 128 tracks will blow your mind with a wide range of chill out music from various artists. It ranges from artists of the 70s such as Brian and Roger Eno, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman, Genesis, to world music from artists like Shelia Chandra, Govinda, Joi, Baaba Maal, to classical themes by Ennio Morricone, Tasmin Little, Michael Nyman and Barrington Pheloung, to New Age and Celtic music from Enigma, Matt Molloy, Mae McKenna, David Byrne, Sacred Spirit, Adiemus, Douglas Spotted Eagle, Yulara, Clear Sound Project, Penquin Cafe Orchestra plus many many more varieties of artists and music. This box set will satisfy everyones taste and mood for chillout music.

The band's fifth release, Rain Dances is Camel at its best, offering the most consistent and representative package in their saga. The addition of Caravan-cofounder Richard Sinclair proves profitable, as do a few colorist touches by Brian Eno on "Elke." Mel Collins' woodwinds are among the highlights, especially on "Tell Me" and the title track. From beginning to end, this project flows gracefully.

The best Beach Boys album, and one of the best of the 1960s. The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon tracks of vocals and instruments to create a richly symphonic sound. Conventional keyboards and guitars were combined with exotic touches of orchestrated strings, bicycle bells, buzzing organs, harpsichords, flutes, Theremin, Hawaiian-sounding string instruments, Coca-Cola cans, barking dogs, and more. It wouldn't have been a classic without great songs, and this has some of the group's most stunning melodies, as well as lyrical themes which evoke both the intensity of newly born love affairs and the disappointment of failed romance (add in some general statements about loss of innocence and modern-day confusion as well)…

While it's no secret that guitar king Peter Green is obsessed with Robert Johnson, having done two previous recordings of his music, this box is in essence something else. There are three CDs included here, one of which is Hot Foot Powder, the first album by the Peter Green Splinter Group, which included guest performances from the likes of Otis Rush, Honeyboy Edwards, Dr. John, Hubert Sumlin, and Joe Louis Walker, among others. The second disc by the band, The Robert Johnson Songbook, featured mainly the Green band, though Free/Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers guests on a tune. Fans already have these without a doubt, so Snapper Music - with Green's blessing - assembled a 28-cut collection of original Robert Johnson recordings chosen by Green. Adding them all together in a box with a handsome booklet for a decent price makes it all worthwhile…

Using only analog equipment, Radio Massacre International forges huge atmospheres and a sound that fits perfectly in the new-millennium digital domain. While their sound recalls the Berlin school of the early '70s, it also stands proudly with modern digital e-music. Republic contains three long-form compositions that cross all borders. Radio Massacre International is able to perform deep minimalism, experimental sci-fi passages, and dark ambient atmospheres. They compliment and surround those elements with the dense sequences expected of the Berlin school. This is excellent evolutionary Berlin school electronica. Radio Massacre International is on a plane with Ron Boots, Ian Boddy, Klaus Schulze, and Paul Ellis.

Flashback is the second box set compilation by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), released in 2000. In 2000, Jeff Lynne found a new impetus to work on the music of his old band and returned to the recording studio to work on an ELO project for the first time in some 15 years just prior to the comeback album Zoom in 2001. This work resulted in a digitally remastered compilation released in late 2000. Unlike its predecessors, this project, Flashback, was personally approved and endorsed by Lynne. The set includes songs featured from all 11 studio albums up to that point, including an edit of "Great Balls of Fire" from their live album The Night the Light Went On in Long Beach, plus some new recordings amongst the band's extensive back catalog, most notably a reworking of Lynne's only UK number one hit "Xanadu". The album includes liner notes by David Wild with quotes on each song from Lynne and a booklet inside.

Norway's a-ha took "Take on Me" to the number one spot on Billboard's Top 40 in 1985, thanks to the award-winning animated video that accompanied it. Still, a-ha contributed rather accordingly to the '80s pop sound, drenching their music with bouncy riffs and employing the keyboard as the foundation to their colorful formula. Headlines and Deadlines: The Hits of a-ha assembles all of their singles together, a definite one-stop for all of their music. Combining ballads and radiant '80s pop, this set includes their most fervent offering in "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.," which hit number 20 in 1986 and originated from Hunting High and Low, the same album that included "Take on Me."

Both of us have grown up with this music from the cradle of our earliest infancy; […] It is music that allowed us to become what we are, while at the same time encouraging us to question things constantly. […] Now, playing the music – because, as we all know, we play rather than make music – has become a part that each of us plays, played here as a double act. Each one for himself, with his instrument as a crucible, and at the same time each of us for the other, since after all we are engaged in a performance.