Martin Frösts new album is a baroque adventure based on the question: What might Vivaldi have composed for the clarinet if it had been more fully developed? For this recording three clarinet concertos have been newly composed, made up of music drawn from Vivaldis most beautiful opera and oratorio arias. Performed on the mellow, songlike chalumeau the predecessor of the modern clarinet and the brilliant, virtuosic clarinet of today, Martin Fröst and Concerto Köln create a wonderful symbiosis between the old and the new.

A l'occasion du tricentenaire de la naissance de C.P.E. Bach, Olivier Vernet a enregistré l'intégrale de son oeuvre pour orgue qui est complétée par la réédition des deux Concertos pour orgue et orchestre qu'il avait gravé en 1998 avec l'Orchestre d'Auvergne placé sous la direction d'Arie Van Beck et salués alors par 5 Diapasons. La plus jeune soeur de Frédéric II, la princesse Anna Amalia de Prusse (1723-1787) possédait une vaste collection de compositions de C.P.E. Bach suggérant ainsi que ces oeuvres étaient régulièrement jouées à la cour d'Anna Amalia.

Built by Arp Schnitger and his sons in 1721, the organ featured in this recording resides in the St. Michael Church in Sqolle, the Netherlands. Over the last few decades the organ has been restored to its full glory. The pieces chosen for this release come from the Husumer Orgelbuch (Husum Organ Book). This book is a collection of works for organ by North German masters. A notable Italian organist, scholar, and teacher, Manuel Tomadin won the Grand Prix of the Schnitger Organ Competition in 2011. He wrote all of the liner notes included in this releases booklet, which includes extensive information on the organ.

Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine. The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Thanks to the Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (New Schubert Edition), Tübingen, which uses primary sources, the performers have been able to benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team.

Formed in Berlin in 1968, Birth Control were known for a progressive hard rock sound fused will elements of jazz, psychedelia and Krautrock. A surreal concept work from 1976 recorded by legendary producer Conny Plank, Backdoor Possibilities arguably marked their final creative peak, combining rock, jazz and avant-garde stylings with intricate polyrhythmic textures and lyrical nods to Faust and Odysseus. This expanded double disc edition has been remastered by Zeus B. Held and features three bonus live tracks recorded in Korbach on 1 May 1977, as well as a bonus live disc taped at the famous Sartory Saal in Cologne on 24 September 1976.

The second recording by Charlie Haden's Quartet West is similar to the music that the group (bassist Haden, tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent, and drummer Larance Marable) would play for the next decade. Among the highlights of this well-rounded set (one of the band's most definitive releases) is "First Song" (Haden's most memorable composition), Miles Davis' "Blue in Green," and a lengthy exploration of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman." An excellent showcase for Haden in a straight-ahead setting and for Watts, whose passionate sound perfectly fits the band.

Within a month after finishing "The Green Manalishi" - Peter Green’s swansong as guiding creative force behind the earliest version of Fleetwood Mac - he departed the group to record with a rhythm section. What emerged was his first solo album, "The End Of The Game" and it was as much a departure from "The Green Manalishi" as that same track had been from the rest of Fleetwood Mac’s entire output. Through three tracks per side, Green pursued a far looser strand of improvisational rock comprised of wholly instrumental outings that were entirely un-bluesy, extemporaneous free rock borne on the wings of Green’s guitar with its expansive tone evoking the loosest of feels, often drenched with emotional wah-wah pedal use of hair triggered sensitivity…

30 years ago Planet Dog released one of the all-time classic albums of modern electronica - Last Train to Lhasa - which reached #31 in the UK Album Charts and #1 in the UK Independent Charts.
This is the sound of the techno-tribe, banging a drum with one hand and a mouse with the other. Toby Marks, aka Banco de Gaia, wants to bang on the drum all day, and he thankfully makes a pretty joyous noise - a full-bodied amalgam of the Orb, Loop Guru, and Transglobal Underground. Using an army of ethnic and indigenous samples (from Indian drums and chants to woodblocks, rainsticks, and shakers) and zapping them through the technological prism, Banco de Gaia creates a modern-day techno-folk music that calls up the shaman buried deep in our ancestral memory.

Out with the old, in with the new: gone was John L. Watson, standing, or rather sitting at the keyboards. In his stead came Dave Lawson, and in celebration of his ensnarement by the band, gone too was the "The" in Web. The new-look Web released the group's third and final album, I Spider, in 1970. It was also their best, bringing to fruition the group's sound and leaving behind the rather stumbling genre experimentations of yesteryear. Moving strongly into progressive rock, the band strode far afield from the psychedelic meanderings they'd undertaken on their last set, Theraphosa Blondi.

9012 Live: The Solos is the third live album by English rock band Yes, released as a mini-LP on 7 November 1985 by Atco Records. Recorded during their 1984 world tour in support of their eleventh studio album, 90125 (1983), the album features a selection of solo tracks performed by each of the five band members, plus live versions of two songs from 90125. The album was an accompany release to the band's 1985 concert film, 9012 Live.

Fresh Cream represents so many different firsts, it's difficult to keep count. Cream, of course, was the first supergroup, but their first album not only gave birth to the power trio, it also was instrumental in the birth of heavy metal and the birth of jam rock. That's a lot of weight for one record and, like a lot of pioneering records, Fresh Cream doesn't seem quite as mighty as what would come later, both from the group and its acolytes. In retrospect, the moments on the LP that are a bit unformed – in particular, the halting waltz of "Dreaming" never achieves the sweet ethereal atmosphere it aspires to – stand out more than the innovations, which have been so thoroughly assimilated into the vocabulary of rock & roll, but Fresh Cream was a remarkable shift forward in rock upon its 1966 release and it remains quite potent.

The success of the Austin Powers movies rekindled an interest in everything groovy, swinging and mod. The Instro Hipsters a Go-Go responded in kind, serving up fun but mostly forgotten instrumentals from the '60s and early '70s that sound equally good in a bachelor pad or discotheque. Instro Hipsters a Go-Go, Vol. 2 is a Wall of Sound made up of twangy surf guitars, tumbling drums, flourishes of brass, and funky organs, exemplified by Excursion's "Switched On," St. Louis Union's "English Tea" and Zoot Money's "Zoot Suite." The Ray McVay Sound's "Revenge" and the Reg Guest Syndicate's "Underworld" sound like gritty spy movie themes, while Purple Fox's "Git Some" and Salon Band's "Disco 2" take things in a mellower direction, but the entire collection makes for very entertaining mood music that still conjures up that swinging, stylish era.

Johnny Winter begins Raisin' Cain, his ninth studio album since signing to CBS Records in 1969 (his records are now issued on the Blue Sky subsidiary), with "The Crawl," a rock & roll dance tune, and he ends it with "Walkin' Slowly," which employs a Fats Domino-style New Orleans rhythm and the saxophone work of Tom Strohman. The two songs serve to reinforce Winter's allegiance to his roots in ‘50s rock, which define him as much as his blues work. In between these bookends, he presents his usual mixture of familiar cover songs and specially written (by others, that is) material, all of which serves, as usual, to showcase his fast-fingered lead guitar playing. His slide guitar dominates "Sittin' in the Jail House," for example, while much of the disc's second side is played in a Chicago blues style that recalls his recent efforts as producer to give Muddy Waters a late-career renaissance, notably the side-opening performance of Waters' "Rollin' and Tumblin'." A notable inclusion is a cover of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone".