School's Out catapulted Alice Cooper into the hard rock stratosphere, largely due to its timeless, all-time classic title track. But while the song became Alice's highest-charting single ever (reaching number seven on the U.S. charts) and recalled the brash, three-and-a-half-minute garage rock of yore, the majority of the album signaled a more complex compositional directional for the band. Unlike Cooper's previous releases (Love It to Death, Killer), which contained several instantly identifiable hard rock classics, School's Out appears to be a concept album, and aside from the aforementioned title track anthem, few of the other tracks have ever popped up in concert. That's not to say they weren't still strong and memorable; while such cuts as "Gutter Cat vs. the Jets," "Street Fight," "My Stars," and "Grande Finale" came off like mini-epics with a slightly progressive edge…

The first-ever full length set from Blues Queen Sylvia - both a singer and a bassist, working here in a small combo with Jimmy Dawkins on guitar!
Sylvia Embry began playing piano as a child and sang in church choirs, moving to Memphis at the age of 19. In the 60s she settled in Chicago, where she met and married blues guitarist Johnny Embry, who taught her to play bass guitar. In the 70s she worked for several years with Lefty Dizz and she can be seen playing bass and singing one song with his band in the film Mississippi Delta Blues. She shared the credit with her husband on an album for Razor Records, was part of Alligator Records’ Living Chicago Blues project, and had an album released under the name Blues Queen Sylvia on the German L&R label…

Sir Thomas Beecham was one of the most important orchestra conductors of the 20th century, exerting a huge impact on the entire field of classical music – and the way people listen to it, and the way people have been exposed to it – through his performances, recordings, and the two major orchestras that he founded. Beecham was born in 1879, the son of Sir Joseph Beecham, the maker of a popular and profitable brand of patent medicine.

The Carpenters' box set retrospective From the Top is a 67-track, four-CD set running under 3 ½ hours (which means it could have fit on three CDs) that traces Richard and Karen Carpenter's musical efforts from the formation of the Richard Carpenter Trio in 1965 to Karen's final recording session in April 1982. This is Richard's compilation; he introduces it and writes a track-by-track commentary, and has also done a lot of refurbishing, remixing 40 tracks and providing "additional recording" on many. The set proceeds chronologically, and most of the 20 previously unreleased tracks date from the '60s, as the group's emerging sound can be traced in demos. The Carpenters' hitmaking period of 1970-75 is extensively covered from the last quarter of the first disc to the start of the third, with most of their big hits included, though Richard excludes a few without comment. Also included are many album tracks that sometimes match the quality of the singles. Richard includes a couple of the Carpenters' singles from the second half of the '70s, and devotes the rest of the third disc and most of the fourth to excerpts from stray projects – Christmas albums, TV specials, Karen's solo album (which Richard carefully notes went unreleased "at Karen's behest"). As such, there is necessarily a fall-off in the set's quality. But by sequencing the songs chronologically, choosing only the ones he wants, and remaking them to his satisfaction, Richard is telling his version of the Carpenters' story, chronicling his band's rise and fall, which occurred in artistic and commercial terms well before his sister's death.

"My name is Christopher von Deylen - and I am Schiller." At some point during every Schiller concert, von Deylen speaks these ten words and the crowd goes wild. Schiller’s ethereal “global pop”, as his fans and the press have coined the style, gives the listener a feeling of floating in a dream world. Inspired by electronic classics such as Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Jean-Michel Jarre, von Deylen is known for creating visionary sounds that are way ahead of their time.
"Timeline: The Very Best of 1998-2011" looks back on Schiller’s accomplishments through the years as it chronicles the best and most important songs of Schiller’s career - compiling noteworthy tracks from prior albums such as Zeitgeist, Voyage, Day and Night, and Desire. Guest artists include Nadia Ali, Colbie Caillat, Chinese pianist Lang Lang, Indonesian-French artist Anggun, and more.

Flamboyant British icons of the 1970s whose nasty fusion of heavy metal, glam rock, and sneering cynicism influenced many punk bands. Collection includes: 'Mott The Hoople' (1969); 'Mad Shadows' (1970); 'Wildlife' (1971); 'Brain Capers' (1971); 'All The Young Dudes' (1972); 'Mott' (1973); 'The Hoople' (1974); 'Live' (1974) 30th Anniversary Edition 2004; 'Rock And Roll Queen' (1974); 'Drive On' (1975); 'Greatest Hits' (1976); 'Two Miles From Heaven' (1980); 'The Ballad Of Mott: A Retrospective' (1993); 'Fairfield Halls, Live 1970' (2007).

The Mars Volta have never taken the easy route. Their sixth album since Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala quit seminal post-hardcore outfit At The Drive-In in 2001, ‘Noctourniquet’ is framed around a narrative based both on Superman villain Solomon Grundy and the Greek myth of Hyacinthus. If you need refreshing, that’s the one in which Hyacinth, the (male) lover of the god Apollo, attempts to impress Apollo by catching his discus, but gets struck by it and dies. The music follows the same recondite, abstruse path as the lyrics - an ambitious, avant-garde swirl of prog, rock, post-rock and quasi-metal that carries the weight of such intense cerebral pressure. Suffice to say, there are no songs about wearing the same jeans for four days…

'The Doors announced themselves to the world with a near-perfect debut album,' writes veteran rock journalist Ben Fong-Torres in his notes for this unprecedented box. Indeed, The Doors' self-titled 1967 debut recorded in late '66 struck awe in fans and critics alike, and heralded the arrival of the one the most original and daring bands ever. Through five more studio albums, The Doors were fronted by the legendary Jim Morrison, and continually pushed the boundaries of contemporary music and popular culture. To mark the band's 40th anniversary, Rhino salutes their legacy with a 12-disc box housing remastered & expanded editions of these six album masterpieces.

Collection includes all studio albums and two compilations by English musical group Talk Talk. The group had a string of international hit singles including "Today", "Talk Talk", "It's My Life", "Such a Shame", "Dum Dum Girl", "Life's What You Make It" and "Living in Another World". In their later years the band's commercial appeal receded, but their critical reputation increased as they moved from synthpop to a more experimental form. Their final two albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, were highly acclaimed and remain influential to experimental alternative rock genres, especially post-rock.

Collection includes: 'Everlasting' (1987); 'Good To Be Back' (1989); 'Unforgettable With Love' (1991); 'Take A Look' (1993); 'Holly & Ivy' (1994); 'Stardust' (1996); 'Snowfall On The Sahara' (1999); 'The Magic Of Christmas' (1999); 'Ask A Woman Who Knows' (2002); 'Leavin' (2006), and 'Still Unforgettable' (2008); Natalie Cole en Español (2013).

Part of a eight-album Donna Summer SHM-CD cardboard sleeve reissue series featuring albums "Love To Love You Baby", "A Love Trilogy", "Four Seasons Of Love", "Remember Yesterday", "Once Upon a Time", "Live And More", "Bad Girls", and "On The Radio".

Nina Simone's live performances have a power and an intimacy all their own, and those qualities stand out in this recording from Vine Street. It's a stunning form of cabaret singing, dramatic without melodrama, and with roots that reach to Billie Holiday's surprising success with "Strange Fruit." Simone can add profundity to a usually carefree song like "My Baby Just Cares for Me," and the range of the performance broadens with the startling "Be My Husband," a simple pattern reduced to the naked force of a field holler, and the stark hymn "Balm in Gilead." Carefully chosen songs from Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, and Janis Ian achieve new dimensions in Simone's treatments. Her own deeply felt "Four Women" and "Mississippi Goddam" are potent and enduring protests. There's some effectively spare accompaniment from guitar, bass, and drums, but Simone's piano is the essential instrumental voice, from slow barrelhouse to Bach.

Giovanni Antonini has been recording the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn with the Alpha label for more than five years. Now the series is enriched by another monument by the Austrian composer: Die Schöpfung (The Creation), recorded in 2019 with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and his own orchestra, Il Giardino Armonico. This great oratorio was inspired by those of Handel, which Haydn heard performed by very large forces during his visits to England. The Creation, composed between September 1796 and April 1798, demanded such a colossal effort of him that he even fell ill just after its first performance; but the work enjoyed immense success.

Academy of Ancient Music, Cambridge Handel Opera Company, Cambridge Early Music and Julian Perkins are proud to present the first professional recording of John Eccless Semele (c.1707), a notable early setting of the great English libretto by William Congreve better known in a version by GF Handel from 1744. Academy of Ancient Musics mission is to explore, reveal and preserve the great treasure house of baroque and classical music, and a spirit of newfound discovery runs through all our work.

The Sistine Chapel Choir were quite late to the recording scene, but they are making up for lost time under director Massimo Palombella. The strengths of the choir's performances on this holiday release are threefold. First of all is the sound environment of the chapel itself, resonant and big, yet hospitable to dense polyphony since Josquin was a choirboy there. Josquin appears on the program here, but the motet Missus est Gabriel is not a common work, and that points to the choir's second strength: they work from a manuscript tradition, that of the Vatican, that is different from the set of scholarly publications that have long shaped the Renaissance performing repertory, and several pieces here are world premieres, or otherwise seldom heard.