In addition to his reputation as a dancer, the Sun King was also a musician. Under the enlightened influence of his mother, Anne of Austria, the young Louis XIV learned to play the lute and then the guitar. Once relegated to commoners, this instrument became a symbol of royal refinement. Beyond simple entertainment, this musical craze served a political purpose: to seduce the court and the people, and to weave harmony between French, Italian and Spanish cultures. Like a new King David, monarch-musician par excellence, Louis XIV crafted the image of an Apollonian sovereign, master of the arts as much as of power. Together with exceptional musicians, Lea Masson reveals this forgotten facet of the guitarist king!

Lionel Richie's Back to Front isn't just a definitive greatest hits collection, it's a reminder of Richie's supreme strengths as an R&B singer-songwriter. From the gentle sweep of "Do It to Me" to the earnest lovelorn crooning of "Hello," Richie's ballads are timeless. Even the borderline sappy "Endless Love" shines despite cosinger Diana Ross's histrionics. Also featured is "Still" and "Say You, Say Me," and while the faster songs–the Caribbean-inspired rhythms of "All Night Long" and the '80s synthpop of "Running with the Night"–are weaker, they hardly detract from this otherwise sterling survey.

Deluxe two CD Edition of her ace 2007 album features a bonus disc that includes remixes and non album tracks. The album was written and conceptualized during 33 months of touring and was recorded in just two weeks in a 200 year old manor house on the outskirts of Paris with players including Gonzales, Jamie Lidell, Mocky and Erik Glambek Boe (Kings Of Convenience), and includes 'My Moon My Man', with it's sucker-punch melody tumbling over hard-soul piano chords and live favorite 'Sea Lion Woman'.

If Melody Gardot's 2009 sophomore effort, My One and Only Thrill, sustained the sultry, atmospheric vibe of her critically acclaimed 2006 debut, her 2012 follow-up, The Absence, is a bit of a creative departure for the vocalist. Apparently inspired by her world travels, and specifically by a trip that brought her to the desert around the city of Marrakech, the album moves her away from smoky, small-group jazz and into a bright, if still bedroom-eyed, rhythmically exotic sound. Produced by guitarist/composer Heitor Pereira, the album is a lush, somewhat orchestral album that finds Gardot delving into various Brazilian, Spanish, and African-influenced sounds - including bits of samba, tango, bossa nova, and calypso - that evince her global journey…

Third album, dating from 1973, from this UK heavy prog band. Inevitable Jethro Tull comparisons, due to the inclusion of flute, shouldn't detract from the fact that this is a fine example of 70s British rock.
Second Birth is one of the more hard rocking albums on the legendary Dawn label - but a set that's also got all sorts of complexity and interesting moments that really keep things on edge throughout! There's tracks here that are almost screamingly sinister - but those are balanced by gentler moments that have more of a sense of harmony - and it's that contrast that really makes the record stand out, especially on tunes where the guitar might be playing all these really spooky lines, but an accompanying flute line graces things with a sense of innocence - one that might not even be present in the lyrics…

Midnight Blue is a 1963 album by Jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell featuring Stanley Turrentine on tenor saxophone, Major Holley on double bass, Bill English on drums and Ray Barretto on conga, and is one of Burrell's best-known works for Blue Note. Jazz Improv Magazine lists the album among its top five recommended recordings for Burrell, indicating that "if you need to know 'the Blue Note sound', here it is". In 2005, NPR included the album in its "Basic Jazz Library", describing it as "one of the great jazzy blues records".

Danish electronic quartet Bliss create ambient soundscapes riddled with cinematic textures and downbeat bravado. Often compared to artists like Massive Attack and Sade, the group was the brainchild of writer/producers Marc-George Anderson and Steffen Aaskoven. Vocalists Tchando and Alexandra Hamnede provide Bliss with soulful performances that reflect their alternately African-tinged and jazz-based foundations, resulting in an ethereal stew of pan-global atmosphere.
"Quiet Letters" is music that certainly will envolve all your senses in one single harmony. Kind of easy-listening, chill-out music for having a moment of relax with captivating vocals and gentle percussion that will make you travel to faraway lands.

Raum is Tangerine Dream's second studio full-length since founder Edgar Froese died in 2015, though the group has additionally released several live albums and EPs. For this recording, Thorsten Quaeschning, Hoshiko Yamane, and recent addition Paul Frick (of Brandt Brauer Frick) were given access to Froese's archive of Cubase arrangements and tape recordings dating back to the 1970s, so like their previous studio album, 2017's Quantum Gate, he's still present in spirit. Notably absent is Ulrich Schnauss, who joined the band in 2014, yet curiously enough, the album often sounds more like his own work than Tangerine Dream's – glimmering opener "Continuum" and the downtempo crawl "You're Always on Time" are both easy to mistake for Schnauss, or contemporaries such as Tycho.

With “Constellation”, Virgil Boutellis-Taft reminds us that music provides one of the best ways to travel the world. In this programme, nourished by many influences, he presents some of the milestones of the violin repertoire (Chausson’s Poème, the Janáček Violin Sonata, Danse macabre by Saint-Saëns, arranged here for two violins…) together with several miniatures, reflecting a career marked by international concerts and a deep admiration for Yehudi Menuhin. The composer Tara Kamangar features alongside Philippe Hersant, André Hossein and Ernest Bloch, all of whom chart the course and show the sources of inspiration of this well-travelled violinist.

Above the album worked the 'Buried Treasure: The 70s ', and his release took place on 2021. The album has got songs with a total duration of more than an hour. A compilation is a compilation of original music.

The 10th studio album by the English Rock band Deep Purple originally released in October 1975 and the first without Ritchie Blackmore. It is the only Deep Purple studio record featuring Tommy Bolin, who replaced Ritchie Blackmore on guitar and is also the final of three albums to feature Glenn Hughes on bass and David Coverdale on lead vocals before he later left to form Whitesnake. Generally the record is considered one of Deep Purple's lesser efforts, although it did sell reasonably well on release (#19 in the UK charts, and #43 in the US) and received a rave review in the leading British music paper, the New Musical Express. The album was certified Silver on 1 November 1975 by the BPI, selling 60,000 copies in the UK. In 1990, the album was remastered and re-released in the US by Metal Blade Records and distributed by Warner Bros.

Don McLean's third official live album, Starry Starry Night, isn't precisely the soundtrack to the video of his PBS special, from a November 2, 1999, performance at Austin, TX's Paramount Theater, so much as another permutation of the show. Nanci Griffith's contribution is present, but Garth Brooks's songs aren't (as he explains in the notes, there are two different video editions that don't overlap 100 percent with each other or this release).

LSD is the upcoming sixth and final studio album by the English rock band Cardiacs, set for release on 19 September 2025. Recording began following lineup changes, with the single "Ditzy Scene" released by Org Records in 2007 to tease the upcoming double album. It was due to be released in October 2008, promoted by singles in August and November, an autumn tour, a radio session with Marc Riley and a reissue of the concert film All That Glitters Is a Mares Nest (1992). Production was indefinitely postponed after frontman Tim Smith had a cardiac arrest and stroke on 25 June 2008 leaving him unable to play or provide vocals. Fundraiser gigs, namely charity concerts entitled "The Alphabet Business Convention", were arranged and tribute albums were recorded to aid Smith in rehabilitation, and to help him to complete work on the album and other musical projects. He died on 21 July 2020 of what was deemed to be another heart attack. The band released "Vermin Mangle", which was intended to be the final track of LSD, on 1 September 2020 to mark his funeral. Originating from Smith's solo performances in 2000 and 2006, it was the first release of new Cardiacs material since "Ditzy Scene", and featured Smith on vocals. Because of its history, the album became the subject of speculation and many apocryphal stories. In 2024, Tim Smith's brother Jim revealed that work on LSD had continued during Tim's illness and after his death, reaching the mixing phase of recording.

F.S.Blumm and Nils Frahm share their fifth collaborative album, 'Handling'. Containing three tracks but 40 minutes long, it finds the duo advancing from 2021’s dub-influenced 2X1=4, deploying its lessons in ambitious new territory that also nods to earlier collections. Recorded at his studio in Berlin’s Funkhaus, the album will be released by LEITER on vinyl and via all digital platforms on September 19, 2025.

Paddy McAloon had not yet found the key to the elegant compositions that made Prefab Sprout distinctive when it came time to record their debut, Swoon. He certainly tries hard to make his sophisticated contemporary pop sound distinctive, but the problem is that he does too many things at once – the lyrics are overstuffed, and the music has too many chord changes and weird juxtapositions, as he tries to put white-funk beats to carefully crafted melodies. A few moments work, such as "Couldn't Bear to Be Special," but Swoon is primarily of interest as a historical item, since it only suggests the promise the band later filled.