With his thick, engaging sound and elegant romanticism, it only made sense for Ike Quebec to try his hand at the bossa nova boom Stan Getz kick-started in 1962, and that's what he did with Soul Samba. However, Quebec makes the session much more than mere bandwagon-jumping. He takes some chances with the repertoire and consciously adds a heavy blues inflection that makes Soul Samba one of the more unique interpretations of the bossa nova style. It's also one of the more sensuous, thanks in part to the combination of Quebec's natural tendencies and the soft, light style itself, but even more so with the extra bit of meat added via the blues. The music is warm and danceable, yet with a late-evening hush that's more suggestive of winding down and getting cozy with someone…

“Between Flesh and Divine” is the second album by Asia Minor, a cult band of the progressive rock scene founded by two Turkish students living in Paris, Setrak Bakirel and Erik Tekeli, who are still part today of the line-up that has recently released, yet on AMS Records, the album “Points of Libration” (2020).
“Between Flesh and Divine” was released in 1980 but does not seem at all affected by all the music trends of that era - new wave, punk, dance, electronic music - and indeed, like very few other LP’s from the same period, it kept alive the flame of the ‘real’ progressive rock of the early ’70s sound, which had almost completely vanished year by year. Asia Minor’s love towards King Crimson, Genesis and Camel is manifested at the highest levels in the grooves of “Between Flesh…”, by many called a real masterpiece in the light of what has been said and the evocative force of a music out of time…

Anticipating the 50th anniversary of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2022, we present their complete recordings on DG. The intriguing sound culture of Orpheus, especially of the string section, is often explained as a result of the cooperative mindset of the orchestra and its artistic process of rehearsing.

"Hope Amid Tears," the new album by Yo-Yo Ma together with his friend and pianist Emanuel Ax, presents Beethoven’s five sonatas for cello and piano in the order in which they were composed, tracing an important arc in Beethoven’s development and approach as a composer. Joining them are Beethoven’s three sets of variations for cello and piano.

The perfect case of a pianist who sounds completely relaxed in the studio and, because of that, manages to balance assertiveness and poetry in ideal proportions. Gerhard Oppitz is a penetrating Brahmsian, bracing in the youthful works, quietly confiding in the later ones.

Alphaville has always embraced technology and used it to produce music to show the coldness of the world. For this release, their cold, distant, sometimes frightening music has been remixed to fit into the sound and the vibes of 2001/2002. That does not mean that this is a party album, quite the opposite. This is dance music for the depressed 4 a.m. rave, and for the most part it is quite good. The remixes maintain the beauty of the original music, and the songs chosen easily lend themselves to the remix treatment. Mark Plati redoes "Red Rose" and comes close to bettering the original by adding a heavy dance beat combined with an eerie droning, which produces an overall uneasy feeling. A few of the remixes do not work, such as Eiffel 65's mix of "Big in Japan" (the mix of the song on the CD), due to straying too far away from the original song while not adding anything interesting to win over the listener…

Protest as she may – and she does, claiming in the liner notes that #1's is "not a greatest hits album! It's too soon, I haven't been recording long enough for that!" – it's hard to view #1's, Mariah Carey's first compilation, as anything other than a greatest-hits album. Carey was fortunate enough to have nearly every single she released top the pop charts. Between 1990's "Vision of Love" and 1998's "My All," all but four commercially released singles ("Anytime You Need a Friend," "Can't Let Go," "Make It Happen," "Without You") hit number one, with only a handful of radio-only singles ("Butterfly," "Breakdown") making the airwaves, not the charts. That leaves 12 big hits on #1's, all number ones.

Dominique Visse and his group Ensemble Clément Janequin have been involved in many outstanding projects over the years, but this 2002 Harmonia Mundi recording has to be one of the most spectacular; the Missa "Et ecce terrae motus" (aka, "The Earthquake Mass") of Antoine Brumel. Brumel is one of many mid-renaissance composers whose reputations are so far overshadowed by Josquin Desprez that – like Rodney Dangerfield – they "just don't get no respect." In Brumel's own time, however, he was considered one of Josquin's equals and his death in 1512 was widely observed in a number of "déplorations." Although the mass itself survives in only a single manuscript copy, it bears the signatures of singers who revived the work in Munich in 1570 – probably close to a century after it was first given – and among them is a bass named Orlandus Lassus.

The leap from 1970's Benefit to the following year's Aqualung is one of the most astonishing progressions in rock history. In the space of one album, Tull went from relatively unassuming electrified folk-rock to larger-than-life conceptual rock full of sophisticated compositions and complex, intellectual, lyrical constructs. While the leap to full-blown prog rock wouldn't be taken until a year later on Thick as a Brick, the degree to which Tull upped the ante here is remarkable.

Written by FKA twigs, Charli XCX and Jack Antonoff and performed by award-winning actress Anne Hathaway, 'Mother Mary: Greatest Hits' is a fictional pop album from a very real A24 vehicle, and the lead single's called 'Burial'. Make of that what you will.

When he recorded this album, his lone date as a leader, trumpeter Tommy Turrentine (who was a member of Max Roach's group along with his brother, the soon-to-be famous tenor Stanley Turrentine) seemed to have a potentially great future. Unfortunately, ill health would eventually force his retirement. Turrentine's set for Time (which has been reissued on CD by Bainbridge) actually features the musicians of Roach's quintet (including brother Stanley, trombonist Julian Priester, bassist Bob Boswell, and Roach himself) plus pianist Horace Parlan.

Kazumi Watanabe is one of the finest jazz guitarists to emerge out of Japan. A household name in the world of jazz fusion fans, Guitar Renaissance is the third and the final release of the trilogy. Only four of the fifteen tracks are pop-, jazz- or classical compositions. Most of the six Watanabe originals are in the Spanish style, too. On two tracks he is accompanied by clarinet or another guitar, the rest is solo Watanabe at his best.