Kotebel's self-released debut, Structures, contained promises – but the production (synthesizer only with programmed tracks) held the music back. This second offering, released by the giant prog rock label Musea, is much more satisfying. Although still very much keyboard oriented, Mysticae Visiones is better programmed (the drums have considerably improved) and features other instrumentalists. The presence of guitarist César Garcia and flutist Omar Acosta provides a lush '70s progressive rock atmosphere not unlike Maneige circa Ni Vent Ni Nouvelle or the instrumental albums of Banco del Mutuo Soccorso. Cellist Francisco Ochando and singer Carolina Prieto add more occasional touches. The music of Carlos Plaza (the man behind the moniker Kotebel) remains romantic, symphonic, highly melodious.

Legendary singer Graham Bonnet (RAINBOW, MSG, ALCATRAZZ, GRAHAM BONNET BAND) has joined forces with Italian axeman and producer Dario Mollo in a new project called EZOO. The band's debut album, "Feeding The Beast", was released on June 2 via earMUSIC. Grooving and stomping music, with the great feeling straight from the golden days of hard rock, EZOO features the immediately recognizable voice of Bonnet and Mollo's melodic and powerful guitars. While Mollo is well known for his collaboration with Glenn Hughes (VOODOO HILL) and his three albums with former BLACK SABBATH singer Tony Martin, you can claim that probably every rock fan has heard the biting and unique voice of Bonnet before.

This obscure but timeless gem from 1984 sounds as if it were recorded yesterday. The hard bop originals (several of which should be revived), high musicianship, and consistently rewarding solos make this a milestone in the careers of Tom Garvin, Bob Sheppard, Bob Ojeda, John Patitucci and Mike Stephans.

“Just A Glimpse” consists of a band of young voices from the German jazz scene who play compositions by Philipp Wisser. The quintet is based on both a rough, lighthearted and melancholy streak. The built-in opposites ensure good stories and a dynamic that makes it possible to revive many exciting moments for the listener.

Ha!-Ha!-Ha! is a bruising album, a tsunami of a set that epitomized the fire and fury of its age. Icy to its core, producer Steve Lillywhite brilliantly captured both the band's urgency and the brittleness of their sound. Like the implosion of gases that ignited the Big Bang, Ha!-Ha!-Ha! hangs in the millisecond before the ensuing explosion, trembling with ferocious tension and fierce anticipation of the coming storm…

Bassist T.M. Stevens leads guests like Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow, Deep Purple), Corey Glover and Will Calhoun (ex-Living Colour), Richie Kotzen (ex-Poison), Al Pitrelli and Vinnie Moore through renditions of Deep Purple favorites including "Stormbringer," "Black Night," "Burn," "Smoke on the Water" and a reggae version of "Child in Time."

The fourth in the Switched On series that compiles non-album tracks and sought after deep cuts by the groop. Following on from the first volume released in 1992, 1995's Refried Ectoplasm, and 1998's Aluminum Tunes, the long-awaited fourth installment spans 1999 - 2008 in the Stereolab story and collates 3 LPs worth of material, all remastered from the original tapes and overseen by the band. It features all the tracks from out-of-print and sought after mini-album The First Of The Microbe Hunters, one-off and impossible to find tour 7"s, compilation tracks, art installation work and a couple of unreleased outtakes from the Mars Audiac Quintet and Dots and Loops recording sessions.

Once upon a time, on January 11th 2019 (pre-plague), a rag-tag group of Scottish musical ne’er-do-wells flew to a fancy-ass studio in Sweden on an impossible mission to record, in two whole days, an album of the only eleven songs they could actually play. Were it not for a series of mishaps, bad calls, vodka, general tomfoolery (those f****** gloves!) and one near-death experience, they might just about have managed it too.

Steppin' Out is the second studio album released by soprano saxophonist George Howard. It was first released as an LP record in 1984 by Palo Alto Records and reached as high as #9 on the Billboard magazine Top Jazz Albums list for that year. This CD from 1984 has lively and complex sax sounds. When Howard rejoined GRP Records in 1990, they acquired the rights to previous albums by him and released this album on compact disc in 1992.

Queen II was a breakthrough in terms of power and ambition, but Queen's third album Sheer Heart Attack was where the band started to gel. It followed quickly on the heels of the second record – just by a matter of months; it was the second album they released in 1974 – but it feels like it had a longer incubation period, so great is the progress here. Which isn't quite to say that Sheer Heart Attack is flawless – it still has a tendency to meander, sometimes within a song itself, as when the killer opening "Brighton Rock" suddenly veers into long stretches of Brian May solo guitar – but all these detours do not distract from the overall album, they're in many ways the key to the record itself: it's the sound of Queen stretching their wings as they learn how to soar to the clouds.

Wisely going only by her first name, Polish-by-way-of-England pop singer Basia Trzetrzelewska ("pronounced Basha Tshetshelevska"), joined by her musical partner Danny White, steps out of the band Matt Bianco to launch her solo career with Time and Tide. She and White create a series of keyboard-based dance-pop arrangements to support her smooth alto…

With the success of the band Incantation and ethnic South American music in 1982-1983, Chris Rea introduced his sixth album, Wired to the Moon, with the track "Bombollini," which was over six minutes of jungle-sounding drums and the haunting sound of pan pipes. The ethnic flavor continued on the second track, "Touché d'Amour," which was reggae in the unashamed style of lovers rock. However, Rea wasn't going to disappoint his fans altogether, small in number though they were in the U.K., having built a career over several albums of soft rock tracks and midtempo ballads with Dire Straits-style guitar breaks, and the rest of the tracks on Wired to the Moon fell easily into this category, especially "Shine, Shine, Shine" and "Holding Out," which were lovely emotive ballads.

«This is meant to be a soothing and pleasant piece that can wrap the listener in a blanket of sound. It’s definitely my most ambient release yet and I wanted it to sound like a ‹classic› ambient record in the vein of Eno (I’m thinking particularly about his long-form early pieces like ‹Thursday Afternoon›, ‹Discreet Music› and ‹Neroli›), just with a bit more edge. Like these works it’s meant to be able to function as background music while still being interesting when paying attention – ‹as ignorable as it is interesting› as Eno put it.» – øjeRum

Expanded reissue of the 1996 psychedelic-pop masterpiece. If you’ve seen Paul McCartney over the past nine years, you’ve seen Chris Holmes. He’s been the DJ spinning records pre-show for nearly a decade now. But his story starts much earlier.