Prince spent the latter half of the '80s courting the pop audience, and by the time of Graffiti Bridge, he had lost much of his R&B fan base. As a response, he formed the New Power Generation and recorded Diamonds and Pearls, his first record to reconnect with the urban audience since 1999, as well as his first to acknowledge the hip-hop revolution. Although he still has a problem with rap – "Jughead" is simply embarrassing – he manages to skillfully reinvent himself as an urban soulman without sacrificing his musical innovation.

Wilco’s thirteenth studio album, Cousin, was recorded in the band’s legendary Chicago studio – The Loft – over a period of two years. The ten new tracks are written by band leader Jeff Tweedy and feature musical performances by the longtime lineup of Nels Cline, Mikael Jorgensen, Glenn Kotche, John Stirratt, Pat Sansone and, of course, Tweedy on lead vocals. After a short detour back into their country-influenced roots via last year’s Cruel Country double album, Cousin sees Wilco back in their more familiar progressive and experimental rock territory. Tweedy’s singular songwriting voice is in full evidence, with lyrics weaving across a variety of topics – from the iconoclastic to the introspective. Adding a unique and new element to the recording process was the attachment of Welsh singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon as producer – the first time an outsider has been actively involved in a Wilco recording session for more than ten years, since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Le Bon brought her unique musical perspective to the band’s trademark sound and provided them with an inspiring new challenge to push their musical boundaries.

Steven Wilson -"Harmony Codex" / Steven Wilson is an English musician and record producer. Currently a solo artist, he became known as the founder, lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of the band Porcupine Tree. He has also worked with artists such acts as Opeth, King Crimson, Pendulum, XTC, Tears for Fears and Roxy Music. His honors include four Grammy nominations: twice with Porcupine Tree, once with his collaborative band Storm Corrosion and once as a solo artist. The Harmony Codex is his most ambitious album to date.

Songs for the Deaf is the third studio album by American rock band Queens of the Stone Age, released on August 27, 2002 by Interscope Records. It features Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters on drums, alongside other guest musicians, and was the last Queens album to feature bassist Nick Oliveri. Songs for the Deaf is a loose concept album, taking the listener on a drive through the California desert from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree, tuning into radio stations from towns along the way such as Banning and Chino Hills. Songs for the Deaf received critical acclaim, and earned the band their first gold certification in the United States. One million copies were sold in Europe, earning a platinum certification from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in 2008. Three singles were released from the album: "No One Knows", "Go with the Flow", and "First It Giveth".

There's no overestimating the importance of Screamadelica, the record that brought acid house, techno, and rave culture crashing into the British mainstream – an impact that rivaled that of Nirvana's Nevermind, the other 1991 release that changed rock. Prior to Screamadelica, Primal Scream were Stonesy classic rock revivalists with a penchant for Detroit rock. They retained those fascinations on Screamadelica – one listen to the Jimmy Miller-produced, Stephen Stills-rip "Movin' on Up" proves that – but they burst everything wide open here, turning rock inside out by marrying it to a gleeful rainbow of modern dance textures. This is such a brilliant, gutsy innovative record, so unlike anything the Scream did before, that it's little wonder that there's been much debate behind who is actually responsible for its grooves, especially since Andrew Weatherall is credited with production with eight of the tracks, and it's clearly in line with his work. Even if Primal Scream took credit for Weatherall's endeavors, that doesn't erase the fact that they shepherded this album, providing the ideas and impetus for this dubtastic, elastic, psychedelic exercise in deep house and neo-psychedelic. Like any dance music, this is tied to its era to a certain extent, but it transcends it due to its fierce imagination and how it doubles back on rock history, making the past present and vice versa.

Ghost is a live album first released by British musician Gary Numan in 1988. It was recorded live at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on 25 and 26 September 1987 during Numan's Exhibition Tour (an 18-month concert tour that promoted the compilation album Exhibition). The original release was only available as a fan club mail order double LP. It went on general release in the United Kingdom as a double CD in May 1992.

In October 2023, Vanessa Bernardi will obtain her two-year second-level diploma in classical guitar at the A. Buzzolla Conservatory in Adria under the guidance of Maestro Giulio Tampalini. This follows her achievement of a three-year first-level diploma with the highest grades and honours in October 2021. That same year, she also earned a bachelor's degree in History and Protection of Musical Artistic Heritage from the University of Padua (thesis title: "Music in the Time of Covid-19: Musical Initiatives and Distance Education").

From the dawn of time, across the four corners of the world, exile has left its mark on the landscape of men… and on the songs of women. Mediaeval songs by trouveres and nuns (The women who stayed), Iberian and Sephardic songs (The women who left) are woven around Exils, a set of four pieces composed by Thierry De Mey in homage to all those women (from ancient times to our modern and highly topical times) who never reached their place of exile…

Sofya Melikyan’s fascinating album has as its inspiration the great Ricardo Viñes, composer and pianist, champion of young progressive composers (he was Satie’s favourite performer of his music), whose friends included among others Picasso, Gide, Colette, Cocteau.

In his first recording for PASSACAILLE, Real Câmara revives the spirit of the excellent Portuguese court orchestra before the great earthquake of 1755, bringing to life a forgotten repertoire once written for performance at the magnificent court of King John V. in Lisbon: from the divertimenti of Pietro Giorgio Avondano, the Genoese concertmaster of the orchestra, to opera arias by the Portuguese composer Francisco António de Almeida and the Italian composers Rinaldo di Capua and Giovanni Bononcini.

Exiled in the United States since October 1940, Bela Bartok was short of money and worn out by leukaemia. Nevertheless, a few weeks' respite from the disease in August 1943 enabled him to fulfil a commission from the conductor Serge Koussevitzky. For a fee of a thousand dollars, he quickly wrote the Concerto for Orchestra, which was to be premiered at Boston's Symphony Hall on 1 December 1944. Koussevitzky was very enthusiastic about the Concerto, even describing it as 'the best orchestra piece of the last 25 years'. It was the success of this score that prompted the violist William Primrose to ask the Hungarian composer to write a work for him. Bartok had little experience of the instrument and was only convinced when he heard the soloist perform the Walton Concerto on the radio. The score was initially planned in four movements, but the composer's death reduced it to three. Amihai Grosz (a founder member of the Jerusalem Quartet, now principal viola of the Berliner Philharmoniker) joins the Orchestre National de Lille and Alexandre Bloch for this recording.

Arctic Saxophone is the second album where Ola Asdahl Rokkones (b.1983) premieres three new classical saxophone concertos commissioned by him. The album title Arctic Saxophone is not only a reference to his hometown Tromso, but also to the three composers on this recording that all have some link to the Arctic. The two Norwegian composers Alexander Aar?en and Terje Bjorklund both originate from Northern Norway, and the Russian composer Alexander Manotskov caught his inspiration from the Russian city of Arkhangelsk.

The indissoluble and historical link between Spain and the Guitar offers us, with this CD, a new and intense chapter: the "Spanish Masterpieces", as the evocative tille reminds us, follow one another in the interpretation of Nicholas Nebuloni combining great classics of the six-string repertoire to precious record news.

Naïve Records has announced a September 29 release for Julien Martineau's new recording, O sole mio: Mandolin Concertos & Songs. On the project Martineau is joined by the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Wilson Ng. Guests performers include Florian Sempey, Anna Schivazappa, Yann Dubost, Philippe Mouratoglou and Eric Franceries.

Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg was born in Warsaw in 1913. His father worked in the Yiddish Theatre as a violinist. The young composer would also work in this theatre as a pianist, and the music of the Eastern European Jews would form an indelible influence on his music. As would the tragic events that overtook his family in the Holocaust. His parents and his sister were murdered in the Trawniki concentration camp by the Nazis.