Caught like many other mid-'90s male instrumentalist/female singer duos were in the commercial slipstream of Portishead's success, Mono deftly steered clear of the trip-hop conundrum for the most part with Formica Blues. Certainly there was a certain shared sense of cinematic drama and haunting gloom that informs plenty of songs - consider the Get Carter-sampling "Silicone," while "The Outsider" has an emotional directness Beth Gibbons would be proud of. The fact that lead single "Life in Mono" samples Portishead favorite John Barry and works with breakbeats didn't necessarily help Mono stand out more, for instance. But observations that Saint Etienne rather than the Bristol duo makes for a better role model are actually more accurate, and certainly on "Life in Mono" the keyboards and melancholy yet wistful singing of Siobhan de Maré suggests the likes of "Avenue" more than it does "Sour Times"…

Pilgrimage of the Soul is the 11th studio album in the 22-year career of Japanese experimental rock legends, MONO. Recorded and mixed – cautiously, anxiously, yet optimistically – during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, Pilgrimage of the Soul is aptly named as it not only represents the peaks and valleys where MONO are now as they enter their third decade, but also charts their long, steady journey to this time and place. Continuing the subtle but profound creative progression in the MONO canon that began with Nowhere Now Here (2019), Pilgrimage of the Soul is the most dynamic MONO album to date (and that’s saying a lot). But where MONO’s foundation was built on the well-established interplay of whisper quiet and devastatingly loud, Pilgrimage of the Soul crafts its magic with mesmerizing new electronic instrumentation and textures, and – perhaps most notably – faster tempos that are clearly influenced by disco and techno. It all galvanizes as the most unexpected MONO album to date – replete with surprises and as awash in splendor as anything this band has ever done.

For two decades, MONO have defined and refined a kind of orchestral rock that is as emotional as it is experimental. Their 10 studio albums over those 20 years have established MONO as what Pitchfork described as “one of the most distinctive bands of the 21st Century.” Meanwhile, their live concerts are typically more subdued in instrumentation – and more supercharged in volume and voltage. Rarely is there the opportunity to combine those two experiences. In their 20-year history as a band, MONO have presented no more than a half-dozen live concerts featuring the support of an orchestra. Such events are not only unusual – they are also unforgettable.

MONO formed in Tokyo, Japan in the closing winter weeks of December, 1999. They played their first live shows at the top of the new millennium, and released their first album, Under The Pipal Tree, in 2001. Recorded live in one day on a razor-thin budget, Pipal Tree was an earnest introduction to the curious magic of a band that would eventually become synonymous with monstrously dynamic, contemporary classical rock music.

Procol Harum's self-titled, debut album bombed in England, appearing six months after "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and "Homburg" with neither hit song on it…

CD box set release from Bob Dylan including his eight original albums from "Bob Dylan (1962)" to "John Wesley Harding (1968)." All albums feature the 2010 remastering from each mono master. *Japan edition exclusively features cardboard sleeve (mini LP) manufactured by Japan (size: 13.5 x 13.5cm). It faithfully repricates the original LP artwork with Obi. Limited copies of 5000.

Most of the Sinatra recordings available during the 1950s consisted of his contemporary work for Capitol Records. But every so often his former label, Columbia Records, would get something together on LP from among his '40s and early-'50s sides. The Voice was one of a handful of '50s long-players showcasing the first phase of Sinatra's solo career, and at the time it wowed listeners – the focus is on the ballads, and the dozen represented here constitute a bumper crop of classics, all resplendent in the singer's richest, most overpowering intonation and most delicately nuanced work…

Cannonball Adderley's Mercury albums (most of which, like this LP, are long out-of-print) find the youthful altoist trying to unsuccessfully keep his quintet with brother Nat together. Despite the powerful bop-oriented music they consistently recorded, the band would break up in a year, only to regroup with great success in 1959…

Who could ever have thought, going back to the Pretty Things' first recording session in 1965 – which started out so disastrously that their original producer quit in frustration – that it would come to this? The Pretty Things' early history in the studio featured the band with its amps seemingly turned up to 11, but for much of S.F. Sorrow the band is turned down to seven or four, or even two, or not amplified at all (except for Wally Allen's bass – natch), and they're doing all kinds of folkish things here that are still bluesy enough so you never forget who they are, amid weird little digressions on percussion and chorus; harmony vocals that are spooky, trippy, strange, and delightful; sitars included in the array of stringed instruments; and an organ trying hard to sound like a Mellotron…

The debut Jefferson Airplane album was dominated by singer Marty Balin, who wrote or co-wrote all the original material and sang most of the lead vocals in his heartbreaking tenor with Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson providing harmonies and backup. (Anderson's lead vocal on "Chauffeur Blues" indicated she was at least the equal of her successor, Grace Slick, as a belter.) The music consisted mostly of folk-rock love songs, the most memorable of which were "It's No Secret" and "Come up the Years."…