When Jeff Lynne was growing up, he listened to music on longwave radio, soaking up all the sounds coming through the big radio in the living room. His 2012 tribute to these days, appropriately called Long Wave, is a far-reaching salute to the glory days of pop in the years before the Beatles. It's too easy to peg this as a standards album, a designation that isn't quite accurate. Lynne may cover many show tunes along with '50s favorites of big-band vocalists but he spends nearly as much time with rock & roll, and not just the operatic pop of his fellow Traveling Wilbury Roy Orbison, either. He cranks through Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock," slides into the silken harmonies of the Everly Brothers on "So Sad," and grooves through Don Covay's "Mercy, Mercy."

Amongst a pantheon of great Czech composers it is Bedrich Smetana who is revered as the musical personification of his country’s national spirit and the founder of its modern musical character. Composed after the onset of Smetana’s incurable deafness, Má vlast (My Fatherland) is an unprecedented cycle of six related symphonic poems that evoke ancient Czech legends and celebrate the majestic beauty of the country’s landscapes. Acclaimed with ‘unending storms of applause’ at its 1882 premiere, Má vlast reflects the unique characteristics that form the living heart and soul of the Czech nation.

Recorded on 25 and 26 April 1991 at the Teatro Bulevar Casa de Cultura in Torrelones (Madrid) and originally released in October 1991, it was a respectful flamenco vision of Spanish classical music in a flamenco style. In it, Paco de Lucía performs with the Cadaqués Orchestra, conducted by Edmon Colomer, the concerto for guitar and orchestra that Joaquín Rodrigo wrote under the title Concierto de Aranjuez. To complete the album, he recorded with Juan Manuel Cañizares and Jose María Bandera three pieces, arranged by Juan Manuel Cañizares, from Isaac Albéniz's Suite Iberia. The result was absolutely devastating and is one of the best known and recognised versions of Maestro Rodrigo's masterful work.

As long-standing supporters of independent record stores all around the globe, the John Lennon Estate are excited and proud to be able to join the fun with this new, exclusive, limited-edition 4-track 12” EP release. As a teaser to the forthcoming “Ultimate Edition” anniversary release of the Mind Games album (coming later this year in a collection of incredible new formats,) this extremely limited-edition EP sets the tone for what will be an extraordinary year for the music and legacy of John Lennon. Offered in two color variants – a luminous glow-in-the-dark 140g color vinyl or a 180g black vinyl version for Record Store Day 2024.

Formed in the 1994 in the back province of West Saxony (Germany) and based in Leipzig since 2001, Disillusion quickly matures to something of an underground institution. Already at the very beginning the band around mastermind Schmidt is enclosed by a unique charisma which leaves no doubt about the fact that this band could become a real high-flyer on their hard way to uncompromising music.
After 18 months' time of production in April 2004 "Back to Times of Splendor" is released and is rightly being hailed internationally as one of the best debut albums in progressive metal genre. In interviews the band themselves here and there compare their work in a tongue-in-cheek comment to the opulence of Peter Jackon's "Lord Of The Rings"…

Nonetheless is the fifteenth studio album by English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, released on 26 April 2024 through the band's own label x2 and Parlophone. It was produced by James Ford and mostly recorded at his East London studio. The band's first album for Parlophone since Elysium in 2012, its four-year gap with Hotspot (2020) marks their longest period between studio albums to date. It was preceded by the single "Loneliness", released alongside the album announcement. The album was released on 26 April 2024 in a variety of formats, including digitally, and physically on CD and multiple variants of coloured vinyl. The 2-CD and double white vinyl editions include a four-track EP titled Furthermore, featuring new recordings of "Heart", "Being Boring", "Always on My Mind" and "It's a Sin".

Humanoid is the seventeenth studio album by German heavy metal band Accept, released on 26 April 2024. It is the band's first studio album on Napalm Records, with whom Accept had signed with in February 2022, and also marks the first time since 2017's The Rise of Chaos that they had recorded as a five-piece band rather than a six-piece. Humanoid has received positive reviews from critics. Dom Lawson of Blabbermouth.net gave the album a rating of seven-and-a-half out of ten, writing, "For those who enjoyed the previous five, there is absolutely nothing here that fails to live up to expectations. Accept are, and have always been, exceptionally good at heavy metal. It's their thing", and added that the album "can be devoured as another generous serving of fresh metal anthems." Lawson also referred to "Unbreakable" and "Mind Games" as "among the finest songs that the band have written since 2009", and "Straight Up Jack" as "so unapologetic about its debt to AC/DC that resistance is useless."

The new focus on Bohemian classicism in the second half of the 18th century, manifested in recent recordings and articles in professional journals, has amply demonstrated the calibre of these composers and the quality of their music. Among them, Josef Mysliveček enjoyed considerable fame during his lifetime. He was known to such important figures as the soprano Caterina Gabrielli and was a friend of Mozart’s, who esteemed him.

Deep Purple have never quite been placed in the revered 1960s canon that includes the Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, or any of the other British rock bands who continue to reunite in various configurations to tour and even periodically release new albums, but given that the group has always been a riveting and brilliant live act, part prog, part heavy metal, part funky R&B, and imminently theatrical, that second-tier designation seems like both an oversight and a shame. Returning with this set, the band's first since 2005's Rapture of the Deep, and featuring a near-classic lineup of vocalist Ian Gillan, guitarist Steve Morse, bassist Roger Glover, drummer Ian Paice, and keyboardist Don Airey (Jon Lord, whose distorted organ parts were so much a part of the classic Deep Purple sound, left the band in 2002 and died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer), one can only marvel at how timeless it sounds, as if it were actually recorded in the early '70s and not tracked a little more than a decade into the 21st century.

In 2013, over a quarter century removed from his first album, Joe Satriani uses his solo albums as a way to stretch himself, both to flaunt his skills and perhaps to move him into areas where he's not quite comfortable. Unstoppable Momentum, his first album since 2010's boogie- and prog-heavy Black Swans & Wormhole Wizards, finds the guitarist occasionally indulging himself in a bit of swing, letting him ride an elastic beat ("Three Sheets to the Wind" has a supremely delicate touch), and he also digs into a bit of a nasty ZZ Top groove on "Jumpin' In," a boogie he turns inside-out on its immediate successor "Jumpin' Out." This is a pretty good indication that this is the work of a virtuoso who enjoys playing with his surroundings, tweaking tempos and arrangements to coax out unexpected wrinkles…

This was Ammons' final recording before "being made an example of" and getting a lengthy jail sentence for possession of heroin; his next record would be cut over seven years later. The music is surprisingly upbeat, with Ammons joined by two guitars (Bucky Pizzarelli and Kenny Burrell), a fine rhythm section (pianist Hank Jones, bassist Norman Edge, and drummer Oliver Jackson), and the bongos of Al Hayes for a set of Latin-flavored jazz that was masquerading as bossa nova.

In January of 2008, the Japanese Arcangelo label re-released all the albums by Swedish avant-proggers Samla Mammas Manna/Zamla Mammaz Manna originally issued between 1971 and 1980: 1971's Samla Mammas Manna featuring keyboardist Lars Hollmer, bassist Lars Krantz, drummer Hans Bruniusson, and percussionist Henrik "Bebben" Öberg; 1974's Måltid and 1975's Klossa Knapitatet, both recorded after the departure of Öberg and the addition of guitarist Coste Apetrea to the lineup; 1976's Snorungarnas Symfoni, written by Gregory Fitzpatrick and performed by the Måltid/Klossa Knapitatet lineup with guest appearances by trumpeter Kalle Eriksson and saxophonist Ulf Wallander; and 1978's Schlagerns Mystik/För Äldre Nybegynnare and 1980's Familjesprickor (Family Cracks), both recorded after guitarist Apetrea had been replaced by Eino Haapala…

Never one to do things timidly, with Vulnicura Björk delivers a breakup album that isn't just sad - it throws listeners into the total devastation of heartbreak. Starting with the album cover's wound/vulva imagery, she explores the tightly linked emotional and physical pain the end of a relationship brings with an intensity that has been missing from her music for too long. As expertly as she wedded feelings and concepts on Medúlla, Volta, and especially Biophilia, hearing her sing directly about her emotions is a galvanizing reminder of just how good she is at it. For the first time in a long time, the conceptual framework of a Björk album feels like it's in service of feelings she must express, and as she traces the before, during, and after of a breakup, she links Vulnicura to the most emotionally bare parts of her discography…

"Nicholas Harnoncourt's venture into the late 19th-century repertory tends to provoke ideologically-motivated reactions, either for or against, "historically-informed" performance practice. I think it's more rewarding to approach his outstanding recording of the Bruckner 7th symphony, done with the Vienna Philharmonic, as stemming from a strong interpretive vision of the 7th, one that is allied to some of the performance practices that Harnoncourt has advocated in his career."