Brian Wilson's retirement from performing to concentrate on studio recording and production reaped immediate dividends with Today!, the first Beach Boys album that is strong almost from start to finish. "Dance, Dance, Dance" and "Do You Wanna Dance" were upbeat hits with Spector-influenced arrangements, but Wilson began to deal with more sophisticated themes on another smash 45, "When I Grow Up," on which these eternal teenagers looked forward to the advancing years with fear and uncertainty. Surf/hot rod/beach themes were permanently retired in favor of late-adolescent, early-adult romance on this album, which included such decent outings in this vein as "She Knows Me Too Well," "Kiss Me Baby," and "In the Back of My Mind." The true gem is "Please Let Me Wonder," one of the group's most delicate mid-'60s works, with heartbreaking melodies and harmonies.

Mojo magazine is celebrating the re-release of Pink Floyd's catalog with its own series of Floyd albums covered in their entirety by contemporary artists. First comes Return to the Dark Side of the Moon, the classic 1973 Floyd album re-imagined here by bands like Gallops, the Oscillation, Our Broken Garden and the Pineapple Thief. The album is available on CD, packaged together with Wish You Were Here Again, a remake of 1975's Wish You Were Here featuring new versions of select tunes from the album by various contemporary acts (Beak>, The Orb).

Silverstate is Simon Hulbert. This album was also released under the alias "Chorus of Tribes" as Myth. This is great music along the vein of Deep Forest and Enigma. Its a decent New Age album for those into that genre.

Klaus Mäkelä’s forthcoming album with the Orchestre de Paris will be released on Friday, June 6, 2025 on Decca Classics. This is the third album in Mäkelä’s series with the orchestra and features two famous French works: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Ravel’s La Valse.

Lynchpins of the late-'90s post-grunge/nu-metal wave, Godsmack, have spent over two decades applying their brooding yet polished sound to the mainstream rock charts. Lighting Up the Sky is the Massachusetts band's eighth and reportedly final album. A sonic composite of their seven prior efforts, the eleven-song set straddles multiple hard rock and heavy metal sub-genres, from crushing alternative metal to classic rock-tinged post-grunge. Featuring the hard-hitting singles "Surrender" and "You & I," Lighting Up the Sky debuted at No. 1 on the US Top Hard Rock Albums chart and reached the upper echelons of charts in Austria, Germany, and the UK.

It is fun even if it isn't remotely the best jazz, or jazz at all. Benny Golson leads an orchestra featuring Art Farmer on trumpet and flugelhorn, Eric Gale on guitar, and Bernard Purdie at the drums, doing jazzed versions of the theme music from popular commercials. Some of it does work-Farmer and Gale have their moments-but a good deal of this recording (especially material like "The Swinger," for the Polaroid camera) comes off as jazz-muzak; it's doubtful that even Miles Davis could have done much more with the repertory here, and Golson wasn't being half as ambitious. Elliot Horne's original notes talk about Golson's credits and musical imagination, but here he even leaves the vocal choruses intact on several tracks, which ensures that listeners think of the original commercials and the products, not the music; in fact, next to this record, Verve's Count Basie Plays The Beatles is hot, swinging, and daring…

Jadis have re-released their first proper album as "More than Meets the Eye 25" in a special edition to mark 25 years since its original release in the early 1990s. This 2xCD Digipak has a brand new remix by Gary Chandler and disc 2 has newly recorded acoustic renditions of ‘Wonderful World’ and ‘G13’ by Martin Orford and Gary using 12 String Guitar, Piano, Flute and Vocals as well as live versions of ‘The Beginning and the end’ and ‘This Changing Face’ recorded in 1993. There are also 4 remastered songs from ‘Medium Rare’ ‘Follow me to Salzburg’, 'All in one day,’ 'View from above’ and ‘This Changing Face’ acoustic.

The late, great Lightnin' Hopkins was one of the most natural of bluesmen, a poet who would often make up lyrics as he recorded. He was at his best when unaccompanied, as on this Prestige date recorded in 1961. Though he usually played electric guitar, the Texas blues titan performed on this release with an acoustic, and the result is most rewarding. Tunes include "Goin' to Dallas to See My Pony Run" and "Buddy Brown's Blues."

Tyrannosaurus Rex's transformation from oracles of U.K. hippie culture to boogie-friendly rock stars began with the album A Beard of Stars, released in early 1970 when the band picked up electric instruments, and by the time the year was out, Marc Bolan had pared their name down to the more user-friendly T. Rex and dropped their first album with the new moniker. Oddly enough, while the songs on T. Rex bear a much stronger melodic and lyrical resemblance to what would make the band famous on Electric Warrior in 1971, the tone of the album is a bit more pastoral than A Beard of Stars; on most of the tunes, the electric guitars are more successfully integrated into the arrangements so they lack the jarring immediacy of "Elemental Children" or "Pavilions of the Sun," and Mickey Finn still wasn't using a full drum kit, so the tunes don't quite have the kick of a full-on rock band…

Joseph Holbrooke, an all-star ensemble from the mid-1960s dedicated to free improvisation, brought together three of the most influential British improvisers: guitarist Derek Bailey, bassist Gavin Bryars, and drummer/percussionist Tony Oxley. Though their recorded legacy is sparse, the group briefly reunited in 1998, leading to the acclaimed The Moat Recordings. Last Live 2001 captures their final performance, recorded in Antwerp in January 2001, and stands as a newly unearthed gem from Gavin Bryars’ archives. This release is both a document of the trio’s fearless musical dialogue and a moving tribute to Bailey and Oxley.

Telemann's Fantasias represent the most important current discovery in the gamba repertoire and are destined to become one of the cornerstones of the repertoire. The compositions, full of musical references to many different styles, are a compendium of how Italian and French influences permeated the purely German language to create a specific style, but it is also an example of visionary creativity, as Telemann anticipates many structural elements that define what will become the galant or pre-classical style. Moreover, using the genre Fantasia, Telemann shows us a portrait full of audacity, freshness and compositional freedom hitherto unknown.