Apollo is Banco's first new studio album in 7 years and brings together heavy dub beats, powerful vocal arrays, and lilting melodies, drawing inspiration from both old and new schools of sonic artistry, and in doing so blending the subtle flavours of the act's historical sound with modern day techniques and ideas.
Apollo opens with the powerful and evocative Lamentations, featuring the ethereal vocals of Zhenia Mahdi-Nau, before slipping into Wimble Toot, whose initially stuttering drums and bass build into a relentless rhythm, peppered with reggae style horns and saxophone, nicely setting the scene for the foot stomping, dust raising, dancefloor rousing Eternal Sunshine…

Morgan Wade has never been one to mince words or play coy, a fact that she underscores repeatedly on her new album The Party Is Over (recovered). The follow-up to 2024’s acclaimed Obsessed, Wade continues the intense exploration of her psyche’s recesses across 11 songs that she again wrote solo.

Total of 95 tracks, approximately 7 hours and 26 minutes of recording time.
Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 - Prelude (Mork), Saint-Saëns: The Swan (du Pré), Piazzolla: Oblivion (Gautier-Capuçon), Tchaikovsky: Rococo Theme and Night Variations - Theme, Variation 1 (Isserlis, Gardiner), Vaughan Williams: Six Etudes on English Folk Songs - No. 2 (Eileen Croxford), and more.

As the title makes clear, this three-disc, unmixed collection has one simple aim: to soundtrack kitchen discos, living room dances and long car journeys with a jam-packed selection of disco hits and disco-tinged favourites. It does a good job at that, even if some of the selections tend towards the lesser-known end of the commercial disco spectrum, discs showcasing such disco must-haves and part-starting sing-alongs as Dan Hartmans soaring Relight My Fire famously covered Take That in the 90s, Diana Ross's Im Coming Out, Chaka Khan's inspired 'Young Hearts Run Free', Grace Jones' punk-funk Roxy Music cover Love Is The Drug, McFadden & Whiteheads epic Aint No Stopping Us Now and Cheryl Lynns peerless Got To Be Real.

Denis Rouger wuchs als Sohn einer Musikerfamilie in Paris auf, erlernte schon in jungen Jahren Trompete, Horn, Klavier und Gesang. Nach dem Abitur studierte er am CNSM (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique) von Paris Musikgeschichte und Kompositionslehre, worin er erste Preise in Harmonie, Fuge und Kontrapunkt erhielt. Seine Ausbildung zum Chorleiter absolvierte er bei Andrea Giorgi, Jacques Grimbert, Stéphane Caillat, Rachid Safir, Eric Ericson, Philippe Caillard sowie in Holland an der Akademie Kurt Thomas und im Centre d’Art Polyphonique von Paris. Er ist Inhaber des Certificat d’Aptitude für Vokalensembles, das vom Kultusministerium erteilt wird. Als „Professeur agrégé“ an der Universität Paris-Sorbonne leitete er den „Choeur de Paris-Sorbonne“ und unterrichtete Chorleitung.

Kurt Masur’s achievement is defined above all by his relationships with two orchestras exemplifying vastly different traditions. Having spent some 20 years as Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, which traces its roots to the 15th century, he became the transformational music director of the New York Philharmonic, an embodiment of the New World. Through all this, his musical integrity remained consistent. As the New York Times wrote: “He brought to the podium the ardent conviction that music-making was a moral act that could heal the world.”

Itzhak Perlman was born in Tel Aviv on 31st August 1945 to a family of Polish origin. He was drawn to the violin from the age of three, but when he was four he contracted polio, losing the use of his legs. Despite his handicap, he began learning the violin a year later, and his first teacher was a café violinist. Very soon, he joined the Tel Aviv Music Academy where he studied for eight years with Rivka Goldgart, a teacher of Russian origin.

On 15 August, we will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, an atypical figure in British music who was one of the first Afro-descendants to achieve success as a composer. Supported and encouraged by the greatest musicians of his time (Elgar, Stanford, who was his teacher, Sullivan), he rose to fame in 1898 with the premiere of his cantata Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, based on Longfellow's epic poem inspired by the traditions of the Ojibwe indigenous people. This work would be performed regularly for years to come and even brought him fame in America! One of his latest pieces, the rhapsodic dance The Bamboula, is also inspired by non-European traditions, in this case the rhythms and instruments imported to the Caribbean by African slaves.

On The Spotlight Kid, Captain Beefheart took over full production duties. Rather than returning to the artistic aggro of Trout Mask/Decals days, Spotlight takes things lower and looser, with a lot of typical Beefheart fun crawling around in weird, strange ways. Consider the ominous opening cut "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby" – it isn't just the title and Beefheart's breathy growl, but Rockette Morton's purring bass, Zoot Horn Rollo's snarling guitar, Ed Marimba's brisk fade on the cymbals again and again, and more.

Producer Ted Templeman was a bit of a surprising choice given his firmly mainstream production credits, with the Doobie Brothers already under his belt and Van Halen lurking in the near future. As it turned out, such a combination led to a better-working fusion than might be expected, making one wonder why in the world Clear Spot wasn't more of a commercial success than it was. The sound is great throughout, and the feeling is of the coolest bar-band in town, not to mention one that could eat all the patrons for breakfast if it felt like it. Consequently, fans of the fully all-out side of Beefheart might find the end result not up to snuff, but those less concerned with pushing back all borders all the time will enjoy his unexpected blend of everything tempered with a new accessibility. "Nowadays a Woman's Got to Hit a Man," besides having a brilliant title, shows the balance perfectly – Van Vliet serves up his rough asides with all his expected wit and sass, while the Magic Band trade off notes here and there just so.

On Down in the Alley, his first album for Alligator Records, Steady Rollin' Bob Margolin doesn't quite follow though on the success of its predecessor Chicago Blues, yet that's only a relative scale. Margolin is one of a handful of musicians to keep classic Chicago blues alive in the '90s, both through covers and original material. His association with Muddy Waters is, if anything, overhyped by journalists and Alligator alike, but it has to be said that he does Muddy proud with down-and-dirty recordings like this. Margolin's guitar has true muscle, and there's genuine grit to the recording, unlike many contemporary Chicago blues albums. For some tastes, the album may be a little predictable since he never breaks from the tradition, but anyone looking for a straight-ahead slice of electric blues like Chess used to make them should be pleased with Down in the Alley.

The Sweet The nucleus of The Sweet came together in 1966, when drummer Michael Thomas Tucker (b. 17 July 1947, Harlesden, London, England) and vocalist Brian Francis Connolly (b. 5 October 1945, Hamilton, Scotland) played together in Wainwright's Gentlemen, a band whose repertoire comprised a mixture of Motown, R&B and psychedelia. The pair broke away to form Sweetshop, later shortened to just Sweet, with Steve Norman Priest (b. 23 February 1950, Hayes, Middlesex) on bass and Frank Torpey (2) on guitar. After releasing four unsuccessful singles on Fontana and EMI, Torpey was replaced by first Mick Stewart, and then Mick by Andrew David Scott (b. 30 June 1949, Wrexham, Wales) and the new line-up signed to RCA. The band were introduced to the writing partnership of Chinn and Chapman, who were to provide the band with a string of hit singles.However, the band were writing their own hard-rock numbers on the b-sides of these hits. The group's determinedly effete, glam-rock image was reinforced by a succession of Top 10 hits.The Sweet in 1974 recorded the album Sweet Fanny Adams without the assistance of Chinn and Chapman. The album charted at number 27, but disappeared again after just two weeks. As The Sweet became more of an albums band, the hit singles began to dry up. Following a move to Polydor, they cut four albums with each release making less impact than its predecessor.

John Stanley was born in London on 17 January 1712. A precocious musician, by the age of nine he was playing the organ (probably as an occasional deputy) at All Hallows, Bread Street.
When the titular organist there – the composer and harpsichordist William Babell, a former pupil of Handel – died on 23 September 1723, an eleven year-old Stanley was appointed in his place. At the age of 14 he was chosen as organist at St. Andrew’s, Holborn and at the age of 17 became the youngest person ever to obtain the BMus degree from Oxford University. In 1734 he was appointed organist to the Society of the Inner Temple, a position he held until his death.

The key to Buxtehude’s trio sonatas, both for performers and for listeners, is an awareness of the stylus fantasticus which German composers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries developed in response to the new freely inventive style of Italian composers such as Claudio Merulo and Girolamo Frescobaldi. ‘It is the most free and unrestrained method of composing,’ wrote one contemporary theorist. ‘It is bound to nothing, neither to any words nor to a melodic subject, instituted to display genius and to teach the hidden design of harmony and the ingenious composition of harmonic phrases and fugues.’

Italian/Polish black metal band Amalekim continues their collaboration with Avantgarde Music to release their third album, Shir Hashirim, two years after their previous work Avodah Zarah.
Founded in 2020 by Mróz (vocals and guitar), Amalekim released their first album, HVHI, the same year. In 2022, the band, with a completely renewed line-up, released their sophomore album, Avodah Zarah to critical acclaim. The traced path now continues with Shir Hashirim, their third work, walking a more innovative path and encasing more dissonant sounds. The new work embraces once again the occult, the profane, the hermetic, not only in the music, but also in the concept and lyrics…