These 25 tracks represent the Marmalade's complete recorded output for CBS Records, including a pair of outtakes. The band simply moves from strength to strength during their period with CBS, starting with the superb Mike Smith-produced "It's All Leading up to Saturday Night," with its great beat and catchy choruses, and getting better from there. The title track has a special resonance; it's a glistening piece that mixes hard-rock guitar and bass with exquisite harmonies in a manner that overlaps with the Hollies. Yet, with its careful use of guitar distortion pumped up to sound like an orchestra, and a soaring choral phrase or two, the song also strangely anticipates the sound of the Electric Light Orchestra at their most poppy…

These Chicago veterans deliver a collaboration of hard-hitting, real-deal blues. Jimi Primetime Smith is son of blues woman Johnnie Mae Dunson and learned guitar from Jimmy Reed as a teenager. Blues harmonica ace Bob Corritore has been teaming with Jimi for the last 7 years and this album documents their musical adventures so far! Lots of good, rowdy blues fun contained in the 10 songs!

Hank Crawford always puts a lot of passion into each note he plays. On this set of blues and soulful ballads, Crawford caresses each melody as usual but the lack of tempo variations and the generally so-so material keep this from being one of his more essential recordings. Guitarist Melvin Sparks has a few fine solos but otherwise the backup band (which includes pianist Dr. John, organist Gloria Coleman and an occasional brass section) sounds pretty anonymous. Although a pleasant enough listen, Hank Crawford has recorded many more significant dates than Groove Master.

Providence were the only American band signed to the Moody Blues' Threshold label back in the seventies. The group hailed from the Pacific Northwest, and distinguished themselves by their lack of a drummer, featuring instead nothing but various stringed instruments and a keyboardist. The keyboardist played piano, harpsichord, and sometimes organ, rather than ARP or Mellotron like so many of the band's contemporaries. The band's lone released album was produced by longtime Moody Blues producer Tony Clarke, and the band's music, particularly the vocals, reveal the strong influence of that band. The band recorded original compositions that featured languid string arrangements, sometimes psychedelic guitar as well as acoustic, and a bass that pretty much comprised the rhythm section for the band. Their lyrics ranged from fantasy to nature to hippy philosophy, and tended toward naively-positive themes.

For those whose exposure to Soft Cell has been limited to the glorious and inescapable "Tainted Love," the duo's 1984 swan song This Last Night in Sodom should feature a warning sticker. Singer Marc Almond and keyboardist Dave Ball don't attempt to recapture the Top 40 magic of that hit here. Instead, Almond completes his transformation into an electro-pop Scott Walker, operatically singing self-conscious and jaded songs like "Mr. Self-Destruct," "Little Rough Rhinestone," and "Meet Murder My Angel," while Ball's keyboards explore an icy, nearly Germanic abstraction (in the Kraftwerk/Neu! sense). Anyone intrigued by the prospect of faux-decadent torch songs in the Piaf/Brel tradition should be interested in this electronic hybrid of the style, but if you're looking for "Tainted Love, Pt. 2," it isn't here.

Alexei Lubimov belongs to the great russian tradition of musicians such as Richter, Gilels (Lubimov was one of the last student of Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow) and to this generation of baroque pioneers together with Gustav Leonhardt, Juijken… He is also a major artist playing russian composers such as Denisov, Schnittke, Silvestrov… and Arvo Pärt…
Alexei Lubimov developed his outstanding international carrier with these three cultures in mind. He was in Brussels in 1968 to play Denisov piano pieces where he met the Kuijken brothers. He played John Cage and Terry Riley during the Soviet Union time.

Ernest Chausson is a most unusual figure in French music, positioned at the crossroads where the romanticism of Berlioz and Franck meet the language of Wagner and the symbolism of the young Debussy. His Poème de l amour et de la mer is a unique score for the period and certainly his greatest work; simultaneously a profane, naturistic cantata, a monologue, and a song cycle, it was composed between 1882 and 1892.

Throughout history men have feared madwomen, burning them as witches, confining them in asylums and subjecting them to psychoanalysis – yet, they have also been fascinated, unable to resist fantasizing about them. For their new disc, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have created a programme that explores the responses of a variety of composers to women whose stories have left them vulnerable and exposed. As a motto they have chosen an aphorism by Nietzsche: ‘There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.’

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band live at Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, Nov 1st 1980.

Bob Dylan live at Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, USA, 1st June 1978.