Sylvie Courvoisier presents a new trio album at the height of her mastery and success. "Free Hoops" follows the widely celebrated trio album "D'Agala" which "The New York Times" counted as among the best records of the year. 
With every concert and every album this glorious trio's modus operandi becomes more clear - Sylvie Courvoisier, Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen play morphing music by turns intricately detailed and ambiguously wide open. The music Courvoisier writes is rigorously organized and calls for ensemble precision, as a few thorny unisono heads demonstrate. But the music also 
harbors a misterioso, dreamlike quality that may surface at any time, induced by a wistful ostinato or moonlit piano arpeggio stubbornly repeated, or by a quiet episode that underscores the depth of the trio's sonic space…

Mansun‘s second album SIX is being reissued as a four-disc 21st anniversary deluxe edition in March. The 1998 album has been remastered from the original tapes (by Jon Astley) and is presented alongside a disc of demos, rarities & outtakes (details TBC), the B-sides album ‘The Dead Flowers Reject’ and a DVD with a 5.1 surround mix of the album (along with hi-res stereo) and original promo videos.

During his lifetime, Carl Friedrich Abel was fêted all over Europe both for his supreme skills as a performer of the viola da gamba as well as for the quality of his compositions, and was responsible (along with J.C. Bach) for setting up arguably the first series of subscription concerts in the history of Western music, the “Bach-Abel-Concerts”. Even the prodigy that was Mozart benefited from Abel’s teachings (and was claimed as the composer of one of Abel’s own symphonies). 12 years after his recording of pieces from the Drexel Manuscript (for solo viola da gamba), Paolo Pandolfo teams up with an exquisite ensemble to record a fine selection of Abel’s sonatas, many of them recently discovered and being recorded here for the first time. Often adding his own cadenzas and ornamentations, Pandolfo and his team offer a breathtaking and colorful display of virtuosity and sensibility. The contemporary painter Thomas Gainsborough wrote that Abel “excelled at feeling upon the instrument”, while the writer of one of his obituaries likened him to Laurence Sterne, famous as the author of Tristram Shandy: “The death of Abel occasions a great loss to the musical world. Sensibility is the prevailing and beautiful characteristic of his compositions. He was the Sterne of Music.” Thus, this recording is aptly entitled A Sentimental Journey– an exploration of the world of feeling paralleling Sterne’s unfinished novel A Sentimental Journey though France and Italy.

In the Nightside Eclipse is the first studio album and fourth official release by Norwegian black metal band Emperor, released in 1994 through Candlelight Records. It was their only album to feature drummer Faust and one-time bassist Tchort. Considered a landmark in the black metal scene, the album has been ranked by critics as one of the most influential albums of the genre. It also contains some of Emperor's best known tracks, "I Am the Black Wizards" and "Inno a Satana". In 1998, the album was remastered and reissued, with two cover songs as bonus tracks: "A Fine Day to Die" by Bathory, and "Gypsy" by Mercyful Fate. For the reissue, the opening tracks "Intro" and "Into the Infinity of Thoughts" were combined, whilst the album was packaged in a paper slipcase covering the traditional jewel case, with both featuring the same artwork.

Two weeks ago, German heavy psychedelic rockers Samsara Blues Experiment announced they would be going on indefinite hiatus. Fair enough. 2020 makes it a decade since the band made their full-length debut with the jammy fluidity of Long-Distance Trip, a record that in no small part would define listener expectation from them even as they went on almost immediately to more progressive work. They’d already toured the US by then, hitting the West Coast in 2009 on the heels of their demo (discussed here, review here), and though they wouldn’t North American shores apart from two more shows in 2015, the years since they stopped through have not lacked adventure.

In Extremo is a German medieval metal band originating from Berlin. The band's musical style combines metal with medieval traditional songs, blending the sound of the standard rock/metal instruments with historical instruments (such as bagpipes, harp, hurdy-gurdy and shawm). Versions of well-known traditional/medieval ballads make up the main part of their repertoire, but the band has written an increasing share of original material in recent years. Their own material is written in German, whilst the traditional songs and cover songs are in a variety of languages. In August 1996, they began work on the first In Extremo album, which already contained two tracks of the new rock project. Because the album had no official name, it became known as Gold because of the golden cover. In February 1997, like the single Der Galgen (engl. "The Gallows"), it quickly sold out in Medieval markets. The 2006 reissue, Die Goldene, contains two acoustic bonus tracks, including an alternate version of Villeman og Manhild.

Solal remains one of the most inventive, brilliant, and woefully underappreciated pianists in modern jazz. This CD should serve further notice as to his genius in completely reshaping and reinventing standards with the poetic fervor of a restless soul. Bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Paul Motian contribute mightily to Solal's raised temperature and metamorphosed rhythmic and harmonic notions, values he alone should be allowed to define. The proof is in the listening. Six of the nine pieces are standards, and if thought you'd never hear a fresh take of "Round 'Bout Midnight," here it is. Intentionally convoluted, more angular than Monk, Solal, completely off the cuff, molds this well-wrought melody in a 20th-century modernism that defies any standard nomenclature…

This career-defining collection includes 3 different boxed sets: Limited Edition, Original Analog Edition & Digitally Remixed/Remastered Edition. We have also made a small quantity of each of these boxes in an Individually Numbered Series making it highly collectible and one of a kind. Each edition features 5 hit albums including No Fences, The Chase, In Pieces, Fresh Horses & Triple Live, plus CDs with bonus tracks for a total of 7 vinyl albums & 7 CDs in each edition.

Argus: "After our first debut album Tell Me! it’s time for a new album.
This album will be called The Outsider and consists 6 masterpieces composed by Wim and Frans and provided with stunning lyrics makes a sublime piece of prog rock with serious content. Captivating melodic arrangements with from time to time a good rock sauce and of course (partly due to Marijn) also regularly a mathematical prog piece which is sometimes quite difficult to understand. The tight bass of Ed and the equally tight guitar of Ton make it a great album that we are very satisfied with, more than 60 minutes of enjoyment!"

Ten Madison (aka Peter Jürgens, Jürgens & Peter Gun) is an electronic artist from Germany, signed to Millennium Records. He's released some Chillout albums, all well reviewed & attracting fans. However, his talent & energy surpass any simple Ambient labelling. As Peter Gun he successfully provides the four-to-the-floor oriented club area for years now and thrilled numerous fans and critics with the albums "Pressure Point" and "Thicker than Blood".

The following albums are included: Hawkwind, In Search of Space, Greasy Truckers’ Party (2CD) Doremi Fasol Latido, The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London (2CD), Hall of the Mountain Grill, The 1999 Party (2CD) and this set also comes with a bonus disc collecting rare single mixes called Of Time and Stars – The Singles…

Born in 1970, Guillaume Connesson has won several prestigious awards. His writing, thanks to an exceptional sense of rhythm and color, is of a very accessible language, even exciting, which has earned him great success, especially with the younger generations. The program of this double CD is the richest possible calling card of the composer's work: it contains his most beautiful pages of chamber music, interpreted by the very best of French soloists, including Eric Le Sage. (piano), Paul Meyer (clarinet) Jerôme Pernoo (cello), Florent Héau (clarinet) and the Parisii Quartet in particular.

The serenata Polifemo opens with an overture for which Bononcini adopts the formal model of the two-part French ouverture in which a slower section with dotted rhythms is followed by a quicker section often involving fugal textures. Bononcini combines his French model with the Italian concerto principle with its multiple choirs of instruments: here the wind ensemble alternates in the quick section with the strings. Although it is in only one act, Polifemo is made up of no fewer than twenty musical numbers: seventeen arias, two duets and one chorus. With a single exception, these numbers are cast in da capo form. Some have no instrumental prelude, whereas eight end with a postlude described as a “ritornello”, with elaborately worked-out parts for the instrumentalists. These postludes presumably allowed preparations to be made for the following action.

Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality.

West German rock band Grobschnitt will see a very limited 17CD super deluxe box set of all 14 of their albums released later this month that comes with almost seven hours of bonus material. The box set is titled 79:10 and covers the entire output of the band from 1972 to 1989. Everything has been newly remastered and in total there is over 22 hours of material for fans to enjoy. The reason for ’79:10′ is that each of the 17 CDs has 79 minutes and 10 secs of audio, so they are packed with content!…