With Breakfast in America, Supertramp had a genuine blockbuster hit, topping the charts for four weeks in the U.S. and selling millions of copies worldwide; by the 1990s, the album had sold over 18 million units across the world. Although their previous records had some popular success, they never even hinted at the massive sales of Breakfast in America. Then again, Supertramp's earlier records weren't as pop-oriented as Breakfast. The majority of the album consisted of tightly written, catchy, well-constructed pop songs, like the hits "The Logical Song," "Take the Long Way Home," and "Goodbye Stranger." Supertramp still had a tendency to indulge themselves occasionally, but Breakfast in America had very few weak moments. It was clearly their high-water mark.

Walk on Water finds the classic mid-'70s UFO lineup – featuring Michael Schenker – reuniting for another go-round. Much has changed in rock & roll since Schenker last played in UFO, but in UFO's world, things remain the same. The group continues to pound out heavy rockers without changing its formula much at all. To the disinterested observer or critic, this means Walk on Water is boring, but UFO diehards may be pleasantly surprised by the record, since it finds the band playing with energy and conviction, even if the music is predictable.

This short-lived psychedelic pop outfit was formed in the UK at the end of the 60s. Featuring Gillies Buchan (guitar/vocals), Edward Jones (bass/vocals), David McNiven (clarinet) and John Romsey (drums), the group was originally known as Skin but did not record as such. Human Beast signed to Decca Records in 1970 and made their debut with Volume One (Instinct). Though it sold poorly at the time, it has subsequently become the subject of collector’s interest. Typical of its contents were songs with expansive titles such as ‘Brush With The Midnight Butterfly’, ‘Reality Presented As An Alternative’ and ‘Appearance Is Everything Style Is A Way Of Living’. Fittingly, each featured similarly ponderous lyrics.

In this first period-instrument recording of Dido, Andrew Parrott tries to re-create the first known performance of the work–at Josiah Priest's School for Young Gentlewomen in London. Here (as there) the cast includes only one male–David Thomas, whose brawny Aeneas could overwhelm Dido physically as well as emotionally. Judith Nelson is a warm, sweet-toned Belinda; the Sorceress gets a vivid, raucous, love-it-or-hate-it performance by the legendary medieval-cum-folk-singer Jantina Noorman. Emma Kirkby, early in her career, sounds eloquent but extremely youthful as Dido–barely past her teens. This makes for a different, perhaps more credible, tragedy: a new, slightly immature queen, servant rather than mistress of her emotions, angrily refuses to take back the lover who abandoned her–only to die heartbroken after banishing him.

Bonnie Tyler needs little introduction: from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, she was one of the most popular British singers with a truly unique and amazing voice, a string of classic hits and a legion of fans. REMIXES AND RARITIES is a new compilation devoted to the hard-to-find tracks scattered across Bonnie's prolific career, from her earliest recordings for RCA in the late Seventies to her time with Hansa in the early Nineties, including many overlooked non-album tracks. Released with the blessing of Bonnie's management, Remixes And Rarities includes several highly collectable tracks which were only issued in South America or Japan; numerous tracks which have never graced CD before; and others which are long-out-of-print.

This music, the album EB=MC2 and Chapman and Banai’s concerts together before that can ultimately be traced back to two valleys. One near Hawnby, North Yorkshire, lush green and full of trees, the other, more austere, in northern Galilee. Michael Chapman, paying his way through Art College in the early ’60s worked as a woodsman on the North Yorkshire Mexborough estate in the summer breaks and found inspiration for classics like “In the Valley” and “Among the Trees,” leaning against the trees with his guitar. Slightly later, Ehud Banai spent an extended reflective period in the ’70s, alone near Rosh Pina in Galilee, with his guitar, a ghetto blaster and one cassette. On that inspirational cassette was Michel Chapman’s 1969 Fully Qualified Survivor album. Travel forward over 30 years to 2012, and Ehud, now a successful musician with a string of his own albums, is playing The 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street in London.

Leon "Ndugu" Chancler was an American pop, funk and jazz drummer. He was also a composer, producer, and university professor. Chancler began playing drums when he was thirteen years old. He would publicly reminisce about being asked to leave a classroom for continuously tapping on the desk, only to be later heard tapping on the poles in the hallway. His love for the drums took over while attending Gompers Junior High School and it became his lifelong ambition. He graduated from Locke High School having been heavily involved in playing there with Willie Bobo and the Harold Johnson Sextet. He graduated from California State University, Dominguez Hills with a degree in music education. By then he had already performed with the Gerald Wilson Big Band, Herbie Hancock, and recorded with Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Bobby Hutcherson.

Hummel's choral music, like that of his rival Beethoven, lies pretty far down the list of his compositions in terms of overall renown. But some of it originated in a very famous spot: Hummel succeeded Haydn as a composer of large-scale choral works for the use of the noble Esterházy family at its vast palace. The Mass in D minor heard on this album was composed in 1805, when the "Lord Nelson" mass in the same key by Haydn would still have been very much in the air and ears at Esterháza. Faced with the unenviable task of trying to top it, Hummel turned not to Haydn as a model but, as liner-note writer David Wyn Jones points out, to Mozart: the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor provides Hummel's mass with its tense general mood, its flexible shifts between the soloists and the larger group, and its flashes of lyrical light.

Michael Jackson had recorded solo prior to the release of Off the Wall in 1979, but this was his breakthrough, the album that established him as an artist of astonishing talent and a bright star in his own right. This was a visionary album, a record that found a way to break disco wide open into a new world where the beat was undeniable, but not the primary focus – it was part of a colorful tapestry of lush ballads and strings, smooth soul and pop, soft rock, and alluring funk. Its roots hearken back to the Jacksons' huge mid-'70s hit "Dancing Machine," but this is an enormously fresh record, one that remains vibrant and giddily exciting years after its release. This is certainly due to Jackson's emergence as a blindingly gifted vocalist, equally skilled with overwrought ballads as "She's Out of My Life" as driving dancefloor shakers as "Working Day and Night" and "Get on the Floor".

As with the previous disc in this series, Richard Hickox and his expert forces bring their usual mix of freshness, rhythmic élan and sensitivity to this attractive, often impressive work. Choir and orchestra respond eagerly to the conductor's enthusiastic direction. And the soloists, led by the ever-eloquent Susan Gritton, interact and blend with true chamber musical finesse.

It is astonishing that such fine pieces have been so completely neglected.They here inspire Hickox and his team to performances just as electrifying as those they have given of the great series of late Haydn masses.