Day of the Dead is an epic tribute to the music and artistry of the Grateful Dead, curated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National. They have brought together some of their favourite musicians to reinterpret the songs and sounds of the Dead for a new generation. 59 tracks and over 5 hours of music makes the album a landmark to get lost in, to discover hidden treasures and to make your own playlists for whatever mood you’re in. Covers by The War On Drugs, Kurt Vile, Bill Callahan, Courtney Barnett, Anohni, Wilco, Mumford & Sons, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, The Flaming Lips, Stephen Malkmus, Cass McCombs, Tim Hecker, Lucinda Williams, Perfume Genius, Fucked Up, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, The Tallest Man On Earth and others.

Digitally remastered and expanded two CD edition. Described, variously, as "dusky and mysterious, cosmetic and up-for-it", "Industrial techno disco," and "like a Japanese express train", Curve's second album Cuckoo is more sophisticated, more seductive, less serrated, even squelchy in places than their debut, Doppelganger. A mature, fluent, and literary album, it hit the Top 30 on release in 1993. Cuckoo takes the listener from the established hallmarks and runs with them - over the horizon - to many new and rich areas of pop melodrama. Delicate and gorgeous moments sit easily with their simultaneously cool and incendiary sound. A more personal album, it is nonetheless metallic, unforgiving, loud, clear. As with Doppelganger the album was produced by the band with Flood and Steve Osborne, and it was mixed by Alan Moulder. It is home to the lead tracks from singles Blackerthreetracker EP and 'Superblaster' and is regarded by the band as their best piece of work. This expanded edition includes the album plus the remixes and two previously unreleased tracks, the original versions of 'Rising' and 'Half The Time', which have only previously been available in their remixed form. Compiled by Dean Garcia and Toni Halliday.

Following a few years after Levee Town, an album tightly focused on a specific place and time, Landreth dedicates The Road We're On to the more intangible magic of the blues. The music this time scans a vast panorama, from the Texas shuffle of "All About You" and zydeco pulse of "Gone Pecan" through the tub-thump beat of some Bayou dive on "Juke Box Mamma." Aside from a couple of cuts on which he plays standard guitar, Landreth fills this album with wizardly slide work: A shimmering lick at the end of "A World Away" provides the most gorgeous sonic moment, though his extended jam on the environmental call to arms "Natural World" sustains a high level of intensity through several choruses. On most of these tracks Landreth performs in a raw trio setting, almost all the time recording live; on "Hell at Home" he even keeps the scratch vocal, rather than overdub a fresh version, because the four-beat groove, reminiscent of "Walking Blues" on Paul Butterfield's East-West, is so in-the-pocket.

John Jenkins: yet another seventeenth century English composer who deserves to be more widely known. This delightful CD from The Consort of Musicke directed by Trevor Jones is no dutiful study of a hidden but rather uninspiring corner of English early Baroque consort music; rather, a mosaic – rich in color and shape, carefully crafted and full of surprises. Listen, for instance, to the unpretentious, jaunty and appropriately figurative progress through the Saraband (52, tr.6) and the restrained melancholy of the Fancy-Air (4, tr.7). Jenkins' counterpoint is well-wrought, his instrumental palette fresh and crisp and his melodies catchy without being fey or superficial in any way. He is in excellent hands with the Consort of Musicke… eight string players of the caliber of Monica Huggett and Alison Crum violins; Alan Wilson organ and Anthony Rooley theorbo. If fresh, beautiful, expertly-played English consort music appeals to you, don't hesitate to get this gem of a CD – actually a reissue of a Decca disc from 1983: it's unreservedly recommended.