Not long after the 1994 release of Plugged In, Dave Edmunds chose to tune out, slowly winding his way back to his native Wales, where he essentially acted as a hermit. Occasionally, he'd show up on-stage – or on Jools Holland's Later – but his active career essentially ceased, punctuated by the live album A Pile of Rock (a title often recycled in his career) documenting a one-off European show from 1997, plus a 2000-era largely instrumental album called Musical Fantasies. With this in mind, the release of …Again in 2013 is big news: it appears to be his first new album in nearly two decades. This isn't the case. …Again is a curious thing, a 15-track collection that contains no less than nine of the 11 songs on 1994's Plugged In, along with "Return to Sender," his contribution to the Otis Blackwell tribute Brace Yourself (released in 1994, but recorded in 1991), plus five new songs. It's not quite enough to be considered a full-fledged comeback but it's slightly more than tossed-off bonus tracks, too, as these new contributions spin the Plugged In material in a slightly different direction.

With the lengthy title of Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival, this 1971 release was recorded at the event held at Monterey, CA, between June 16-18 in 1967. Six of the eight tunes appear on the box set Rhino released of the mega concert, excluding "Somebody Groovy" and "Spanish Harlem." John Phillips' arranging and songwriting genius has never been properly recognized as the inspiring force that it was and continues to be, and though this Wally Heider remote recording (mixed in the studio by Erick Weinberg) is deficient, the performance by the original group at this important point in time is enthusiastic and worthwhile.

An often misunderstood album, this album (aside from the 1971 "reunion" album) was the final record by the Mamas & the Papas. It has held up incredibly well over time, and sounds better today than when it was released in mid-1968. The centerpiece of the album is "Dream a Little Dream," which very well may be the finest cover version that the group ever recorded, and in the end, was a very nice way to end the group's short but incredible career. The album also contains some excellent John Phillips material such as "12:30" (a minor hit), "Rooms," and "Too Late." These three tracks form a mini-medley in the middle of the second side, and add a lot of dimension to the record. Cut at the Phillips' home studio, the album has a simple sound, but when the vocal majesty cuts through on such tracks as "Mansions" (one of the band's lost masterpieces), it's faultless.

The Mamas & the Papas' second album was made while the group was still riding high from the chart success of their first album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, and the two singles, "Monday, Monday" and "California Dreamin'," that made them icons of the young pop generation. At the same time, their personal lives were so messy that Michelle Phillips got bounced out of their ranks for a few months. Only the good vibes made it on the record, though, as the same creative team sought to recapture the beautiful harmonies and jangling, sometimes moody folk-rock that made their debut sound so good. To that end, they definitely whip up a similar vocal blend, with Denny Doherty's velvety smoothness at the center of the swirling, almost medieval mixture of voices.

One of a series of remastered and sonically enhanced editions of the Vangelis albums recorded for the RCA and Arista labels. All of which come in deluxe digipack designs, with masters personally supervised by Vangelis in 2013.
The superb ‘Albedo 0.39’ was Vangelis’ second album to be released by RCA Records and was recorded at Nemo, his personal studio in London, in 1976. This conceptual work, inspired by space and galactic physics, took its name from the planet Earth’s albedo, (the proportion of the light a planet receives that is reflected back into outer space), as it was in 1976.
The album features the iconic ‘Pulstar’ and saw Vangelis push the perceived boundaries of the synthesizer as a musical instrument to new dimensions…

David Gates got all the attention, but James Griffin stood proudly as his cohort during the early days of Bread. Once Bread crumbled, Gates also had hits but Griffin didn’t, despite developing a strong body of work that finally gets anthologized via Hux’s 2013 compilation, Just Like Yesterday: The Solo Anthology 1974-77. During these four years, Griffin released just two albums—1974’s Breakin’ Up Is Easy and 1977’s eponymous LP—and both records are here, along with the bonus tracks of “Just Like Yesterday” and “She Knows,” the latter coming from a May 1974 performance on the Old Grey Whistle Test.

Collected is a comprehensive three-disc career retrospective celebrating the immense legacy of the iconic British reggae-pop outfit UB40, released via Universal Music under the catalog number 534 381-5. Spanning over thirty-five years of global chart success, this expansive anthology beautifully traces the group's evolutionary trajectory from their politically charged, gritty underground post-punk roots to becoming standard-bearers of smooth commercial island music. Disc one and two deliver an outstanding overview of their definitive studio highlights, contrasting revolutionary early social commentaries like One in Ten and Tyler against their world-famous, sun-kissed crossover blockbusters, including Red Red Wine and their legendary collaborations with Chrissie Hynde. The curation extends deep into fan-favorite pop-reggae translations such as Kingstown Town and Homely Girl alongside their colossal chart-topping covers of Elvis Presley and Neil Diamond classics. Deeper collectors will find massive value across the third disc, which uncovers a treasure trove of rare collaborative singles with Shaggy and Robert Palmer, heavyweight studio dub mixes, and high-energy vintage live performances from Ireland and Moscow. Fully remastered for an elite audio experience, this box set remains the ultimate archive for casual listeners and dedicated reggae-pop collectors alike.