Heartattack and Vine is Tom Waits' seventh and final album for Asylum. As such, it's transitional. As demonstrated by its immediate predecessors, 1978's excellent Blue Valentine and 1977's Foreign Affairs, he was already messing with off-kilter rhythms even in the most conventionally structured blues and jazz songs, with nastier-sounding guitars - he plays a particularly gnarly style of rhythm on this entire album. Five of these nine tracks are rooted in gutbucket blues with rock edges and primal R&B beats. By this time, his singing voice had deteriorated to a gasping-for-breath whiskey-and-cigarettes growl that could make words indecipherable from one another, but his jazzman-inspired phrasing more than compensated. Check the opening title track with its razored electric guitars (Roland Bautista guested on lead over several cuts), Greg Cohen's walking upright bass and natural sound…

The dozen signs of the Zodiac are ruminated upon during the pseudo-psychedelic Cosmic Sounds. This embarrassingly dated "concept" album was issued in late 1967 on Elektra Records . The recording – replete with equally absurd cover art – helped usher in the "age of Aquarius." Judging by the astrological psycho babble in these grooves, it may too have been the age of excess. But what should one expect from an album whose caveat reads "Must Be Played In The Dark"? Cosmic Sounds narrator Cyrus Faryar's other credits include proficiencies as a bouzouki player, bassist, guitarist, and sometimes vocalist for a plethora of diverse artists, namely Dave Guard & the Whiskeyhill Singers and the Modern Folk Quartet, as well as guest spots on albums by Mama Cass Elliot, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Buffalo Springfield, Fred Neil, and even the Firesign Theatre.

With this second contribution to the Vivaldi Edition, Fabio Biondi and his ensemble Europa Galante sign here the recording of the twentieth opera of the collection - a pasticcio in which Vivaldi ‘recycles’ hit tunes from the ‘World of Warcraft’ operas of his contemporaries.

Aquostic II – That’s A Fact! is the follow up to the phenomenally successful album from 2014 Aquostic (Stripped Bare). Aquostic II offers a generous helping of Quo classics that are immediately recognisable, and yet demonstrably re-engineered; including In The Army Now, Hold You Back and Roll Over Lay Down. Also featured are three brand new tracks from the band One For The Road, Is Someone Rocking Your Heart? and One Of Everything. This deluxe edition comes with a bonus CD featuring six tracks recorded at the band’s 2015 Stuttgart Aquostic show including Pictures of Matchstick Men and Whatever You Want.

Pietro Paolo Bencini (1675? -1755) was one of the most important figures in the musical life of Rome in the eighteenth century. His sacred music is on the same level as that of Alessandro Scarlatti. This is evident from the fact that much of his music can be found in copies even outside Europe. The most important part of his oeuvre is in the collection of the 'Cappella Guilia', now the library of the Vatican. Bencini worked as 'maestro di cappella' in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Damaso and from 1743 in St. Peter's of Rome; an important job. His style is festive, full of contrasts and smooth melodic lines.

This matchup between pianist Oscar Peterson, bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, and drummer Louis Hayes directly precedes Peterson's recordings for Pablo. The pianist is in typically brilliant form on the LP, performing six standards (including "Soft Winds" and "On the Trail") along with his own "Wheatland." From the results here, it couldn't have been too surprising that Peterson would want to record frequently with Pedersen in future years.

The first 10 years of Magma were celebrated with the music written by Christian Vander on three memorable evenings in June 1980 at the Olympia theatre in Paris. This retrospective, reuniting most of the musicians who had performed in the group, was issued as two albums, Retrospektïẁ 1/2 (Double) and Retrospektïẁ 3 (Single). Issued first, Retrospektïẁ 3 comprises 3 titles, Retrovision, a long piece in the style of the album Attahk, in which the vocalists Stella Vander, Guy Khalifa and Maria Popkiewicz turn in a blazing performance over a driving rhythm section, followed by a supercharged version of Hhai, in which the trio Lockwood/Paganotti/Widemann works miracles. And finally La Dawotsin, where, in a more muted register, Christian Vander’s voice triumphs through its mastery and profound sensibility.

30: Very Best of Deep Purple is a 1998 compilation album by English rock band Deep Purple, celebrating 30 years of the successful band. There are two CD versions of the album, a single CD and a double CD. The vinyl version was a double LP printed on purple vinyl, and the tracklisting was identical to the single CD version. The single CD version concentrates on the greatest hits of Deep Purple through the years, and contains mostly edited single versions of the songs, for example "Child in Time" which was over ten minutes long in its original form on the album Deep Purple in Rock.

The sole, eponymous album of this great progressive band was released in May 1970 by the Danish Sonet Records as a pressing of just 1000 copies. The music of Pan was an ambitious mixture of heavy rock sounds with folk, jazz and classical music and was characterized by great English (and some French) vocals from Robert Lelievre (who sadly committed suicide in 1973), fluid tasteful guitar parts, atmospheric Hammond phrases and loose, but solid rhythm section. This tightly arranged and beautifully produced LP is now regarded as one of the very best rock albums ever recorded in Denmark.

The place for Art of Noise neophytes to start, Daft collects (Who's Afraid Of?) The Art of Noise! and Into Battle with the Art of Noise, along with two reworkings of "Moments in Love" from the original U.K. release of that song, to make a fantastic hour's worth of music. If anything, a single or two aside, Daft beats out the official Best Of compilation by a mile. Having aged superbly with time, AON's early works sound all the more advanced and of the moment, a testament especially to Trevor Horn's excellent production and Anne Dudley's gripping arrangements. Further entertainment comes from the liner notes, which aren't merely state-of-the-art 1984 album design but an apparently barbed attack on the further incarnation of the band from one Otto Flake…

British group the Enid were formed in 1974. The founder of the band was Robert John Godfrey (Barclay James Harvest). In forming the group he was joined by Stephen Stewart and Francis Lickerish. They released their first album in 1976. Coming at the heart of the punk rock era, the jazz/progressive rock-ish release (In the Region of the Summer Stars) certainly did not fit into that genre. Two years later the group followed that release with Aerie Faerie Nonsense. In 1979 they released Touch Me and Six Pieces came out the following year.