Much has been made of Vashti Bunyan's 1969 unheard-at-the-time Just Another Diamond Day. Produced by Joe Boyd, it featured the singer and songwriter backed by a small string quartet. Discouraged by the sleazy ethics of the music biz, she retired and concentrated on raising a family, gardening, and other productive matters. The set was re-released on CD in 2000, and has been rightfully heralded as a classic by virtually everyone who has heard it. Sought out, she re-entered the arena, worked and collaborated with Devendra Banhart and Simon Raymonde, and was the featured vocalist on Animal Collective's fine Prospect Hummer EP. Thirty-six years later, Lookaftering, Bunyan's second album, was released by Fat Cat. Produced by post-classical composer and atmosphere impresario Max Richter – who co-arranged the set with Bunyan – it features many of her collaborators, including Banhart, Joanna Newsome, Adem, Adam Price, Robert Kirby (who arranged the strings on her first record as well as Nick Drake's albums), Otto Hauser, and Kevin Barker (Espers/Currituck County). This is not just some neo-acid folk gathering of the stars, however.

Following his acclaimed 2024 collaboration with the Messthetics on the unrestrained The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, James Brandon Lewis's groove-heavy new studio album, Apple Cores, takes its name from a 1960s column by Amiri Baraka in DownBeat magazine. In one 1964 installment, for example, Baraka critiqued jazz club owners for their conservative booking policies. "They don't know anything," he wrote, describing them as "hip bartenders" who responded mostly to "the sound of the falling coin." He argued that "a new audience [was] just waiting for somewhere to go" and championed bold young innovators like Don Cherry, Albert Ayler and "a very strong beautiful tenor player from Little Rock, Pharoah Sanders."

Andy spent many years in Eric Clapton's band and this album demonstrates why he is guitarist of choice for the elite blues artists of our time. Andy's 'hit record' career has overshadowed his undeniable credentials as a great bluesman - a talent that hasn't escaped the notice of some of the world's finest artists who have drawn on his skills as a guitarist and singer. Eric Clapton of course heads the impressive list of former employers and collaborators from the blues world including, Jimi Hendrix (no kidding), Jeff Beck, BB King, Jimmy Page, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Van Morrison and many more. These guys know. Aside from his own work, the impressive list of discerning employers and collaborators he has played with includes, Bob Dylan, Roger Waters, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, David Crosby, The Band, Richard and Linda Thompson, David Gilmour, The Who, BB King, Joe Cocker, Steve Winwood, Donald 'Duck' Dunn, Jimmy Page, Ronnie Lane, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Joe Satriani, Jeff Beck, The Impressions, Lonnie Donegan, Ringo Starr, Steve Gadd, David Sanborn, Benmont Tench, Warren Zevon, Stevie Nicks, Charlie Watts, Mary J. Blige, Dave Edmunds, Georgie Fame, Bonnie Raitt, Otis Rush, Phil Collins, Van Morrison, Gerry Rafferty, Chris Rea, Buddy Guy, Chris Barber, Jackson Browne, Bill Wyman, Sheryl Crow, Helen Watson, Charlie Dore, Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown, Pete Townshend, Kate Bush, Paul Weller, Mick Hucknall, Paul Young, and hundreds more.

Guitar-slinging, soul-singing blues and rock legend Tommy Castro gets back to his crowd-pleasing blues roots on Closer To The Bone. Tommy’s one of the most popular roots music artists in the world due to his infectious albums and one of the busiest live performance schedules in all of music. His 2021 studio release, Tommy Castro Presents A Bluesman Came To Town, has scanned nearly 15,000 units.

Canadian violinist Robert Uchida presents I Can Finally Feel the Sun, his ATMA Classique debut recording. The program includes solo pieces from the standard violin repertoire alongside works that have grown from these roots. Pianist Philip Chiu joins Uchida for two works.Pieces for solo violin include a Bach Partita; a Papineau-Couture Suite, a Telemann Fantasy; a Sonata by Ysaÿe; Murray Adaskin’s Sonatine Baroque; and Carmen Braden’s I Can Finally Feel the Sun; and two works in which pianist Philip Chiu joins Robert Uchida: Igor Stravinsky’s Suite italienne from Pulcinella and Claude Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano.

Live In Japan 1974 is the first live album to be released in over 50 years by freewheeling-funk/rock/soul/latin fusion musical outfit WAR that features all seven original band members. This thoughtfully curated 2LP and 2CD release is made up of a compilation of live performances by the band, as they traveled throughout Japan after spending the better half of 1974 touring the US and Europe. This collection of recordings includes classic WAR tracks like “The Cisco Kid”, “The World Is A Ghetto” and “All Day Music”, taken from live shows across Shizuoka, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kobe.

Acclaimed singer, songwriter, producer, and performer GINO VANNELLI is returning February 7, 2025 with THE LIFE I GOT (TO MY MOST BELOVED), marking his 22nd album and first new studio album since 2019. It is the most intimate release in his expansive 50+ year career that’s highlighted by 20 million albums sold worldwide. Written through a time of personal hardship as his wife, Patricia, battled cancer and sadly passed earlier this year, its 11 finely etched tracks encompass the emotional turmoil of losing one’s soulmate and finding the will to move forward. “This collection of songs was written during my beloved wife’s illness,” says GINO, whose luminous and soaring voice imbues the album with both warmth and urgency. “It’s an account of all the joys and suffering. She passed away when the record was completed. I remain in awe of Patricia’s courage. I miss her so. My love is eternal.” THE LIFE I GOT (TO MY MOST BELOVED) was written, arranged, produced, and recorded by GINO and co-producer Peter Fil at Inka Studio in Portland, OR, where GINO resides. Coming off his shows last year, look for GINO to tour throughout 2025.

On her upcoming album, pianist Alice Sara Ott immerses herself in the rarely performed world of John Field, the “father” of the beloved Nocturne. “By recording this album, I hope to share the story of this historically important composer and to encourage listeners to discover the origins of the Nocturne,” says Ott. The album is a visual and auditory exploration of Ott’s journey through the music of a nearly forgotten composer. It is not only the first recording of Field’s complete Nocturnes on DG but also the first Dolby Atmos version ever. Additionally, in a complete first for classical music, the album will be accompanied by a series of sophisticated music videos, uniquely crafted in a cutting-edge LED studio, pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling. The full 45m film will immerse viewers in the pianist’s imagination and her connection to Field’s music, offering a rare glimpse into the artist’s mind during her creative process. Listen to a further pre-release track, Field’s joyful and energetic Nocturne No. 12 in E Major. The full album will be released digitally, on CD as well as on vinyl on 7 February.

Although not exactly a household name in the U.S., Poland's SBB (short for either "Silesian Blues Band" or "Szukaj, Burz, Buduj") were a renowned act in their homeland during the 1970s. Like the majority of emerging '70s rock acts before punk's arrival, SBB were prog-based, and after spending much of the 1980s on hiatus, the group picked up right where it left off with sporadic reunions during the '90s and early 21st century. Released in 2005, New Century (issued as a DVD audio release) is exactly what you'd expect from the band: lush arrangements and soaring vocals merged with a polished/mainstream rock edge – with half the lyrics sung in English and the other half in Polish.

Hip-O made a natural choice for this repackaging of two Millie Jackson LPs: her love-triangle classic Caught Up from 1974, and its follow-up, Still Caught Up, from 1975. Sounding better than they ever have, this pair of albums chart the course of one of the most disastrous affairs in musical history. The first features sides from each perspective, with Jackson brazenly discussing her affair with her lover's wife (on "All I Want Is a Fighting Chance") and later, taking the wife's part, giving up all hope of getting her husband back ("I'm Through Trying to Prove My Love to You"). The production is lush and the playing, by a crack team of Southern soul names, is crisp and effective. While Still Caught Up can't help but suffer an energy loss, it's a surprisingly strong record, featuring an unbelievable closer, "I Still Love You (You Still Love Me)," featuring Jackson being dragged away to an institution screaming (she even reprised the act for her stage show). In total, Caught Up/Still Caught Up is basically the equal of any solid Millie Jackson compilation, with highlights scattered all over the disc: "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right," "It's All Over but the Shouting," "Making the Best of a Bad Situation," "Leftovers," and "I'm Tired of Hiding".

One of the greatest albums in rock history, The Who's first album is back in US spec! The Who's first album "The Who Sings My Generation" (mono & stereo/no chart record) was released in April 1966. The order of some of the songs was changed, and "I'm a Man" (Bo Diddley/55 cover), which was on the UK version, was replaced with "Instant Party" (apparently because of its sexualized lyrics). The UK version of "Kids Are All Right" is an edited version of the single. The cover of the US version, with Big Ben in the background, has a great atmosphere, and it is no wonder that many fans prefer it to the artwork of the UK version. This disc is a 2-in-1 coupling of mono and stereo versions of all 12 tracks from the US version. ~Excerpt from the commentaryCommentary: Masaru Konishi

Universe Room is the eighteenth Guided by Voices album in ten years and packs a vast mix of energy levels and sounds into seventeen diverse tracks in less than forty minutes. The new record ventures into truly surprising territory, where barely any song segments and choruses are revisited and fidelity daringly shifts between lo-fi and hi-fi. "I wanted to create, hopefully, an experience, kind of a wild ride, where the listener would want to hear it multiple times in order to grasp all the sections and fields of sound to discover something new with each listen," says Robert Pollard. "I trimmed down the songs so that there wasn't a lot of repetition, so you get a lot of sections that happen only once or twice."Universe Room embodies a realm of new horizons for Guided by Voices, who continue to redefine and expand as they blast off to unpredictable worlds.

This 2 CD Expanded Edition features the original album plus a disc with 19 previously unreleased tracks.For the A Ghost Is Born recording, Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Mikael Jorgensen; Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the band’s previous release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, co-produced the album with Wilco. Leroy Bach left Wilco at the completion of the sessions and the band announced the addition of two new members: Pat Sansone and Nels Cline. Sansone and Cline toured with Wilco to promote AGIB and that lineup has remained unchanged since 2004. As Tweedy said to Mehr for his new liner note, “Making that record, and then finding this lineup, that was the start of something—of having a band that can play anything. That’s why, twenty years later, we’re still here and still going.”Wilco first began sessions for what would become A Ghost Is Born in early 2002 at Chicago’s Soma E.M.S., where they had mixed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Much of the album was tracked live in the studio with O’Rourke and engineer Chris Shaw. They also reunited there with engineer and soon-to-be-bandmate Mikael Jorgensen.At Soma, the band began sketching out music using Tweedy’s notebooks of lyrics, poetry, and prose. Mehr notes: “In between more traditional song tracking, the group would engage in a series of conceptual improvisations in the studio. These musical experiments, broadly known as ‘Fundamentals’ …were part of what Kotche said was ‘an attempt to search for a new group identity. To see what we could make this band into.’”In the fall of 2003, the band relocated to New York to finish recording at Sear Sound. “It seemed like the band needed to get out of Chicago, get out of the working mode they’d been in, and only be thinking about making a record,” O’Rourke told Mehr.

From the off, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory is sonically different from Van Etten's previous work. Writing and recording in total collaboration with her band for the first time, Van Etten finds the freedom that comes by letting go. The result of that liberation is an exhilarating new dimension of sound and songwriting. The themes are timeless, classic Sharon - life and living, love and being loved - but the sounds are new, wholly realized and sharp as glass.Reflecting on this new artistic frame of mind, Van Etten muses, "Sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's scary, sometimes you feel stuck. It's like every day feels a little different - just being at peace with whatever you're feeling and whoever you are and how you relate to people in that moment. If I can just keep a sense of openness while knowing that my feelings change every day, that is all I can do right now. That and try to be the best person I can be while letting other people be who they are and not taking it personally and just being. I'm not there, but I'm trying to be there every day."Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory is a quantum leap in that direction.- Lol Tolhurst

As children, the two composers featured on this album both received the same, first-class education. However, it is widely and lazily accepted that only the male sibling dedicated his life to music, while the female sibling did not, and so it is hardly surprising that Fanny Mendelssohn’s catalogue of works is much more concise than that of her brother. On this disc, we wished to reflect the two Mendelssohns through a pair of works written for the same chamber ensemble. Though their respective musical languages share many points of similarity, their individual artistic personalities shine through in a fascinating manner. We are especially thrilled to be able to present a recording of these two works on suitable instruments for the period. It’s not as if there is a surplus of such recordings.