Michael Schenker has never been one to compromise, and his new album Don’t Sell Your Soul is proof that his fire still burns at full intensity. From his first days as a teenage prodigy with Scorpions and his era-defining run with UFO, Schenker set a standard for hard rock guitarists that few have ever matched. When he formed the Michael Schenker Group in 1979, it gave him the freedom to shape heavy music on his own terms, and decades later MSG remains the canvas for his vision.
Don’t Sell Your Soul arrives as the second part of a trilogy Schenker began with My Years With UFO, which celebrated his deep history with the band that helped launch him to worldwide acclaim. That album was followed by a triumphant tour, and now this next chapter finds him pushing forward with just as much force…

Reduced to a quartet for the most part, with Barry Adamson joining Nick Cave, Blixa Bargeld, Mick Harvey and Thomas Wydler on only a couple of tracks, the Bad Seeds turn from the interpretive triumph of Kicking Against the Pricks to another strong high, the mostly-original Your Funeral…My Trial. The one cover is a sharp, unsurprisingly dramatic version of Tim Rose's "Long Time Man." As for the rest of the album, Trial shows the Seeds working as, again, a remarkably accomplished and varied act, ever available and ready to explore a wide range of musics distilled into Cave's often dark, always passionate vision. Arguably Cave and company have by now so clearly established their overall style that Your Funeral…My Trial is much more a refinement of the past than anything else, but so good is their work that resistance is near impossible. If anything, the brooding power of the Seeds is more restrained than ever, suggesting destructive endings and overwhelming love without directly playing it.

Before they were Fleetwood Mac, they were John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. In 1967, before there was a Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood were John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. The four musicians were only together for three months, which makes it even more remarkable that a staunch fan from Holland was able to sneak a one channel reel to reel tape recorder into five London clubs and capture this exciting glimpse into music history. For almost fifty years these tapes have remained unheard until John recently got them and began restoring them with the technical assistance of Eric Corne of Forty Below Records. Corne adds "While the source recording was very rough and the final result is certainly not hi-fidelity, it does succeed in allowing us to hear how spectacular these performances are."

Endless Boogie is a studio album by John Lee Hooker, released in 1971 through ABC Records. Produced by Bill Szymczyk and Ed Michel, the double album was recorded at Wally Heider Recording with session musicians such as Jesse Ed Davis, Carl Radle, Steve Miller, Gino Skaggs and Mark Naftalin.

23 live tracks taken from the acclaimed Luck and Strange Tour on 2 CDs. Produced by Charlie Andrew and David Gilmour. Luck and Strange was a concert series by English musician David Gilmour to support his fifth solo album, Luck and Strange (2024). The tour was Gilmour's shortest solo tour, at only 21 concerts, held in Rome, London, Los Angeles, and New York.

In the Land of Hi-Fi is one of Sarah Vaughan's best jazz dates for EmArcy. Accompanied by an all-star orchestra arranged by Ernie Wilkins and featuring altoist Cannonball Adderley (who was near the beginning of his career), the great singer is in superior form during these concise (around three minutes apiece) performances, particularly on "Soon," "Cherokee," "I'll Never Smile Again," and "An Occasional Man." A strong session.

Osanna is classic seventies Italian prog. The basis of their sound is original heavy guitar rock often in combination with amazing flute solos. Additionally, more spacey, Pink Floydian parts and quiet interludes with acoustic guitar and flute can be heard as well. There are plenty of mood changes and surprises that make this music very dynamic and interesting. Their first three are masterpieces in their own right.

The two albums I.F. and I.F. 2 (short for Intergalactic Federation) Deep Space Network made with fellow German artist Dr Atmo for Fax Records feature longer tracks, offering a bigger canvas for Moufang and Grossmann to work on. These are true collaborations with Atmo - a lover of shadowy, cosmic Eastern melodies and percussion - where the whole ends up greater than the sum of the parts. I.F. contains the extraordinary "Ten Waves", a 25 minute psychedelic blissfest of bleeps, radio & TV samples and spacey melodies driven by a tabla drums and a steady, almost jazzy two-chord progression. This stoned masterpiece was a staple in dance party chill spaces in the 90's and stands up brilliantly today, every bit the equal of other extended chillout classics of the era.

After the breakup, Beatles fans expected major statements from the three chief songwriters in the Fab Four. John and George fulfilled those expectations - Lennon with his lacerating, confessional John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Harrison with his triple-LP All Things Must Pass - but Paul McCartney certainly didn't, turning toward the modest charms of McCartney, and then crediting his wife Linda as a full-fledged collaborator on its 1971 follow-up, Ram.
Where McCartney was homemade, sounding deliberately ragged in parts, Ram had a fuller production yet retained that ramshackle feel, sounding as if it were recorded in a shack out back, not far from the farm where the cover photo of Paul holding the ram by the horns was taken…

Gold assembled a handful of knowns and unknowns to make special cameos on this melodic and fun collection of original and classic Halloween tunes with a pop-rock bent. Among the haunted are David Cassidy, Karla Bonoff, Linda Ronstadt, Stephen Bishop, Nicolette Larson, and Gold's children and wife. From the Beatlesesque touches of "It Must Be Halloween" (parts seemingly lifted from "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite") to Boris Karloff's "Monster Mash" and "The Addams Family" theme song, Gold and company offer up treats that kids and their parents will like, including the "Ghostbusters" theme. But with cooler original fare like "The Creature from the Tub" and "Spooky, Scary Skeletons," you have to wonder why they relied on so many predictable cover songs.