By the time they recorded Tomorrow Belongs To Me, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band had perfected a totally unique trademark sound, an audacious and often surreal witches' brew of heavy metal thunder, glam artsiness, prog complexity, and all sorts of left-field cabaret and big-band elements. This album does not break any new ground for this oddball synthesis, but it is a solid and high-powered outing that will please anyone who enjoyed Framed or The Impossible Dream.

An overlooked work in the Brothers Gibb catalog, Cucumber Castle is an excellent album that plays to the Bee Gees' strengths of melody, arrangement, and craftsmanship. Though at times one may miss the distinctive trembling vocals of Robin Gibb (the brothers had split up at this point), Barry and Maurice carry on with 12 cuts that continue in the tradition of their distinctive pop sound. Orchestral arrangements and Mellotrons abound, and the sound tends toward full productions, especially in "Then You Left Me" and "I Lay Down and Die."

As director of Musica Antiqua Koln, Reinhard Goebel was constantly on the lookout for musical treasures from the Baroque. In Dresden and Leipzig after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Goebel secured access to original manuscripts which allowed him and his Musica Antiqua Koln to record some of the most insightful Bach albums in DG's history. This 13CD box presents Goebel's finest J.S. Bach recordings for DG including The Brandenburg Concertos, Orchestral Suites and Chamber Works.

Progressive rock bands stumbled into the '80s, some with the crutch of commercial concessions under one arm, which makes the Moody Blues' elegant entrance via Long Distance Voyager all the more impressive. Ironically enough, this was also the only album that the group ever got to record at their custom-designed Threshold Studio, given to them by Decca Records head Sir Edward Lewis in the early '70s and built to their specifications, but completed while they were on hiatus and never used by the band until Long Distance Voyager (the preceding album, Octave, having been recorded in California to accommodate Mike Pinder), before it was destroyed in the wake of Decca's sale to Polygram. In that connection, it was their best sounding album to date, and in just about every way is a happier listening experience than Octave was, much as it appears to have been a happier recording experience.

Quadrophenia is the sixth studio album by English rock band The Who, released on 26 October 1973 by Track Records. It is a double album and the group's second rock opera. The story follows a young mod named Jimmy and his search for self-worth and importance, set in London and Brighton in 1965. It is the only Who album to be entirely composed by group leader Pete Townshend. The group started work on the album in 1972, trying to follow up Tommy and Who's Next, which had both achieved substantial critical and commercial success. Recording was delayed due to bassist John Entwistle and singer Roger Daltrey working on solo albums, while drummer Keith Moon worked on films, and because a new studio was not finished in time, the group had to use Ronnie Lane's Mobile Studio.

Genesis' first truly progressive album, and their first record for the Charisma label (although Trespass was released in America by ABC, which is how MCA came to have it), is important mostly as a formative effort. Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, and Michael Rutherford are here, but the guitarist is Anthony Phillips and the drummer is John Mayhew. Gabriel, Banks, Phillips, and Rutherford are responsible for the compositions, which are far more ambitious than the group's earlier efforts ("Silent Sun," etc.).

Includes Japan exclusive track 'Giving It All'. It was winter in Manhattan. The streets were frozen and still the band rode bicycles to the Power Station on 53rd and back to Brooklyn for three weeks. Three weeks that would mark the birth of Double Infinity - the album that constitutes a grand departure for Big Thief. An ultramodern community of musicians gathered in the warm wooden room where Bruce once stood. They all tracked together – simultaneously – improvising arrangements and making collective discoveries. Laraaji created drones with zither and an iPad and sang intuitive vocal melodies. Joshua Crumbly played bass; Mikey Buishas made live tape loops and played keys; Mikel Patrick Avery, Jon Nellen, and Caleb Michel played percussion; Adam Brisbin played guitar; and Hannah Cohen, Alena Spanger and June McDoom sang background vocals. Along with core members Adrianne, Buck, and James, the group played for nine hours a day. Double Infinity is the archive of this play. It could only have been produced, engineered, and mixed by longtime Big Thief collaborator Dom Monks. “Double Infinity,” reaches into the idea of inner and outer worlds, and the body as the bridge.

May Blitz (alongside Rory Gallagher's Taste) were among the first of the newly formed hard rock power trios to take up the challenge of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience; that is, making the biggest possible noise with the smallest available lineup, but never losing sight of melody and finesse while they did so. Certainly anyone catching their early live show was guaranteed to leave with their ears ringing but their brainbox humming, and the band's debut album was a seamless reiteration of their in-concert impact, all the way down to the extended riffing and miniature solos. May Blitz's strongest point, in terms of audience recognition, was drummer Tony Newman, and fans of the jazz-inflected style that he injected into the Jeff Beck Group certainly won't be disappointed by what they find here – indeed, with guitarist James Black beside him, it's not difficult to compare May Blitz to the Beck band's Beck-Ola, and find the better-known disc come up wanting every time. The epic "Smoking the Day Away" kicks things off in dynamic form, laying down the grinding, almost proto-metallic assault that was May Blitz's raison d'etre; later in the set, "Dreaming," "Virgin Waters," and "Squeet" all howl with a vengeance that might sound a little old-fashioned today, but was breathtakingly fresh at the time. Even better is "Fire Queen," which essentially blueprints the best parts of every metal act from Judas Priest to the Cult, except it doesn't hang around long enough to spoil the effect. Rather like May Blitz themselves, in fact.

CD 1: Live from Soundscape on November 11, 1979. CD 2: Recorded November 10, 1979 in NYC, the first 72 minutes of an unedited talk by Sun Ra.

Song of Innocence is the debut album by American composer and producer David Axelrod. It was released in October 1968 by Capitol Records. In an effort to capitalize on the experimental climate of popular music at the time, Axelrod composed the album as a suite-like tone poem interpreting Songs of Innocence, a 1789 illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. Recording took place at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles with an orchestra and studio musicians from the Wrecking Crew collective, including keyboardist and conductor Don Randi, guitarist Al Casey, bassist Carol Kaye, and drummer Earl Palmer.

Includes many cosmic and spacey rock numbers that make full use of synthesizers, including "Stardrive" and "Want To Take You Higher"! Released in 1973.

Like many of his peers, Cat Stevens made records that were identified by strong, memorable hit singles, but make no mistake: he made albums that were cohesive works onto themselves. For that reason, the very idea of a Cat Stevens greatest-hits collection may be troublesome to some fans, since they will only notice the missing album tracks, but Greatest Hits does its job exceptionally well. With the exception of "The Hurt," all of his hits from the early '70s - "Wild World," "Moon Shadow," "Peace Train," "Morning Has Broken," "Sitting," "Oh Very Young," "Another Saturday Night," "Ready," and "Two Fine People" - are here, along with three other fine album tracks. In short, it is everything that casual fans need - and even fans that find a favorite or two missing will be hard-pressed to deny that this is a solid introduction and a great listen.

In 2000, Marilyn Manson not only was recovering from his fans' rejection of Mechanical Animals, he was scarred from Columbine and, worst of all, he was no longer America's demon dog. What was Brian Warner to do, standing on such uneasy ground? As a smart man and savvy marketer, he knew that it was time to consolidate his strengths, blend Omega with Antichrist Superstar, and return with a harsh, controversial, operatic epic: a vulgar concept album to seduce his core audiences of alienated teens and cultural cops. The resulting album, Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death), is intended as the third part of the trilogy beginning with Antichrist Superstar, and its convoluted story line is fairly autobiographical, but the amazing thing isn't the story - it's that he figured out to meld the hooks and subtle sonic shading of Mechanical Animals with the ugly, neo-industrial metallicisms of Antichrist…

David Hazeltine evidently salutes pianist Bill Evans on this Venus CD, as eight of the nine songs were recorded by Evans for Riverside and the late pianist's influence is definitely a part of Hazeltine's style (though the Japanese liner notes make it difficult to confirm for sure). Accompanied by two sympathetic musicians, bassist George Mraz and drummer Billy Drummond, Hazeltine's interpretations of standards like "Beautiful Love," "Alice in Wonderland" and "When You Wish Upon a Star" are lyrical and to the point. The lively setting of "How Deep Is the Ocean" and loping treatment of "Tenderly" also merit praise. Hazeltine's sole composition is "For Bill," a fluid piece that is also reminiscent of Bill Evans' approach to the piano and writing.

Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the release of "Living On The Hill: A Danish Underground Trip 1967-1974", a 3CD clamshell boxed set celebrating the so-called “underground” rock music scene that emerged from Denmark at the tail end of the 1960s. It was an era that saw huge changes, both musical and social and was a pivotal period for creativity in rock music throughout Europe.
The influence of ground-breaking artists from Britain and the USA such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Traffic, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Jefferson Airplane et al spread far and wide. In Denmark, as in many other European countries, the cries of change were made by students, radicals and hippies to a backdrop of emerging “underground” bands who were fusing the musical influences of psychedelia, jazz, blues, folk…