The album DUO by Joachim Kühn and Michael Wollny marks the start of a collaboration between two extraordinary partners: the label ACT and Château Palmer, one of the most important Grand Cru wineries in Bordeaux. And it unites the worlds of music, wine and modern art in a unique way. The first, exclusive release brings together two icons of European jazz piano who are also close friends and mutual sources of inspiration. Two ever-alert and enormously creative minds, which possess the virtue of being able to listen, and also the confidence to do the right thing at the right moment.

KUU!’s songs are so well honed, they have a way of emotionally hitting the spot, and also staying lodged in the mind. The reason why this band has been making such waves in Germany is the special chemistry between the artists, combined with a sixth sense and an urgency about the way they communicate. The band members – Kalle Kalima, Frank Möbus (both on guitars) with drummer Christian Lillinger – are never short of creative ideas, and they form a strong yet supple understructure for the phenomenally expressive singer Jelena Kuljić.

The widespread positive response to “Lampedusa Lullaby”, KUU!’s 2018 label debut on ACT also gave rise to enthusiastic, imaginative and telling descriptions of the band’s music: “An alchemically complex jazz punk alloy. […] Really rather wonderful.”( PROG magazine). “A raw, thorny mixture of punk attitude, electro- dance elements, eccentric fusion, and free jazz outbursts.” (All About Jazz).

You can already hear the first notes of 'Speaking Sound': With German piano great Joachim Kühn and Mateusz Smoczyński, the violinist of the highly acclaimed Polish "Atom String Quartet", two musicians have come together who, without many words, click in a real magical way and inspire each other to explore the full range of their musical possibilities - from rich and beautiful melodies, to free outbursts of energy. Chamber jazz without borders.

Pianist Jan Lundgren from Ystad in Sweden and guitarist Yamandu Costa, from Brazil’s southernmost province Rio Grande del Sur might seem an unlikely pairing, and the combination of guitar and piano is well known to be fraught with difficulty. But the collaborative affinity of this duo, the chemistry which they have found through playing together, first in a handful of concerts, and now on this fine album, are something truly exceptional.

Sung by Janis Joplin (All is loneliness) and hailed by Philip Glass and Steve Reich as a pioneer of minimalism, Moondog merges the medieval canon (Music for little hands), like Satie , fugue and passacaille according to Bach, and the asymmetrical rhythms of popular dance: Santa Fe, Elfe Dance, Sea Horse, Rue Lette and Für Fritz. Among the young generation who more or less (!) Appropriates their music, pianist François Mardirossian is an exception. Sensitive to the different facets of this character resolutely timeless - until his own transcription of the famous Bird’s Lament (taken as the credits of several TV and radio shows), he preserves its medieval hieratism and jazzy ardor!

SUPERB THREE DISC SET FEATURING RARE LIVE & STUDIO RECORDINGS FROM THE 60s, THE 70s & THE 90s. Originally formed way back in 1958, the Bee Gees worked in so many styles and guises through their extraordinary career that there can barely be a music fan alive who doesn t appreciate at least some of their work. There is of course, also, the vast majority who appreciate nearly all of it, such was the supreme ability of the Brothers Gibb to compose and perform one of the most joyous and exceptional back catalogues in musical history. And this 3 CD Set, which features live and studio recordings made for radio and TV broadcast at various points in their career, is directed loudly and proudly at just such a fan. Featuring, on Disc One, tracks recorded for BBC Transmission on the (then) newly formed Radio One in 1967 and 1968, Disc Two continues with a show the group recorded for the soundstage programme in 1975, made shortly before the Bee Gees became one of the most famous and cherished pop groups in the world during the disco boom of the late decade. Concluding this collection, Disc Three contains the brothers VH1 Storytellers set, recorded for both TV and Radio broadcast in 1998.

Tyrannosaurus Rex's fourth album, A Beard of Stars, was the turning point where Marc Bolan began evolving from an unrepentant hippie into the full-on swaggering rock star he would be within a couple of years, though for those not familiar with his previous work, it still sounds like the work of a man with his mind plugged into the age of lysergic enchantment. "A Daye Laye," "Pavilions of Sun," and the title tune sure sound like the writings of an agreeably addled flower child, and Bolan's vocals are playfully mannered in a manner that suits his loopy poetry. However, after shunning the corrupting influences of electric guitars on Tyrannosaurus Rex's early recordings, A Beard of Stars finds Bolan plugging in as he turns on, and he sounds like he's clearly enjoying it; the wah-wah solo that closes "Pavilions of Sun" demonstrates how just a little electricity gave this music a new lease on life…

Yes, they really do still make albums like this in the 21st century. Steve Wold, otherwise known as Seasick Steve, released his second album, Dog House Music in 2006, his first purely solo effort; he had previously released an album entitled Cheap several years earlier for which he shared the credit with Swedish band the Level Devils. Dog House Music is like a really old John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters album, or maybe something even less commercial as Steve strums his guitar and sings along, his voice sounding drowned in bourbon, and occasionally a song such as "Fallen off a Rock" crashes to life, literally, with the guitar no longer picking out a sorrowful blues lick but strumming wildly and the drums smashing away in the foreground played by two members of his family, HJ Wold and PM Wold. Apart from that however, the entire album is played by Steve, recorded in what sounded like one take…

Letter to You comes quickly on the heels of Western Stars, a long-gestating 2019 immersion into the lush, progressive country vistas of the early 1970s, but in a sense, it's a true sequel to Bruce Springsteen's 2016 memoir Born to Run and its 2017 stage companion Springsteen on Broadway. It's an album where Springsteen reckons with the weight of the past, how its ghosts are still readily apparent in the present, an album where the veteran singer/songwriter is keenly aware he has more road in his rearview mirror than he does on the highway ahead of him.

The Brain Salad Surgery Deluxe Edition of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's album includes remastered versions of the original tracks, along with various alternate mixes, instrumental versions, and B-side tracks. The Deluxe Edition also features a die-cut poster and a 20-page booklet with digitally restored artwork.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer's most successful and well-realized album (after their first), and their most ambitious as a group, as well as their loudest, Brain Salad Surgery was also the most steeped in electronic sounds of any of their records. The main focus, thanks to the three-part "Karn Evil 9," is sci-fi rock, approached with a volume and vengeance that stretched the art rock audience's tolerance to its outer limit, but also managed to appeal to the metal audience in ways that little of Trilogy did…

Most of pianist Bill Evans' recordings were in a trio format, making this quintet date a nice change of pace. Evans' all-star group consists of tenor saxophonist Harold Land, guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Philly Joe Jones and the results are quite tasteful and explorative in a subtle way. This version of Thad Jones' "A Child Is Born" is most memorable.

Planet Zero contains reworked versions of several compositions released by Isao Tomita’s in the seventies, mainly from the 1976 album "The Planets".
Pioneering Japanese composer and synthesizer expert Isao Tomita bridged the gap between note-by-note classical/electronic LPs like Switched-On Bach and the more futuristic, user-friendly interfaces developed in the 1970s. After creating one of the first personal recording studios with an array of top synthesizer gear in the early '70s, Tomita applied his visions for space-age synthesizer music to his favorite modern composers - Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel - though his recordings steered a course far beyond the sterile academics of Wendy Carlos and other synthesists…