A collection of Morricone arrangements from the era before he became a groundbreaking soundtrack composer. Whether these recordings were released as singles or were created to appear in film, Morricone invested the most throw-away pop with an extraordinary quality; as the numbers, some-times stylishly romantic, often amusingly playful, performed by such popular domestic artists as Barbara Baldassare, Eduardo Vianello, Catherine Spaak, Tony Del Monaco and Miranda Martino, attest. Included here also are the two sides by the American folk singer Peter Tevis with the choir of Franco Potenza. Notte Infinita and Pastures of Plenty inspired Sergio Leone to commission his film scores from Morricone. To Leone's ears the single suggested the way forward, provided an unconventional musical blueprint for the landscape of the spaghetti western; what his biographer Christopher Frayling described as Duane Eddy meets Rodrigo in the middle of a crowded Via Veneto .

Performed by top-tier artists and ensembles like the London Chamber Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Anne Queffélec, Mikhail Pletnev, Kun-Woo Paik, Alexis Weissenberg, and others.

To celebrate the centenary of the composer's death, this compilation offers a journey through Erik Satie’s unusual and distinctive piano works, by three of his greatest performers: Anne Queffélec, Bertrand Chamayou and Aldo Ciccolini. Bonus: his third Gnossienne orchestrated by Francis Poulenc, under the baton of Michel Plasson. rik Satie occupies a special place in the history of French music. Some see him as a hoaxer, others as a major avant-garde personality or an astonishing forerunner of surrealism. He was a colourful, comical, but lonely character, pianist at the Chat Noir club in Montmartre. His formidable fits of temper often led him into long-lasting quarrels – Debussy and Ravel felt the brunt of them – and he described himself as “a composer of musical furniture (…) who came very young into a very old world”. He never completed the studies he had started at the Paris Conservatoire, his teachers decrying his preference for practising his distinctive signature rather than practising the piano. Before long, he cultivated a bohemian life-style, frequenting Parisian cabarets, where he was introduced as ‘Erik Satie – gymnopédiste’, which relates to a naked dance. Not long afterwards, in 1888, he produced three short pieces for piano, called Gymnopédies…

With this release, David English and Pal Granlund bring the complete background story into the making of the MGM documentary 'Elvis: That's The Way It Is'. Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the movie's 1970 release, this ultimate collector's edition includes two hardback books, eight compact discs - housed in a gatefold sleeve - with over 450 minutes of music, including newly discovered unreleased performances.

All songs recorded live in Santa Cruz, November 13th, 1990.

Robert Plant opens Carry Fire with "The May Queen," a song that can't help but stir up memories of "Stairway to Heaven," the most mystical number Led Zeppelin ever cut. "The May Queen" doesn't sound a thing like "Stairway to Heaven," which is deliberate. As Plant murmurs about "the dimming of his light," the churning folk-rock – a rootless, restless gypsy hybrid of American, English, and Middle East traditions – comes to crest upon a violin line that appears to quote "Prodigal Son," a gospel blues attributed to Robert Wilkins.

Cheap Trick attempted to ride the new wave on 1982’s One on One, but wound up with a wipe-out, so they recovered by hiring Todd Rundgren, one of the few ‘70s album-rockers who proved that he knew how to negotiate the treacherous waters of the early ‘80s, for 1983’s Next Position Please. Rundgren wielded a heavy hand during his production, pushing Cheap Trick toward making a record that could easily be mistaken for a Utopia record – so much so, the Todd composition, “Heaven’s Falling,” slips onto the second side without calling attention to itself. The bright surfaces with the guitars and keyboards melding so tightly with the vocal harmonies they’re inseparable, produce a sound that is uncannily reminiscent of Oops!

In the first 20 years of his recording career, Devon Allman has made one thing very clear. He doesn’t stand still. As an artist and performer, he is always on the move, eager to stretch his boundaries, forever on the lookout for new sources of inspiration and new musicians to collaborate with. That ethos has driven him to continually create and move on. That’s why his discography to date – though it includes a number of solo albums – also shows releases with Honeytribe (with whom he debuted in 2006) and southern rock supergroup Royal Southern Brotherhood as well as with the Allman Betts Band. The resumé is a work in progress, yet one that is already worthy of the musical legacy handed down to him by his late father Gregg Allman of the legendary Allman Brothers Band.

When Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala silenced At the Drive-In in the midst of its popular emergence, there was no question that the two artists would return with new music as exciting as their previous band. However, there was plenty of discussion in corners and over drinks about what, exactly, that music would sound like. It was clear that much more was happening under those Afros than biting, post-hardcore anthemics laced with psychedelia. In 2002, Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala returned with the single "Tremulant," attributed to their new project, the Mars Volta. Its shifting soundscapes were certainly a hint, but with the Mars Volta's ambitious De-Loused in the Comatorium, it's clear the ATDI expats' mushroom-headed hairstyles hide bulging brains that pulsate with ideas, influences, and a fever-pitch desire to take music forward, even if they're occasionally led too far afield for the audience to follow…

Digitally remastered and expanded edition of this album from the Rock singer, songwriter and guitarist. First album Children of the Future was produced by Glyn Johns at Olympic Studios in London, and released in April 1968. The five-man line-up featured Steve Miller on guitar and vocals, Boz Scaggs on guitar and vocals, Lonnie Turner on bass, Tim Davis on drums and Jim Peterman on keyboards. The original side one of the album features a suite of linked psychedelic songs, while side two starts with two Boz Scaggs originals before culminating in a selection of blues cover versions. The bonus track is the non-album single side 'Sittin' in Circles'. The booklet of this Special Digipak Edition contains all the lyrics, a brand new booklet note by San Francisco journalist Joel Selvin, based on 2012 interviews with Steve Miller himself, and photos from Steve's own collection.

Until 1999's Free Soul (Capitol) and 2001's exhaustive but more excellent overall Petals (The Right Stuff) came along, Capitol Gold offered the best summation of this true original's horribly undervalued solo career. As with Free Soul, Capitol Gold leaves a significant gap by excluding the best moments from Minnie Riperton's debut (Come to My Garden), an album that was released on GTR. This issue would be rectified by The Right Stuff, a subsidiary of Capitol, for Petals. Still, Capitol Gold makes for a fine substitute introduction to Riperton; it includes all of her significant singles and a good survey of album tracks that didn't receive the notice they deserved when they were originally released.

Ultimate Sixties – The Classics brings together 100 of the most iconic tracks from the Swinging Sixties. From Petula Clark to The Stooges, and from Hawkwind to Engelbert Humperdinck, this album presents an eclectic mix of absolute classics from the decade that changed everything.

In the last 30 years, the relationship between the leading Czech string quartets and Janáček two String Quartets has evolved markedly. The best Czech performers have always produced fine recordings of these extraordinary works, but more recent generations of players have pursued a different level of engagement. While performances such as that of the Talich Quartet (2005) show remarkable insight, recordings by other quartets, such as the Haas and ≤kampa, grapple with the passion and drama, occasionally even sadism in these turbulent works. The Pražák Quartet has an international reputation in Czech repertoire, in particular for their Dvořák their new recording of Janáček’s Quartets shares many of their fellow ensembles’ keen engagement with the composer’s language.

The Style Council's albums were always weighed down by their far-reaching musical ambitions, which meant that their ideas were usually best heard on their singles. And while this period of Paul Weller's career has been criticized heavily, he wrote several excellent songs during the Style Council, most of which are featured on the fine compilation The Singular Adventures of the Style Council. Not all of the 16 songs are first-rate, as it begins to lose steam toward the end of the band's life, but "My Ever Changing Moods," "You're the Best Thing," "Long Hot Summer," "Shout to the Top!," "A Solid Bond in Your Heart," "Money Go Round," "Walls Come Tumbling Down," and "Speak Like a Child" are terrific, and make the collection worthwhile for fans of the Jam and Weller's solo career, as well as fans of New Romantic new wave and jazzy sophisti-pop.

By all means a phenomenal pop album that hit number nine on the black albums chart and crossed over to penetrate the pop charts at number 32, Nightclubbing saw Grace Jones working once again with Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, and the remainder of the Compass Point team. Nightclubbing also continues Jones' tradition of picking excellent songs to reinterpret. This time out, the Police's "Demolition Man," Bill Withers' "Use Me," and Iggy Pop's "Nightclubbing" receive radical reinterpretations; "Nightclubbing" is glacial in both tempo and lack of warmth, while both "Use Me" and "Demolition Man" fit perfectly into Jones' lyrical scheme. Speaking of a lyrical scheme, "Pull Up to the Bumper" (number five black singles, number two club play) is so riddled with naughty double entendres – or is it just about parallel parking? – that it renders Musique's "In the Bush" as daring as Paul Anka's "Puppy Love." Drive it in between what, Grace? It's not just lyrics that make the song stick out; jingling spirals of rhythm guitar and a simplistic, squelching, mid-tempo rhythm make the song effective, even without considering Jones' presence.