When you listen to The Poem of Ecstasy', Scriabin advised, 'look straight into the eye of the Sun', and he made sure that Ecstasy was orchestrated in such a way as to burn itself onto the consciousness. Whether by design or not, and without leaving you with tinnitus, this new performance, in its moments of joyful - and finally tintinnabular - climactic clamour, does just that. There is a sensational resolve from (and resolution for) the horns as they eventually take over and expand the trumpets' assertions and reach for the heights. And, thankfully, Pletnev, his fearless players and his engineers have left room to maximize this moment of arrival.

The brilliant young violinist Chloë Hanslip has recorded another volume of Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series, and displays her usual insouciant virtuosity and obvious delight in the music. Glazunov’s Violin Concerto, written for Leopold Auer, is a masterpiece of violin writing, including a brilliantly effective cadenza by the composer himself. As Hans Keller wrote, ‘Glazunov created an almost perfect concerto—instrumentally, the best I know amongst pianists’ violin concertos’.

For this set of Beethoven's first five symphonies, Jordi Savall began with the fundamental idea of recovering the original sound of the orchestra and tempo as the composer imagined them. All the orchestral work was performed with instruments corresponding to those used at the time, and by 55-60 musicians, a number similar to that arranged by the composer. 35 players were selected from Le Concert des Nations alongside 20 young musicians from different countries across world. The main goal was to reflect, in our 21st century, all the richness and beauty of these symphonies, through a true balance between colors and the quality of the orchestra's natural sound.

Freedom of Choice is the third studio album by the American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in May 1980 on the Warner Bros. label. The album contained their biggest hit, "Whip It", which hit No. 8 and No. 14 on the Billboard Club Play Singles and Pop Singles charts, respectively. Freedom of Choice peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.

Crossing Muddy Waters was singer-songwriter John Hiatt's fifteenth album, released in 2000. A raw album recorded with no drummer, it was a purely acoustic album that brought elements of bluegrass music into his Americana sound. (The title of the album is a pun, referencing blues legend Muddy Waters.) It was nominated for a Grammy award in 2001 for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Can it get any better? If aliens came down needing to know what funk was all about, in all its talented, embrace-anything-and-everything, screw with your head and get your butt down glory, then this is a prime candidate for what to give them. The man, his voice, his bass, the backing of a prime core band including his guitarist brother Catfish, Fred Wesley, and Maceo Parker leading the brass – beautiful, hilarious, and just plain great. This one-disc collection could easily be a two-disc or more if one wanted to include every last highlight from Collins' up-down-all-around career – his work with James Brown alone is beyond the bomb – but when it comes to solo work, this is as perfect a place to start as any. Drawing mostly on the albums done with the active help of George Clinton in the late '70s, Back in the Day is a model for what a good compilation should be. Sound is excellent throughout, while full details on who plays what and where, along with where everything came from in the first place, all appear in exhaustive detail. The liner notes, meanwhile, come from longtime funk road manager (Brown, Prince, plenty of others) Alan Leeds, explaining every step of Collins' wonderful story.

French act AKIN was formed back in 1998, and following two demo releases that were favouarably received by the local French metal press they were signed to French label Sacral Productions. Their full length debut album Verse was released in 2001, followed by the EP Forecast in 2003. A few years of inactivity followed, but in 2009 the band decided to have another go. The end result became the CD The Way Things End. Initially self-released in April 2011, and following the band signing to US label Progrock Records reissued worldwide later the same year.

Strange Brew: Weird & Wonderful Covers From the Atlantic & Warner Vaults Review by Jason Ankeny
Much of what's so great about the soul-jazz of the late 1960s and 1970s is the jazz community's embrace of contemporary pop and rock & roll – purists blanched, of course, but a new generation of musicians recognized the potential in the melodies and rhythms that dominated AM radio, setting out to reinvent these songs by seizing and expanding their undeniable groove. Strange Brew: Weird & Wonderful Covers From the Atlantic & Warner Vaults collects some of the most imaginative and unexpected renditions to emerge from the WEA roster – the unfortunate subtitle may suggest the material boasts little more than novelty value, but to the contrary, much of it is genuinely compelling, not to mention genuinely funky. If there's a common modus operandi at work here, it's maintaining just enough trace elements of the original to keep a given song familiar, but twisting and stretching it far enough to create something fresh and new – highlights include Rahsaan Roland Kirk's "My Girl," Ananda Shankar's "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and Jack McDuff's "Blowin' in the Wind."

This is a cool little compilation of late-'60s and early-'70s spiritual soul and funky jazz. The "psychedelic" term in the title has more to do with the era than the music. It's true there are some spaced-out moments here, such as Sun Ra's "Spontaneous Simplicity" and Freddie Hubbard's notoriously freaky "Threnody for Sharon Tate," but let's face it, the former was psychedelic before the word was invented and the latter was attempting an indictment of the entire hippie generation. The majority of this material was rooted in early funk and fusion explorations of the Miles Davis era. There are some revelatory cuts here, such as the opener, Gary Burton's way-out groover "Vibrafinger," which is rockin', dirty, nasty, and greasy.

Backbeats Records is strictly a compilation company based in the U.K. and distributed throughout the European Union at budget prices. What they do is simply compile collections of dance music by well-known and obscure artists from the disco era to the late '90s. And for what it’s worth, when it comes to licensing, they do a terrific job, and this set is a case in point. Compiled by Ian Dewhirst, this collection of '70s and '80s soul walks the end of the classic soul era’s foray into funk, disco, and beyond into the '80s high-production modes associated with that era. Dewhirst is a smart cookie, however, and while the '80s produced some of the lamest records ever in the name of soul, he’s avoided all of them on Back to My Place Baby, an excellent collection of babymakers.

In the crowded underbrush of the late sixties British psych blues scene Jasper was definitely at the head of its class. The quintet's personalized blues style, with Steve Radford's excellent lead-guitar lighting the way (punctuated also by their keen use of flute and harpsichord) is well expressed in the inspired version of 'Baby Please Don't Go' and 'Ain't no Peace'. Unfortunately soon after the release of their rare 1969 debut album Liberation the group disbanded and disappeared from the scene.

If Alternative 4 feels like a rushed album, it’s because, somehow, it is. Prior to its recording, the Cavanagh brothers witnessed the death of their mother: the event is commemorated in the album’s cover artwork, which represents a burial place inside an angel’s shroud. The album’s main theme is based on betrayal. But not the typical relationship issues treated like a game by Chad Kroeger, but rather the realization that the importance of relationships and friendships can be understood only when lost forever, in favor of some sort of “ignorance of convenience” in order to make thoughts of misanthropy, nihilism and suicide hit as much later as possible: a battle against nothing made quietly by every human on Earth, yet widely accepted and practiced by the modern society like an elephant in the room…

The Kinks were one of the most influential bands of the British Invasion. Early singles "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" were brutal, three-chord ravers that paved the way for punk and metal while inspiring peers like the Who. In the mid-'60s, frontman Ray Davies came into his own as a songwriter, developing a wry wit and an eye for social commentary that culminated in a pair of conceptual LPs, The Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), that proved enormously influential over the years. By the end of the '70s, the Kinks had refashioned themselves as a hard rock stadium act, resulting in a surge of late-period popularity until they disbanded for good in the mid-'90s.

NOW Music is proud to present the next instalment in our ongoing ‘Yearbook’ series, NOW – Yearbook 1986; 80 tracks from a fantastic year in pop! This special edition CD is housed in ‘hard-back-book’ packaging, including a 28-page booklet featuring a summary of the year, a track-by-track guide, a quiz, and original singles artwork.
Opening with two stellar #1s, ‘A Different Corner’ from George Michael and ‘The Sun Always Shines On T.V.’ from a-ha, before leading into huge hits from Duran Duran (‘Notorious’), Kate Bush (‘Hounds Of Love’) and ‘Thorn In My Side’ from Eurythmics. A top year for pure Pop magic is showcased in the next run of hits, including the #1 from Falco, plus Level 42, Kim Wilde, Nick Kamen, Owen Paul, and The Bangles, before timeless radio friendly Pop from the Pretenders, and the lead single from one of the year’s biggest albums (‘Graceland’) from Paul Simon with ‘You Can Call Me Al’. Reggae-Pop from UB40 and another #1 from Boris Gardiner give way to two of the year’s most enduring ballads from Simply Red and Spandau Ballet.

In the Telemann mountains, much of the topography remains terra incognita because most of Telemann's music remains an undiscovered country. But whatever future generations of hardy musicologists may uncover, it is unlikely that Telemann's Nouveaux Quatuors en Six Suites published in Paris in 1738 will be displaced as among his output's highest peaks.