Roots and groove mark this teaming of John Hiatt and the North Mississippi Allstars. On Master of Disaster, legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson and his sons Luther and Cody (the Allstars' guitarist and drummer, respectively) team with veteran bassist David Hood to give Hiatt's music a slow simmer rather than the high voltage fans might have expected from the collaboration. Yet the airy, organic interplay of the band provides the perfect complement for Hiatt's songs of folkish simplicity and lyrical grace. With the title track, he addresses the artist's midlife crisis and finds creative renewal in the process, a theme revisited in the country balladry of "Old School." There's a ragtime spirit to "Wintertime Blues" and "Back on the Corner," the insistence of a tom-tom's thump on "Love's Not Where We Thought We Left It" and "Find You At Last," a slide guitar that slices and dices through "Ain't Ever Goin' Back." With "When My Love Crosses Over," Hiatt returns to the soulful, soaring romantic balladry that remains a signature specialty, while "Cold River" tells a story that probes the coldest resources of the human heart. The result is his richest and most consistently satisfying release since the late 1980s.

Don Pasquale is among the last of Donizetti’s sixty-six completed operas. After the successful premiere of Linda di Chamounix in Vienna in May 1842. Donizetti made his way to Milan, hoping to get a new libretto for a comic opera for Paris. He actually started on a work called ‘Ne m’oubliez pas’ (do not forget me) before abandoning it when he got the commission to write a comic opera for the Théâtre Italien. Giovanni Ruffini, an Italian political exile living in Paris, wrote the libretto based on a previous opera by Pavesi. Donizetti was not happy with Ruffini’s verses and made changes of his own to the extent that his librettist refused to attach his name to the printed libretto.

Guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarelli returns with another solid collection of tastefully swinging standards on Knowing You. Never straying too far from what he does best, Pizzarelli is nonetheless an exciting improviser and pleasing vocalist who always finds a way to make an old chestnut of a tune his own. Here, his rapport with such longtime bandmates as pianist Ray Kennedy, bassist Martin Pizzarelli, and drummer Tony Tedesco is instinctual, full of humor, and filled with call-and-response interplay. To these ends, Pizzarelli has compiled an enjoyable set of well- and lesser-known standards, including the sprightly swinger "Coffee, Black," the elegantly mellow "The Shadow of Your Smile," and the sweetly unexpected Brian Wilson classic "God Only Knows."

Inspired by a fable by La Fontaine, Rameau produced perhaps his most brilliant music for his penultimate great work, blending reality and the surreal on several levels. This passionate new production by José Montalvo stunningly choreographed by Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu, sets new standards in entertainment, charm and ingenuity. The sharp and spectacular multimedia staging does full justice to Rameau's dazzling burlesque, confirming Olivier Rouvière's statement that ‘Les Paladins' is the last laugh of a witty 77-year old composer’. Recorded live in 2004 at the Paris Théâtre du Châtelet in true surround sound, both the virtuoso cast and Les Arts Florissants are in top form, clearly enjoying themselves in the masterful hands of William Christie.

While workwing on Leaving Home, Magnus Birgersson found himself with a plethora of ideas and sound sketches. Eventually, the material was enough to give birth to two different Solar Fields albums, and Extended came to life in 2005, one month earlier than Leaving Home. Downtempo liquid patterns are what makes Solar Fields music so unique, and Extended is no exception: Magnus Birgersson signature sound is here configured in one of its most peaceful and relaxed outcomes. Synthetic drums and beats are always left behind but in rare occasions (namely the final "Detection"), as the album focuses on the ambient side of Birgersson spectrum, crafting meditative and spacey, astral patterns.

Intriguing and mysterious, "Yolo", dissects a combination of Max random synthesised sounds and field recordings into fragments and particles which are then sieved through in microscopic detail. Inoue moves the focus with a speed that is at first disorientating but demonstrates the concise precision that has made his deserved reputation as an artist that is not afraid to explore and expand. In many respects it's like a diary of intimate impressions, internalised and deeply processed; a collection of fading super-8 memories moving jerkily in and out of the frame of the imagination.
There is no lengthy exposition or superfluous effect to be found on any of the tracks. Rather there's an insistence and urgency to cut to the chase…

The first major-label release of Mutantes material was this 1999 compilation, put together by longtime Brazilian fan David Byrne through his Luaka Bop label. Including tracks from the band's late-'60s and early-'70s LPs (available separately through Omplatten), Everything Is Possible is a solid collection that only includes 14 tracks but does spotlight Mutantes' tremendous diversity. From the birth of tropicalia on their first album from 1968 (wildly experimental pop songs like "Panis Et Circenses" and "Bat Macumba") plus their later, more straight-ahead incarnations, the album gives beginners a solid place to start. The inclusion of both versions of the rather tiresome Janis Joplin retread "Baby" is a bit regrettable, but all around, Everything Is Possible gets it right better than could be hoped from a domestic compilation.

Probably one of the best instalments in a consistently top-quality career, Leaving Home clearly deals with the connection between space and emotion, and the consequences of distancing from your comfort zone. And it does so in the usual Solar Fields way: through intense, layered, touching downtempo tunes. In a so frenzied era, where everything is filtered through haste and technology, the very idea of artists like Solar Fields, taking their time to create vast, multifaceted environments through synthetic sounds should be praised.

2CD set featuring 26 tracks from one of Europe's most popular rock combo's who formed in 1969. This compilation takes tracks from the 1998 & 1995 albums 'Sonic Origami' and 'Sea Of Light'. Tracks include 'Love in Silence', 'Between Two Worlds' and 'Spirit of Freedom'. 2CD set was made in Germany in 2005 and it's 24-bit digitally remastered.

Angel Air continues to sweep up the furthest flung crumbs of the Ray Russell canon for reissue, and now they've finally swatted the Mouse onto CD. This quartet, comprising Russell, drummer Alan Rushton, keyboardist Jeff Watts, and singer Alan Greed released their sole album on EMI in 1973. Russell jokes in the booklet that "attempts to make a single were forgotten about an hour into the first session," but even so the compulsive "Electric Lady," a throbbing rocker or alternately, the bouncy pop-flecked "We Can Make It" both fit that bill. And even if "Going Out Tonight" was a little too quirky for singledom, it was still the perfect set opener on-stage or on record.

The first collaboration ever between conductor William Christie and director Luc Bondy with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, this production of Hercules has been a major event. Hercules returns from the war with Iole, a princess he fell in love with. Mad with jealousy, Déjanire, his wife, ends up totally insane after poisoning her husband. Half theatrical performance, half secular oratorio, Hercules wasn’t originally meant to be performed in front of an audience. Luc Bondy chose to show the dramatis personae as ordinary people, victims of their passions. The superb Chorus of the Arts Florissants, both mediator and prosecutor, is the main witness of this tragedy of women’s jealousy.