When the only music you can stand is the drumbeat of rage coursing through your aching head, the Sleaford Mods are always good for a spin. They’re Nottingham, England’s answer to the Fall, with singer Jason Williamson rant-rapping about everything from austerity-era Britain to consumerism to the foibles of the music business over Andrew Fearn’s spare-yet-sharp beats.

To say there has been a lot of anticipation for Coldplay’s fourth album, Viva La Vida, is an understatement. Having enlisted legendary leftfield producer Brian Eno, borrowed their album title from a painting by renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and made tantalising remarks about sonic reinvention, the world has been curious (to say the least) to hear what the ‘new’ Coldplay might sound like. Viva La Vida definitely makes some departures from the band’s usual formula, which happens to be one of the most commercially successful rock-pop blueprints of recent years.

Nurse With Wound rework The New Blocakders rare AF 1982 début, ‘Changez Les Blockeurs’ in a mechanically reclaimed reflux of the OG, as gruesome as McNuggets, and just as tasty.

Mannequin Records presents a LP compilation of Michael Antener (Swamp Terrorist) early 80's minimal synth/industrial projects Nacht'raum (with Michael Stämpfli) and, as solo, Bande Berne Crematoire.

The players of Holland Baroque continue their PENTATONE journey with Telemann Polonoise. Together with violinist Aisslinn Nosky, they take the listener on a journey to the wild nature and lively folk culture of Poland, viewed through the lens of Georg Philipp Telemann, whose Polish travels left a profound mark on his compositional style.

I really love the piano trio,” says Aki Takase, with a passion that mirrors her playing. “But not the old idea, where the pianist is king, and the bassist and the drummer are just sidemen.

Bob Kindred is a great tenor sax player who is consistently underrated and underexposed. Aside from some CDs released by a small audiophile label Mapleshade, it is not easy to find his leader albums in the market. Venus Records wanted to correct this situation and signed Kindred a few years ago and released this label debut album, Blue Moon.

The musical world of eighteenth-century Europe was a small one. Despite the problems presented by contemporary standards of transport, it was quite normal for composers in one part of Europe to be entirely au fait with what was happening elsewhere.

Acclaimed Dutch cellist Viola de Hoog presents Mendelssohn's two great cello sonatas.With a lifetime spent performing chamber repertoire on period instruments, de Hoog is an ideal, passionate exponent for this music, bringing performances that encapsulate the composer's sense of refined virtuosity.

This new Elgar surround-sound recording brings together some of Chandos’ finest exclusive British artists for the first time.

Alongside its ongoing and much lauded Haydn and Schubert series, both on-stage and on-record, the Doric String Quartet with this Mendelssohn album is adding a new milestone in its repertoire.

When Henry Purcell wrote his one and only opera "Dido and Aeneas" in the second half of the seventeenth century, there was no existing opera tradition in England. With a libretto based on Virgil’s Aeneid and its music stylistically close to and derived from the typically English ‘Masque’ form, Purcell created a monumental baroque opera. On this 1970 multi-channel Philips Classics recording, Dido is interpreted by soprano Josephine Veasey. The Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the John Alldis choir are conducted by Sir Colin Davis. The recording has been remastered in 2015 and is now re-released in Pentatones’s Remastered Classics series, which finally gives it the chance to expose its magnificent sound quality.

These are the two sea monsters from Greek mythology guarding each side of the Strait of Messina. Odysseus and his sailors navigated this notorious stretch of water they had to steer a middle path between the monsters to avoid coming too close to the shore and in doing so, risking losing their lives.

Carlo Domeniconi is a master of guitar composition. His fusion of Western and Eastern elements is a distinctive feature of his writing, and this album presents a body of work for the unusual combination of mandolin and guitar.

People who are passionate about music will soon have to carry out careful investigations in the ancient districts of the Austrian musical baroque, because these indeed seem to present themselves today as parts of a land rich in forgotten music.