I write from the perspective as a Candy rather than Hans officianado and therefore assume that the direction on this album comes more from father than girl. As such we get Euro-dance flavours enhanced by the dualled horns (of every voice) of Hans and Candy in various combinations. Very hard to tell whether the Student has become the Master, but DD allows you to explore the possibilities. It also explains why Hans and Candy haven't recorded before, the latter being clearly derivative of Dad spearated only by her own influences.

Pruning 16 tracks from Hopkins' extensive catalog for a best-of meant that some hard choices had to be made. The ones Rhino came up with won't satisfy everyone, but the label did take the correct road by sticking exclusively to the earliest part of his career, 1947-61. Perhaps the decision will offend some fans who feel that his 1960s and '70s work should be represented, but two things should be acknowledged. First, Hopkins, as is the case with most artists, did his most interesting recordings in the earlier part of his career. Second, as is the case with many blues artists, he did not vary his approach substantially throughout the decades. So what you have is a good assortment of his first 15 years on disc, taken from about ten labels, including both originals and covers, and placing the singer/guitarist in various instrumental contexts: with a full electric band (Sonny Terry is on a couple of 1961 cuts), as a solo guitarist, or accompanied by nothing more than a bass or additional guitarist. It's a good deal for those who want only one Hopkins disc, and for those who want a best-of that's more extensive, there's Rhino's own two-disc anthology, Mojo Hand.

Art & Roman Griswold have dominated the Toledo, Ohio blues scene for the last ten years, after the death of their erstwhile mentor and colleague Big Jack Reynolds. While The Griswolds' style differed from Big Jack's their arrival in the Detroit/Toledo area in the 1950s brought them under his and Little Walter Mitchell's influence. Roman is the older brother, but Art has always been the leader with both his guitar histrionics and his staccato vocals. They recorded singles throughout the 1960s and 1970s on Fortune and other regional labels, but it wasn't until 1987 when the Griswolds had material released on an album, Blue Suit's initial release "Two Aces & A Jack," which they shared with Big Jack Reynolds. They remained minor figures in the regional blues world until the 1980s when their band (Art on guitar & vocals, Roman on organ and vocals, Eli "Professor Easy" Garner on tenor sax and Allen "Funky Monkey" Szombati on drums) was the hottest group in the area.

China Crisis Collection: The Very Best of China Crisis doesn't lie; true to its title, the album gathers China Crisis' brightest moments. While the exclusion of "The Highest High" is an oversight, this is one of the most accurate and thorough summaries of a band's career. Uniting elements of synth pop, jazz, progressive rock, and new wave, China Crisis sound like nobody else.

This album was released in 1973 following the amazingly original albums 'Back To Front' and 'Himself' released in 1972 and 1971. It seems the 70s are O'Sullivan's vintage era and it is astonishing he could keep writing so many songs of highest quality and originality. Like the previous album, this one includes, not only hit songs like 'Get Down' and 'Ooh Baby', but also heart-warming and memorable songs like 'Where peaceful waters fllow', 'Afriend of mine' and 'They've only themselves to blame'. One of the characteristics of this album is the unabashed sense of humour and striking melodies which go very well with the witty lyrics in the songs like 'I'm a writer not a fighter', 'Who knows perhaps maybe' and 'If you love me like you love me'. This is certainly one of the best albums by O'Sullivan.

Folksongs & Ballads Review by Fred Thomas
Folksongs & Ballads is the only document of Tia Blake's short-lived stint as a folk performer. In 1970, Blake was an American teenager living in Paris who stumbled into a recording contract that resulted in a single LP of 11 public domain folk compositions. There was only one live performance in Paris to promote the album's release, and the next summer Blake left France, never to return and never to record or perform publicly again. California reissue label Water extends the original album with some rehearsal tapes, as well as three songs from 1976 recorded by the Canadian Broadcasting Company but never used, representing just about every song the artist ever put to tape in her time. With minimal orchestration of two guitars, Blake's darkly powerful voice, and the occasional flute or dobro flourish, these traditional songs are rendered either gorgeously wistful – as on the breezy "Wish I Was a Single Girl Again" or the trucker's anthem "Plastic Jesus" – or crushingly sad. Swinging between these extremes, the album finds a quiet gracefulness that bests some of the most successful folk albums of its time.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

Show tunes provide a multitude of reference material for the traditional vintage jazz or pop vocalist. Then there are movie themes, more familiar to the general public, especially when they were seen later on a modern invention called television. This collection of 26 tracks features a modicum of jazz, but mainly pop tunes from the Golden Era of the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Big bands are prevalent as the backup groups, sometimes including strings, with little instrumental improvisation and stock charts. Among the most famous of these sentimental journey songs are "Moon River" from Billy May, "Call Me Irresponsible" by Bobby Darin, Dean Martin's slightly sloshed "Baby, It's Cold Outside," and Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" and his actually hip "The Continental" (two of three Cole selections heard here). There are also two from Johnny Mandel with the Pied Pipers, "Swinging on a Star" by Freddie Slack, a young Nancy Wilson with "Secret Love," and soupier group vocal pieces from the King Sisters, Bob Hope with the Clark Sisters, the Lettermen, the Four Freshmen, and Ray Anthony with the Belvederes on the apropos "Thanks for the Memory." Overall, this is nothing more than a trip down that lane of reminiscence for those familiar with the old dirt road path to grandma's, now a superhighway.

Robert Schumann often described the opposing “Florestan” and “Eusebius” facets of his own personality. The contrasts between the mercurial, exuberant Florestan and the more considered and introspective Eusebius comes into sharp focus when you compare these spectacular Chicago performances of Schumann’s Second and Third symphonies under Daniel Barenboim with their more recent Decca counterparts with Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Cleveland Orchestra.

When he wrote his second String Quintet, op.111, in 1890, Brahms thought, strangely enough, that it would be his artistic testament, to be followed by "some glorious farniente, a little time between life and death". But this serene work, which disconcerted the composer's friends by its complexity and by the importance it gives to the viola, was to be succeeded by another quintet, this time with clarinet, which was inspired by Brahms's fascination with the playing of the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld. The supreme masterpiece among his chamber works featuring the clarinet, this sublime opus 115 is undoubtedly one of the composer's most popular works.

Way to Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake Review by James Christopher Monger
Edited down from performances in London, Melbourne, and New York City, the 15 tracks that populate the lovely and inspiring Way to Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake feel far more intimate than the live tag would suggest. Drake's original producer, the venerable Joe Boyd, wanted to recapture the intimacy of Drake's recordings while maintaining the late singer/songwriter's evocative spirit, so any instances of applause have been removed, resulting in a set that feels both wildly unpredictable and incredibly reverent, with highlights arriving via Vashti Bunyan's beautiful, Robert Kirby-arranged rendition of "Which Will," Lisa Hannigan's haunting and spare version of "Black Eyed Dog," and Robyn Hitchcock's kaleidoscopic retelling of Pink Moon's spooky "Parasite."

2015 marks the 20-year milestone in their illustrious career and to celebrate the band have curated a special remix album 'Faithless 2.0.' A package comprised of 28 tracks split across two CDs joining dots between past, present and future. While CD1 firmly brings their catalog back to life, CD2 celebrates 14 of Faithless' career-defining records, with originals 'Insomnia', 'Mass Destruction', 'We Come 1' and 'Salva Mea' reminding us quite how timeless their music really is.
Calling on those they've inspired and been inspired by throughout their remarkable career, the album sees heavy hitters Avicii, Tiesto, Above & Beyond, Eric Prydz, Armin Van Buuren; alongside underground connoisseurs Booka Shade, Claptone, High Contrast and Purple Disco Machine all provide their own takes on their seminal classic material.

Back in 2002, Lacuna Coil released an album which is now undeniably an anthem-laden millennial classic that established them as a band with the stamina to go the distance. Now, 20 years later, the current lineup of Lacuna Coil decided to revisit the songs, but not to just re-record them as they were but deconstruct and transport them into 2022.

You wanna hear a band about to explode? In June 1977, Cheap Trick was in Los Angeles to record their second album, In Color. To get the band in shape for the record, they booked 5 gigs at the Whisky a Go Go the weekend of June 3. The result: a series of fire-breathing shows that you can still hear reverberating on the Sunset Strip to this day. KROQ DJ Rodney Bingenheimer introduced the band at the shows, and his memories are clear: ““The Whisky was packed for every show. A lot of girls showed up. It was like the ‘new’ Beatles had arrived.” Indeed, this concert stand takes its place alongside The Doors in 1966, Led Zeppelin in 1969, and Van Halen in 1977 as among the most notorious shows hosted by the venerable venue. As drummer Bun E. Carlos puts it, “The Whisky shows capture a hungry band. It's right before we went on tour with KISS and became much more famous than we were at this point. It was two nights where we did all our cool stuff from our first couple of records and it's chock-full of goodies.”

The second album by Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow was a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit like a shot heard round the world; where the later efforts from bands like the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and especially, the Charlatans, were initially not too much more than cult successes, Surrealistic Pillow rode the pop charts for most of 1967, soaring into that rarefied Top Five region occupied by the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and so on, to which few American rock acts apart from the Byrds had been able to lay claim since 1964. And decades later the album still comes off as strong as any of those artists' best work. From the Top Ten singles "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" to the sublime "Embryonic Journey," the sensibilities are fierce, the material manages to be both melodic and complex (and it rocks, too)…