The album pays homage to some of Argue’s key influences with original songs dedicated to R. Buckminster Fuller, Alan Turing, and Mae West. Fellow Nonesuch artist Cécile McLorin Salvant, with whom Argue collaborated on her long-form musical fable Ogresse, joins the ensemble for “Mae West: Advice.” Dynamic Maximum Tension’s eleven tracks, on two CDs, also include a response to Duke Ellington’s “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” titled “Tensile Curves,” among other original songs.

Following it’s surprise digital release, Sigur Rós’ first new studio album in ten years, ÁTTA, is their most intimate and emotionally direct record to date.

"Already during my childhood, I became absorbed in Scriabin’s universe and fascinated with the idea of embracing the transformation of his style in one concert. With this program, I draw together pieces that are connected through the realization of similar ideas in Scriabin’s different stylistic periods. For example, the pathetic, rebellious line is drawn in the Etude op. 8 no. 12, Prelude op. 11 no. 14, Prelude op. 27 no. 1, Poeme op. 32 no. 2, Preludes op. 48 no. 1&4 and going to op. 74…"

Following the publication of the collection Parnassus Musicus Ferdinandaeus in 1615, all kinds of compiled collections of sacred music started to appear, often featuring music for smaller ensembles and of course, in the new early-Baroque style, music scored for voice, instruments and basso continuo. The compiler, usually a composer himself, gathered works from his colleagues, added some of his own work and had the collection published. Nowadays because of copyright this would be unimaginable, particularly if publishing the compositions of one’s own contemporaries.

The most well-informed aficionados of NYC's jazz avant-garde speak of pianist John Blum with reverential respect, yet his discography is shockingly small for someone with a three-decade career: five albums as a leader, four as a sideman. Blum studied piano with seminal avant-gardist Cecil Taylor and ambidextrous master Borah Bergman, and it shows, yet his style at its most intense is more thickly textured than even theirs, and fully individualistic.

"For this recording, I have chosen Couperin at his most dramatic, powerful and often tragically brilliant. The Troisiême Ordre is a finely chosen selection of pieces in C minor and major. While Couperin may have had no specific overall architecture in mind for this selection, he is successful in offering us great variety, ranging from the classical theatricality of La Ténébreuse and the tender sighing of Les Regrets to the riotous clowning of Les Matelotes Provençales. Let us remember that when he gathered the music for his first book of harpsichord works, he was amassing selections from over 20 years of composing. This is truly a retrospective collection of harpsichord pieces."

This CD could almost have been subtitled "The Lost Years," defining the period in which Donovan's records barely even made it into stores so that they could be ignored by the public - that had been the fate of Essence to Essence (which actually made it into stores), and 7-Tease and Slow Down World - each died an absolute commercial death in its wake. More's the pity, because there's a lot of beautiful (even gorgeous) and clever music here, a big chunk of it about as good as anything that Donovan ever put out. The zeitgeist behind the songs on these two albums may throw people who are accustomed to his '60s material, when Donovan had a wide listenership and was in sync with the times; here he's singing against his times (and mostly against indifference and self-involvement), and he is so beguiling musically and lyrically, that one feels a real sense of tragedy that these albums weren't more widely heard…

Live in concert at Blues On The Eastside, L'l Big Horn Saloon in Cambridge, Ontario (Canada), Snooky Pryor gives his audience a taste of the fire that has developed his career along with the Chicago Blues sound. The harmonica master and his band are some 500 miles away from Chicago for this night out. They've brought the right attitude from home, though, as Pryor sings about the kinds of blues that take hold from time to time. He was 80 when this performance was recorded in late 2001. Few can ignite a room the way Pryor does, and it all comes from his experiences as a veteran bluesman. Since 1940, he's turned on Chicago audiences with his special kind of blues magic…

Ever since Charlie "Bird" Parker recorded his first Charlie Parker With Strings sessions in 1949 and 1950, jazz artists have hoped to enjoy the backing of lush string orchestras. But most will never get the chance because of the expense; it's a lot easier to pay four or five musicians than 15, 20, or 25. Ron Carter, however, did fulfill that dream in the late '70s and early '80s - first on 1978's Pick 'Em, then on 1981's Super Strings. In 2001, Fantasy reissued those Milestone dates back to back on this 78-minute CD. Typically, a jazz-with-strings project will emphasize overdone standards, but Carter's own material dominates this CD; the only tunes that he didn't write are Gordon Parks' "Don't Misunderstand" and Miles Davis' "All Blues." Carter's composing is solid throughout, and the material he provides ranges from introspective ballads ("Tranquil," "Opus 2") to a funky, gospel-minded offering ("Uptown Conversation")…

Berits Halsband was one of Sweden's greatest unsung progressive jazz rock units. Formed in Stockholm in 1974, their sole self-titled album was released in 1975 on the Forsaljud label and featured as much as 14 members, including a trumpets and flute horn section. The album included four lengthy instrumental steamy upbeat fusion pieces in a slightly folk-tinged jazz-rock vein; add to it a Canterbury-centric airiness and a rhodes’ based, post “Bitches Brew” intensity and what you get is one of the best mid-70s psychedelic-jazz rock albums you never heard of… Well, except the few ones, who kept the “collectors’ flame” on, with original copies nowadays fetching few hundreds of euros. 40 years later Greece’s Sound Effect Records, in collaboration with Musicbazz Productions presents the first ever reissue of this seminal '70s rarity on both vinyl and CD…