If the afterworld includes a red-light district, Erotic Rhythms from Earth would qualify as its soundtrack. The third recording from Austin, Texas programmer/multi-instrumentalist Shane O'Madden beckons you into an off-focus world of amorphous boundaries, one that hovers somewhere between eternity and soft-core carnality. Offering an assortment of quirky temptations too intriguing to resist, O'Madden blurs Middle Eastern textures (principally generated via violin) and ambient electronic wayfaring with sultry, unhurried trip-hop textures, subtle female cooing, and understated rhythms. It all combines to exude a beguiling mood of faint danger and fashionable decadence, where the final destination is a bazaar of hidden, delicious pleasures. If the disc's arresting cover image speaks to you, so, too, will this exotic, oddly accessible slice of imaginative trip-hop…

On True Colors, Cyndi Lauper began to edge her way into adult contemporary territory, but it was on her third album, A Night to Remember, that she concentrated all of her attention on becoming a self-consciously "mature" singer/songwriter. A Night to Remember doesn't always work, but not because she's incapable of performing polished, well-crafted middle-of-the-road material – "Time After Time" and "True Colors" prove that she could convincingly deliver ballads. Instead, the album bogs down because it assumes that labored arrangements and precisely detailed production are tantamount to musical sophistication. That said, there are some moments – such as the seductive "I Drove All Night" – that make a lasting impression, illustrating what Lauper was attempting to achieve with the record.

This 21-song set is representative of Roy Wood's always inventive work with the Move, Wizzard, and as a solo artist. It contains no fewer than three U.K. number one hits, in addition to the seasonal "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," and which usually makes a chart appearance during the holidays. And the sound quality is uniformly fine, which certainly hasn't been the case with some reissues like The Best of & the Rest of Roy Wood & Wizzard, which is something of a companion piece to this disc.

Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4 is the only work on the disc and the performance was recorded live in Mandel Concert Hall in May of this year. Prokofiev first based this symphony on his 1928 ballet The Prodigal Son, then revisited it nearly two decades later to create a work of greater scope and vitality. The 1947 revision expands the symphony’s scale, moving from calm, reflective passages to bursts of energy, tender lyricism, and a finale charged with rhythmic drive.

We know Satie as a loner, but it is less well known that Satie had also been in love. He had a brief and stormy affair with the painter Suzanne Valadon. The portrait she made of him is on the cover of this album, as pianist Guillaume Coppola has conceived it as an intimate portrait of the composer, one masked by a veil of modesty or provocation and which lies between antique and oriental inspiration, mystical phases, humour and cabaret. The miniature Bonjour Biqui and the motif of the Vexations possess rare allusions to Valadon and become commas between these chapters, as does Désespoir agréable, whose title alone seems to sum up Satie's life and work.

The Simply Mozart adventure, dedicated to his last three symphonies, comes to an end with this third volume and the 39th symphony. The programme also includes the overture to Così fan tutte ("a statement of the opera in miniature", according to Julien Chauvin) and the Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. Composed one year after Mozart's second trip to Paris, the Sinfonia concertante was directly inspired by the Parisian practice of having several soloists enter into dialogue with the orchestra; this was very much in vogue at the end of the 18th century. "Mozart left his mark on us and on our hearts with its second movement, one of the most poignant that he was ever to write," says Julien Chauvin; here his violin dialogues happily with the viola of Amihai Grosz, who has already made two recordings for Alpha Classics (ALPHA634 & 1013).

In 1982, a strange album, Dogged By Dogma, appeared under the name of The Ghoulies, a project masterminded by one Charlie Summers, and featuring no less than Dave Stewart and Pip Pyle alongside a host of anonymous Welsh session musicians. The music itself bore more than a passing resemblance to that of Hatfield and the North, a major influence of Summers, who got in touch with Stewart through mutual acquaintance Green Gartside (Scritti Politti's vocalist, whom Stewart had approached to sing on his debut solo single What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted?). With his regular drummer Nigel Harris having moved to London, Summers also managed to get Pyle involved, and recording sessions took place in Cardiff sometime in 1981…

Behemoth's ascent is a story that can be told in many ways and from many perspectives. When one writes about a band that has written and rewritten the book on extreme metal for over 30 years that much is inevitable. However, it would be difficult to really capture the story's essence without focusing on the ambition and power which drive the band. While both power and ambition, as terms, can be tied in some way and some meaning to every story - their interpretation here is exact and carefully chosen. Ambition is the charioteer, navigating ever forwards to new horizons and visions and power are the horses, without whose prowess those horizons would be but a distant dream.
The new opus, The Shit Ov God, is emblematic of that. Here's a band that, 34 years in, is releasing it's most inflammatory and extreme record to date…

Tot ver in de achttiende eeuw was de luit hét instrument van de Europese adel. De beste renaissance- en barokcomponisten schreven talloze werken voor het instrument. Een van de beste luitisten van dit moment, Christopher Wilson, maakte een prachtige keuze uit het enorme luitrepertoire uit de Franse renaissance. Verfijnd, rustgevend en sfeervol.

Written by a young and ambitious Chopin as self-promotional vehicle to demonstrate his performance capabilities and, to a lesser degree, his compositional skills, the two piano concertos have remained as an important part of the instrument's repertoire. Often derided for their somewhat trite orchestral parts, these concertos are nevertheless beautiful, thoroughly enjoyable works. While there are countless recordings of the piano works of Beethoven and Mozart on period instruments, this inclination has found its way to Chopin's works with less frequency. This album, produced by The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, makes use of an 1849 Erard fortepiano made in Paris, very similar to the instruments Chopin himself would have used.

Konjovic is the most significant representative of the nationalism of the Serbian modernism in music. His most famous works are his operas. The period between two world wars was defined by Konjovic who introduced several genres into Serbian music. His Czech experience encouraged his natural inclination toward folk sources and he began developing melodies, like Janacek, out of the inflection of speech. Konjovic's mature style strives for direct communication with broad audience while incorporating a sophistical harmonic vocabulary. His work includes over one hundred folk songs arrangements and twenty original choral pieces.