The Moody Blues' resumed work together after a four-year hiatus and delivered Octave in 1978, which quickly became a hit but has also proved to be a very problematic album…

Rameau on the piano? It's not altogether unheard of – there were a handful of classic recordings made by Robert Casadesus back in 1952 – but, despite many recordings of Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti on the piano in the digital age, there's been precious little Rameau on the piano until this Angela Hewitt recording of three complete suites from 2006. By choosing the Suite in E minor from the Pièces de clavecin of 1731 plus the Suites in G minor and A minor from Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin, Hewitt has for the most part stayed away from the more evocatively titled works and stuck to the standard stylized Baroque dance forms of the allemande, courante, and gigue. Justly celebrated for her cool and clean Bach recordings, this strategy works well for Hewitt. Without seeming to resort to the sustain or the mute pedal, she floats Rameau's lines and melodies, and without seeming to exaggerate the accents or dynamics, she gives Rameau's rhythms a wonderful sense of lift. In the deliberately evocative movements from the G minor Suite – "La poule," "Les sauvages," and especially "L'egiptienne" – Hewitt seems to bring less to the music – her interpretations are remarkably straight – and to get less out of it – her performances are remarkably bland.

As the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) had done a year earlier, Super Session (1968) initially ushered in several new phases in rock & roll's concurrent transformation. In the space of months, the soundscape of rock shifted radically from short, danceable pop songs to comparatively longer works with more attention to technical and musical subtleties. Enter the unlikely all-star triumvirate of Al Kooper (piano/organ/ondioline/vocals/guitars), Mike Bloomfield (guitar), and Stephen Stills (guitar) – all of whom were concurrently "on hiatus" from their most recent engagements. Kooper had just split after masterminding the groundbreaking Child Is Father to the Man (1968) version of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Bloomfield was fresh from a stint with the likewise brass-driven Electric Flag, while Stills was late of Buffalo Springfield and still a few weeks away from a full-time commitment to David Crosby and Graham Nash. Although the trio never actually performed together, the long-player was notable for idiosyncratically featuring one side led by the team of Kooper/Bloomfield and the other by Kooper/Stills.

Part of the ultimate audiophile Prestige stereo reissues from Analogue Productions — 25 of the most collectible, rarest, most audiophile-sounding Rudy Van Gelder recordings ever made. All cut at 33 1/3 and also released on Hybrid SACD All mastered from the original analog master tapes by mastering maestro Kevin Gray.

A melodic hard rock group from Sweden, H.E.A.T materialized in 2007 with a sound built on a foundation of classic hard rock and late-'80s-inspired commercial heavy metal. They released an eponymous debut in 2008 and found success after a strong showing at the 2009 Melodifestivalen with the hit "1000 Miles." They continued to find favor with melodic rock fans both at home and abroad on subsequent outings like Tearing Down the Walls (2014) and Into the Great Unknown (2017). Three years later the band returned with H.E.A.T II, which marked a return to the heavy melodic rock of their earlier albums.

Part of the ultimate audiophile Prestige stereo reissues from Analogue Productions — 25 of the most collectible, rarest, most audiophile-sounding Rudy Van Gelder recordings ever made. All cut at 33 1/3 and also released on Hybrid SACD All mastered from the original analog master tapes by mastering maestro Kevin Gray.

Kurt Vile’s Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) was recorded and mixed in sporadic sessions that spanned four years at The Butcher Shoppe studio in Nashville, TN. It includes five songs — covers of John Prine and “Cowboy” Jack Clement as well as two originals — and was recorded alongside a cast of local heavies like Bobby Wood, Dave Roe, Kenny Malone and Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Superwolf). Most importantly, it features what KV has called “Probably the single most special musical moment in my life” – a duet with the late John Prine on the songwriter’s well-loved tune, “How Lucky.”

It was inside Jeff Tweedy’s second home, The Loft in Chicago, that Love Is The King was recorded in April of 2020. Surrounded by an assemblage of treasured instruments and loved ones in a world that felt more and more alien by the day.

A seasoned American hard rock troupe with roots in AOR and glam metal, America's House of Lords convened in 1987 after the dissolution of keyboardist Gregg Giuffria's previous ensemble, Giuffria. The band saw success with their 1988 eponymous debut, which was released by Kiss bassist Gene Simmons' RCA imprint, and again with 1990's Sahara and 1992's Demons Down, but the onset of grunge dulled the group's commercial momentum, and they spent the remainder of the decade on hiatus. House of Lords reconvened in the mid-2000s sans Giuffria with vocalist/guitarist James Christian at the fore and have gone on to issue a string of dynamic melodic rock efforts like Come to My Kingdom (2008), Indestructible (2015), and New World - New Eyes (2020), all of which have been released on Frontiers Records.

Of all of the classic-era Pink Floyd albums, Animals is the strangest and darkest, a record that's hard to initially embrace yet winds up yielding as many rewards as its equally nihilistic successor, The Wall. It isn't that Roger Waters dismisses the human race as either pigs, dogs, or sheep, it's that he's constructed an album whose music is as bleak and bitter as that world view. Arriving after the warm-spirited (albeit melancholy) Wish You Were Here, the shift in tone comes as a bit of a surprise, and there are even less proper songs here than on either Wish or Dark Side. Animals is all extended pieces, yet it never drifts – it slowly, ominously works its way toward its destination…

On their second album, Uriah Heep jettisons the experiments that weighed down Very 'Eavy Very 'Umble and works toward perfecting their blend of heavy metal power and prog rock complexity. Salisbury tips the band's style in the prog direction, containing one side of songs and one side dominated by a lengthy and ornate epic-length composition…

Two years after the Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks/Christine McVie-less incarnation of Fleetwood Mac crashed and burned, their classic '70s lineup reunited for an MTV Unplugged session and an accompanying tour…

An American Treasure, the first posthumous Tom Petty project, is designed as an aural biography of the late rocker, telling a tale that begins with a Mudcrutch session from 1974, running through the glory of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in 1976, and concluding with a live version of "Hungry No More" from 2016, just over a year prior to his tragic 2017 passing. Arriving roughly a year after Petty's death, the timing for An American Treasure makes sense – he certainly deserved a tribute – but in strict discographical terms, there didn't seem to be a need for a second career-spanning box set, as he already had 1995's rarity-laden box Playback and a multi-disc The Live Anthology from 2009. Happily, An American Treasure offers a story that's not told on either previous set, and that's a complete picture of Petty's career, told entirely through byways, not highways.

This album's tracks show a more focused side of D'Rivera's work during his days in Cuba. Several songs stem from his time with the seminal Cuban fusion band, Irakere; these tracks show his influence upon the band as both a soloist and overall stylist. More pieces from Irakere document their performance with the legendary guitarist Leo Brouwer. Some of these recordings were originally released on the album Great Moments, while others appear here for the first time. These songs demonstrate D'Rivera's ability to bridge distinct styles, from ragtime to classical and Afro-Cuban rhythms.