Altoist Marion Brown is perhaps best known for performances on albums by his contemporaries, such as Coltrane's Ascension, but Brown stands on his own as one of the most creative and important forces to come out of the 1960s avant-garde jazz movement. Porto Novo is widely regarded as one of Brown's best recordings, captured during a 1967 session in Holland at the peak of his creative powers, accompanied by bassist Maarten van Regteben Altena and drummer Han Bennink. Previously out of print for decades, the recording has now been remastered for a long-overdue reissue on audiophile-grade vinyl, exclusively for Record Store Day 2020.

Adult Cinema is a remarkable one-man project helmed by multi-instrumentalist Mike Weston. Hot and Cold is his third release and displays a mercurial talent, seemingly at ease with an array of instruments, skilfully moulding together an entertaining melange of styles. As with previous albums, there are nods to the great bands of the 60’s and 70’s, but now Mike has added flavours from later eras and has further defined a unique sound for the band. The songs on ‘Hot and Cold’ cover a myriad of subjects such as religion, hatred, cowardice, control (and the loss of it), dual personality, science and atheism.

The third Garcia/Grisman album, this one concentrating on the traditional 'folk' song aspect of their repertoire.

After collaborations with Wynton Marsalis and Shabaka Hutchings, the visionary South African pianist and composer Nduduzo Makhathini is set to release his Blue Note debut Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds, an expansive album in which lyrical, plaintive horns mingle with percussion, pained yelps and urgent lyrics in a musical exploration of ancestral realms.

There may be people out there who don't regard BLIND GUARDIAN's "Imaginations From The Other Side" as a classic heavy metal record, but those people are wrong and deserve to be publicly scorned for their foolishness. "Imaginations " remains a lot of fans' favorite album by the Germans, not least because it seemed to confidently define the band's sound at a point when melodic bombast and theatricality were, with mainstream rock and metal folk, about as popular as genital warts.

Music has become more important than ever in recent times. As a result, the triumphant return of AMARANTHE feels particularly timely. The Swedish six-piece have spent the last decade establishing themselves as a formidable, positive and fervently melodic force for metallic good. From their explosive self-titled debut in 2011 to the more sophisticated, streamlined likes of 2014’s Massive Addictive and its immaculate follow-up Maximalism (2016), AMARANTHE have masterfully blurred the lines between melodic metal, crushing brutality, cinematic sweep and futuristic sparkle. Led by the endlessly ingenious songwriting of guitarist Olof Mörck and powerhouse vocalist Elize Ryd, their rise to prominence has been a joy to behold.

John Williams In Vienna’ featuring the legendary composer’s debut concert with the Vienna Philharmonic will be released in August 2020.

The first in a series of various artist compilations, alongside more in-depth artist focused releases, Virtual Dreams will delve into music produced during the 1990’s that redefined the boundaries of ‘Ambient’. This was music that explored the possibilities of Ambient within a new setting, created often by House and Techno producers for a world beyond dance floors but made very much with the pre-clubbing and post-clubbing listener in mind.

AAM Records’ newest release features the Academy of Ancient Music joining forces with The Choir of Keble College and director Matthew Martin in a landmark recording of Francisco Vall’s ‘forgotten’ Missa Regalis [1740]. Performed from a new edition by Simon Heighes, Valls’ fascinating (and frequently confusticating) juxtaposition of ancient and ‘modern’ compositional styles provides a intriguing glimpse into the treasure-trove of Spanish baroque music, much of which remains relatively unknown to the wider world.

Released in 2015, Grapefruit’s 3-CD multi-artist British underground folk compilation Dust On The Nettles was widely praised, with a five-star review in The Times hailing it as “a delight from beginning to end”. A long-overdue follow up to that set, Sumer Is Icumen In tightens the mesh by focusing on the point when traditional folksong and the burgeoning late Sixties counterculture collided, largely courtesy of seminal acts like the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Pentangle.