Trying to shake things up, producer Creed Taylor brought in arranger Marty Sheller from Mongo Santamaria's Afro-Cuban band, reduced the sizes of the servings (no track is longer than 3:50), cranked up the decibels to a raucous level, and presented Benson in what he hoped would be a radio-friendly setting. The wonder is that Benson manages to transcend the blasting Latin-percussion-spiced production, the tight time limits, and all with often brilliantly tasty guitar fills and brief solos in many styles and three reverb-heavy vocals.

First released in 1960, the debut album from the legend that is Joan Baez was met with massive success upon its release. Presented here in its completion, the record has remained pertinent and sounds anything but dated half a century after it was recorded. Paired with this masterpiece is Joan's 'real' first record, 'Folksingers Round Harvard Square' a set of songs she recorded with friends from the Cambridge, MA folk scene in 1959. These historic recordings serve as an introduction to Baez's very earliest work, but also remain fresh, exciting and an enormously enjoyable album.

With Reforged - Machine World, Iron Savior will close the chapter of their legendary Reforged series.
Band founder Piet Sielck has re-recorded the classics from the noise era in Hamburg's Powerhouse Studio, bringing the series to an impressive conclusion. The new recordings of anthems such as "Machine World", "Eye of the World" and "Contortions of Time" shine with their modern production and perfectly emphasise the band's unbroken energy and versatility. For Sielck, it was ‘a celebration to dive back into the old days and make the songs fit for the new millennium’.
Reforged - Machine World is a must for every fan, whether long-time or newly enamoured!
Get the final chapter of this epic journey - Machine World!

Following the release of Pawn Hearts, bandleader Peter Hammill took time out to develop a solo career, choosing to focus his energy on darkly introspective works that seemed to be intended to examine the personal consequences of his life. When it came time for reuniting the members of Van Der Graaf, this change in direction had its effect on the band's post-1975 music. While the musical structures continued to be complex and dense, there seemed to be far less accent on the demonstration of musical skill than had formerly been the case. Indeed, the album opened with daring quietness, with David Jackson's flute echoing across the stereo space, joined by Hammill's voice as he whispered the opening lines. There was sturm und drang to come, but the music had been opened up and the lyrics had developed more focus, often abandoning metaphor in favor of statement. Godbluff was a bravura comeback - only four cuts, but all were classics.

In the end, few of these musicians embody a style on their own. Personalities beyond the boundaries of the genre in which history usually ranks them. The Elvis, The Miles, and of course the Johnny Cash ! Although he remains one of the gods of country music, he was also inseparable from the history of rockabilly, rock'n'roll, folk and even gospel. Cash was a voice (baritone out of the norm) but also a pen that signed masterpieces like I Walk the Line, Folsom Prison Blues, Ring of Fire, Get Rhythm or Man In Black, The Man In Black as he will be nicknamed throughout his life. A life begun on February 26, 1932 in Kingsland, Arkansas, and sparse with themes as Imperial as redemption, pain, love and death. A career engaged in the company of guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant, aka The Tennessee Two. In 1954, the trio crossed the road of the great producer Sam Philips, "discoverer" of a certain Elvis Presley.

Ahmed Mukhtar on oud and Ignacio Lusardi Monteverde on flamenco guitar explore the entwined musical traditions of their two cultures - The compositions unfold as an elegant dialogue between the two instruments, weaving intricate melodies and rhythmic subtleties that echo centuries of cultural exchange - Through Al-hambra, they create a space where the voices of the oud and guitar converse as equals, bridging time and tradition with a grace that feels both timeless and innovative.

Stone Temple Pilots roared on to the scene 25 years ago with their raucous debut Core. A breakout success, the album peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts, dominated radio waves with hits like "Sex Type Thing" and "Wicked Garden," and has been certified 8x Platinum by the RIAA. The band also took home the 1994 Grammy® Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for their smash single "Plush."

Stone Temple Pilots embraced experimentation and open-mindedness to record the band's third album, 1996's 'Tiny Music… Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop'. Released on 26th March 1996, the album is a pitch-perfect amalgamation of the band members' musical personalities, yielding three US #1 hits - 'Big Bang Baby', 'Lady Picture Show', and 'Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart'. This deluxe edition features 15 unreleased tracks that pull back the curtain on the creative process. Those include early versions of nearly every song on the album with nascent incarnations of 'Tumble In The Rough', 'Pop's Love Suicide', and 'Seven Caged Tigers'.

One of the major bands of the rock & roll era, the Who straddled the gap separating art-pop and hard-rock, creating kinetic, exploratory music that expanded the lexicon of rock & roll. Arriving during the second wave of the British Invasion, the Who came out of the UK's R&B-besotted Mod scene and married that groove to the crunching power chords pioneered by the Kinks. After their debut single "I Can't Explain" cracked the UK Top Ten in 1965, the band quickly gained a reputation for their volcanic live performances, which could escalate into Pete Townshend shattering his guitar while Keith Moon pushed over his drum kit.

In 1986, after almost 30 years on Columbia Records, Country music legend Johnny Cash released his first album on Mercury Records – Class Of ’55, in collaboration with fellow Sun Records alumni Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. Seven years later, his last recording before signing with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings would be another collaboration, “The Wanderer”, with U2.With brand new liner notes by music writer Scott Schinder, Johnny Cash: The Complete Mercury Studio Recordings (1986-1991) represents the very first deep dive into the Country music legend’s Mercury catalogue, and reveals its importance as the bridge between his better known catalogues on Columbia and American.

The recordings contained on "Chicago 1968" come from live performances and rehearsals during that year, and showcase the tracks that were to feature on their first Columbia album in 1969.

In the early 1970s San Diego was a sleepy Southern California Navy town on the Mexican border and a seemingly unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their era. Yet the presence of Harry Partch - hobo composer, iconoclast and inventor of instruments such as the Harmonic Canon and Quadrangularis Reversum - and a newly established and highly experimental music department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) ushered in a revolution that was as much social as it was musical. Drawing from the occult, self-realization and radical political movements of 70s Southern California, these artists sought to dismantle the established control systems of American life, looking to the future even as they sometimes referenced a distant, idyllically imagined past. In their pursuit of “Irrelevant Music” - Kenneth Gaburo’s term for an untainted music free of constraint and compromise - these disparate artists constitute a shadow history of American experimental music far removed from the European and East Coast models of the time. Sonic Meditations, compositional linguistics, microtonality, invented instruments, cutting edge electronics, underwater synthesizers, Tibetan throat singing, environmental sound and pure noise were their tools. My 2023 book, Alien Territory: Radical, Experimental and Irrelevant Music in 1970s San Diego, presents the story. In this collection are the sounds.

This new 2-LP compilation groups together all Marianne's non-album singles, B-sides and rarities released in the UK, alongside four previously unreleased recordings. The set has been remastered from the original tapes by the Grammy-nominated Andrew Batt who also provides detailed sleeve notes which Marianne contributed to before her passing in January 2025.

North Country Maid is the third studio album by British singer Marianne Faithfull. It was released only in the United Kingdom. The arrangements were by Jon Mark and Mick Taylor. Gus Dudgeon was the engineer and Gered Mankowitz was the photographer. The guitarists included Jon Mark and Big Jim Sullivan. Half of the songs had been released months earlier in the United States on the album Go Away from My World. Marianne’s second folk album North Country Maid has been remastered from the original tapes by the Grammy nominated Andrew Batt who also provides detailed sleevenotes which Marianne contributed to before her passing in January 2025.

Come My Way is the second studio album by English singer Marianne Faithfull. It was released simultaneously with her album Marianne Faithfull on 15 April 1965 by Decca Records. The double release was a result of different creative directions. While the record label pressed Faithfull to record a pop album, she wanted to record an album of folk songs. Even after the label suggested an album containing both genres, Faithfull decided to make two separate albums instead; Marianne Faithfull as the pop album and Come My Way as the folk album.