The romantic comedy Singles, in part a homage to director Cameron Crowe's hometown of Seattle, was released at exactly the right time (summer 1992). Nirvana's Nevermind had symbolically knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the album charts at the beginning of the year, and the underground buzz about Seattle bands like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam was beginning to find its way past circles of indie aficionados and open-minded hard rock fans and into the mainstream. Singles helped crystallize the idea of the "Seattle scene" in the mainstream public's mind, and it was also one of the first big-selling '90s movie soundtracks (it went platinum and reached the Top Ten) to feature largely new work from contemporary artists. The soundtrack's strength was the way it was so firmly rooted in place – where future soundtrack extravaganzas simply contrived to gather as many big-name acts as possible, Singles focused specifically on Seattle-area music (quite logically, given the film's plot and setting), which gave the album the feel of a cohesive document.

As the sixth domestic Aerosmith hits collection and the first to feature selections from both their Columbia and Geffen years (not to mention that it's the second double-disc retrospective released within eight months), The Ultimate Aerosmith Hits should live up to its title – and it does, for the most part…

This is the extraordinary recording debut of jazz phenomenon Anaïs Reno, who made it in 2020 at the age of 16. Reno has already won accolades for her dedication to the Great American Songbook. She recently received the Julie Wilson Award, and in 2019 won the Mabel Mercer Foundation competition for high school students. For this album she has chosen 12 tunes by two master writers: Duke Ellington (1899-1974) and Billy Strayhorn 1915-67), creators of some of the most challenging and sophisticated material in the Great American Songbook. Reno combines beloved hits such as Mood Indigo, Take the A Train, Lush Life and Caravan with lesser-known but equally memorable tunes like A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing and Its Kind of Lonesome Out Tonight, all backed by a stellar group of jazz musicians led by pianist Emmet Cohen, who also did the arrangements with Reno. I have a very personal relationship with these songs, says Reno. Somehow I believe that the music of Ellington & Strayhorn understands me. This is why I want to honor it.

"Ghetto Red Hot" is the 1992 single by Jamaican dancehall artist William Maragh, known commonly as Super Cat. This was the first single from his major label debut album, Don Dada and became a hit through the remix with the use of Lou Donaldson's cover of The Isley Brothers' "It Your Thing" as a sample. This American CD5 features four mixes of "Ghetto Red Hot", including the popular "Hip-Hop Mix" and its instrumental version. This was released by Wild Apache/Columbia.

"Dolly My Baby" is the 1993 single by Jamaican dancehall artist William Maragh, known better as Super Cat. This was not on the original Jamaican pressing of his 1992 album Don Dada but placed on the American version as an extra song. It became a hit due to the remix featuring singer Mary J. Blige and rappers 3rd Eye, Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, and an artist Combs just signed but hadn't finished an album yet, The Notorious B.I.G. Combs' rhyme style was on the "ruffneck" style which he completely changed soonafter. This would lead to a successful-yet-brief career for B.I.G., who was commonly known by some hip-hop fans as Biggie Smalls. This US CD5 features seven mixes of the song, including the original "reggae mix" and the more well known "Bad Boy Extended Mix".

"James Brown Is Dead" is a 1992 single by Michiel Van Der Kuy (b/k/a Denzil Slemming) and Wessel Van Diepen (b/k/a Maxx Mondino), who were known collectively as L.A. Style. The song became a surprise hit in the techno genre, even though James Brown was still very much alive. This American CD5 features nine different mixes of the song. Arista Records came out with thus in the United States.

German band Frequency Drift creates atmospheric, melodic and yet challenging music which they call Cinematic Progressive Rock. Published on The Musea Parallele label, "Personal Effect - Part One" (2008) is a concept-album set in a dystopian future. It focuses on the two main characters, and each has its own musical theme. The album is mainly influenced by movies or television series like "Ghost In The Shell", "Blade Runner" or "Cloverfield". Musically, it can be compared with the likes of Marillion's "Brave" or Sylvan's "Posthumous Silence", if these two bands had a female singer. The story is told through the songs, though not in a chronological order. The booklet contains a storyboard-like picture for each song that will help the listener understand the story.

UB40 was faced with following up the surprisingly successful covers album Labour Of Love (which had topped the U.K. chart, and become their U.S. chart debut) with this album of original material. Their own songs were good, but no match for what then seemed a one-of-a-kind collection. "If It Happens Again," which went to Number Nine in Britain, sounded like a song by The English Beat, while the second single, "Riddle Me" (at Number 59), was a deeper reggae groove tune. It was a good set, but without a classic like "Red, Red Wine," it suffered from a certain anonymity, especially in the U.S.

Sneakin' Around is a collaborative album by guitarists Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed. Reed and Atkins had done a series of recording collaborations nearly 20 years before this release. It peaked at No. 68 on the Billboard Country Albums charts. At the Grammy Awards of 1993, Sneakin' Around won the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance.

You won’t be seeing Mark Knopfler in melodramatic newspaper headlines or on talent show panels. The much-travelled craftsman prefers to reside wherever the song takes him, from writing room to rehearsal space, recording studio to concert hall. He is, as tirelessly and inquisitively as ever, on the trail of some musical truth, just as he has been since the 45s of Ricky Nelson and Lonnie Donegan, or the playing of Hank Marvin and Duane Eddy, sent him down a path that led to 125 million record sales. That approach to his life’s work is how the title of his new, eighth solo album (not counting a myriad of collaborations, productions and film soundtracks) came into being. It’s the other half, if you like, of his typically acclaimed double set ‘Privateering,’ which graced top tens throughout Europe and beyond in 2012.

Italian pianist Marcotulli's duets with British saxophonist Sheppard have been discreet gems which, in recent years, have occasionally been seen glittering around the jazz scene, and this set is a more faithful representation of that intimacy than the pair's more eclectic album, Koine, released four years ago. Marcotulli has lived in Scandinavia, and the ghostly, wistful long-note jazz of Jan Garbarek, Arve Henriksen and others has had an impact here. Sheppard's tone control and ability to do more with less has been an eloquent feature of his mid-life music, but a startling edginess often bursts out of it, in fierce split-notes or rumbling, upward-spiralling runs against slowly swaying piano figures. Waves and Wind appoints the piano (in Marcotulli's Jarrett-like incarnation) and the saxophone to play each role respectively, and Sound of Stone is an abstract wriggle through soprano figures and skittering percussion.

Awesome debut studio disc by this killer retro rock band from the deep woods of West Virgina featuring bad-ass, blues-based, "old-school" heavy guitar riffage and outstanding soul-powered vox that land down hard @ the 70s Classic Rock jam:house. Includes 12 tracks of straight up, authentic, bluesy hard rock that is highly recommended to fans of Bad Company, Free, Humble Pie, Led Zeppelin, Montrose, James Gang, Foreigner, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Badlands & Cry Of Love. Grooveyard Records Re-issue of this way-kool essential guitar rock disc complete with an excellent unreleased, epic 8 minute bonus track. Dig deep and smell the awesome Stone Machine rock mojo.

Commissioned by the Molde International Jazz Festival and recorded live at the Norwegian festival in 2010, “La notte” is a salute to Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, whom Ketil Bjørnstad counts amongst his formative influences. “At the same time that I discovered what jazz could be, after listening to Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way, I also saw the films by Godard, Bresson and Antonioni. Perhaps it was the slow, rhythmic authority in the films by Michelangelo Antonioni that made me think of music… As long as visual art creates music in our minds, and music creates pictures and visual expressions with the same intensity, the two are deeply and profoundly interdependent”. This album, then, can be considered “the soundtrack to an inner film”, in which Antonioni’s images and atmospheres are translated and transformed through personal moods and memories.

This live recording, made in 1975, comes from Ritchie Blackmore's last three concerts with the band before leaving to form Rainbow. It features Deep Purple Mark III, with David Coverdale on vocals and Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals…