Goosebumps! That is what I got after listening to the new album of Pain. The project of mastermind Peter Tagtgren (Hypocrisy) unleashes an album upon the world, which is just of supreme quality. The disc is baptized 'Dancing With The Dead' and works on me like a stroll through a painting of Jeroen Bosch. Each step is another surprise.

Robbie Williams is the only ex- Take That-er to have achieved both major sales and widespread credibility, but his second album I've Been Expecting You is a mixed bag. With the singles "Millennium", "Strong", and "No Regrets", the album is unashamedly Life Thru A Lens Part Two. Full of self-parody ("My breath smells of a thousand fags/and when I'm drunk I dance like me dad"), the cheeky chappie's personality shines through on every track. His voice has improved no end since, and the album includes his finest moment to date: "No Regrets", which features backing vocals by the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon and Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant, and is not alone in playing on that James Bond-alike thing. In fairness it has to be said that there are some duff tracks ("Jesus in a Camper Van"), but these are easily outweighed by the likes of loud and noisy "Karma Killer", with full orchestral arrangement. In a typically audacious manner, "You Win Some You Lose Some" opens with the voice of ex-girlfriend Nicole Appleton of All Saints. The nation as a whole seems to be in love with Robbie, and it is this fascination, this desire for him to be good, which makes his music work as well as it does.

Time Life is proud to offer the first-ever career-spanning collection of 19 unforgettable live performances from the '50s through the '70s by Jerry Lee Lewis. This includes his greatest hits such as, "Breathless," "Great Balls of Fire," and "Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On." The bonus material includes one of the most comprehensive and revealing interviews with Jerry Lee Lewis.

Robben Ford has always been a very eclectic musician; therefore, the people who get the most out of his recordings tend to have eclectic tastes themselves. If you're the sort of broad-minded listener who holds blues, rock, and jazz in equally high regard, Anthology: The Early Years is a musical feast. This two-CD set, which Avenue Jazz provided in 2001, looks back on recordings that the singer/guitarist/saxman made from 1972-1976 (when he was in his early to mid-20s). Even then, Ford was difficult to categorize — those who insist on pigeonholing musicians wondered if he was really a blues-rock singer or a jazz instrumentalist at heart…..

The blues cannot heip but be derivative and therein lies its attraction and challenge. i Today‘s modern blues performers and songwriters face the towering task of shaping andbending an ageold, classic form of music to their own proclivities. Sometimes that requires changing or manipulating the basics to get a “new and improved“ version and sometimes it requires just laying in the groove and letting the form determine content.Andy j. Forest chose to do the latter on this project and has produced a rootsy, traditional blues CD. At the suggestion of his record company, and after years of touring with a full-blown band, Andy heeded the call to come home, Iiterally and figuratively home to the real, down home acoustic blues, and home to New Orleans where he hired Crescent City‘s finest musicians to play and contribute to this outstanding collection of original and standard blues songs.Andy‘s formula is as follows: equal parts sweat and congeniality, a massive dose of songwriting talent, and everything liberally seasoned by his tasty virtuosity on harmonica. Lyrically, Andy‘s songs are poetic glimpes into his everyday experiences. If you‘ve ever been to Mardi Gras and experienced the ultimate “day-after-and-I-don‘t-know-where-l-am-orwhere-I‘ve-been blues‘ you know what he‘s singing about on “Hogshead Cheese.“ And you can‘t get much simpler than the sentiment expressed on “Capable“ — 1 ot things to show you and places to take ya, music so bw and love to make ya. ‘12 Bar Dive“ is a fine updated take on the blues form: contemporary road-weary lyrics riding a sparse John Lee Hooker groove…..

The blues cannot help but be derivative and therein lies its attraction and challenge. Today‘s modern blues performers and songwriters face the towering task of shaping andbending an ageold, classic form of music to their own proclivities. Sometimes that requires adding changing or manipulating the basics to get a “new and improved“ version and sometimes it requires just laying in the groove and letting the form determine content.

This has got to be Agnetha Faltskog at her best. The album was recordedin California, North America and was produced by former Chicago singerPeter Cetera.
I wasn't a fan of Agnetha's solo work, until I heard this album. A lot offans criticise this album because of the American sound on it, and that itwasn't the familiar Euro-Pop sound that fans were used to, maybe that'swhat it appealed to me! It was a fresh new sound and I think that's whatmakes this album "Stand Alone" from her previous work.

Ten songs of Tropicalismo and Pos-Tropicalismo in the voices of Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Novos Baianos and others …

To enjoy the great classics of Samba with Cartola, Paulinho da Viola, Martinho da Vila and others

The music of avant garde saxophonist Evan Parker is not generally known as easy listening, and though his recordings for ECM may have tended toward the atmospheric, 2006's TIME LAPSE, released on Tzadik, finds Parker returning to challenging form. There are 11 original compositions here, and Parker's sax is the only instrument on most (though he makes ample use of multi-tracking ). Parker can be ruminative at times, and at others full of gutsy, exploratory fire, giving fans familiar with this contemporary avant icon's wild, mercurial sound much to appreciate.

Ten hits hot to enjoy in all seasons with the band Olodum, Asa de Aguia, Chiclete com Banana

Daniel Barenboim turned in a very decent if a touch heavy-handed account of Schumann's symphonies for DG with the Chicago Symphony, but this set is something else altogether: conducting of genius that immediately leaps to the top of the heap, sharing that position with the likes of Szell, Bernstein, and Sawallisch, while sounding better than any of them. Given the excellence of his Beethoven symphony cycle with these same forces, I expected good results from Barenboim, but nothing prepared me for music-making so gripping that you can play both discs and all four symphonies straight through at a single sitting and never once find your attention distracted (even at 2 am!). In fact there's so much going on here interpretively that verbal description can barely scratch the surface–but imagine Szell's care with balances (and liberal instrumental retouching here and there) allied to a healthy dose of Bernstein's animal energy and Sawallisch's light textures and ability to float a phrase at speed, and you'll have a good picture of what to expect. Barenboim doesn't put a foot wrong anywhere and these are some of the most treacherous works in existence.

"Sunrise" is the nickname given to one of the most famous violins Stradivarius made. It falls into a special category of decorative instruments, which he made in very limited quantities beginning in 1677 with this violin. Through the courtesy of Mr. Michio Fujii, who is the current owner of "Sunrise," it is transformed onto CD to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the demise of Stradivarius by the talented violinist Yoko Fujita. "Sunrise" seems to have peculiar tonality. If force is applied excessively by the artist, it sounds awkward and if force is exerted too gently, the sound is not produced at all. These features form the "miracle of Sunrise" as it lets people hear its wonderful acoustics. Hear Fujita coax this miraculous sound in Tokyo's gorgeous Verio Hall.

Michael Haydn, like his brother, was a chorister at St Stephen's in Vienna. Shortly after leaving the choir-school, he was appointed Kapellmeister at Großwardein and later, in 1762, at Salzburg. The latter office he held for forty-three years, during which time he wrote over 360 compositions for the church and much instrumental music. He was an intimate friend of Mozart, who had a high opinion of his work, and the teacher of Carl Maria von Weber.
Michael Haydn's sacred choral works are generally regarded as being his most important, including the Missa Hispanica (which he exchanged for his diploma at Stockholm), a Mass in D minor, a Lauda Sion, and a set of graduals, forty-two of which are reprinted in Anton Diabelli's Ecciesiaslicon. He was also a prolific composer of secular music, including forty symphonies, a number of concerti and chamber music including a string quintet in C major which was once thought to have been by his brother Joseph.