"toshiie to Matsu"

With a discography that includes a classic debut album (1984's Welcome to the Pleasuredome), a misguided sophomore effort (1986's Liverpool), and very few B-sides but plenty (like tons) of remixes, compiling Frankie Goes to Hollywood in a one-disc set (with Japanese bonus CD) is easy if you don't over-think it. Knocking the new wave circus act's career with ease, Frankie Said certainly avoids just that. The rarities it offers are on the edge of even a rabid fan's interest ("Born to Run" "live" on the Tube is just the studio version but louder, and that Anne Dudley mix of "Two Tribes" is nothing but the piano intro, now isolated), plus all the hits ("Relax," "Two Tribes," "Power of Love") are present in both representative mixes and worthy alternates…

Musically, this band is tough to describe. They are closest to stoner rock, but their instrumental nature and tendency to experiment place them a bit beyond the standards of that genre. With their uncompromising instrumental sound that echoes such desert rock bands as Kyuss and The Obsessed, they were not an easy band to fully understand, but surely an intriguing one. They unofficially disbanded in mid-2002. This special 3CD digipack anthology is limited to a numerated 1500 copies…

Few recording artists aspire to the stylistic purity of Karma to Burn, and nowhere is this fact better demonstrated than on the band's 2001 Spitfire release Almost Heathen. Even the title reinforces the near-decadence, and the strange but necessary elusiveness of artistic completeness. To say that Almost Heathen "rocks" would actually be a disservice to disc. It is more than a great record. It is form as function, the combination of craft and content, meditative, aloof, and sublime, if only for its singularity…

Karma to Burn released one of the most original hard rock albums of 1997 with its fantastic self-titled debut. The West Virginia combo is usually associated with the "stoner rock" scene because of its reliance on '70s-style hard rock riffs, but unlike most bands in that genre, Karma to Burn merely dabbles in fuzzy distortion and psychedelia…

The most popular and successful lineup of Return to Forever – Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, and Al Di Meola – was coming off the Grammy-winning No Mystery when it recorded its third and final album, Romantic Warrior. It has been suggested that in employing a medieval album cover (drawn by Wilson McLean), using titles like "Medieval Overture" and "Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant," and occasionally playing in a baroque style, particularly in Clarke's "The Magician," Corea was responding to Rick Wakeman's successful string of albums on similar themes. Certainly, the music suggests that the musicians have been listening to Wakeman's band, Yes, among other progressive rock groups.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood were one of the biggest-selling pop groups of the 1980s, as well as the most controversial. Their debut single, 'Relax', went to No. 1 in ten countries around Europe and its follow-up, 'Two Tribes', was the definitive cinematic soundtrack to the Cold War. They also had a sensitive side ('The Power Of Love'), a rocky side ('Born To Run') and a playful side ('Do You Think I'm Sexy?'). Listen to Frankie afresh, from all sides, with this essential collection.