247 Thailand #178, 12 March 2014

There are plenty of anthology collections available for New Wave of British Heavy Metal act Saxon, and if you're an enthusiast looking for a curated overview of the band, they are a great place to begin. But for the Saxon completist, The Complete Studio Album Collection 1979-1988 is your way to celebrate this classic, underrated band…

Inspired to enter the field of electronic music by Britain's acid house explosion of the late '80s, Toby Marks took quite a different spin on electronica with his recordings as Banco de Gaia, introducing elements of Eastern and Arabic music, sampling similarly exotic sources, and tying the whole to ambient-dub rhythms. Marks began releasing cassette-only albums in the early '90s, distributed through a network of clubs and artists known as Planet Dog. When Planet Dog became a record label as well (later the home of Eat Static and Timeshard), Banco de Gaia debuted on disc with the Desert Wind EP, released in November 1993. Early the following year, Marks released his first album, Maya…

Compiled from a selection of opening live improvisations performed by Markus on Touch Guitar throughout The Crimson ProjeKCt’s Spring 2014 European Tour. These instant compositions set the tone for each concert and provided a launch pad for the two drummers to begin their drum duet. The edits presented here cut-off at the point where Pat Mastelotto and Tobias Ralph entered the performance.

Nonesuch Records releases the debut album from the electric duo of Brad Mehldau and Mark Guiliana, Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, on February 25, 2014. The two have been performing for several years, including a brief US tour this fall, with Mehldau playing Fender Rhodes and synthesizers and Guiliana on drums and effects, as they are on the record. Mehliana comprises 12 original tunes—six written by the duo and six written by Mehldau—and was engineered and mixed by Greg Koller (Jon Brion, Kanye West). The vinyl edition of the album, due March 18, includes two 140-gram LPs pressed at Pallas MFG in Diepholz, Germany, and a CD of the album.