A Decade Of Dio

Two CD collection. When Purple Records was first set up in 1971, it was by no means a mere vanity label to release Deep Purple product, from Machine Head until the end of the decade; it also set out to nurture and discover raw talent too. The label would eventually become home to debut solo releases from Jon Lord, Roger Glover, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, as well as early releases from Yvonne Elliman and Ronnie James Dio with Elf. One of their earliest signings was a hard rock band called Bullet, featuring guitarist John Du Cann and drummer Paul Hammond, both formerly of Atomic Rooster, having played on Death Walks Behind You (1970), and In The Hearing Of (1971). They were joined by Quatermass bassist John Gustafson. After only one single, they discovered a US band already called Bullet, swiftly changing their name to Hard Stuff.

With this recording the acclaimed ensemble Le Nuove Musiche, led by director Krijn Koetsveld, have come full circle and at last completed their monumental undertaking of a complete cycle of Claudio Monteverdi’s books of madrigals. In bringing this endeavour to a close the group have returned to their starting point, recording a fresh take of perhaps the most famous set, Monteverdi’s groundbreaking Books V & VI, previously released by Le Nuove Musiche one decade ago at the start of this musical journey.

The young Swiss soprano Marie Lys was pleasantly surprised to discover that many of the roles she has sung in George Frideric Handel’s works in recent years were written for the spectacularly virtuoso soprano Anna Maria Strada, Handel’s prima donna in the London of the 1730s. Accompanied by the Abchordis Ensemble and Andrea Buccarella, the group’s conductor and harpsichordist, Marie Lys decided to dedicate her first solo CD on Glossa to “La Stradina”, with an in-depth study of Anna Maria’s life on stage and the extraordinary vocal skills her roles demanded.

Together with their countrymen Kreator and Sodom, Germany's Destruction constituted the dominating triumvirate of Teutonic thrash metal during the 1980s. And even though they ultimately failed to match these peers in terms of commercial success and longevity, at least two of their albums still qualify among the crème de la crème of the decade's speed metal. Heavy metal underwent a worldwide revolution in the early '80s, when the lingering lessons from '70s giants like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest crashed head-on with the D.I.Y. ethos of punk rock and the sheer velocity of Motörhead to spawn the much ballyhooed New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which, in turn sparked a far more powerful and lasting bastard offspring: thrash metal. Of all the nations contaminated by this musical virus as it proliferated unchecked, Germany was second only to the U.S. in terms of widespread infection…