Close to The Machine

Like many Germans, Berlin schoolboy Erwin Bartmann fell under the spell of the Zeitgeist cultivated by the Nazis. Convinced he was growing up in the best country in the world, he dreamt of joining the Leibstandarte, Hitler's elite Waffen SS unit.

"The Isley Brothers: The RCA Victor and T-Neck Album Masters (1959-1983)", a monumental 23-disc box set collection chronicling the sonic evolution and abiding achievements of the unprecedented R&B ensemble, The Isley Brothers. Features newly remastered versions of The Isley Brothers' 21 albums, nearly all of which are expanded with rare mixes and tracks making their CD and digital debuts. This box set follows The Isley Brothers through their transformation from a 1950's doo-wop/gospel vocal group into the world's preeminent R&B Rock'N'Soul powerhouse party band. Includes 84 rare and previously unreleased bonus tracks including the "Great Lost Isley Brothers Album" - Wild In Woodstock: Live At Bearsville Sound Studio 1980, a live studio double album now newly restored.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At Clark University represents the second release by Dagger Records. Like no Hendrix live disc ever before issued, The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At Clark University provides a window into one night on the road with the Experience. Beyond the memorable concert performances of "Fire", "Red House", "Foxey Lady", "Purple Haze", and "Wild Thing" featured here, Live At Clark University provides a further treat in the form of extended interviews with Jimi, Mitch, and Noel. What makes this collection so unique is the perspective and extraordinary insight gained by listening to the interviews conducted with each band member prior to and immediately following the group's performance.

It's 2015. The Friend has been the de facto ruler of Japan and tremendously popular around the world since defeating "terrorist" Kenji Endo on Bloody New Year's Eve fifteen years earlier. Kanna Endo (Airi Taira), now 18, knows the truth about Friend and her uncle (but not that Friend claims to be her father), but there is not much she and her uncle's friends can do about it, especially with "Shogun" (Etushi Toyokawa) locked up and Yukiji (Takako Tokiwa) focused on Kanna's safety. What none of them know about is that there's a "New Book of Prophecy", which lays out Friend's plan to "destroy humanity and become god". Are Kanna, her classmate Kyoko (Haruka Kinami), and Detective Chono (Naohito Fujiki), the grandson of a legendary cop killed for getting too close to the truth back in Chapter One, ready to follow in their predecessors' footsteps?

Totally awesome three CD set. Electric 80's is a collection of the most electrifying tracks celebrating the electronic edge of '80s pop. Featuring extended, rare and unreleased remixes of massive hits, Electric 80's gives these classics a definite dancefloor flavor and the album comes as three continuous DJ mixes, making Electric 80's unique for 2014. Including huge tracks from the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Spandau Ballet, OMD, Tears for Fears, Human League, Pet Shop Boys, Heaven 17, Gary Numan, New Order, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and tons more, Electric 80's is sure to spark this Spring.

This 77-minute CD is close to an ideal compilation, reaching back to before the band's beginnings for the original 1965 recording of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" and across seven of the better cuts off of Electric Music for the Mind and Body, up through the Woodstock Festival and the band's farewell concert that same year at the Fillmore West. It reels in most of the notable album cuts in between, all in surprisingly good sound (not usually a strong point on Vanguard CDs of the late '80s). The 19 songs, which don't follow a strict chronological order, encompass some of the band's most celebrated experimental material, as well as more traditionally structured songs such as the fiery double-lead guitar workout "Death Sound Blues," the catchy, folk-rock-style "Sing Sing Sing," and the counterculture singalong "Marijuana" and works of serious personal significance (and intimately focused genius), including "Grace" and "Janis." The disc offers a good balance between the various sides of the group's sound and includes several notable live tracks, including the November 1968 Fillmore East performance of "Superbird," an anti-Lyndon Johnson song that dated back to 1965 and which is adapted here to include an attack on president-elect Richard Nixon. The sound is amazingly good and consistent throughout, and the track order, as well as the music itself, is downright spellbinding at times; the annotation is minimal, but this CD really has only a single flaw – apparently, between the 1965 original version of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" and the 1969 Woodstock performance, there was no room for the standard studio version off of the band's second LP.

The ultimate aim of artificial intelligence (A.I.) is to understand intelligence and to build intelligent software and robots that come close to the performance of humans. On their way towards this goal, A.I. researchers have developed a number of quite different subdisciplines.