End of The Línea

Outstanding execution by Jeroen Van Veen with superb sound quality. Einaudi's work is difficult to categorize as he pulls classical, pop, new age and cinematic ideas into thoughtfully crafted modern pieces. Highly appealing because it's simply all very good. The most comprehensive set-to-date of Ludivico Einaudi's piano works. - Pianist Joeren van Veen is a prolific and critically well-regarded Brilliant Classics recording artist. - The booklet contains an essay regarding the popular success of Einaudi, written by Mr. van Veen.

The story of Moby Grape has been told and re-told countless times, with its tales of excess, mismanagement, and record company screwups. By the end of the '60s the Grape was all but finished – or so everyone thought. After an aborted attempt at a Peter Lewis solo album, producer David Rubinson was able to help engineer this re-formation of all five original members, along with extra member Gordon Stevens on various stringed instruments. Written and recorded at the Grape's communal house in the Santa Cruz mountains, the results of the experiment rendered 20 Granite Creek, an album that is rightfully the successor to the first album (1967's Moby Grape). One of the most shining examples is Peter Lewis' funky and fast "Goin' Down to Texas," which clearly illustrates the power Moby Grape had in this, one of the original three-guitar lineups. Skip Spence, who was one of the more interesting writers in the band, contributes one song, the delicate and gorgeous oriental-sounding "Chinese Song." The whole record is quite similar in feel to the Doors' L.A. Woman, another truly great, homemade comeback album.

After finally running out their 13-year, seven-plus album deal with a poisonously indifferent Atlantic Records via 2005's workmanlike Octavarium, progressive metal standard bearers Dream Theater took advantage of their well earned free agent status to enjoy a heated courtship from several interested labels, before eventually settling on the artistically simpatico Roadrunner. But, ironically, Dream Theater's first album for the label that heavy metal built, 2007's Systematic Chaos, was relatively accessible by the group's standards, complementing every epic and complex composition with a comparatively concise and hooky song, thus leaving it to its 2009 successor, Black Clouds & Silver Linings, to really flex the band's progressive metal muscles to their maximum girth…

La Contra Ola is the fascinating 1st ever survey of Spanish electronic music during the post-punk and synth wave phenomenon which swept subterranean US and European scenes circa 1980-1986.

Universi Paralleli is the last, long awaited, studio album by Arti e Mestieri, a band from Turin that have been active, one way or another, for more than forty years. It was released in 2015 on the Cramps - Sony label with a renewed line up featuring, along with founder members Gigi Venegoni (acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards) and Furio Chirico (drums, percussion), also Iano Nicolò (vocals), Piero Mortara (accordion, piano, keyboards), Lautaro Acosta (violin, electric violin), Roberto Puggioni (bass, fretless bass) and Marco Roagna (acoustic and electric guitars) plus some prestigious guests such as Arturo Vitale (sax), Mel Collins (sax, flute) and Lino Vairetti (vocals)…