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This is the classic 1969 album that Serge and Jane Birkin cut together, and every track is a groovy French classic of the sort that made Serge a legend! The arrangments are amazing, and feature some of the weirdest instrumentation ever heard on a pop record – especially one that was as successful as this. The tracks are insane, and even though the lyrics are in French, you'll be able to get more than enough of them from the sexy interpretation! Highlights include "Je t'aime… moi non plus", "69 année érotique", "Jane B", "Elisa", "Orang Outan", and "Manon".

Drummer Tony Williams' first recording as a leader (made when he was 18 and still billed as Anthony Williams) gave him an opportunity to utilize an advanced group of musicians: tenor saxophonist Sam Rivers, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, pianist Herbie Hancock, and both Richard Davis and Gary Peacock on bass. Williams wrote all four of the pieces and has a different combination of players on each song. The freely improvised "Memory" features Hutcherson, Hancock, and Williams in some colorful and at times spacy interplay; "Barb's Song to the Wizard" is a Hancock-Ron Carter duet; "Tomorrow Afternoon" has Rivers, Peacock and Williams in a trio; and all of the musicians (except Hutcherson) are on the sidelong "2 Pieces of One." The unpredictable music holds one's interest; a very strong debut for the masterful drummer. Allmusic 4,5/5

Only John Lydon could claim to be "getting rid of the albatross" by tying it around his neck in the form of an obtuse ten-minute album opener. Less a band than a menacing juggernaut, PIL recorded an unforgiving second album, propelled by Keith Levene's livewire guitar work and Jah Wobble's endless, rubbery basslines. Lydon (still Rotten, just not by name) used these perpetual motion machines to launch bitter screeds against society, and it's hard to imagine more anti-social music. But the group were aware of the potential hypocrisies in holding up a dark mirror image to the public, implied by their corporatist name. Second Edition was originally released as Metal Box , literally packaged in cost-prohibitive film canisters. For this, Lydon was eternally grateful to Virgin, his pride and price for showing that major labels were capable of issuing genuinely challenging art for mass consumption. –Christopher Dare

Somewhere between Gainsbourg, Scott Walker and Gene Vincent, Alain Bashung, who has died aged 61, was a French popstar with millions of fans.
He worked a rare intelligence and profound poetry into his songwriting, over the years developing a style of phrasing which always put expressiveness first. Less ruled by the idea of absolute authorship than Gainsbourg, Bashung knew, throughout his career, how to find alter egos to expand his universe.

Bashung made rock music which worked in the French language, succeeding where many predecessors and contemporaries were content to offer pale imitations of Anglo-Saxon artists. He often did so while employing the best musicians from the UK and the US – for instance, he worked with the Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera and Wire's Colin Newman on Novice (1989), Adrian Utley of Portishead on Fantaisie Militaire (1998), and the Tom Waits collaborator Marc Ribot on Chatterton (1994), L'Imprudence (2002), and Bleu Pétrole (2008), the last of his 13 studio albums. In doing so, Bashung followed in the footsteps of Serge Gainsbourg, who often came to London and who used seasoned British artists to record Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971). Gainsbourg and Bashung teamed up for the latter's critically-acclaimed "cold wave" album, Play Blessures, in 1982.

Joy Division are rivalled only by The Velvet Underground in the establishment of such an influential legacy with such a small canon of recorded work. When their career was abruptly re-routed by the suicide of singer Ian Curtis in 1980, they had recorded just two complete albums and were still a month away from their biggest hit, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” - which has endured to become as universally adored an English pop classic as “Waterloo Sunset”. Uncut.

If Unknown Pleasures was Joy Division at their most obsessively, carefully focused, ten songs yet of a piece, Closer was the sprawl, the chaotic explosion that went every direction at once. Who knows what the next path would have been had Ian Curtis not chosen his end? But steer away from the rereading of his every lyric after that date; treat Closer as what everyone else thought it was at first – simply the next album – and Joy Division's power just seems to have grown. Allmusic 5/5

In April 1979, the band began recording their debut album, Unknown Pleasures, at Strawberry Studios in Stockport. Producer Martin Hannett contributed significantly to the final sound. The band initially disliked the "spacious, atmospheric sound" of the album, which did not reflect their more aggressive live sound. Hook said in 2006, "It definitely didn't turn out sounding the way I wanted it…. But now I can see that Martin did a good job on it…. There's no two ways about it, Martin Hannett created the Joy Division sound." The album cover was designed by Peter Saville, who would go on to provide artwork for future Joy Division releases. Unknown Pleasures was released in June and sold through its initial pressing of 10,000 copies. Tony Wilson said that the relative success of the album turned the indie label into a true business and a "revolutionary force" that operated outside of the major record label system. Reviewing the album for Melody Maker, writer Jon Savage called Unknown Pleasures an "opaque manifesto" and declared "[leaving] the twentieth century is difficult; most people prefer to go back and nostalgize, Oh boy. Joy Division at least set a course in the present with contrails for the future—perhaps you can’t ask for much more. Indeed, Unknown Pleasures may very well be one of the best, white, English, debut LPs of the year". Wikipedia.

Recorded during their American tour in late 1969, and centered around live versions of material from the Beggars Banquet-Let It Bleed era. Often acclaimed as one of the top live rock albums of all time, its appeal has dimmed a little today. The live versions are reasonably different from the studio ones, but ultimately not as good, a notable exception being the long workout of "Midnight Rambler," with extended harmonica solos and the unforgettable section where the pace slows to a bump-and-grind crawl. Some Stones aficionados, in fact, prefer a bootleg from the same tour (Liver Than You'll Ever Be, to which this album was unleashed in response), or their amazing the-show-must-go-on performance in the jaws of hell at Altamont (preserved in the Gimme Shelter film). Fans that are unconcerned with picky comparisons such as these will still find Ya-Ya's an outstanding album, and it's certainly the Stones' best official live recording. Allmusic.

Available only in Japan, guitarist Grant Green is heard in prime form in a sparse trio with bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Al Harewood. Because Green rarely ever played chords, sticking to single-note lines, hearing him in this setting is similar to hearing a tenor in a pianoless trio. Recommended. Allmusic****