Heart July 1january

The second album by Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart continued the bassist's exploration into ethnic fusion, merging together music from different world traditions with pop production and his own dub-influenced bass guitar. Fans of Wobble's earlier work with Holgar Czukay and Public Image Limited might be surprised and a bit dismayed at first by the glossy production and pop nature of some of the tracks here; one would never have guessed that Wobble would come up with something as commercial as the Latin pop of "Ungodly Kingdom." However, much of the music is remarkable and on each listen seems to contain something new. Wobble is far more interested in experimentation than simply adding world sounds to pop music. The tracks with Middle Eastern influences, including the amazing "Everyman's an Island," are quite remarkable and most feature the fine talents of Natasha Atlas. Meanwhile, the trance-like opener, "Visions of You," which guests Sinéad O'Connor on vocals, is absolutely beautiful. On the title track, Wobble even returns to his past, with he and guitarist Justin Adams bringing the sound of early PiL forward ten years.

On Beautiful Broken, Heart decide to tread a path well worn by vintage rockers: revisiting their catalog. This is an exercise often fraught with peril. That said, while Ann and Nancy Wilson do stumble, they've learned from predecessors' mistakes. Seven of these ten cuts were previously recorded, but none are considered Heart standard…

Simply entitled "Datacide II", is Atom Heart and Tetsu Inoue's second collaboration work. Very different from their first Datacide recording, which mainly contained "acid" oriented, rhythmical tracks, "Datacide II" explores what finally became "Datacide's" main trademark: psychedelic ambient textures. Only remotely the "acid" background can still be heard, mainly in the track "Head Dance". "Datacide II" contains a series of trippy, relaxing, sometimes abstract ambient compositions which are tied together by the already mentioned centerpiece "Head Dance" and which may evoke the feeling of one traveling through a chain of audio images.

After acquiring a substantial following with Dreamboat Annie, Heart solidified its niche in the hard rock and arena rock worlds with the equally impressive Little Queen. Once again, loud-and-proud, Led Zeppelin-influenced hard rock was the thing that brought Heart the most attention…

On The Road Home, Heart re-records some of their biggest hits acoustically live in concert. It's interesting to hear these arena rock and AOR standards – including "Barracuda," "Crazy on You," "Dreamboat Annie," and "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You" – recast as intimate numbers…