Leading Lightly

The Pogues - 30 Years (2013) {8CD Box Set Rhino 8256464780}
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© 1984-95, 2013 Rhino | 8256464780
Rock / Folk Rock / Celtic Rock / Folk Punk / Alternative / Celtic Punk

This set collects the seven studio albums from 1984′s Red Roses For Me to Pogue Mahone from 1996 and adds a previously unreleased live album The Pogues with Joe Strummer Live In London (recorded in December 1991). There have been Pogues reissues before of course, notably in 2004 when the albums were re-released on CD with bonus tracks. Rhino also issued an Original Album Series collection in 2009 that brought together the five Shane MacGowan albums in the usual card slipcase packaging. So while in some ways 30 Years treads familiar ground, there is still much to recommend it. First off the band were involved in the project, and were keen to have their say. The decision to revert back to ‘just’ the albums and lose the 2004 bonus tracks was theirs, for instance. Another example of the band’s input was the cover design of the box. The literary types amongst you might notice that the typesetting and design is ‘inspired by’ an edition of James Joyce’s landmark work Ulysses.

I doubt if many of us have found our ideal set of Brandenburgs, but most, I suspect, have settled on a favourite collection. The field is enormous, reflecting a wide range of performing styles as well as smaller discrepancies where some of the instruments themselves are concerned. These reissued recordings of the Brandenburgs are style-conscious, period-instrument performances. For sheer refinement of thought and elegance of phrase Parrott’s set has few rivals, though some of the intellectual and artistic excitement that must have gone into its preparation seems a little chastened in the finished product. Parrott never lets us down in his lightly articulated performances and stylistically consistent concept of the music.

Five CDs and 94 tracks from her 1962-63 recording sessions give this complete Dinah Washington collection from Mosaic ample opportunities for extended listening. Five hours of Ms. Washington's expressive way with a song tell a long and detailed story.

Claudio Arrau - Chopin (1991) {6CD Box Set Philips Classics 432 303-2}
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© 1991 Philips Classics | 432 303-2
Classical / Romantic / Piano

"Arrau's Chopin – now available in a six-CD box (Philips 432 303-2) as part of Philips's Arrau Edition – is as far from moonstruck "sentimentality" as any Chopin ever was. But no performance of the Preludes is more sentimental, in Schiller's sense, than the version Arrau recorded for Philips in 1973. Its premise – that the cycle is a grand tragedy, the darkest thing Chopin wrote – is unmistakable. Even the prefatory C-major Prelude heaves with orgasmic rubatos – more weight, it seems, than the music can possibly bear. And yet, as Arrau packs each small berth with a world of feeling, the weight grips and holds. At times, the sheer density of emotion can seem suffocatingly intense. The Prelude No. 22, a Stygian descent, is surely Hades; the plunging scales of No. 24 rip the thread of life."

David Bowie - Space Oddity (1969) [2CD] {2009 Remaster, 40th Anniversary Edition}
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© 2009 EMI / Jones/Tintoretto | DBSOCD 40
Rock / Pop / Experimental Rock / Psychedelic Rock

Special 40th Anniversary two CD edition of David Bowie's classic 1969 album released in a digipak with an extensive booklet featuring rare photographs, memorabilia, and sleeve notes. Disc One features the original album remastered from the original analogue master tapes. Disc Two features 15 bonus tracks, of which eight are previously unreleased, including two ultra-rare demos. The album, produced by Tony Visconti (bar 'Space Oddity' itself which was produced by the late Gus Dudgeon), was a giant leap forward in terms of songwriting for Bowie compared to his eponymous debut, and can be considered as the first truly essential David Bowie album. Noted for a list of collaborators, including session players Herbie Flowers, Tim Renwick, Terry Cox and Rick Wakeman, the album delves into Psychedelic Folk-Rock, as well as Prog, with its genre-defying template creating a blueprint of what would become, over the next decade and more, one of the most inimitable British artists.