Melody Gardot The Absence [japanese Edition, Shm Cd] (2012)

Enigma brings the first album in eight years, and its Japanese edition exclusively includes two Japan only bonus tracks "Sadness" and "Return to Innocence." Also features Japanese original cover artwork & sleeve case packaging. The musical project, known globally as ENIGMA, has proved one of the most successful of the last quarter-century. It has delivered more than 70 million sales across seven albums, 60 Number One albums around the world, and received over 100 Platinum awards. Now, in 2016, Cretu reconnects with that very first multi-platinum album to transfer its bold, pioneering sound-world to here and now. The Fall Of A Rebel Angel is the musical parable of a sensitive artist's view on the human condition. The album tells the story of a protagonist setting off on a symbolic journey of development and change to find a new, fulfilling life.

Jon Bon Jovi's first official solo album, Destination Anywhere (apparently Blaze of Glory doesn't count because it was a soundtrack) finds the hard rocker attempting to simultaneously make his signature sound more mature and more contemporary. Producer Stephen Lironi tones down the sample-driven rhythms that characterized his work with Black Grape, giving Bon Jovi a laid-back and modern musical bed. Of course, the singer chooses to write melodies and lyrics very similar to those of his full-time band, only less bombastic. And that's the key to Destination Anywhere – it really couldn't have been made by the band, because there are too many subtle sonics and melodies for the group. So, in a sense, it's a breakthrough for Bon Jovi, because it is the first time he sounds like he's come to terms with adulthood. That doesn't mean Destination Anywhere is a complete success – it, like his other records, is hampered by filler – but none of his contemporaries were able to age this well, and the record is a fine example of late-'90s mainstream pop.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer's most successful and well-realized album (after their first), and their most ambitious as a group, as well as their loudest, Brain Salad Surgery was also the most steeped in electronic sounds of any of their records. The main focus, thanks to the three-part "Karn Evil 9," is sci-fi rock, approached with a volume and vengeance that stretched the art rock audience's tolerance to its outer limit, but also managed to appeal to the metal audience in ways that little of Trilogy did…

Queen were straining at the boundaries of hard rock and heavy metal on Sheer Heart Attack, but they broke down all the barricades on A Night at the Opera, a self-consciously ridiculous and overblown hard rock masterpiece…

Queen II was a breakthrough in terms of power and ambition, but Queen's third album Sheer Heart Attack was where the band started to gel. It followed quickly on the heels of the second record – just by a matter of months; it was the second album they released in 1974 – but it feels like it had a longer incubation period, so great is the progress here…

In every sense, A Day at the Races is an unapologetic sequel to A Night at the Opera, the 1975 breakthrough that established Queen as rock & roll royalty. The band never attempts to hide that the record is a sequel – the two albums boast the same variation on the same cover art, the titles are both taken from old Marx Brothers films and serve as counterpoints to each other. But even though the two albums look the same, they don't quite sound the same, A Day at the Races is a bit tighter than its predecessor, yet tighter doesn't necessarily mean better for a band as extravagant as Queen…

In one regard, Queen II does indeed provide more of the same thing as on the band's debut. Certainly, of all the other albums in Queen's catalog it bears the closest resemblance to its immediate predecessor, particularly in its lean, hard attack and in how it has only one song that is well-known to listeners outside of their hardcore cult: in this case, it's "Seven Seas of Rhye," which is itself more elliptical than "Keep Yourself Alive," the big song from the debut…

Queen had long been one of the biggest bands in the world by 1980's The Game, but this album was the first time they made a glossy, unabashed pop album, one that was designed to sound exactly like its time…