Muse (2012)

Throughout their career, it's always been clear that Muse aren't satisfied to just do the same thing over and over again, as they have evolved from their early days when they were (perhaps unfairly) pigeonholed as a Radiohead imitator into purveyors of some of the most epic symphonic rock since Queen graced the stage. On their sixth album, The 2nd Law, they continue to shake things up, diving deeper into the electronic rabbit hole as they experiment with a sound that's less reliant on Matthew Bellamy's guitar heroics, resulting in an album that's a bit of a mixed bag. Incorporating some of the slickest production the band has ever had with a more synth-heavy sound, the album certainly succeeds in feeling different from Muse's previous work…

With this newly researched recording of Couperin's Les Nations, Les Ombres, a Baroque ensemble of the new European generation, boldly cross borders and barriers to share a vision of spiritual union beyond national divide.
Couperin was the very first composer in France to produce a trio sonata in the style of Corelli, which he composed when he was barely 22-years old. Not daring at first to declare openly his admiration for the Italian genius, he did not sign his own name to 'L’Astrée', written around 1691. It was finally published in 1726, in the collection known as 'Les Nations', where it became the opening ‘sonade’ of La Piémontoise.

An air of inquiry suffuses Laura Marling's third album, a mood of experimentation as cerebral as it is playful. Opening song The Muse is like nothing she has released before: swaggering and brassy, with her voice pulling angular shapes across saloon-jazz piano and tight brush drums. Salinas and Rest in the Bed are like miniature western movies, with spit and sawdust in the guitar and banjo lines, melodrama in the backing vocals and Marling squinting at a relentless sun as her characters glare fate in the face. As on last year's I Speak Because I Can, Marling can sound curiously dispassionate, slurring the chorus of Don't Ask Me Why, maintaining a studied cool at the start of Sophia as she murmurs: "Where I have been lately is no concern of yours." But when Sophia unfurls into a glowing country romp, the distance between her and us suddenly shrinks – and the feeling is exhilarating.

Blandine Verlet is now one of the last living legends of the harpsichord. After a few years of absence, she has joined the label Aparté with a programme dedicated to Francois Couperin's harpsichord music, recorded on a sumptuous Hemsch of 1751 upon which she already performed Goldberg Variations in 1993. Throughout these pieces with evocative titles (Les Amusements, the Raphaèle, the delights, the Poppies, the Wandering Shadows ..) she reveals an artist with a voice more than inspired, powerful and constantly renewed.