The popular choral group the Sixteen has never sounded better than on this release, and fans of the ensemble can buy with confidence in acquiring a set of classic English Renaissance pieces with a few modern works for spice. For the unconverted it's a bit less convincing, but it has a strong idea. The album title comes from the conventional name of a prayer of none other than St. Patrick, set in modern English by Arvo Pärt in 2007.
Never before revealed: A CLEAR picture of how the mind works and how you can profit from this intimate knowledge
Russ Ballard's eponymous 1984 album and its sequel, The Fire Still Burns, were reissued on a single disc by Renaissance Records in 1996. Both albums are fairly spotty, but they have enough highlights to make this worthwhile for dedicated fans of Ballard or his former band Argent.Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
This box set is a companion piece to the 8CD set From Sacred To Secular: A Soul Awakening, which traced the history of soul music from its earliest antecedents in 1927 right up to the first true soul records released in 1962. Here we continue the story from 1962 up to the end of the decade, covering a large portion of soul music’s Golden Age with 100 tracks by soul’s greatest 60s superstars (from Aretha Franklin to Stevie Wonder) and a whole host of “lesser” names whose contribution to the musical genre shouldn’t be overlooked. The CDs cover all of soul’s many styles from early doo-wop and R&B influenced music to the funk grooves which were to prove so popular in the 70s. Other harbingers of the coming decade can be found here in the first sweet-soul Philly sounds from the Delfonics and Intruders, early funk rock (Sly & The Family Stone) and Chicago’s renaissance via Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions.