Revelation For Personal Use

"Breathtakingly beautiful", "magical", "epic", "magnificent" and "instantly memorable" were among the words used in reviews of her much applauded comeback album "Rocks & Straws" from 2015, her first in 10 years. Brimming with memorable melodies, subtle arrangements, evocative lyrics, strong musicianship and a vital album production, it showed a mature and confident artist moving in a somewhat surprising direction, given her background in electronic music with Bel Canto, Röyksopp and her first solo efforts. It would be no mean feat to follow up the huge artistic success of "Rocks & Straws", but to our ears "Revelation For Personal Use" is an improvement on all accounts. It is also very much a follow-up, an ode to her native town and region, and again with all the songs being based on lyrics by local cult poet Arvid Hanssen and translated to English by artist and writer Roy-Frode Løvland.

Florent Schmitt was well known as a critic and composer during his lifetime, but his compositions fell into neglect after his death. Difficult to pigeonhole, he has been called everything from conservative to neo-romantic to revolutionary, and Dutilleux wrote of him that he ‘gave back to the French school certain notions of grandeur’. The three works on this CD are all remarkable in their own ways – for their rhythmic exuberance, their rich and varied orchestration, their imaginative use of traditional harmonies, and in the case of Le Palais hanté and La Tragédie de Salomé for their exploration of the dark side of humanity.

Luther Vandross was one of the most successful R&B artists of the 1980s and '90s. Not only did he score a series of multi-million-selling albums containing chart-topping hit singles and perform sold-out tours of the U.S. and around the world, but he also took charge of his music creatively, writing or co-writing most of his songs and arranging and producing his records. He also performed these functions for other artists, providing them with hits as well.