The Last Stand (2013) 720p Brrip X264 Aac Rarbg

Most famous for his vocal and guitar work in the group Ten Years After, Alvin Lee had a long solo career after the band dispersed, still working in the hard rock, rockabilly, and British blues style that TYA did until his sudden death in Spain in the spring of 2013. This set captures his last live show, a concert held in Raalte, Holland, on May 28, 2012, with a crisp rhythm section of Pete Pritchard on bass and Richard Newman on drums. The show was recorded, and although it wasn't recorded to be an official release, Lee was pleased with the performance and authorized its release, not knowing, of course, that it would be his swan song.

Written one after the other in the space of just three months and with unprecedented energy, Mozart’s last three symphonies carry within them the aesthetic ideal of their composer, touched by a grace that is already pre-Romantic, and thus form an exemplary musical testament. The Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, a pioneering collective among period-instrument orchestras, reveals a richness, a modernity, a visionary complexity that prepares the way for the Beethovenian revolution.

It's an open secret that Sting's interest in songwriting waned after 2003's Sacred Love, an undistinguished collection of mature pop that passed with barely a ripple despite winning a Grammy for its Mary J. Blige duet "Whenever I Say Your Name." Sting spent the next decade wandering – writing classical albums for lute, recording the frostiest Christmas album in memory, rearranging his old hits for symphony, then finally, inevitably, reuniting the Police – before finding inspiration within the confines of a musical. The Last Ship tells the tale of a British shipyard in the '80s, one laid low by changing times, so there's naturally an elegiac undertow to Sting's originals, a sensibility underscored by his decision to ground nearly all these songs in the folk of the British Isles.