Timothy Presley

Released in time for the 2015 holiday season, the updated U.K. edition of Now That's What I Call Christmas offers a heaping plate of Yuletide pop favorites spanning multiple decades. From holiday rock perennials like the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" and Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" to more contemporary pop fare like Kelly Clarkson's "Underneath the Tree," this hefty three-disc set covers a lot of ground. The selections on the first disc range from the 1970s to contemporary while the latter two discs go back as far as Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole with bits of vintage Motown, soul, folk, and rock tossed in for variety. Not every track is a surefire classic and more than a few feel like filler, but at 71 tracks, there is more than enough Grade-A holiday music to go around.

Berlino, 1945: nel settore americano della città arriva dagli Stati Uniti il Narcotics Control Officer Arthur J. Giuliani, con il compito di riportare l’ordine nelle strade dell’ex capitale del Reich. Ovunque sono ancora visibili le ferite aperte dalle bombe britanniche, americane e russe, e in questo panorama desolante sono sempre di più le persone che ricorrono all’uso di sostanze psicoattive. Se fino a poco tempo prima erano stati gli stimolanti e i sedativi a mettere la società di fronte al problema della loro regolamentazione, nel 1943 un nuovo tipo di droghe – gli allucinogeni – fa la sua comparsa sulla scena, quando il giovane chimico Albert Hofmann scopre accidentalmente l’LSD nei laboratori della Sandoz di Basilea..

Acoustic Classics, a collection of newly recorded timeless Richard Thompson songs, features 14 tracks culled from his 40 plus year music career. For the first time ever, acoustic versions of songs like "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight" and "Dimming of the Day" mingle with cornerstone classics like "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" and "Beeswing" as well as other acoustically rendered gems. "I really wanted to have something that would reflect the acoustic shows," Richard explains, "But we didn't have anything like that. Just some old, slightly scratchy recordings of solo sets that I wasn't really happy with." His last proper solo acoustic release was the live Small Town Romance, and that was more than 30 years ago! In the meantime, the acoustic shows have evolved as a full parallel to his band tours. Thompson was named by Rolling Stone Magazine's as one of the Top 20 Guitarists of all time and considered one of the UK's most outstanding songwriters and musicians.