Timur Selçuk 1978 Odtü Konseri

After an uncharacteristic (for her) four-year hiatus from recording, Nina Simone returned to the fringes of the pop world with Baltimore, the only album she recorded for the CTI label. While it bears some of the musical stylings of the period – light reggae inflections that hint of Steely Dan's "Haitian Divorce" – the vocals are unmistakably Simone's. Like many of her albums, the content is wildly uneven; Simone simply covers too much ground and there's too little attention paid to how songs flow together. As a result, a robust torch piano ballad like "Music for Lovers" is followed immediately by one of Simone's more awkward moments, an attempt to keep up with a jaunty rhythm track on a cover of Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl."

U.K. is the self-titled debut album by the progressive rock supergroup U.K., released in May 1978 through E.G. Records and Polydor Records. It features John Wetton, Eddie Jobson, Bill Bruford, and Allan Holdsworth. "In the Dead of Night" and "Mental Medication" were both edited for single release. The album was well received by FM album rock radio and by the public during the summer of 1978. In 2015 Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as the 30th best progressive rock album of all time. Featuring members of Yes, King Crimson, Roxy Music, and Soft Machine, U.K. was one of the most prominent progressive rock supergroups of the late '70s. Various members of U.K. – guitarist Allan Holdsworth, keyboardist/violinist Eddie Jobson, bassist/vocalist John Wetton, and drummer Bill Bruford – had all played together in their previous bands, but when the group formed in 1977, it was the first time all of the musicians had played together.

This was a group of session musicians assembled by a composer to record a single LP. Composer and keyboardist Carlo Barbiera dedicated a full album to the life and works of sculptor Luciano Ceschia (1926-1991), both coming from near Udine, Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the north-east of Italy. This rare album is a rather original example of experimental electro-acoustic progressive style, mainly based on synth effects and acoustic guitars and often reminding some of Battiato's early works. Despite the presence of five singers in the line-up, the vocal parts are short, spoken or recited rather than sung. 19 tracks (+ bonus tracks) are listed on the cover, but these are connected to form two long suites. All in all an interesting album for the adventurous listeners in search of something different.

Tim Blake played synths with Gong, Hawkwind, Steve Hillage, and other similar projects before going solo as a synthesizer performer and recorder. This was Blake's first studio release versus his recordings of live gigs. He really polishes things up a great deal, adding guitars and singing in the style of Gong's Daevid Allen and Steve Hillage's solo offerings. Blake's vocals would never be his strong point. His blessing to the ears was and always will be his ethereal and spacy synthesizer expertise. As Gong and Steve Hillage all preached the New Age and tuning into earth vibes and aligning one's soul with Earth energies to bring in a world of light and love – so Blake also crooned.

Jethro Tull's 11th studio album, Heavy Horses, is one of their prettier records, a veritable celebration of English folk music chock-full of gorgeous melodies, briskly played acoustic guitars and mandolins, and Ian Anderson's lilting flute backed by the group in top form. This record is a fairly close cousin to 1977's Songs from the Wood – and was ultimately the hinge-piece and first of an ecologically themed trilogy which concluded with 1979's Stormwatch – except that its songs are decidedly more passionate, delivered with a rough, robust energy that much of Tull's work since Thick as a Brick had been missing. In its lustiness it arguably surpasses even Aqualung. "No Lullaby" is the signature heavy riff song, a concert version of which opened Bursting Out: Jethro Tull Live recorded that same year. Anderson sings it – and everything else here – with tremendous intensity, as though these might be the last lines he ever gets to voice.