V is For Virgin

Edgar Froese - Solo (1974-1983), The Virgin Years (2012) {4CD Box Set Virgin-EMI}
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© 1974-83, 2012 Virgin / EMI | 5099964495422
Electronic / Ambient / Avant-Garde / New Age

2012 four CD anthology, a complete collection of this important and influential artist's solo recordings for Virgin Records. Comprising of five complete albums, plus a number of bonus tracks available on CD for the first time. The highly prolific Tangerine Dream, led by Edgar Froese for over 40 years, signed to Virgin Records in 1974, with Froese developing a concurrent solo career.

2012 four CD anthology, a complete collection of this important and influential artist's solo recordings for Virgin Records. Comprising of five complete albums, plus a number of bonus tracks available on CD for the first time. The highly prolific Tangerine Dream, led by Edgar Froese for over 40 years, signed to Virgin Records in 1974, with Froese developing a concurrent solo career. Debut solo album Aqua (1974) recorded in Berlin appears here augmented with the alternative version of 'NGC 891' from his 1981 compilation album Solo 1974-1979. Epsilon in Malaysian Pale (1975) also includes the alternative version of the title track. Ages (1978) recorded in Autumn 1977 at Amber Studios in Berlin…

Long-awaited expanded double-CD edition of acclaimed soul-jazz vocal stylist and songwriter Lalah Hathaway’s first two albums – “Lalah Hathaway” (1990) and “A Moment” (1994). Features a wealth of bonus material including hard-to-find mixes, b-sides and rare Japanese-only single ‘Night And Day’.

Gong slowly came together in the late '60s when Australian guitarist Daevid Allen (ex-Soft Machine) began making music with his wife, singer Gilli Smyth, along with a shifting lineup of supporting musicians. Albums from this period include Magick Brother, Mystic Sister (1969) and the impromptu jam session Bananamoon (1971) featuring Robert Wyatt from the Soft Machine, Gary Wright from Spooky Tooth, and Maggie Bell…

A multi-disc CD + blu-ray box set, In Search Of Hades, containing Tangerine Dream’s trailblazing 1970s recordings for Virgin Records is set for release through UMC/Virgin on 31 May.

Culture - Culture On The Front Line: The Virgin Front Line Albums (2015) {2CD Set Caroline-Virgin 5358458 rec 1978-1979}
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© 1978-79, 2015 Island / Caroline / Virgin Records | 5358458
Reggae / Roots Reggae

Shortly after being formed by Joseph Hill Kenneth Paley and Albert Walker in the mid-seventies, Culture joined the roster of Kingston-based producer, Joe Gibbs for whom they recorded a stream of Roots classics, including the 1977 breakthrough hit, 'Two Sevens Clash'. The following year, the group signed with Sonia Pottinger, who between 1978 and 1979 provided Richard Branson's recently launched Virgin Front Line imprint with four of sublime long players: 'Harder Than The Rest', 'Cumbolo', 'International Herb' and 'Black Rose'. Widely acclaimed upon their release, the first three of these albums soon became regarded as Roots classics. Now, after over 35 years, this long-lost masterpiece finally sees its long-overdue release on this essential 2CD collection, which also features the legendary trio's three other Front Line LPs, so highlighting Culture's complete recorded works for Virgin's esteemed label.

Christian Tetzlaff’s effortless virtuosity, purity of intonation, and slight emotional reticence perfectly suits Sibelius, making this the finest available collection of the Finnish composer’s music for violin and orchestra. In the concerto, Tetzlaff’s relative coolness makes the music sound more like Sibelius and less like a violin concerto, which is all to the good. That doesn’t mean he lacks anything in sheer technique: indeed, his first-movement cadenza impresses as one of the most impressively concentrated and musically satisfying on disc. Tetzlaff’s slow movement sings but avoids panting and heaving, while the finale realizes the music’s gentle melancholy as well as its more thrusting elements. He’s nicely accompanied by Thomas Dausgaard, whose gentle support perfectly suits the overall interpretation.

Arvo Part - Pro & Contra - Estonian NSO, Paavo Jarvi (2004) {Virgin Classics}
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© 2004 Virgin Classics / EMI | 7243 5 45630 2 7
Classical / Contemporary Classical

Fans of Arvo Part's gorgeous brand of minimalism–all soft, neo-medieval and tintinablular–will be enormously surprised by this program. The six pieces were composed before his re-examination and re-emergence in 1976, after a five-year period of silence. They are what one thinks of when one thinks of a certain variety of fascinating, if noisy and vaguely unpleasant "modern" music, the type of work one expects to hear led by Pierre Boulez. In other words, we are dealing here with atonality, experimentalism, and serialism.

Picking our list of the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums was no easy task, if only because that period boasted such sheer diversity. The decade saw rock branch into a series of intriguing new subgenres, beginning, at the dawn of the '70s, with heavy metal. Singer-songwriters came into their own; country-rock flourished. The era ended with the revitalizing energy of punk and New Wave. No list would be complete without climbing onto every one of those limbs. Here are the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums, presented chronologically from the start of the decade.