VA Masters of Turkish Music (reupload)

To celebrate Ricercar’s fortieth anniversary, with the symbolic total running time of forty hours of music, this box set assembles a vast anthology of seventeenth-century German music, an area that clearly emerges here as the label’s main focus. The anthology ends with a selection of the very first compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, in which the link with the music of previous generations is still very perceptible. Some of the finest artists and ensembles ever featured on the label are included here, such as Andrea Buccarella, Brice Sailly, Yoanna Moulin, Capella Sancti Michaelis, Ex Tempore, Musica Aurea, and many more.

To celebrate Ricercar’s fortieth anniversary, with the symbolic total running time of forty hours of music, this box set assembles a vast anthology of seventeenth-century German music, an area that clearly emerges here as the label’s main focus. The anthology ends with a selection of the very first compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, in which the link with the music of previous generations is still very perceptible. Some of the finest artists and ensembles ever featured on the label are included here, such as Andrea Buccarella, Brice Sailly, Yoanna Moulin, Capella Sancti Michaelis, Ex Tempore, Musica Aurea, and many more.

Call it a soundtrack producer's dream. One of the most vital and influential bands in modern-day music cuts a song entitled "If God Will Send His Angels" just months before you are hired to put together a soundtrack for a movie entitled City of Angels. The band is U2, and their song not only opens the City of Angels soundtrack, but it is also the anchor of a group of tracks that narrowly escapes the sappy trail that the movie blazed when it hit theaters. In all actuality, the soundtrack sounds much too dark, menacing, and legitimate to be attached to the film. Alanis Morissette assures the direction of the album when she follows U2's less-than-perky offering with "Uninvited," which is nothing if not vintage Alanis. From there on the quality drops off somewhat, but not until after Jimi Hendrix comes in with "Red House." It's still amazing to this day how the sounds of Hendrix on the guitar could be so many things all at the same time – soothing, moving, eerie, and untouchable.

Jim Steinman (the melodramatic writer behind Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell) is the author of many of the tracks here, and they have his typical rock & roll Sturm und Drang, especially when the backup group consists of members of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Also on hand are The Blasters, Maria McKee, and Ry Cooder. The album's hit single turned out to be Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream about You".