Wesley Virgin

King’s College Choir are the most famous choir in the world. This 29-CD set of the complete Argo recordings celebrates David Willcocks’ tenure from 1957-1973 and includes some of the most beautiful choral music sung with the choir’s trademark richness and purity of sound. Six albums are released on CD for the first time – David Willcocks’ 1964 Festival of Lessons & Carols and Tye Masses and four albums from Boris Ord, Willcocks’ predecessor. Also includes works by Bach, Tallis, Haydn and others.

The act with the first arena-sized sound in the electronica movement, the Chemical Brothers united such varying influences as Public Enemy, Cabaret Voltaire, and My Bloody Valentine to create a dance-rock-rap fusion which rivaled the best old-school DJs on their own terms – keeping a crowd of people on the floor by working through any number of groove-oriented styles featuring unmissable samples, from familiar guitar riffs to vocal tags to various sound effects. And when the duo (Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons) decided to supplement their DJ careers by turning their bedrooms into recording studios, they pioneered a style of music (later termed big beat) remarkable for its lack of energy loss from the dancefloor to the radio. Chemical Brothers albums were less collections of songs and more hour-long journeys, chock-full of deep bomb-studded beats, percussive breakdowns, and effects borrowed from a host of sources. All in all, the duo proved one of the few exceptions to the rule that intelligent dance music could never be bombastic or truly satisfying to the seasoned rock fan; it's hardly surprising that they were one of the few dance acts to enjoy simultaneous success in the British/American mainstream and in critical quarters.

Decca's 2015 limited-edition box set of the complete Argo recordings of the King's College Choir of Cambridge, directed by David Willcocks, consists of 29 CDs spanning the period from 1957 to 1973. The albums, presented with their original jacket art, offer some of the choir's finest performances, which include three recordings of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols (1954, 1958, 1964), anthems by Gibbons, Blow, and Handel, masses by Byrd, Taverner, Haydn, Tye, and Blow, and other great choral works by Bach, Allegri, Palestrina, Tallis, Vivaldi, Howells, and Vaughan Williams. The choir is world famous for its purity of tone and beautiful blend, and under Willcocks' masterly direction it became the exemplar of British choral singing, unmatched by any other ensemble of men and boys.

Based out of New Orleans, guitarist and singer Walter "Wolfman" Washington has become one of the leading lights in the Louisiana blues scene, playing a fiery mixture of soul, funk, jazz, and blues. Washington first became a local hero backing up some of the Crescent City's most celebrated blues and R&B acts before moving on to a successful solo career, playing the blues with rare fluency and power.
In 1981, Washington cut his first solo album, Rainin' in My Life, for the small New Orleans label Help Me Records. Rounder Records, who had released several of Johnny Adams' albums with Washington, offered the guitarist a deal, and he released three albums for the respected roots music label, 1986's Wolf Tracks, 1988's Out of the Dark, and 1991's Wolf at the Door…

Mystery Girl is the last album recorded by Roy Orbison, posthumously released on the Virgin label in 1989. The album became a hit worldwide, reaching #5 on the US Billboard 200, and #2 on the UK Albums Chart. Roy Orbison's comeback started in 1986, when David Lynch used "In Dreams" for a pivotal sequence in his masterwork Blue Velvet. So mesmerizing was Dean Stockwell's pantomime of the 1963 hit that Orbison soon became in demand. He re-recorded his hits for a collection naturally called In Dreams, he gave a star-studded concert called Black & White Night, and then he began work with ELO leader Jeff Lynne on a comeback album. The duo tabled the album to join the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, a collaboration with Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Bob Dylan that turned into a surprise smash in 1988. Once that record began its run up the charts, Lynne and Orbison completed the album that became Mystery Girl, but the record didn't come out until February 1989, a few months after Roy's tragic death.

Between 1980 and 1998 Simon Rattle conducted no less than 934 concerts with the CBSO. Together they performed works by many 20th-century composers, as well as established favourites, and gave a total of 16 world premieres. Rattle also made 69 recordings for EMI with the orchestra. This box brings together that recorded legacy, which includes pieces by composers pivotal to his work, such as Mahler, Sibelius and Szymanowski, as well as some of the new compositions he championed — Nicholas Maw’s Odyssy, Mark Anthony Turnage’s Momentum, Three Screaming Popes and Drowned Out, and Thomas Ades Asyla.