Birth of The Third Stream

Beyond Description (1973-1989) is a companion set to 2001's 12-disc box The Golden Road (1965-1973), which collected all of the Grateful Dead's albums for Warner Bros, adding bonus tracks to each album, along with a double-disc collection of early pre-Warner recordings called "Birth of the Dead" for good measure…

The Orlando Consort’s third recording for Hyperion turns to the music of Loyset Compère, a composer the group first investigated some twenty years ago. In the intervening decades musicological goal-post shifting has elevated our composer from also-ran outsider to something of a trailblazer, the wonderfully complex Magnificat recorded here, for example, now being thought to predate the masterworks of Josquin by some fifteen years. A gorgeous selection of motets and chansons further charts this period of radical musical experimentation.

Serpentine, the British quintet who burst on to the scene with two critically acclaimed albums in 2010 & 2012 including the Japanese charting A Touch Of Heaven album - which received a 92% rating in Burrn! Magazine - are back with their latest release and a refined line up. Classic Rock’s legendary wordsmith Malcolm Dome says this about the band: “They appear to have perfected the knack of mixing sumptuous arrangements with enough grit to prevent them from becoming just a rehash of American ideals. Serpentine are very adept at writing songs with patient choruses and then giving these enough kick to deliver maximum impact. If they retain this standard they could be sailing very calm waters to success. At times they’re almost Journey-esque. Close to being melodic rock paradise.”

Hyperion’s record of the month for July celebrates the (probable) 500th anniversary of the birth of England’s first superstar composer, Thomas Tallis, and welcomes the signing to the label of The Cardinall’s Musick and Andrew Carwood. In a fifteen-year history The Cardinall’s Musick has progressively built an enviable reputation for excellence. Some twenty recordings on the ASV Gaudeamus label have seen accolades from around the world, including a Gramophone Award and a Diapason d’Or, while in the concert hall and workshop the group has consistently displayed innovation and a freshness of approach, whether tackling contemporary works (many of them commissions) or sharing the fruits of years of research into the music of the English Renaissance.