Did You Know That

Lana Del Rey could have retired after the cinematic grandeur of her 2019 high-water mark Norman Fucking Rockwell! That album's imaginative songwriting, finely crafted performances, and exceptional production served as a realization of the magnificence promised by earlier efforts, and the deepest look yet at Del Rey's stormy inner world. Subsequent albums suggested a little bit of a comedown after such heights. Both released in 2021, Chemtrails Over the Country Club felt like an NFR! bonus reel, while Blue Banisters played like a mixtape of solid but random song ideas. Ninth album Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd finds Del Rey returning to the powerful level of song sculpting she reached on NFR!, and feels like a strong step forward as much as it does a worthy follow-up to her best record.

Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd is the ninth studio album from acclaimed singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey, comprising 16 tracks and interludes with features including Father John Misty, Tommy Genesis, Jon Batiste, Bleachers and more. It follows the prolific artist's 2021 albums Chemtrails Over The Country Club and Blue Banisters.

It's almost a blessing that, for legal reasons, this four-piece can't call itself Black Sabbath. It only serves to hammer home the point that with Ronnie James Dio up front and Vinny Appice in back, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler express a very different side of their musical personalities than they ever did with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals and Bill Ward on drums. Where the original lineup was an ultra-heavy blues band, with a rhythm section that never failed to swing (OK, they failed a little bit on "Sweet Leaf"), when Dio came on board in 1980 the group was reinvented as a heavy metal juggernaut.

It's almost a blessing that, for legal reasons, this four-piece can't call itself Black Sabbath. It only serves to hammer home the point that with Ronnie James Dio up front and Vinny Appice in back, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler express a very different side of their musical personalities than they ever did with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals and Bill Ward on drums. Where the original lineup was an ultra-heavy blues band, with a rhythm section that never failed to swing (OK, they failed a little bit on "Sweet Leaf"), when Dio came on board in 1980 the group was reinvented as a heavy metal juggernaut.

Between 1968 and 1974, amateur songwriters, musicians and home taping enthusiasts Peter Howell and John Ferdinando - aka H & F Recordings - retreated to their makeshift home studio in East Sussex to mastermind a series of privately-issued albums that were attributed to semi-fictitious groups such as Ithaca and Agincourt. Only pressed in double-digit quantities, those albums are now amongst the most valuable vinyl artefacts of the era, with copies selling for upwards of £2,000 on the extremely rare occasions that they surface. A Game For All Who Know: The H & F Recordings Box gathers together all four albums and adds an unreleased-at-the-time fifth, the Friends LP Fragile, which was abandoned at acetate stage after Howell accepted an invitation in 1974 to join the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on a full-time basis. The first four albums are presented in miniature card sleeve replicas of the original vinyl artwork, while the Friends album recreates the duo's original plans for the artwork had the LP reached pressing stage.