Fatgirl 2001

After the seven-year gap between 1990's Jordan: The Comeback and 1997's Andromeda Heights, many Prefab Sprout fans were surprised by the comparatively brief four years between that album and 2001's The Gunman and Other Stories. The album holds other surprises for the longtime Prefab Sprout fan; for one thing, backing vocalist Wendy Smith is absent, having left the group after the birth of her first child, and for another, it's a Western-themed concept album.

Not since the release of Tiamat's groundbreaking masterpiece Wildhoney in 1994 had the extreme metal scene witnessed such an overwhelming show of fan enthusiasm and uniform critical praise as that bestowed upon Blackwater Park, the astounding fifth effort from Swedish metal titans Opeth. A work of breathtaking creative breadth, Blackwater Park (named after an obscure German progressive rock outfit from the 1970s) keeps with Opeth's tradition by transcending the limits of death/black metal and repeatedly shattering the foundations of conventional songwriting, to boot. Rarely does a band manage to break new ground without losing touch with its roots, but Opeth has made a career of it - perhaps never as effortlessly as on this occasion…

The evolution of Elegant Futurism… This is the next highly-anticipated chapter in the Body Electric / Light Fantastic story, except this time it's a new book altogether. This project has gone through several phases in its development over the past two years. Numerous pieces were created and set aside as the artists made new discoveries and continued pushed the envelope further than ever before. Roach and Vir Unis pulled out all the stops to create a music experience that flows with the natural precision of the body's life-blood, by way of a constant enfoldment of hyperstate fractal grooves and luminous soundworlds that are unique to their collaborative spirit.

Detunized Gravity The prolific and long-running De-Phazz (also known as DePhazz) is a contemporary lounge project led by Peter "Pit" Baumgartner, a German-Austrian producer who has surrounded himself with a shifting cast of collaborators that includes vocalists Barbara Lahr, Karl Frierson, and Pat Appleton. Beginning with Detunized Gravity (1997), Baumgartner and company have explored various forms of lounge music, much of it balancing samples with live instrumentation, with innumerable cross-sections of vintage jazz and soul, easy listening, and Latin music. De-Phazz tracks like "No Jive" and "The Mambo Craze" have appeared on dozens of compilations with "lounge," "chill," and "cafe" in the title.