Lucas Brown, Skyviews

Gary Lucas – charmingly oddball pop songwriter, musical world traveler, utterly hellacious guitarist – is perhaps at his most hellaciously, charmingly cosmopolitan on this frankly amazing album, which finds him adapting popular Chinese songs that were originally recorded in the 1960s and which he heard and fell in love with during a sojourn in Taiwan in the mid-'70s. His girlfriend at the time had a cassette tape of such local superstars as Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong, and it was, he says in his liner notes, "like almost no other music I had ever heard before." Twenty-five years later he put together this quirkily gorgeous tribute, which includes jaw-droppingly virtuosic fingerstyle guitar arrangements ("Mad World," "Wall") and song settings using guest vocalists. Among the best of the latter are the limpidly beautiful "Night in Shanghai" (again, note the guitar playing) and the country-flavored "I Wait for Your Return," which is simply a hoot. He's not playing this stuff for laughs, though; his genuine affection for the music comes through loud and clear, and even when he has fun with it he is obviously trying to do so in a way that brings its haunting loveliness to the fore. Very highly recommended.

West Coast vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Robert Lucas forged a path for himself in the blues world after the release of his much-hailed 1990 self-produced debut cassette, Across the River. Based in Long Beach, CA, as a solo artist Lucas recorded for the Audioquest label out of San Clemente. He was also a member of the legendary boogie blues band Canned Heat, singing and playing bottleneck guitar and harmonica with the group off and on starting in 1994. Lucas paid homage to traditional blues but also carefully crafted his own singing and slide guitar style. These talents are on ample display on his Audioquest albums, including Luke and the Locomotives, Usin' Man Blues, Built for Comfort, Layaway, and Completely Blue, all released during the '90s, as well as latter-day Canned Heat albums on the Ruf and Fuel 2000 labels.

With gallant style and romantic virtuosity, this album illustrates the exceptional technical brilliance of the flute in late classical chamber music.

Noted as a "maximalist" for his densely textured, intricately constructed serial works, Brian Ferneyhough is a challenging composer by any standard, and his uncompromising and intensely demanding scores are some of the most original of the late avant-garde. In such complicated chamber works as Funérailles I (1969-1977) and Funérailles II (1969-1980), both versions for seven strings and harp, Ferneyhough presents thickets of notes and short gestures that are tightly organized, but so abrupt and pointillistic that the lay listener may mistake them as random fragments, not at all as recurring ideas. Similarly, in the rhythmically layered Bone Alphabet for percussion (1991) and the angular Unsichtbare Farben (Invisible Colors) for solo violin (1999), the ear can only take in the surfaces of the music, having no way to grasp the underlying patterns that are employed. Yet it would be a mistake to think these pieces are just cerebral exercises, since Ferneyhough is too good a composer to pass off intellectual doodles as serious work. While there are designs in these pieces only a theoretician may comprehend and abrasive sonorities only a die-hard modernist may love, there are points of tension and release that are easily perceived, and textures and timbres that a prepared listener may appreciate without too much strain.

Other World, the collaborative album by Peter Hammill and Gary Lucas, might seem an unlikely pairing on the surface, but its roots lie in an acquaintance and mutual admiration decades old. Hammill invited the New York guitarist to his studio in Bath to see what might transpire…

Legendary soul singer Nona Hendryx (Labelle) teams up with original Beefheart guitarist on 2017 tribute album studio album that spans the entire length and breadth of Captain Beefheart's groundbreaking catalog, from "Safe as Milk" through "Trout Mask Replica" and beyond.

"Scarlatti" is the new album from the internationally renowned pianist Lucas Debargue. This stunning new album features 52 beautiful sonatas by Scarlatti—often considered ne of the most influential composers of the Baroque era. Debargue started taking piano lessons at the age of 11. At the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition , Debargue was awarded the coveted Moscow Music Critic’s Prize. Debargue has performed at numerous prestigious music venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonic hall , Carnegie Hall and the Concertgebouw. Debargue has won many awards including the highly regarded Echo Klassik award in 2017.