Maire Brennan Canvas

The Time Machine by Alan Parsons actually features very little musical input from Parsons himself, who produced and engineered the album. No matter, because this concept album about the passage of time – and the triumphs, mistakes, regrets, and memories associated with it – is Parsons' best work of the '90s…

Marianne Faithfull doing Melanie Safka doing Marianne Faithfull is what you get when Mick Jagger's ex-girlfriend performs on a majestic version of "Ruby Tuesday" backed up by the London Symphony Orchestra. It's a reunion of sorts for Jagger and Faithfull, as the lead singer of the Rolling Stones follows his ex with a similar version of "Angie," with deeper textures than the original pop hit. This release is a worthwhile addition to the Rolling Stones' catalog of music. Sure there are "symphonic" albums of music by Creed, the Beatles, Depeche Mode, heck, even Symphonic Star Trek, but this package, all in black with silver ink, of course, is something special. "Angie" is downright eerie. Perhaps the late Michael Hutchence wasn't the best choice to open up the voices, beginning with his rendition of "Under My Thumb," but at least he's not awful…

New Age Music - musical direction, began as an elitist subculture among sophisticated professionals, on the one hand, and in an atmosphere of spirituality - on the other. "New Age Music" has absorbed elements of different types of music culture, and even mass culture. New Age music is broadly defined as a relaxing, even "meditative" music, which is basically a tool. In contrast to the relaxed form of classical music, New Age music uses a wider range of electronic tools …

Here we go again with yet another compilation of soundtrack excerpts and vaporous ditties, to be filed under "Celtic" and pronounced, one assumes, with a soft "c." Some of the selections, such as those featuring old hands like Loreena McKennit, Sinead O'Connor, Clannad, the Corrs, and the Chieftains, actually merit the moniker. But how a pair of embarrassingly twee tunes by David Arkenstone and Vangelis (!) made the cut is anyone's guess. Other choices of dubious provenance include Annie Haslam and Steve Howe's cover of an already hoary Yes tune, a squirm-inducing bit of overkill called "Elysium" (by Elysia, whoever that may be,) and Ryan and Rachel O'Donnell's flaccid reworking of Enya's "May It Be" from Lord of the Rings. "Hedwig's Theme" from the OST to Harry Potter also appears, courtesy of the City of Prague Philharmonic, even though the books never so much as hinted at the owl's nationality. –Christina Roden

It's a much-welcome breath of fresh air to see Celtic and New Age done so well. So many "Celtic" releases are in fact substandard New Age treacle with anonymous vocals and synth instruments, but here we have 32 outstanding tracks that capture the lyric, melancholy beauty of the Irish nature, recorded by masters of the trade (the Chieftains have been around for more than three decades!).

The title of Breaking Stretch is a concise representation of Brennan’s envelope-pushing ambitions. Breaking references her desire to push herself and her bandmates to their limits, to mine the transcendent results of virtuosic imaginations confronted by unexpected challenges. Stretch captures her music’s intense elasticity, its ability to stretch from the taut and minutely focused to the wide-angled and reaching. Those extremes are depicted in the album’s striking artwork, a mix of astronomical and volcanic images, placing the cosmic and the subterranean side by side – the differences between the opposing poles, as in Brennan’s work, at times nearly indistinguishable.