Monsieur Dako Intro

After their successful debut "Grippy Grappa", which earned them a nomination for Best Newcomer in the 2014 Songlines Music Awards, the dynamic trio from the island of Cyprus is back with a second album, "Sikoses". Comprised mainly of their own compositions but also some fresh rearrangements of traditional Cypriot songs, "Sikoses" is definitely a huge step forward for the band. Influenced by music from different cultures, "Sikoses" is an album full of energy, clever arrangements and respect for tradition.

For elodie Vignon, the decision to record Debussy's complete piano works in chronological order was born of what the Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune was in Debussy's day: a revelation! For her, playing this music is like entering a cocoon that belongs to you alone. This first volume (generous with 2CDs) of the three that will make up the complete works, naturally begins with Debussy's early works, pieces directly inspired by poems by Mallarme and Verlaine and which embrace the mysterious dimension of the sensory imagination. In the years that followed, he increasingly freed music from the polarisation exerted by the tonal note, keeping the sound space open and ultimately initiating spectral music. Debussy liked to draw inspiration from memories when composing, in order to maintain a distance between his own emotions and those he wished to arouse in the listener. Alfred Cortot spoke of evoking sensations rather than feelings, thus rejecting the late-Romantic aesthetic of emotional identification between composer and listener: an obligation that seemed too constraining to Debussy to be able to give rise to an open dialogue with the listeners of his work. Giving the impression of being invented as it is played, Debussy's music invites us to dream, to better understand the complexity of the world.

It's a tribute album with a twist, though, as all of the songs have been meticulously translated into English, many for the first time. The sheer variety of the contributors here should give some indication of the universal influence the man still holds. From Jarvis Cocker to Marianne Faithfull, Michael Stipe to Marc Almond, Franz Ferdinand to Cat Power – the lineup is nearly as diverse as the man's career was and, duly, the material covered here comes from nearly every corner of Gainsbourg's catalog. Unlike many collections of his work, Revisited doesn't dwell on his infamously racy selections…

A tribute to late Detroit bluesman Wailin' Dale. He sings and plays harp on both live and studio tracks recorded over a period of years with the band he founded in 2010. A mix of Zydeco standards and blues-infused originals.

In her debut recording for harmonia mundi, Lucile Boulanger explores the facets of Antoine Forqueray’s career as a virtuoso instrumentalist: adept in a wide range of Italian repertoire and skilled at transcribing works originally intended for the violin, he could try it on for size, as it were, before settling on a different medium. With the viola da gamba, he extended the technique of playing it far beyond the norm, confronting the performer with fiendishly difficult challenges… which have been met brilliantly by the hugely talented foursome heard here.