Office 2009

In 1998, it would have been a cheap joke to say that Mariah Carey had no other kind of hits than ballads, but in the ensuing decade she steadily remade herself into an R&B diva, obscuring if not quite erasing the well-mannered adult contemporary singer of the '90s. The 2009 compilation The Ballads – released just before Valentines Day 2009 – attempts to turn back the clock by focusing just on those AC tunes – 18 of them, in fact, including such mammoth hits as "Hero," "One Sweet Day," "Vision of Love," "I'll Be There," "I Still Believe," "Dreamlover," and "Always Be My Baby."

Paganini composed 6 numbered concertos; the 6th of 1815 actually pre-dates No.1, which appeared in 1817. The Second concerto became one of his most famous works, and one he performed most frequently. The famous finale known as ‘la Campanella’ became an instant hit from the premiere in Naples in 1827. Later that year Pope Leo XII created Paganini a Knight of the Golden Spur, and his international stardom continued.

Prior to Guillaume de Machaut's Notre Dame Mass, a complete polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, inaugurating a tradition that has come down to the present time, various anonymous composers made experimental steps in that direction, creating several related mass movements. This disc by the innovative French group Ensemble Organum is essentially a recording of one of those fragments, the so-called Mass of Toulouse. In order to create a complete "Missa Gotica" (Goths, by the way, may enjoy the booklet's brief exegesis on why the music of the Middle Ages was later termed Gothic), director Marcel Pérès joins the Toulouse fragments to another early mass pair, the Gloria and Credo known together as the Mass of Barcelona.

Deja Vu (2008). Re-pressing two sold out 10" released back in 2002 ("Same Time Same Place" and "Metamorphosis") and adding a new version of "Miserere MMI" which was included into New Death Order" CD EP, Deja Vu is the 2008 release by Cyclotimia. The CD opens with the digital ambient sounds and chants of "Miserere MMI", a short track which introduce us to the first lot of tracks coming from "Same Time Same Place". Cyclotimia didn't want to reproduce the releases as they were but tried to mix the track list just to give a new structure to the album as it was a whole. The tracks coming for the first 10" are sounding more focused on the digital ambient psychedelic effect made of hisses, synth loops, light rhythms and vocal samples…