Out of Our Heads

Stars Are the Light, the luminous seventh album by the American psych explorers Moon Duo, marks a progression into significantly new territory. From a preoccupation with the transcendental and occult that informed Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada’s guitar-driven psych rock, and reached its apotheosis in the acclaimed Occult Architecture diptych, Stars Are the Light sees the band synthesize the abstract and metaphysical with the embodied and terrestrial.

For over 20 years, the collaborative ensemble Fourplay has grown ever more cohesive in its approach to modern jazz. When the three founding members added guitarist Chuck Loeb to the lineup for 2010's Let's Touch the Sky, the group attained perfect dialogic balance. Fourplay had made fine records before, but the guitar chair always felt either under- or overutilized. Though the long established leader, Loeb's writing, arranging, and playing are more ensemble-oriented than either of his two predecessors, Lee Ritenour or Larry Carlton. On Esprit de Four, Fourplay display themselves as among the most intuitive, forward-thinking, and focused groups in modern jazz.

Think Floyd " H O P E " is one of the most fantastic Floydian albums I've ever heard. "HOPE" is a work of genius!! I can't say enough about it! I can't stop listening to it! I can't take it off my CD player! …

Ron Braunstein, better known under his stage-name Necro, is a Jewish-American rapper, producer, director record label owner from Brooklyn, New York. He is the owner of Psycho-Logical-Records founded November, 1999. He is the brother of fellow rapper Ill Bill.

Chances are, if you hit the dancefloor anywhere in the UK (or, indeed, the US) during the 1980s you would have come across many of the 12 killer cuts on this superb collection from the Mastercuts series of compilations.

Sum 41’s 2016 release, 13 Voices, saw singer/guitarist Deryck Whibley reckoning with the infamous drinking habit that nearly killed him. With that out of his system, he approached the band’s seventh album, Order in Decline, from a renewed position of strength. Inspired and energized by the unwavering fan support he experienced on the band’s comeback tour, Whibley went on a writing frenzy while still out on the road. “It got to the point where when I got home from the 13 Voices tour cycle, I just had all these ideas and started putting them together,” Whibley tells Apple Music. “All of a sudden, I was like, ‘Holy s**t—do I have a new album already? I guess I do!”