Rex Warner

Sir Karl Jenkins is one of the most performed living composers in the world. Educated at Gowerton Grammar School, Cardiff University and the Royal Academy of Music, London, The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace alone has been performed over 2000 times in 20 different countries since the CD was released while his recorded output has resulted in seventeen gold and platinum disc awards.

Northern soul is a music and dance movement that emerged in Northern England and the English Midlands in the late 1960s from the British mod scene, based on a particular style of black American soul music, especially from the mid-1960s, with a heavy beat and fast tempo (100 bpm and above).

Something about the 1975 Loss Leader, I Didn’t Know They Still Made Records Like This, seems a little different… yet the same. Starting with the album cover, whose design reeks of some long-ignored graphics designer and photographer teaming up to hatch a surefire scheme to meet hot cover models. Then there’s the curious song selection. It’s always great to hear Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” but the album it came from was released five years prior, in 1970, while Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me Not To Come” comes from his already ancient ’71 live album. Joni Mitchell’s “Carey” is from her 1971 LP, Blue, and Arlo Guthrie’s cover of “City Of New Orleans” was first issued in 1972. Now… these are all great songs, and considered ‘should-owns’ for any collection, but on the surface it looks like Warners didn’t have any new music to promote. Perhaps they were just pushing the back catalog, or maybe it’s as the cover suggests… they don’t make records like this anymore, and here are some of them again to remind you. The uncredited liner notes offer no reasoning, and are more historical than revelatory. So, I Didn’t Know They Still Made Records Like This ends up being an oddball entry in the ongoing series… one that wasn’t even advertised all that much (if at all) via inner sleeves, either. All the while stylistically seeming like an earlier edition in the series, thanks to the older material. Something I didn’t know (or just refused to remember) is that Leo Sayer’s career was kickstarted when The Who’s Roger Daltry specifically picked him to write songs for his debut solo album. Now you know who to blame.

Recorded over the span of more than 18 months, Strictly Instrumental was the ninth rock and roll album by Bill Haley & His Comets, and their final album of new material for Decca Records (although Decca would release previously unissued recordings during the 1960s).

Pinar Toprak (Captain Marvel, Fortnite) scores the soundtrack to the original series Stargirl. The show is based on the DC characters created by Geoff Johns and stars Brec Bassinger, Luke Wilson, Amy Smart, Neil Jackson, Hunter Sansone, Joel McHale and Trae Romano.The drama tells the story of high-school sophomore Courtney Whitmore who inspires an unlikely group of young heroes to stop the villains of the past and reimagines the classic superhero team the Justice Society of America. Johns is also executive producing the Warner Bros. Television production with Greg Berlanti & Sarah Schechter (Arrow, The Flash, Riverdale) and Melissa Carter (Queen Sugar).

This 12-CD set joins Warner Classics’ Icon series, which pays homage to some of the greatest recording artists of the recent past. The box is devoted to the French conductor Louis Frémaux, who, from 1969 to 1978, preceded Simon Rattle as Principal Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. For the first time, it assembles all the recordings that Frémaux and the CBSO made for EMI. Over the course of the 1970s their discography played a substantial role in building the orchestra’s international reputation before the arrival of Rattle as its Principal Conductor in 1980. Indeed, such was the orchestra’s prowess in the French music favoured by Frémaux that, in 1978, Rattle described the CBSO as “the best French orchestra in the world”.