Venus

Another French baroque opera composer, Henry Desmarest, resurfaces after centuries of obscurity. Vénus & Adonis, first seen in 1697 in Paris, was composed in the midst of a scandal, when Desmarest eloped with a young singer who was the daughter of a powerful official. In his absence, he was sentenced to death and thus effectively exiled until his pardon in 1720. The opera’s theme of illicit love seems to have fired Desmarest’s imagination, and the stylish cast, headed by Karine Deshayes and Sébastien Droy, responds in kind. One senses, too, rare involvement in the playing of Les Talens Lyriques. More Desmarest operas await.

John Blow’s opera, Venus and Adonis , explores and exploits the themes of power play, manipulation, and yearning. Venus’s reluctance to surrender coupled with Adonis’s innocence leads to both a tragic accident and poignant transcendence. The work was the first to have been written by a female librettist, Anne Finch.

Band on the Run was a commercial success, but even if it was billed as a Wings effort, it was primarily recorded by Paul, Linda, and Denny Laine. So, it was time to once again turn Wings into a genuine band, adding Joe English and Jimmy McCulloch to the lineup and even letting the latter contribute a song…

Hemina are a 4 piece Progressive Metal band from Sydney, Australia. The band's sound has been described as a unique combination of hard hitting syncopated grooves, lush synth backwashes, multi-part vocal harmonies, memorable leads with a focus on songwriting and emotion. Hemina's first two albums 'Synthetic' and 'Nebulae' were met with critical acclaim traversing two different sides of the band's sonic spectrum from the complex and dark, to the concise and uplifting. With a reinvigorated lineup, the band's third album 'Venus' is the most collaborative work to date offering flavours of what fans have come to expect in the past as well as a new palette and range of expression never before heard from the group…

Producer/DJ duo Visit Venus claim that their respective fathers were German-American "sound scientists" recruited by NASA in the '70s. Their mission: Create mood-enhancing music for entertaining space passengers on an imaginary voyage to the second planet from the sun. Though this "Sky Tourist Programm" was soon abandoned, the fruits of the two scientists' labor lived on - Music for Space Tourism, Vol. 1 is (supposedly) the result of the sons sampling the original tapes that their seniors had tucked away. Who's to say it didn't really happen? If the elaborate liner notes explaining the "project" don't sell you on it, the head-nodding, space-age bachelor pad grooves might be evidence enough…