Youth in Babylon

Israel in Babylon is a pasticcio compiled by Edward Toms in 1764, with pre-existing instrumental works by Handel transformed into arias. The performance is fantastic, with thrilling choral work from the Kantorei Saarlouis, expert solo singing Julia Gooding, Jonathan Peter Kenney and Joseph Cornwell, and spirited playing from the Ensemble UnaVolta under Joachim Fontaine.

This whopping 30-CD box set gathers together the best of Trojan's three-disc box set series. Included are the Ska, DJ, Dub, Instrumentals, Jamaican Superstars, Lovers, Producer Series, Rocksteady, Roots, and Tribute to Bob Marley volumes, each of which can be found under Trojan Box Set for their individual reviews. What's lacking here is a booklet with additional notes and information; the bulk seems to demand some extra coverage and care, yet all that's here are the original notes of each volume – only as much text as can fit on the back of the CD sleeves. From a music standpoint, however, this box is excellent; a truly diverse and comprehensive collection. Of the 500 songs, less than ten reappear on another volume, so you get a more-than-satisfying amount of music spanning the history of the Trojan label.

Box set containing a compilation of British music conducted by Simon Rattle. As well as the tracks listed it also includes 'Incidental Music' from 'Grania and Diarmid, Op. 42' and 'The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38, Part I' by Edward Elgar, 'The Lark Ascending' and 'Songs of Travel' by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 'Thus Spake Isaih' from 'Belshazzar's Feast' by William Walton and 'La Vallée Des Cloches' from 'Miroirs' by Maurice Ravel, amongst others.

Bloodclot is a project featuring true hardcore pioneers: John Joseph of the Cro-Mags, plus former members of Queens of the Stone Age (Joey Castillo, drums; Nick Oliveri, bass), and Danzig (Todd Youth, guitar). While being the leader of one of the most influential hardcore bands of all time – the Cro-Mags – John Joseph is also an author, an outspoken advocate of plant-based nutrition, and a competitive Ironman tri-athlete. Todd Youth – who played in Agnostic Front at the age of 12 – has played guitar with a myriad of artists, including Danzig, Glen Campbell, Motorhead, Ace Frehley, and many more. Additionally, Nick Oliveri has played bass in Queens of the Stone Age, alongside one of the most sought-after drummers in the scene, Joey Castillo – who has also sat behind the kit for Danzig and Eagles Of Death Metal.

The story of the innocent Susanna–whose nude bathing in a stream so excited two elders in her community that they charged her with all sorts of dirty things–is from the Apocrypha. Near the story's close, the young Israelite Daniel, clearly a budding lawyer, disproves the elders' claims by having each explain certain details without the other in the room. (In the Carlisle Floyd version, there's a twist, and the ending is horrifyingly different.) The story, as Handel and his unknown librettist tell it, takes more than two and a half hours. What we get in place of nail-biting drama is a marvelous portrait of the chaste Susanna, her trusting husband, Joacim, and the lascivious elders. There's also a great concentration on the plot's rural setting. Arias are filled with nature–Handel offers us a lovely pastoral setting, with a could-be-tragic story at its core; but neither Nature nor Susanna's good nature wind up sullied.

Susanna comes late in the sequence of Handel’s oratorios but in some ways the composer looks back in it to his experience of Italian opera. It largely comprises a sequence of arias (many in the repeated, da capo form of opera seria) as it relates the story from the Biblical Apocrypha of Susanna who is falsely accused of adultery and eventually vindicated through the clever judicial manoeuvrings of the young prophet Daniel.