During the mid to late 1960s the Modern Music Centre in London welcomed hundreds of aspirant hopefuls through it's doors at 86 Turnham Green Terrace in Chiswick. Over seventy acetates at least on the studio's own label are known to exist but the fact that few have ever been released has ensured the studio remains a largely forgotten venture. It's relatively prolific output of discs however has enabled a most entertaining expedition with Faces From The Dark, from singular beat to unhinged psychedelia, amidst a good measure of fuzzed our frazzles. Faces From The Dark is a CD only compilation featuring 28 tracks (of which only 3 have been previously released)

Recorded during and immediately following R.E.M.'s disaster-prone Monster tour, New Adventures in Hi-Fi feels like it was recorded on the road. Not only are all of Michael Stipe's lyrics on the album about moving or travel, the sound is ragged and varied, pieced together from tapes recorded at shows, soundtracks, and studios, giving it a loose, careening charm. New Adventures has the same spirit of much of R.E.M.'s IRS records, but don't take the title of New Adventures in Hi-Fi lightly – R.E.M. tries different textures and new studio tricks. "How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us" opens the album with a rolling, vaguely hip-hop drum beat and slowly adds on jazzily dissonant piano. "E-Bow the Letter" starts out as an updated version of "Country Feedback," then it turns in on itself with layers of moaning guitar effects and Patti Smith's haunting backing vocals. Clocking in at seven minutes, "Leave" is the longest track R.E.M. has yet recorded and it's one of their strangest and best – an affecting minor-key dirge with a howling, siren-like feedback loop that runs throughout the entire song.

"Big Brother & the Holding Company," is an early recording by Big Brother and the Holding Company, a psychedelic blues rock San Francisco-based band during the late 1960's. The record survives largely because of their great, great chick singer, Janis Joplin, of course, who joined them on a Chicago gig. Although Joplin fans will know that she did not, unfortunately, survive the 1970's, as she passed on October 4, 1970 (aged 27), in Los Angeles, California. But in her brief career, despite her troubled life, she left behind a stunning, gutsy repertory of work that has long since floated free of, and outlived, Big Brother. This record, however, was laid down about six months before she (and they) achieved lasting blazing stardom at the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival.

An album and a singles collection at the same time, Fab Four Suture stitches together four limited-edition EPs Stereolab released in the fall of 2005 and spring of 2006. Over the years, the group has made a reputation for having EPs and singles – and therefore, singles collections – that are just as good, if not better, than their albums, as comps like Switched On and Aluminum Tunes attest. Stereolab has also always been very democratic about making sure fans can get their hands on nearly all of their more obscure releases in some form or another; while Fab Four Suture is a little different than their other collections in that it was designed to form an album upon the completion of the EP series, in terms of its quality, it's on par with the band's most enjoyable comps. By combining the looser, more experimental feel of their EPs with the album format, Fab Four Suture ends up being more organic-feeling than Stereolab's previous album, the lovely but occasionally distant Margerine Eclipse.

Fabulous Disaster is the third studio album by American thrash metal band Exodus, released on January 30, 1989. Exodus toured for five months to promote the release of Fabulous Disaster and embarked on a month-long European tour with Nuclear Assault and Acid Reign. The band wrapped up the album tour, performing at The Fillmore in San Francisco on July 14, 1989, which was recorded for the band's first live album Good Friendly Violent Fun and released two years later.
However, things could have been different back then, because on the night of March 8, 1989 another show was recorded, a show that saw them destroy the stage of The Astoria in London! A night that went down in history and became legendary among Exodus and thrash metal fans worldwide! This recording has remained unheard and kept in the Exodus vaults until now! 35 years later this rager of a show will finally be released for the first time ever!

Grinding Stone is hard to place musically in Gary Moore's early, pretty varied career, but fits somewhere in between Colosseum II and Skid Row. In any case, as well as being his solo debut, it is one of Gary Moore's most overlooked albums. A description of the music could be something as seemingly self contradictory as experimental boogie rock, but on the album Moore explores a number of styles, from the title track's instrumental boogie rock to soulful vocals in "Sail Across the Mountain" and 17 minutes of guitar and keyboard excursions in the surprisingly funky "Spirit." In some ways Grinding Stone gives a taste of what would be heard from Colosseum II a few years later, but if the word fusion can be used here, it is not in the generic sense…

Lionel Hampton's two-day session for Blue Star in 1976 was a very productive date; he only brought along two regulars, guitarist Billy Mackel and pianist/organist Reynold Mullins, but was joined by an assortment of outstanding European players, including pianist Raymond Fol, alto saxophonist Michel Attenoux (who had worked with Hampton before), trombonist Claude Gousset, tenor saxophonist Gerard Badini, bassist Michel Gaudry, and former Ellington drummer Sam Woodyard, who was living and working in Paris. Hampton was only 68 years old at the time of the recording and still had the reputation for wearing out men a third of his age on the bandstand; his enthusiasm is infectious from the opening number, "Ring Dem Bells," as he introduces each soloist in turn in a lively jam…

The best digital release of 76 tracks/6 hours and 17 minutes from Mozart's masterpieces!

Zenzile Miriam Makeba, nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights activist. Associated with musical genres including Afropop, jazz, and world music, she was an advocate against apartheid and white-minority government in South Africa.

Sticky Wicked is a Dutch electric jazz fusion group initiated by bassist and composer Peter van Breukelen. He formed an ensemble with Peter Lieberom (sax), Remco van der Sluis (drums), Glenn Black/Guy Nikkels (guitar) and Steven Hupkes/Matthijs Geerts (keys), musicians who individually have played with many of today's great names in jazz and pop. Peter’s own compositions are considered original, fresh, and contemporary. And they are clearly the result of being inspired by decades of the finest in jazz, think Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, John Scofield and Weather Report.

Carl Heinrich Graun is known as Frederick the Great's court Kapellmeister, but less well known is the fact that Graun enjoyed an important reputation as a singer and that the king had originally engaged him as such at his court. In his obituary, the king characteristically honoured his court Kapellmeister with the words: "We will not hear such a singer again"!

Collegium Musicum is a Slovak prog-rock band. Its founder and leading figure was Marian Varga, one of the most distinctive rock keyboardist. Their style is similar to Emerson Lake & Palmer, Rick Wakeman, and The Nice. The band mostly known for interpretations of familiar themes from the works of classical music (such as Concerto in D by Joseph Haydn), and in this respect the most important group from the former Eastern Bloc.
The group was formed in autumn 1969 and was apparently the first ever creator of art-rock music in Czechoslovakia. The core of the largest and most intense touring productivity formed the Marian Varga, bassist Fedor Fres and drummer Dušan Hájek. With the shorter breaks the group worked on the music scene in 1979. Later it Varga occasionally renewed several times, especially in 1981 due to the recording of divergences.

The collaboration by David Wright and Dave Massey under the name "Callisto". Combining the respective trademark skills that have graced a collective 30 albums, the two Davids merge striking melodies with strident rhythms and sequences in the best tradition of Vangelis, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, to produce fresh and original electronic music.

Maggie Bell was lead singer of the Scottish rock band Stone the Crows, who broke up after their guitarist was fatally electrocuted onstage. Managed by Peter Grant (Led Zeppelin) and produced by Jerry Wexler (Aretha Franklin), Bell made a staggeringly good solo debut that seemed to position her as the heir to Janis Joplin (even covering "A Woman Left Lonely"). But she never broke through commercially, not even when Jimmy Page played guitar on her followup album — the only way she surpassed Joplin was by staying alive.

A fascinating collection of German harpsichord music from one of the instruments finest exponents, Sophie Yates. The German composer Johann Jacob Froberger is the central figure in this collection and he was probably the most significant influence in the development of a distinctive, German style of writing for keyboard instruments. He wrote some twenty-five toccatas of which the two on this album are of very different character; the earlier one is very contrapuntal in style and makes use of a chromatic theme, whilst the other is written in a feer, more improvisatory style, and is harmonically very daring. Sophie Yates writes in her sleeve notes that she wished to include some of the darker more sensual suites, of which the C minor Suite is one of the most striking. Froberger is a colourful composer, and these varied suites, consisting of the usual dance numbers of the day, are most enjoyable. Johann Kaspar Kerll was similarly an innovator and is represented on this album by an impressive Passacaglia which places great demands on the player, Johann Pachelbel is probably most famous as a composer of sacred works and, of course, the ubiquitous Canon in D. Of his instrumental music, the Hexachordum Apollinis is his most well-known work, which comprises a set of six arias with variations, of which the last one is recorded here. George Böhm is best remembered for his influence on other composers, particularly J S BAch.