This volume of Capitol/EMI's Legends Of The 20th Century profiles Nat King Cole, tracing his work as a jazz pianist and a massively popular singer. Both sides of Cole's talent are explored in this 22-track album, which includes "Nature Boy," "Unforgettable," "When I Fall In Love" and other vocal hits as well as jazz works like "Straighten Up And Fly Right," "When I Take My Sugar To Tea," "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66" and "Body And Soul." A fine sampling of highlights from both of Cole's careers.

Windows is a live album by Jon Lord and the German conductor and composer Eberhard Schoener. The music and the record are primarily credited to Lord. It was taped at a concert in Munich, (West) Germany on 1 June 1974 and the music is a mix between progressive rock and orchestral late romantic/modernist styles. The piece on the first side, "Continuo on B-A-C-H" is a loose attempt to build on the unfinished triple fugue that closed Johann Sebastian Bach's "Art of the Fugue". The second side of the LP is a three-part composition called "Window". In the liner notes of the LP album Lord makes a comparison between the rhapsodic structure here and the renga tradition of chain composition of poetry in medieval Japan. The music of the middle section was lifted from Lord's earlier crossover effort Gemini Suite (1971).

This fill-in-the-gaps compilation of early-'60s sessions includes six tracks (two of them alternate takes) that were previously only available on the box set The Complete Riverside Recordings, and three previously unissued alternate takes from the performance that yielded the 1961 live album The Montgomery Brothers in Canada. Even with just nine tracks, Montgomery is heard in a variety of contexts: the ballad "If I Should Lose You" performed by the Montgomery Brothers (an alternate take), the 1962 live version of "S.O.S." with Johnny Griffin and Miles Davis' 1959-62 rhythm section (another alternate take), four 1963 songs with organist Melvin Rhyne, and the three unreleased 1961 Montgomery Brothers cuts (two of which are different versions of "Stella By Starlight") with vibraphonist Buddy Montgomery…

Having apparently resolved their Family Cracks, the members of Samla Mammas Manna's '70s quartet - guitarist Coste Apetrea, drummer Hans Bruniusson, keyboardist Lars Hollmer, and bassist Lars Krantz - reunited during the '90s, after well over a decade apart, to play gigs scattered around the globe. In the fall of 1998 they recorded at Hollmer's Chickenhouse studio, and interspersed that material with excerpts from live concerts in Sweden and Norway between 1993 and 1998. The result was 1999's Kaka, a new showcase for the band also heard on the '70s albums Måltid (1974), Klossa Knapitatet (1975), and Gregory Fitzpatrick collaboration Snorungarnas Symfoni (1976). Kaka is actually a fine introduction to the Samlas, nicely balancing their serious musicality and unbridled lunacy. Revisiting material from the band's '70s era with much-improved sound quality, the studio-recorded tunes dominate the proceedings…

This double-disc, 41-track collection does what the title promises. It runs through the Animals' – and the subsequent Eric Burdon & the Animals' – singles, A- and B-sides from March 1964's "Baby Let Me Take You Home" till January 1969's cover of "Ring of Fire." By representing both the early- and late-'60s Animals incarnations, it's a relatively comprehensive summation of the band, at least as embodied by their singles. It's not complete since there is nothing from the band's excellent 1977 reunion album Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted. Also, the dreadful 1983 second reunion track "The Night" is incongruously and non-chronologically tacked on as the last cut of the first disc, making the omission of Rudely material that much more frustrating.

All the Way… A Decade of Song is the first English-language greatest hits album by Canadian recording artist Celine Dion. Released by Sony Music Entertainment on 12 November 1999, it features nine previously released and seven new recordings. Dion worked on new songs mainly with David Foster. Other producers include Max Martin, Kristian Lundin, Robert John "Mutt" Lange, James Horner and Matt Serletic. All the Way… A Decade of Song garnered positive reviews from music critics. They praised the first uptempo single "That's the Way It Is" and a ballad "If Walls Could Talk". Some criticism was directed towards including a small number of hits and many new recordings. Despite that, the album became a commercial success throughout the world and peaked at number one in every major music market around the globe.

Most of Monteverdi's motets for one voice were among his late publications, like the celebrated Selva morale e spirituale (Venice, 1640). An aboluste master of what he called the seconda prattica, he demonstrated in these pieces all of the skill he had acquired over the years in writing for the solo voice. Just as he had taken the madrigal to its peak of perfection, Monteverdi here realises the achievements of the Baroque period in this form of religious music inherited from the early centuries of polyphonic writing. The performers have striven to revive the typically Venetian context of the time, placing these sublime works in a framework of instrumental toccatas and sinfonias by his contemporaries Marini, Merulo and Antegnati.

One of the causes of the ‘crisis’ in the music industry is the fact that too many works are recorded over and over again. There are innumerable CDs with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Pergolesi’s Stabat mater. But once in a while someone has the imagination to perform and record a completely unknown piece by a composer hardly anybody has ever heard about. Antonio Florio is one of those creative minds who concentrates on little-known repertoire. In the last decade or so he has explored the musical past of his city, Naples. This time he presents a composition by an Italian who, for the largest part of his life, worked in Vienna. Badia was born in Verona and went to Innsbruck at a young age.

Originally released around the turn of the millennium, Musick to Play in the Dark featured a restarted Coil at bay, with original members John (later Jhonn) Balance (R.I.P.) and Peter Christopherson joined by synthesist/bassist Thighpaulsandra, and Drew McDowall (replaced by Rose McDowall on the second volume). These are long-form works, collections of mood pieces in several modes, and what’s interesting (and somewhat predictable) is that the patience displayed while shifting in between these modes creates a tension and space that feels… almost removed from music by a step, as if the performance decided to slowly back away from Coil at a respectful, totality-fearing distance (or maybe it was the psychic force of their music that pushed it all back)…