Probably the first album to successfully merge the seemingly disparate sounds of rap and heavy metal, Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut was groundbreaking enough when released in 1992, but many would argue that it has yet to be surpassed in terms of influence and sheer brilliance -- though countless bands have certainly tried. This is probably because the uniquely combustible creative relationship between guitar wizard Tom Morello and literate rebel vocalist Zack de la Rocha could only burn this bright, this once. While the former's roots in '80s heavy metal shredding gave rise to an inimitable array of six-string acrobatics and rhythmic special effects (few of which anyone else has managed to replicate), the latter delivered meaningful rhymes with an emotionally charged conviction that suburban white boys of the ensuing nu-metal generation could never hope to touch. As a result, syncopated slabs of hard rock insurrection like "Bombtrack," "Take the Power Back," and "Know Your Enemy" were as instantly unforgettable as they were astonishing. Yet even they paled in comparison to veritable clinics in the art of slowly mounting tension such as "Settle for Nothing," "Bullet in the Head," and the particularly venomous "Wake Up" (where Morello revises Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" riff for his own needs) -- all of which finally exploded with awesome power and fury. And even listeners who were unable (or unwilling) to fully process the band's unique clash of muscle and intellect were catered to, as RATM were able to convey their messages through stubborn repetition via the fundamental challenge of "Freedom" and their signature track, "Killing in the Name," which would become a rallying cry of disenfranchisement, thanks to its relentlessly rebellious mantra of "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" Ultimately, if there's any disappointment to be had with this near-perfect album, it's that it still towers above subsequent efforts as the unequivocal climax of Rage Against the Machine's vision. As such, it remains absolutely essential.© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of their first album, Sony Music CG has brought together all the WHAM! singles on one disc, with a host of bonus tracks. It could only begin with Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do); the George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley duo’s brassy, bouncy calling card. The original track is followed by 5 re-jigged versions sure to delight fans. Of particular note is the Special US Remix, with its handclaps raising the slider on an already effective original rhythm, which is followed by Young Guns (Go For It), on the back of which WHAM! became a veritable social phenomenon. Relaxed, elegant and gently anti-conformist, the two young men went on to score a string of hits: Bad Boys, with its unforgettable opening synth gimmick, the summery Club Tropicana, and the unmissable Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, a 1984 single that sounds like it came straight out of the Motown catalogue. The number of hits on this compilation is all the more impressive given that WHAM! had a relatively short lifespan, sacrificed in favour of George Michael's phenomenal solo success. Songs like Last Christmas reflect the evolution of George Michael: it is signed by both of WHAM!’s members, but it is Michael alone who carries it on his shoulders. The christmas jingle is presented here in its original version, accompanied by a “Pudding Mix” which features a synthesised bell. As the album is structured chronologically, it ends with the band's least emblematic singles: The Edge of Heaven, Battlestations, and Where Did Your Heart Go?— a cover of the American band Was (Not Was) sung by Michael, on which Ridgeley is simply absent. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is one of the greatest achievements in orchestration by any composer in jazz history. Charles Mingus consciously designed the six-part ballet as his magnum opus, and -- implied in his famous inclusion of liner notes by his psychologist -- it's as much an examination of his own tortured psyche as it is a conceptual piece about love and struggle. It veers between so many emotions that it defies easy encapsulation; for that matter, it can be difficult just to assimilate in the first place. Yet the work soon reveals itself as a masterpiece of rich, multi-layered texture and swirling tonal colors, manipulated with a painter's attention to detail. There are a few stylistic reference points -- Ellington, the contemporary avant-garde, several flamenco guitar breaks -- but the totality is quite unlike what came before it. Mingus relies heavily on the timbral contrasts between expressively vocal-like muted brass, a rumbling mass of low voices (including tuba and baritone sax), and achingly lyrical upper woodwinds, highlighted by altoist Charlie Mariano. Within that framework, Mingus plays shifting rhythms, moaning dissonances, and multiple lines off one another in the most complex, interlaced fashion he'd ever attempted. Mingus was sometimes pigeonholed as a firebrand, but the personal exorcism of Black Saint deserves the reputation -- one needn't be able to follow the story line to hear the suffering, mourning, frustration, and caged fury pouring out of the music. The 11-piece group rehearsed the original score during a Village Vanguard engagement, where Mingus allowed the players to mold the music further; in the studio, however, his exacting perfectionism made The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady the first jazz album to rely on overdubbing technology. The result is one of the high-water marks for avant-garde jazz in the '60s and arguably Mingus' most brilliant moment.© Steve Huey /TiVo

Sitting atop the charts in 1975, Elton John and Bernie Taupin recalled their rise to power in Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, their first explicitly conceptual effort since Tumbleweed Connection. It's no coincidence that it's their best album since then, showcasing each at the peak of his power, as John crafts supple, elastic, versatile pop and Taupin's inscrutable wordplay is evocative, even moving. What's best about the record is that it works best of a piece -- although it entered the charts at number one, this only had one huge hit in "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," which sounds even better here, since it tidily fits into the musical and lyrical themes. And although the musical skill on display here is dazzling, as it bounces between country and hard rock within the same song, this is certainly a grower. The album needs time to reveal its treasures, but once it does, it rivals Tumbleweed in terms of sheer consistency and eclipses it in scope, capturing John and Taupin at a pinnacle. They collapsed in hubris and excess not long afterward -- Rock of the Westies, which followed just months later is as scattered as this is focused -- but this remains a testament to the strengths of their creative partnership.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

"For Lilies I just wanted to retreat to a cave with my Pro-Tools, my computer, and my cheap, 100Euro Shure SM-58 microphone. I could have gone to a big studio, made a big production – but I wanted none of that. I wanted to go back to the seed of creativity, the simplest materials. I was in this room where there was no light, no night or day at all, no heat. Very uncomfortable. But I felt free. I was happy to have this feeling – ‘I don’t need more, I have everything I need here.’” The spirit and the context in which Melanie De Biasio created Lilies are certainly in keeping with this unique artist's life and work... A singer-musician who is always ready to question and challenge herself anew and push the boundary markers which are so often set down between musical genres. Released in 2013, her album No Deal excelled as an atmospheric meeting of jazz, electro and rock. The Belgian who worships Nina Simone and Abbey Lincoln took another departure from the beaten track with what is commonly called vocal jazz, and wandered towards soul, trip hop, blues: into the most impalpable of ethers. In these weightless sequences, Lilies is firmly stamped with the De Biasio hallmark. This is a way of doing away with labels and playing with light and dark, day and night. © MD/Qobuz

T-Bone Burnett is blunt: "Rhiannon is the next in a long line of singers that includes Marian Anderson, Odetta, Mahalia Jackson and Rosetta Tharpe." After hearing Tomorrow Is My Turn, her 2015 debut solo album that revisited such wonders as Elizabeth Cotten, Dolly Parton, Hank Cochran and even Aznavour, the famous producer's opinion sounded obvious. The journey into the timeless Americana of folk, jazz, gospel, blues, soul and country continues for the former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops with Freedom Highway, the title of which is that taken from a civil rights anthem composed by the Staple Singers for the famous Selma marches in Montgomery, Alabama in March 1965. This album is much less rooted in the past than it seems, at a time when America is living through some of its most turbulent moments. With her truly stunning voice, Rhiannon Giddens stirs up the ghosts of slavery and the civil rights struggle, and makes them more modern and alive than ever. Even when she sings Joan Baez's Birmingham Sunday, you could swear you're hearing a tune from 2017! Rhiannon Giddens' strength is that she never does taxidermy. Superbly produced and interpreted, this album is not merely a sepia coloured memory to decorate the conscience and the mind. No, this is a strong and magnificent record that perpetuates a musical, spiritual and ideological tradition that can never die, especially when it is interpreted in this way. © MZ/Qobuz

Master jazz pianist Oscar Peterson had his longest-running trio with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen, and Night Train may be their finest moment. The repertoire here is comprised mostly of standards, although the choices seem deliberate. In treatments of jazz chestnuts like "C-Jam Blues" and "Georgia on My Mind," the trio works inside these well-known songs, painting over familiar colors and reworking traditional melodies while staying true to the spirit of each tune. The chemistry between Thigpen, Brown, and Peterson is unassailable. Peterson in particular is at the top of his game here, running the whole history of jazz through his dexterous, nimble fingers with an in-the-pocket ease not always apparent on his earlier recordings. Night Train was produced by Norman Granz, who had already sold Verve Records to MGM, but continued to record his favorite artists, of whom Peterson was one. The production is superb, and translates especially well via remastering. The Verve reissue features additional tracks, including alternate takes, rehearsals, full versions of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" and "Volare," and an incomplete take of Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time." New packaging, expanded liner notes, and photographs make the 1997 CD version of Night Train a keeper. © Anthony Tognazzini /TiVo

Even though this long-player was the second collection to have featured the original Supremes lineup with Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard and Diana Ross, Where Did Our Love Go (1964) was the first to significantly impact the radio-listening and record-buying public. It effectively turned the trio -- who were called the 'No-Hit Supremes' by Motown insiders -- into one of the label's most substantial acts of the 1960s. Undoubtedly, their success was at least in part due to an influx of fresh material from the formidable composing/production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland (HDH). They had already proven themselves by presenting "(Your Love Is Like A) Heatwave" to Martha & the Vandellas and providing Marvin Gaye with "Can I Get a Witness." Motown-head Berry Gordy hoped HDH could once again strike gold -- and boy, did they ever. Equally as impressive is that the Supremes were among the handful of domestic acts countering the initial onslaught of the mid-'60s British Invasion with a rapid succession of four Top 40 sides. Better still, "Where Did Our Love Go," "Baby Love" and "Come See About Me" made it all the way to the top, while "When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes" (number 23), "Run, Run, Run" (number 93) and "A Breath Taking Guy" (number 75) were able to garner enough airplay and sales to make it into the Top 100 Pop Singles survey. HDH weren't the only contributors to the effort, as William "Smokey" Robinson supplied the catchy doo wop influenced "Long Gone Lover," as well as the aforementioned "Breath Taking Guy." Norman Whitfield penned the mid-tempo ballad "He Means The World to Me," and former Moonglow Harvey Fuqua co-wrote "Your Kiss of Fire." With such a considerable track list, it is no wonder Where Did Our Love Go landed in the penultimate spot on the Pop Album chart for four consecutive weeks in September of '64 -- making it the best received LP from Motown to date. In 2004, the internet-based Hip-O Select issued the double-disc Where Did Our Love Go [Expanded 40th Anniversary Edition] in a limited pressing of 10,000 copies. The package included the monaural and stereo mixes, plus a never before available seven-song vintage live set from the Twenty Grand Club in Detroit and another 17 unreleased studio cuts documented around the same time.© Lindsay Planer /TiVo

Chicago's Irreversible Entanglements thrive in the dense, fiery world they have created between jazz and spoken word performance art. While their official bio strains to describe this album as an "artistic and social statement that simultaneously plugs into and tweaks the zeitgeist," Irreversible Entanglements, while still noisy and hungry for fearless confrontation, have begun to bank some of the anger and defiance that fueled the lyrics on their first trio of albums. Opener "Free Love" has a bass line and lyrics with more than a whiff of the hymn of praise that John Coltrane reaches in A Love Supreme. After a plucked note opening by bassist Luke Stewart, "root⇔branch,"—a salute to the late trumpeter and fellow free jazz explorer jaimie branch—becomes an invitation to "fly" to a world where all can be "free from the pain, free from the struggle." The soaring horns of Aquiles Navarro and Keir Neuringer echo across synth curlicues and black hole reverberations. Sun Ra is a constant influence in this universe. Premiering as a trio of vocalist Camae Ayewa, saxophonist Neuringer and Stewart at a Musicians Against Police Brutality event in Brooklyn in 2015, they became a quintet with the addition of trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes. Here each band member plays numerous instruments, with nearly everyone getting a turn on synthesizer. Recorded by Lily Wen at Figure 8 in Brooklyn and Maureen Sickler at Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey—both of whom do an admirable job of keeping the band's dynamic sounds separate and intelligible—Protect Your Light guests include cellist Lester St. Louis, pianist/vocalist Janice A. Lowe and vocalist Sovei. Set to a rolling Afro-Cuban rhythm with a banging cowbell, the funky title track becomes a storm between horns as they fidget and jerk, eventually drawing together at the conclusion. "Soundness" is an exploration of sax and trumpet tones that both skronk, squiggle and wail while Holmes rumbles and keeps an even rhythm on splash and high-hat cymbals. This horn extravaganza ends with cellist St. Louis adding low notes while both horns eventually wind down to final exclamations and twisted notes in an impressive example of how International Anthem's art can coalesce into a coherent, heady, original mix of music and statement. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Forty years after they officially broke up, ABBA are back. Although sometimes it felt like they never really went away, thanks to the Mamma Mia! musical and movie, as well as the band's prominent placement in films like Muriel's Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and in the arsenal of every wedding DJ. Of course, the world can be divided into two camps: ABBA fans and ABBA haters. And fans, Voyage is a wonder. (And haters: What, you hate heaven-sent harmonies?) "Just a Notion" is just glorious —as feel-good as "Waterloo." Originally recorded in 1978, while the Swedish foursome were making their Voulez-Vous album, it was inexplicably cut despite its joyous handclaps and sax and piano. (It's not a bad thing to say this would be perfect for a Richard Simmons workout.) "Don't Shut Me Down" struts to a high-stepping marching beat and funky double bass, as Agnetha Fältskog—sounding pretty freaking incredible for 71—tells an old lover she wants to come home now that she's gotten her groove back: "Once these rooms were witness to our love/ My tantrums and increasing frustration/ But I go from mad/ To not so bad in my transformation." It's weird and wonderful, the kind of thing that could win Eurovision (which, of course, ABBA did in 1974). The irresistible hooks and soaring chorus of "No Doubt About It" should make bands five decades younger jealous. The epic ballad "I Still Have Faith in You," meanwhile, finds Anni-Frid Lyngstad singing in a surprising, and striking, lower register. The song could be the cousin of "Fernando" and builds to a chorus as majestic as any hair-metal weeper. There's an original Christmas carol, "Little Things," and "When You Danced With Me," a gleeful folk-ish number that wouldn't have been out of place in a dancing scene from the horror movie Midsommar. With a few instrumentation tweaks, "I Can Be That Woman" could be the kind of Nashville Sound countrypolitan ballad Lynn Anderson would've crooned: "You say you've had it, and you say 'Screw you'/ I say 'I love you' and I know it's true" go the lyrics, chronicling a lifetime of regrets and the pledge to be better. Speaking of country—"Keep an Eye on Dan" tackles subject matter rarely found in pop songs. Against slightly sinister strings and a funky bass that recall the "gotcha" scene of any '70s crime show unspools a story that seems to be about a divorcée reluctant to leave her son with his dad for the weekend: "Keep an eye on Dan … he gets out of hand if you let him … I'll be back on Sunday to get him." (The wild synths suggest maybe little Dan is … unhinged?) Yes, it's highly processed cheese, but it really hits the spot. All 10 songs are composed by band members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus who, respectively, divorced Lyngstad and Fältskog years ago. But you'd never know that from the harmony, in every sense of the word. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Jackie McLean had always been a highly emotional soloist, so it makes sense that he was one of the first hard bop veterans to find a new voice in the burning intensity of jazz's emerging avant-garde. McLean had previously experimented with Coltrane's angular modes and scales and Ornette's concept of chordal freedom, but Let Freedom Ring was the landmark masterpiece where he put everything together and ushered in the era of the modernists at Blue Note. A number of saxophonists were beginning to explore the ability of the instrument to mimic human cries of passion, and here McLean perfected a long, piercing squeal capable of expressing joy, anguish, fury, and more. The music on Let Freedom Ring remained more rooted in hard bop structure than Coleman's, and McLean was still recognizably himself, but that was precisely what was revolutionary about the album: It validated the avant-garde aesthetic, demonstrating that it had enough value to convert members of the old guard, and wasn't just the province of radical outcasts. There are only four pieces, one of which is the surging Bud Powell ballad "I'll Keep Loving You"; the other three are McLean originals ("Melody for Melonae," "Rene," and "Omega," dedicated to his daughter, son, and mother respectively) that spotlight his tremendous inventiveness on extended material and amaze with a smoldering fire that never lets up. Pianist Walter Davis takes the occasional solo, but the record is McLean's statement of purpose, and he accordingly dominates the proceedings, with the busy, free-flowing dialogues of bassist Herbie Lewis and Ornette drummer Billy Higgins pushing him to even greater heights. The success of Let Freedom Ring paved the way for a bumper crop of other modernist innovators to join the Blue Note roster and, artistically, it still stands with One Step Beyond as McLean's greatest work.© Steve Huey /TiVo