Queen Kylie Minogue's 2020 album, the bluntly titled Disco, was brilliantly lit by the glow of the disco ball. This time around, she's bringing an electro-pop strobe to the dance floor —and, at 55, proving age really doesn't mean anything. While Madonna has been spinning fruitlessly in search of reinvention, Minogue just keeps nailing trends and staying refreshingly relevant. "Padam Padam"—the onomatopoeic sound of a heartbeat—lives in a metallic echo chamber, carefully curated by producer Lostboy and decorated with an infectious snake-charmer chorus. "I'll be in your head all weekend," Minogue sings prophetically. "Tension" goes deep with '90s house keyboards and beats, and a robotic effect for Mingoue's sexy come-on, directing exactly how she wants to be handled by a lover—"Oh, my god/ Touch me right there/ Almost there/ touch me right there"—while also also making it clear she is completely in control: "I'm a star babe-babe-babe/ Do this all day-day-day/ Cool like sorbet-bet-bet." She works all her vocal tricks on tropical-vibe "One More Time": cooing, showing powerhouse strength, effortlessly hitting the high notes, sassing and whooping and sweating it. (Even though it's not a direct tribute, you can't help but be reminded by Daft Punk's monster hit of the same name.) "Green Light" is cool-breeze cafe pop with smooooooth jazz sax. "Things We Do for Love" delivers an energetic burst of euphoria with a shiny soap bubble of a bridge. "You Still Get Me High" fronts like a prom ballad before erupting into an emo-beat thriller, with wailing sax upping the adrenaline; it's like Kylie x Bleachers, and it's fun. "Hands" finds Minogue casually rapping and delighting in '90s girl-group R&B. "Vegas High" captures that city's cut-loose party vibe and is obviously a tie-in for her residency at the Venetian, which begins November 2023. But she makes up for that bit of cheesiness with "10 Out of 10,"  a goofy, giddy lark of a collaboration with Dutch DJ Oliver Heldens that delivers a Pet Shop Boys-style droll chorus: "Body, 10/ Touch, 10 / Energy, 10." Kylie: 10.  © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Ultra-fresh, verging on esoteric, O Monolith's music is definitely not the most easily digestible - as its name suggests - no doubt as it is largely born on stage. After Warp released the harsh and, let's face it, more predictable punk of Bright Green Field in 2021, Ollie Judge (vocals, drums), Louis Borlase (guitar), Arthur Leadbetter (keyboards), Laurie Nakivell (bass, horns) and Anton Pearson (guitar, vocals) have followed up with a second LP the same year, up to 80% of it generated through live improvisation on stage at the Fieldwork Tour. The principle was simple: the quintet would tour the most remote parts of the British countryside in search of unsuspecting audiences, creating new songs in between performances of tracks from their previous LP. It was a creative process reversed, from which a series of gut-wrenching insights far removed from conventional formats were able to emerge.It was in Bristol that the compositions crystallised, and then in Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios, nestled between stone walls and green valleys in picturesque Wiltshire, that the five Englishmen recorded their creations. In the hands of genre specialist Dan Carey (Toy, Fontaines D.C, Geese, Warmdusher), O Monolith has taken the form of a lively, turbulent rock at the frontiers of the experimental, where nothing is set in stone. On the contrary, everything seems to be in motion, bubbling (Devil's Den), chopped up (The Blades) or weightless (Siphon Song). Nothing is expected. The vocals are choral, sung or robotic; no longer just shouted. But be warned, Squid knows how to turn up the post-punk bass (If You Had Seen The Bull's Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away), the hypnotic synth loops (Swing (In A Dream)) or the purring brass (After The Flash) to stir up the complex allure of this highly sensitive album. Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

Released to complement Kylie Minogue's 2023 album, Tension, Extension: The Extended Mixes features tracks from the acclaimed record in extended versions. The album appeared digitally as well as physically on double neon-pink, and green-splatter vinyl. Included is a longer version of the viral hit "Padam Padam."© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Van Morrison grew up with Skiffle - yes, at 77 years of age that’s still possible! Skiffle is the precursor to pop music which allowed young musicians in England to learn the ropes of traditional American music, folk, jazz and blues in the 50’s and early 60’s. Skiffle bands played makeshift acoustic instruments, guitars, banjos and washboards, with big smiles and hair slicked back behind the ears. Although it was very popular at the time, the genre was soon swept away by the pop explosion (before the Beatles, John Lennon had his skiffle band, the Quarrymen), but it is remembered as a safe haven for musical learning, and a bygone golden age. More than 20 years ago, Van Morrison honoured skiffle on a live album with two of the genre’s heroes: Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber (The Skiffle Sessions, live in Belfast). He has now returned to the studio and to the band for Moving On Skiffle, which is like an elixir of youth. The album’s 23 tracks are all covers of songs that belong to American folk and blues heritage. Van Morrison doesn’t claim to revolutionise anything here. Using cheerful, acoustic instruments, he celebrates the eternal youth of songs that will still be sung around campfires 50 years from now. Just as Dylan revisited Sinatra’s repertoire on Shadows In The Night and Fallen Angels in the mid-2010’s, Van Morrison flips through the musical album of his youth, bringing it back with a catchy simplicity and joy. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

It’s easy to be popular and commercial. It is less so to be popular, commercial AND brilliant. Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde, runs straight into this category reserved to a fortunate few. With Melodrama, the young New Zealander confirms a talent that was already impressive on Pure Heroine, her first album from 2013 released when she was only 16! All the elements of the pop identity are there. Lorde talks about herself, about being a 20 year old woman from the suburbs, about her dreams, solitude and ennui, about the transition to adulthood, about love of course, and also about disillusionment. In short, no pop cliché is missing. Lorde works wonders with the raw material accessible to all. Without trying to make the genre appear more complex, and staying firmly rooted in it, she establishes her singularity, her style, her name. “Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies. Well, Melodrama is about what comes next... The party is about to start. I am about to show you the new world.” With this second album, she highlights even more the quality of her writing, and of her voice too. Musically, there is no lurid effect because everything is done to magnify the song, and nothing but the song. In a way, the mastery radiating from Melodrama puts her closer to Madonna, Elton John or Kate Bush than to Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus. And in her post teenager coating, she almost offers the ingenuousness of a rather mature soul singer… In short, such an understanding of the pop dialect at only 20 is rather astounding… © CM/Qobuz

American Idiot was a rarity of the 21st century: a bona fide four-quadrant hit, earning critical and commercial respect, roping in new fans young and old alike. It was so big it turned Green Day into something it had never been before -- respected, serious rockers, something they were never considered during their first flight of success with Dookie. Back then, they were clearly (and proudly) slacker rebels with a natural gift for a pop hook, but American Idiot was a big album with big ideas, a political rock opera in an era devoid of both protest rock and wild ambition, so its success was a surprise. It also ratcheted up high expectations for its successor, and Green Day consciously plays toward those expectations on 2009's 21st Century Breakdown, another political rock opera that isn't an explicit sequel but could easily be mistaken for one, especially as its narrative follows a young couple through the wilderness of modern urban America. Heady stuff, but like the best rock operas, the concept doesn't get in the way of the music, which is a bit of an accomplishment because 21st Century Breakdown leaves behind the punchy '60s Who fascination for Queen and '70s Who, giving this more than its share of pomp and circumstance. Then again, puffed-up protest is kind of the point of 21st Century Breakdown: it's meant to be taken seriously, so it's not entirely surprising that Green Day fall into many of the same pompous tarpits as their heroes, ratcheting up the stately pianos, vocal harmonies, repeated musical motifs, doubled and tripled guitars, and synthesized effects that substitute for strings, then adding some orchestras for good measure. It would all sound cluttered, even turgid, if it weren't for Green Day's unerring knack for writing muscular pop and natural inclination to run clean and lean, letting only one song run over five minutes and never letting the arrangements overshadow the song. Although Green Day's other natural gift, that for impish irreverent humor, is missed -- they left it all behind on their 2008 garage rock side project Foxboro Hot Tubs -- the band manages to have 21st Century Breakdown work on a grand scale without losing either their punk or pop roots, which makes the album not only a sequel to American Idiot, but its equal.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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On her first studio recording in three years, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz completes the musical shift that began on 2013's Build Me Up from Bones. The earlier album, recorded while finishing her studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, explored songwriting outside the norms of contemporary folk, bluegrass, and country. Undercurrent finds her defining a music built out from American roots traditions, not bound by them. She wrote or co-wrote all 11 songs -- a first. Another is the album's instrumentation. While her octave mandolin and banjo playing are present, guitar is the dominant instrument here. Now living in New York, Jarosz surrounds herself with familiar collaborators who include I'm with Her bandmates Sara Watkins and Aoife O'Donovan, Luke Reynolds, Parker Millsap, and Jedd Hughes. The fingerpicked solo acoustic opener "Early Morning Light" commences with the audacious lyric "All my troubles have just begun...." It's a broken love/leaving song that admits regret and doubt, but ultimately refuses anything but forward motion. First single "House of Mercy," with its minor-key, rumbling, low-tuned acoustic guitar and arco bass, is a dark, steely Americana blues. It's a bitter kiss-off tune to a bad-news ex, spiny and forceful: "This house wasn't meant for strangers/But you come knockin' anyway...Underneath that shirt you're wearin'/Strained muscles and a heart of stone...You make me want to be alone...." "Comin' Undone" is a jazzy, rag-tinged shuffle outfitted with a gospelized B-3 and ringing electric six-strings. Lyrically, it offers more optimism than its melancholy title indicates. On the solo acoustic "Take Another Turn," in 6/8 time, Jarosz asks "What does it mean to be hungry/Hungry and hunting and wild...Should you talk to yourself a little more/Push right through that closed door." On "Take Me Back," her protagonist desires a return to solace and refuge but also accepts that nothing last forever, as an electric guitar adds poignant solo fills. "Still Life," driven by a lonesome fiddle, is another broken relationship song. In it she questions settling for less, but refuses, even though it means leaving a beloved who cannot completely surrender to what love demands. Though darker than her previous albums, Undercurrent is also more resilient. Jarosz reaches through her musical and personal histories with vulnerability and willingness. She comes out on the other side with songs that possess narrative savvy, melodic invention, and a refreshing sense of self-assuredness.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

While it seems quiet and seemingly unambitious to a fault, ambient music is slyly purposeful. Forcing concentration, it invites the uninitiated to become active listeners, alive to the nuances and shifting textures and moods of this often misunderstood and easily dismissed musical form. Unknown in the world outside his native Japan, Hiroshi Yoshimura was a prolific and multi-layered creative force. He composed delicate, tranquil music for both public endeavors, like museums, subways and an airport, as well as more commercial ventures like fashion shows and cosmetics manufacturers. In both cases the effect was the same—a fresh, serene way of listening and perhaps, if truly taken to heart, a more holistic and interconnected way of looking at and being in the world. In the original liner notes to Green, Yoshimura spoke of portraying the "comfortable scenery of the natural cycle" and "music that makes you relax … taking a bath with your mind and body completely exposed." An album length rumination that is widely considered to be one of Yoshimura's masterpieces (along with 1982's Music for Nine Postcards), Green may be his finest realization of these aspirations. With a delicate, nursery rhyme-like twinkling musical figure played on Fender Rhodes, and a deeper, more string-like descending progression of notes sliding in and out as counterpoint, the title track calmly trickles on, at times skipping a beat or two for emphasis, a classic example of Yoshimura at his very best.  Yoshimura, who died in 2003, was an absolute master at using space and silence, two of music's most fundamental elements. While the opener, "Creek" utilizes a rapid, rhythmic, almost percussive note pattern, the rest of the album, all of which solely features keyboards, opens and closes quietly, often fading up from silence after a longish break between tracks. Further demonstrating the power of sound, each song title's English translation has a double "ee" sound which, when read in order, imparts a soothing, elongated lyricism. While this collection once had water and bird sounds added after the fact to one early version, that clutter has now been removed allowing Green to radiate its subtle majesty unfettered. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Hoping for the reformation of Pink Floyd, the band’s drummer Nick Mason grew tired of awaiting a call from bandmates David Gilmour or Roger Waters. Mason, the only member to have played on all the albums by the group, launched his project Saucerful Of Secrets in 2018, also the name of the Englishmen’s second album which saw singer Syd Barrett’s dismissal during the recording. The idea being to have some fun playing tunes from Pink Floyd’s early days in a sort of five star “tribute band”. Accompanied by guitarist Gary Kemp from British group Spandau Ballet and Guy Pratt (who has taken Roger Walter’s place) on the bass and microphone, Mason set off on a large international tour with the aim of “capturing the spirit” of Pink Floyd before the album The Dark Side of the Moon. An essential step in the tour was at London’s famed venue, The Roundhouse. Here, the English group performed their legendary concerts in 1967 and 1971. And this double album is just as grandiose. Nick Mason and his lackeys are liberal with their long, ultra-psychedelic passages from the incipit Interstellar Overdrive, followed by a nod towards Astronomy Domine, another track written by Barrett, whose ghost haunts a record which will delight all Floyd fans and impress passers by. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

If you were paying close attention to the UMG-released Zappa titles, you may have noticed that Uncle Meat was one of the few pre-1982 albums that wasn't reissued using the original master tapes for the first time (all the Ryko masters were altered by Zappa). Meat Light remedies that by finally releasing the Uncle Meat original vinyl mix, remastered from the original master tapes for the very first time on CD. The results are stunning. The album literally sounds better than it ever has, with a crisp clarity to all the instruments, even on the most dense tracks. This alone would justify purchase for most Zappa fanatics...but wait! There's more! Who knew there was ANOTHER Uncle Meat?!? Yes, disc two and part of disc three present "Uncle Meat: Original Sequence." Many of the tracks are exactly the same, but with different sequencing and some completely unreleased material, all segued together with some additional contributions from the Apostolic Vlorch Injector (responsible for the blasts of noise on Uncle Meat and We're Only in It for the Money). "Whiskey Wah" and "The Whip" are previously unreleased guitar solos. "King Kong" doesn't end the set; it's the end of "Side 2" (of four), and it doesn't include the part that was recorded on a flatbed diesel at a Miami Pop Festival. "Cops & Buns" was included on The Lost Episodes, but in an edited form. Some of the other spoken bits ("Our Bizarre Relationship," "If We'd Been Living in California...") have just a little bit of extra material on them, providing a bit of further insight. "Mr. Green Genes" has a slightly different mix with some additional organ and vocals. The "Original Sequence" closes with "Cruisin' for Burgers"...but that's not the end of Meat Light! "A Bunch of Stuff" seems to be a spoken intro to the film Uncle Meat. Tracks like "Tango" and "More Beer" are just short cues. The single version of "Dog Breath" is a gas: no main vocals/lyrics -- just prominent (and awesome!) backing vocals with extra guitar and saxophone mixed in. "The String Quartet" is a medley of Uncle Meat tunes that was often performed live by the Mothers, but this sounds like a studio version. "Electric Aunt Jemima" is a different, more modern-sounding mix, while "Exercise 4" is an unused further elaboration of the "Uncle Meat Variations." The alternate mix of "Mr. Green Genes" has a different vocal mix and cool keyboards added. "Echo Pie" takes Jimmy Carl Black's displeasure in "If We'd Been Living in California" and kicks it up a notch or five. "1/4 Tone Unit" is a short, pretty chamber ensemble piece, "Sakuji's March" is a short percussion piece, and "No. 4" is a scored piece with some amazing double piano followed by double marimba. The extended version of "Prelude to Uncle Meat" adds about a minute and a half to the standard version, along with some interesting extra guitar at the end. "My Guitar (Proto 1)" is a ripping instrumental with FZ jamming on the "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama" riff. Hearing the guitar from "Nine Types of Industrial Pollution" played at the original speed is extremely interesting. You can hear Frank playing acoustic guitar over a faint, slowed-down drum track. It's rare to hear Zappa play acoustic guitar at all, and his playing here is quite different than what he's normally known for. The live version of "Uncle Meat" sounds great. The instrumental version of "Dog Breath" is a bit more refined and not quite as raucous as the single version...until the guitar solo! Meat Light closes with an alternate mix of "The Dog Breath Variations." This is a set fans have been waiting for for years. The sound is a huge improvement over all previous Uncle Meat CDs and the additional material is all excellent. Uncle Meat is arguably Zappa's most avant-garde, most dense, most wide-ranging, and one of his most difficult albums for some. It's also one of his very best and Meat Light really does justice to this masterpiece. © Sean Westergaard /TiVo

There are four sessions collected on 2021's The BBC Sessions, each held at BBC's Maida Vale Studio during Green Day's remarkable run in the 1990s. The first dates from June 1994, just after the band released Dookie. Here, the trio sound loud, precise, and slightly polite; it's as if they're still getting used to operating on a larger stage. By the time they held their second BBC Session in November 1996, nearly a year after the release of Insomniac, they sound rougher and wilder, particularly on the "Brain Stew/Jaded" performance. That attitude carries over to the third session, given in February 1998, a few months after Nimrod hit the stores. The 1998 set finds Green Day honing their precision attack, then the last session, given in August 2001, nearly a year after the release of Warning, captures a group in the thick of rethinking their approach; they retain their power but sharpen their songwriting chops. Taken together, The BBC Sessions emphasizes both the connective threads and creative evolution of Green Day during the first act of their career, which makes it a worthy historical document in addition to a first-rate live album.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

While it seems quiet and seemingly unambitious to a fault, ambient music is slyly purposeful. Forcing concentration, it invites the uninitiated to become active listeners, alive to the nuances and shifting textures and moods of this often misunderstood and easily dismissed musical form. Unknown in the world outside his native Japan, Hiroshi Yoshimura was a prolific and multi-layered creative force. He composed delicate, tranquil music for both public endeavors, like museums, subways and an airport, as well as more commercial ventures like fashion shows and cosmetics manufacturers. In both cases the effect was the same—a fresh, serene way of listening and perhaps, if truly taken to heart, a more holistic and interconnected way of looking at and being in the world. In the original liner notes to Green, Yoshimura spoke of portraying the "comfortable scenery of the natural cycle" and "music that makes you relax … taking a bath with your mind and body completely exposed." An album length rumination that is widely considered to be one of Yoshimura's masterpieces (along with 1982's Music for Nine Postcards), Green may be his finest realization of these aspirations. With a delicate, nursery rhyme-like twinkling musical figure played on Fender Rhodes, and a deeper, more string-like descending progression of notes sliding in and out as counterpoint, the title track calmly trickles on, at times skipping a beat or two for emphasis, a classic example of Yoshimura at his very best.Yoshimura, who died in 2003, was an absolute master at using space and silence, two of music's most fundamental elements. While the opener, "Creek" utilizes a rapid, rhythmic, almost percussive note pattern, the rest of the album, all of which solely features keyboards, opens and closes quietly, often fading up from silence after a longish break between tracks. Further demonstrating the power of sound, each song title's English translation has a double "ee" sound which, when read in order, imparts a soothing, elongated lyricism. © Robert Baird/Qobuz