A guitarist worshipped by Jimi Hendrix, an insanely good falsetto singer that even Prince looked up to, an author heavily involved in the American civil rights movement and a top-tier songwriter: Curtis Mayfield was a man of many talents. His groovy symphonies helped form solid links between funk, jazz, blues, soul and traditional gospel. After making his name with The Impressions in the 60s, he embarked on a solo career in 1970. This box set named Keep On Keeping On contains the singer’s first four studio albums, each remastered in Hi-Res 24-Bit quality: Curtis (1970), Roots (1971), Back to the World (1973) and Sweet Exorcist (1974). Here, the rhythm'n'blues enjoy a second life, supported by a wah-wah guitar, careful percussion and an always airy string section. Every topic concerned is a mini-tragedy, socially engaged, anchored in traditional gospel music. The masterful arranging of these albums (especially his masterpiece Curtis, and Roots) can be considered rivals to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. It is worth mentioning that this 1970-1974 box set does not include the soundtrack to Superfly, Gordon Parks Jr.’s 1972 film which contains the singles Pusherman and Freddie’s Dead. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Arriving 12 years after the release of the film, Vangelis' soundtrack to the 1982 futuristic noir detective thriller Blade Runner is as bleak and electronically chilling as the film itself. By subtly interspersing clips of dialogue and sounds from the film, Vangelis creates haunting soundscapes with whispered subtexts and sweeping revelations, drawing inspiration from Middle Eastern textures and evoking neo-classical structures. Often cold and forlorn, the listener can almost hear the indifferent winds blowing through the neon and metal cityscapes of Los Angeles in 2019. The sultry, saxophone-driven "Love Theme" has since gone on as one of the composer's most recognized pieces and stands alone as one of the few warm refuges on an otherwise darkly cold (but beautiful) score. An unfortunate inclusion of the 1930s-inspired ballad "One More Kiss, Dear" interrupts the futuristic synthesized flow of the album with a muted trumpet and Rudy Vallée-style croon. However well done (and appropriate in the movie), a forlorn love song that sounds as if it is playing on a distant Philco radio in The Walton's living room jarringly breaks the mood of the album momentarily (although with CD technology, this distraction is easily bypassed). Fans of Ridley Scott's groundbreaking film (as well as those interested in the evolution of electronic music) will warmly take this recording into their plastic-carbide-alloy hearts.© Zac Johnson /TiVo

Drawing on rock, salsa, and jazz, Santana recorded one imaginative, unpredictable gem after another during the 1970s. But Caravanserai is daring even by Santana's high standards. Carlos Santana was obviously very hip to jazz fusion -- something the innovative guitarist provides a generous dose of on the largely instrumental Caravanserai. Whether its approach is jazz-rock or simply rock, this album is consistently inspired and quite adventurous. Full of heartfelt, introspective guitar solos, it lacks the immediacy of Santana or Abraxas. Like the type of jazz that influenced it, this pearl (which marked the beginning of keyboardist/composer Tom Coster's highly beneficial membership in the band) requires a number of listenings in order to be absorbed and fully appreciated. But make no mistake: this is one of Santana's finest accomplishments.© Alex Henderson /TiVo

Josh Homme is a man of many talents, but he's not quite a man of his time. He floats outside of it, sniping and sneering at it, but he's not part of it -- he's too in love with rock & roll to belong to a decade that's seeing the music's slow decline. You could say that Queens of the Stone Age keep rock's flame burning, but unlike other new-millennium true believers -- like Jack White, for instance -- Homme lacks pop skills or even the interest in crossing over (which isn't the same thing as lacking hooks, mind you), and unlike the stoner metal underground that provided his training ground, he's not insular; he thrives on grand visions and grander sound. He's an anomaly, a keeper of the flame that will never be played on Little Steven's Rock & Roll Underground because Queens of the Stone Age are too heavy, too muso, too tasteless in all the wrong ways to be commonly accepted or embraced as among the next generation of rock heroes -- which only makes them more rock & roll, of course. And if rock & roll is indeed in decline in the 2000s, Homme and his Queens of the Stone Age prove that rock & roll can nevertheless be just as potent as it ever was with each of their remarkable albums. All are instantly identifiable as QOTSA but all are quite different from each other, from the sleazoid freak-out of R to the dark, gothic undertow of Lullabies to Paralyze, a record so willfully murky that it alienated a good portion of an audience ready to bolt in the wake of the departure of Homme's longtime partner, Nick Oliveri. Its 2007 successor, Era Vulgaris, is as different from Lullabies as that was to their dramatic widescreen breakthrough, Songs for the Deaf: it's mercilessly tight and precise, relentless in its momentum and cheerful in its maliciousness. Like other QOTSA albums, guest musicians are paraded in and out, but here it's impossible to tell if Mark Lanegan contributed anything or if that indeed is the Strokes' Julian Casablancas singing lead on the lethal "Sick, Sick, Sick," because Homme has honed Era Vulgaris so scrupulously that it's impossible to hear anybody else's imprint on the overall sound. QOTSA retain some of the spookiness of Lullabies -- there's a ghostly hue on "Into the Hollow" -- but this is as balls-out rock as Songs for the Deaf, only minus the mythic momentum Dave Grohl lent that record. But Era Vulgaris isn't designed as a monolith like Songs; its appeal is in its lean precision, how the riffs grind as if they were stripping screws of their threads, how the rhythms relentlessly pulse, and, of course, how it's all dressed up in all kinds of scalding guitars, all different sounds and tones, giving this menace and muscle. If the songs aren't pop crossovers -- not even the soulful seductive groove of "Make It Wit Chu" (revived from one of Homme's Desert Sessions) qualifies it as a potential pop hit -- they still have hard hooks that make these manifestos even if they aren't anthems: "Misfit Love" digs in like a nasty Urge Overkill, "Battery Acid" is metallic and mean, blind-sided only by the gargantuan, gnarly "3's & 7's." It's hard to call Era Vulgaris stripped-down -- there's too much color in the guitar, too much willful weirdness to be that -- but this is Queens of the Stone Age at their most elemental and efficient, never spending longer than necessary at each song, yet managing to make each of these three-minute blasts of fury sound like epics. It's exhilarating, the best rock & roll record yet released in 2007 -- and the year sure needed the dose of thunder that this album provides.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Note : The last track "Un Día (One Day)" is not available in 24-bit, you should download the album through your Qobuz application for PC / Mac.

Wilco evolved at remarkable speed after forming in 1994, almost immediately after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo. Their debut album, 1995's A.M., was an upbeat set of alt-country that bore few, if any surprises, but 1996's Being There was a major creative departure that moved far beyond the boundaries of roots music. 1999's Summerteeth was initially controversial among fans because it marked the spot where Wilco almost entirely abandoned the country influences that had once been the core of Jeff Tweedy's music. Instead, Tweedy and Jay Bennett, who had gone from being the group's guitarist to manning a massive bank of keyboards and becoming Tweedy's primary collaborator in the studio, concocted a stunning set of off-kilter pop, suggesting a Midwestern fusion of peak-era Brian Wilson and Big Star's 3rd. ("Pieholden Suite" in particular is a lovely homage to the Beach Boys' Smile, then still circulating only in bootleg form.) At the same time, this was brilliantly constructed pop music was also pop with a dark and troubling center; the violence at the heart of "She's a Jar" and "Via Chicago" is too blunt to avoid, and even the brightest moments ("Can't Stand It," "A Shot in the Arm," and "When You Wake Up Feeling Old") sound and feel emotionally out of balance, giving this a complicated emotional push-and-pull that reinforces the resonance of the performances. (The album's most lovable pop tune, "Candyfloss," significantly comes near the end of the set, bookended after a 20-second burst of silence.) While Wilco was inarguably Jeff Tweedy's band at this point, Summerteeth was the apex of his collaboration with Jay Bennett, even more so than 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and while John Stirratt and Ken Coomer were their strong, reliable selves as a rhythm section, it's Bennett's keyboards and production smarts that give life to a set of great, uncompromising songs. If Being There was the album where Jeff Tweedy embraced all that was possible with Wilco, Summerteeth was where he closed the door on the past and boldly stepped into a very different future.© Mark Deming /TiVo

One underrated highlight of the classic 1984 science-fiction film The Terminator was the marvelous synthesizer score by Brad Fiedel. Side one of The Terminator is comprised of six compositions by Fiedel, who once served as a keyboardist for Hall & Oates briefly in the mid-1970s. "The Terminator Theme" is a spectacular piece of haunting synthesizer music; each layer is perfectly effective, especially the deceptively simple melody line. "Tunnel Chase" is bombastically chilling while "Love Scene" is a soft, mournful piano-based version of the main theme; its bittersweet feel corresponds nicely to the pivotal scene that it supports. Fiedel's synthesizer work on "Factory Chase" is full of glassy squeals and scary bursts, and Ross Levinson adds touches of electric violin. Side two consists of generic, mid-'80s synthesizer-based, dance-oriented pop/rock, but that makes sense since most of these songs were used in club scenes in the film. Tahnee Cain and Tryanglz contribute three songs (Cain, aka Tane Cain, was married to keyboardist Jonathan Cain of the Babys and Journey); all three have typical hard-rock rhythm guitar and flashy solos, but the best one is "Burnin' in the Third Degree." The Jay Ferguson and 16mm cut "Pictures of You" is really only notable because the emphasis on quirky synthesizers is so different from Ferguson's solo rock hits "Thunder Island" and "Shakedown Cruise." The hyperactive Linn Van Hek song "Intimacy" is a mixture of latter-day new wave and primitive, early techno. .© Bret Adams /TiVo

Hailed as Bruce Springsteen's return to rock upon its release in fall 2007, Magic isn't quite as straightforward as that description would have it seem. True, this does mark another reunion with the E Street Band, only his second studio album with the group since 1984's Born in the U.S.A., giving this a rock & roll heft missing from his two previous albums -- the dusty, literary Devils & Dust and the raucous We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions -- and unlike The Rising, the first E Street Band album of the new millennium, there is no overarching theme here. It's just a collection of songs, something that Bruce hasn't done since Human Touch, or maybe even The River. All the ingredients are in place for a simple, straight-ahead rock album, except for two things: Springsteen didn't write a lot of flat-out rock songs, and with his producer Brendan O'Brien, he didn't make an album that sounds much like a rock & roll album, either. Magic is bright and punchy, a digital-age production through and through, right down to how each track feels as if it were crafted according to its own needs instead of the record as a whole. Underneath this shiny veneer, the E Street Band can still lift this music toward great heights, infusing it with a sense of majesty, but this is an E Street Band that was recorded piecemeal in the studio, pasted together track by track as the group fit sessions into their busy schedules. This approach gives the album a bit of a mannered, meticulous sound not unlike The Rising, but such careful construction was appropriate for Springsteen's cautious, caring 9/11 rumination; on Magic it tends to keep the music from reaching full flight. Then again, the songs here don't quite lend themselves to either the transcendent sweep of Born to Run or the down-n-dirty roadhouse rockers that cluttered The River. There's a quiet melancholy underpinning this album. It's evident even on the hard-driving "Radio Nowhere," whose charging guitars mask a sense of desperation, or the deceptively breezy "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," which grows more wistful with each passing chorus. "Girls" is also indicative of how Magic doesn't quite feel like classic E Street Band, even when it offers reminders of their classic sound: like "Born to Run," it trades upon Phil Spector, but here the band doesn't absorb the Wall of Sound; they evoke it, giving the song a nostalgic bent that emphasizes the soft sadness in his melody. This oddly bittersweet vibe that is shared by "Your Own Worst Enemy," whose baroque harpsichords -- uncannily reminiscent of the Left Banke -- are the biggest curveball here. That is, it's the biggest specific curveball outside of the overall feel of Magic, which is far too somber to be called just another rock & roll album. The solemn, sepia-toned picture of the Boss on the cover is a pretty big tip-off that there may not be a whole lot of good times coming on Magic, but it's a surprise that this is not only not as joyous as We Shall Overcome, it doesn't have as many moments of sunny relief as The Rising, which had "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" and "Mary's Place" among its quiet, artful grief. Here, the joy and the sadness are fused, skewing such otherwise lively numbers as "Livin' in the Future" -- which otherwise sounds like it could sneak onto the second side of Born in the U.S.A. -- toward the sober side. Springsteen also targets war and politics throughout the album, either through metaphors (the title track, where the audience is suckered by a con man) or blunt declarations ("Last to Die"). All this toil and tension doesn't make for a very fun album, but 2007 isn't a very fun time, so it's an appropriate reflection of the time. The thing of it is, despite some fine moments of craft -- both musical and lyrical, whether on "Gypsy Biker" or "Long Walk Home" -- the songs aren't written with the keen literary eye that made Devils & Dust play like a collection of short stories. Like the music, the words just feel a shade too deliberate, rendering Magic just a bit too overthought -- hardly enough to make for a bad record, but one that isn't quite grabbing, even if it is helped immeasurably by the E Street Band in old pro mode. And what's missing comes into sharp relief as the album draws to a close with "Terry's Song," a quickly written and recorded tribute to Terry Magovern, Springsteen's longtime friend and assistant. Compared to the rest of the album, this simple tune is a bit ragged, but it's soulful, moving, and indelible, immediate where the rest of the album is a shade distant. After hearing it, it's hard not to wish that Bruce would record this way all the time.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Both pianist Michel Petrucciani and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen had considerable discographies and died far too young, Petrucciani in his mid-thirties and Pedersen at 58. Both men were virtuosos on their respective instruments, Petrucciani having played with a number of jazz greats in his all-too-brief career, while Pedersen began playing with visiting and expatriate Americans when only a teenager and especially made his mark in numerous recordings with the great Oscar Peterson. This performance at the Copenhagen Jazzhouse was unrehearsed and possibly the only time the two men played together, but their chemistry is immediate as they tackle a wide swath of standards and familiar jazz compositions. This is hardly a meeting where the bassist is merely accompanying the pianist; they engage in musical dialogues, frequently at a brisk tempo, and each interprets where the other is going in the performance, not an easy task for musicians not familiar with one another. Obvious highlights are the playful, tightrope-walking, and intricate take of Sonny Rollins' "Oleo," the spirited waltzing "Someday My Prince Will Come," the somewhat whimsical setting of "'Round Midnight," and the pulsing take of "Stella by Starlight" (a refreshing change from the typical straight ballad arrangement). It seems odd that this music remained unreleased for nearly 15 years after it was recorded, but this two-disc set is a perfect example of both musicians being very much at the top of their respective games.© Ken Dryden /TiVo

After the demise of the much-beloved Uncle Tupelo in 1994, Jeff Tweedy regrouped with three of his four bandmates as Wilco and promptly cut A.M., a debut that sounded like he had been stashing a bunch of his best songs. It was followed by the expansive and successful Being There which dropped the alt-countryisms for a more mainstream rock tone, indicating aims for a larger canvas. Those ambitions further morphed into experimental impulses on Wilco’s third album, summerteeth, signaling a band transcending genre and turning consequential. Now remastered and re-released with a selection of demos, outtakes, alternative tracks and an entire 1999 live show, summerteeth's internal churn—a pain and passion struggle between happy pop music and troubled, downbeat lyrics—begins immediately with the tuneful but bleak "Can't Stand It," where "Our prayers will never be answered again." Uncomfortable autobiography mixes with gorgeous baroque pop in "She's a Jar," where Tweedy ends with, "A pretty war/ With feelings hid/ She begs me not to hit her." Even the violins and rising chords of "A Shot in the Arm," don't hold any joy, as he wishes for "Something in my veins bloodier than blood." It would all be just scary narcissism if it wasn't for exuberant melodies like "Pieholden Suite" where a banjo flickers through before a blast of Beatles-y brass, or the jumpy Anglo-pop of "ELT." The light-dark dichotomy persists even in the album's hookiest moment, the Magical Mystery Tour-esque outtake, "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway (Again)" where "love’s a weed" and "a kiss is all we need," but in the end, "I'm a bomb regardless." summerteeth's musical success owes much to multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett's production and arrangement skills, and his added textures of Moog synthesizer, Farfisa organ, lap steel, drums and tambourine. In the post-Max Johnston and Ken Coomer, pre-Nils Cline and Pat Sansone version of Wilco, Bennett supplied the voltage that brought Tweedy's melodic though murky material to life. Never the excruciating struggle that the next album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot became, these are Bennett's finest moments on record, and along with Mitch Easter, he contributed to summerteeth's more defined mix and heightened sonics. While the demos are not revelatory being mostly guitar and voice—although Tweedy's dry, low tone on "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway (Again)" is ominous—some of the alternates are choice, like the shrieking rant "Viking Dan." A funky, slow Fender Rhodes-led version of "Summer Teeth" is lounge jazz. The stripped down alternate take of "ELT" is the equal of the released take. And the "We're Just Friends / Yee Haw" soundcheck is a full tilt goof. The well-recorded live show is a telling snapshot of a band known for its roaring virtuosic performances, as they play most of their first three albums, delivering an especially strong "Passenger Side", "I Got You (At The End of the Century)" and "California Stars." A charismatic peek into an innovative, inspiring rock band evolving from eager contender to conflicted champion. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Whether or not you’re a fan of Steel Panther’s ridiculously over the top glam metal, you have to appreciate their dedication. For a comedy rock band, they manage to tell a joke with a surprisingly straight face, jamming out sleazy hair metal in a way that is equal parts caricature and homage. With the band's pedigree lying with acts like L.A. Guns and Fight, it’s not really a surprise that Balls Out is such a spot-on tribute to the excess of that bygone era, coming from people who were there to see the rise and fall of the genre from the inside. Songs like “It Won’t Suck Itself” and “17 Girls in a Row” show that Steel Panther are still the comedy rock masters of the single entendre, but to be fair, subtlety isn’t what an album like this is all about. This isn’t a carefree, “hang around the house and mow the lawn while you reminisce about the '80s" record, but more of an “all-night bender at a strip club while you reminisce about the '80s" record. As a hair metal album, Balls Out is finely crafted and well produced, evoking the glossy sound of the era, but as a joke, it’s pretty one-note, so either you’re going to get it or it’s going to grate on you. That said, if you’ve been looking for the glam metal equivalent of a theme park ride to be the soundtrack to a guys' night out bird-doggin’ chicks, you’ve found your holy grail.© Gregory Heaney /TiVo

Five years into the most successful phase of his career, Nathaniel Rateliff suffered an identity crisis. His bold 2015 transformation from lyrical indie folk act to retro-soul bandleader went about as well as he could have hoped; his full-band debut, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, went gold, effectively launching the Denver singer/songwriter into the mainstream. Their 2018 follow-up, Tearing at the Seams, was similarly successful, but when Rateliff found himself in a more introspective mood, he resumed his solo career and recorded the more subdued and personal And It's Still Alright. Faced with the prospect of having to keep dividing his material between two camps, Rateliff took a gamble and tried to fuse some of the Night Sweats' rock & roll swagger with the more thoughtful tone of his solo work. This creative reckoning leads the band down some interesting paths on The Future, their third outing together. Without fully abandoning the rugged soul-rock of their first two records, Rateliff and his crew take a more exploratory and collaborative approach that is ultimately quite satisfying. Opening the album, the rousing country-soul title track is not only the best of the bunch but one of Rateliff's best tracks to date. A world-weary mid-tempo barn burner with a host of gutsy payoffs, it sets the nervy tone that gives this album its identity. The Night Sweats could easily have carried on churning out the type of retro-R&B party music that built their career, but Rateliff made the right choice in giving them some weightier material to chew on. The question of where to go next is at the heart of the excellent Harry Nilsson-esque "Something Ain't Right," a chunky piano pop gem over which he bellows "Part of me feels I've arrived, but sometimes it don't align." A dark, almost angry grit shades cuts like "Survivor" and the punchy "So Put Out," while the sparse "Baby I Got Your Number" breaks the band down to their core elements. Likewise, the shuffling "Love Me Till I'm Gone" finds the Night Sweats channeling the autumnal blue-eyed soul of Van Morrison, a sound that suits them well. By the time they close with the fiery Motown vamp "Love Don't," Rateliff and his band have covered a nice range of moods on what is their most diverse release yet. © Timothy Monger /TiVo