Recorded between 1968 and 1972, The Rolling Stone’s Beggars Banquet is a real rock’n’roll feast. One of the biggest feasts in history no doubt! Right from the first few shamanic bars of Sympathy For The Devil, it’s evident that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were trying to summon demons with their wickedly raw music. Blues, violence, rhythm'n'blues, sex, country, African music, revolt, soul, drugs and lust – there’s nothing missing from this electric frenzy. With its satanic prose, the album is carried by haunted guitars and minimalist rhythms. Here, the blue note either sweats buckets (Parachute Woman) or appears completely stripped down (Prodigal Son and Factory Girl). Rock had never been so poisonous and fascinating (Street Fighting Man). Richards releases bursts of demented guitar riffs while Jagger sings with unprecedented power and sincerity. The Stones would continue to build on this momentum with three other masterpieces: Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Recorded between 1968 and 1972, The Rolling Stone’s Beggars Banquet is a real rock’n’roll feast. One of the biggest feasts in history no doubt! Right from the first few shamanic bars of Sympathy For The Devil, it’s evident that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were trying to summon demons with their wickedly raw music. Blues, violence, rhythm'n'blues, sex, country, African music, revolt, soul, drugs and lust – there’s nothing missing from this electric frenzy. With its satanic prose, the album is carried by haunted guitars and minimalist rhythms. Here, the blue note either sweats buckets (Parachute Woman) or appears completely stripped down (Prodigal Son and Factory Girl). Rock had never been so poisonous and fascinating (Street Fighting Man). Richards releases bursts of demented guitar riffs while Jagger sings with unprecedented power and sincerity. The Stones would continue to build on this momentum with three other masterpieces: Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

After four previous studio albums, an EP, and a live set, England's Haken display their irrepressible desire to grow musically combined with sophisticated production aesthetics and a wider sonic palette that knows few boundaries. They established a beachhead with prog fans on 2010's Aquarius and 2011's Visions as they wed Dream Theater-esque riffs to an inventive harmonic prowess that recalled Gentle Giant's. 2013's The Mountain swung toward more accessible -- if no less complex -- arranging and songwriting that combined knotty jazz fusion, operatic vocal dynamics (à la Queen) and passionate metallic and hard rock playing. 2016's Affinity offered a wonderfully perverse take on '80s new wave and fused it to prog metal. Haken's constant sense of reinvention while also retaining their core sound has won them hundreds of thousands of fans.Known for notoriously long albums, the band deliver a full concept set in under 45 minutes on Vector. The story line concerns a catatonic victim of a psychotic doctor who plays nefarious games with his mental state. Musically, this is the heaviest date Haken have issued. After the brief, brooding organ-and-effects intro piece "Clear," the anti-hero is introduced in the flailing, swinging drum-and-keyboard whirl of "The Good Doctor." What anchors the tune are Ross Jennings' melodic, expressive vocals. "Puzzle Box" delivers the first horizon-expanding event on the album as criminally under-celebrated drummer Ray Hearne furiously paces the group through time and key changes amid Diego Tejeida's kaleidoscopic keyboard runs and the bone-crunching guitar riffs of Rich Henshall and Charlie Griffiths, and mathy precision meets balls-out crash and burn. It's at once startlingly familiar and wonderfully disorienting, like a suite inside of eight minutes as Jennings soars above the mix furthering the plot, inserting shapeshifting character traits and describing horrific psychological states. At nearly 13 minutes long, "Veil" is a poster child for anthemic prog metal and the single track on this date where Haken indulge their unabashed worship of Dream Theater. It's a rockist puzzle piece of dazzling variety that furthers the album concept lyrically and Haken's musical viability. The stop-and-start riff-tastic guitar fury on "Nil by Mouth," has thundering, syncopated drums underscored and contrasted with Tejeida's wild, unfettered keyboard sonics. Tejeida also displays the dexterity of a jazz pianist in the closing single "A Cell Divides" -- a labyrinthine prog metal ride through speed and power with an orchestral backing that adds depth to sinister darkness, panic, and confusion in the story. Ultimately, Vector is breathtaking in imagination and execution. Haken's willingness to take chances keeps older fans in the fold because here, they've balanced a far more aggressive direction with more nuanced elements from each phase of their recorded development. Vector is at once a brave new chapter and a logical -- if surprising -- continuation of Haken's always expansive M.O.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Sandy Denny's haunting, ethereal vocals gave Fairport a big boost on her debut with the group. A more folk-based album than their initial effort, What We Did on Our Holidays is divided between original material and a few well-chosen covers. This contains several of their greatest moments: Denny's "Fotheringay," Richard Thompson's "Meet on the Ledge," the obscure Joni Mitchell composition "Eastern Rain," the traditional "She Moves Through the Fair," and their version of Bob Dylan's "I'll Keep It with Mine." And more than simply being a collection of good songs (with one or two pedestrian ones), it allowed Fairport to achieve its greatest internal balance, and indeed one of the finest balances of any major folk-rock group. The strong original material, covers of little-known songs by major contemporary songwriters such as Dylan and Mitchell, and updates of traditional material were reminiscent of the blend achieved by the Byrds on their early albums, with Fairport Convention giving a British slant to the idiom. The slant would become much more British by the end of the '60s, though, both gaining and losing something in the process. Confusingly, What We Did on Our Holidays was titled Fairport Convention in its initial U.S. release, with a different cover from the U.K. edition, although Fairport's very first album from 1968 had used the title Fairport Convention as well.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

‘The senses reign, and Reason now is dead’ (Petrarch). Giovanni Antonini, flautist and founder of the legendary Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, enjoys musical voyages, the discursiveness of music. He begins with an anonymous 16th century pavane, La Morte della Ragione ("The Death of Reason"), which he believes refers to In Praise of Folly, in which its author Erasmus distinguishes between two forms of madness: ‘a sweet illusion of the spirit', and a negative form, ‘one that the vengeful Furies conjure up from hell...’. This succession of ‘musical pictures’ leads us to the threshold of the baroque era, starting out with the Puzzle Canon by John Dunstable (1390- ca.1453), whose manuscript is an enigma, via the ‘bizarre’ style of Alexander Agricola (1446- ca.1506) and his obsessive, ostinato rhythm – almost an anticipation of minimalist music… to the improvisatory freedom of the Galliard Battaglia de Scheidt (1587-1654), a battle piece involving a great many diminutions or ‘divisions’, a common technique of improvisation in the Renaissance... This grand instrumental musical fresco of time and space is a kind of self-portrait of Giovanni Antonini and his longstanding musical colleagues. To accompany this recording, a richly-illustrated booklet presents a free-ranging iconographical tour combining pictures and contemporary photos. © Alpha Classics

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After four previous studio albums, an EP, and a live set, England's Haken display their irrepressible desire to grow musically combined with sophisticated production aesthetics and a wider sonic palette that knows few boundaries. They established a beachhead with prog fans on 2010's Aquarius and 2011's Visions as they wed Dream Theater-esque riffs to an inventive harmonic prowess that recalled Gentle Giant's. 2013's The Mountain swung toward more accessible -- if no less complex -- arranging and songwriting that combined knotty jazz fusion, operatic vocal dynamics (à la Queen) and passionate metallic and hard rock playing. 2016's Affinity offered a wonderfully perverse take on '80s new wave and fused it to prog metal. Haken's constant sense of reinvention while also retaining their core sound has won them hundreds of thousands of fans.Known for notoriously long albums, the band deliver a full concept set in under 45 minutes on Vector. The story line concerns a catatonic victim of a psychotic doctor who plays nefarious games with his mental state. Musically, this is the heaviest date Haken have issued. After the brief, brooding organ-and-effects intro piece "Clear," the anti-hero is introduced in the flailing, swinging drum-and-keyboard whirl of "The Good Doctor." What anchors the tune are Ross Jennings' melodic, expressive vocals. "Puzzle Box" delivers the first horizon-expanding event on the album as criminally under-celebrated drummer Ray Hearne furiously paces the group through time and key changes amid Diego Tejeida's kaleidoscopic keyboard runs and the bone-crunching guitar riffs of Rich Henshall and Charlie Griffiths, and mathy precision meets balls-out crash and burn. It's at once startlingly familiar and wonderfully disorienting, like a suite inside of eight minutes as Jennings soars above the mix furthering the plot, inserting shapeshifting character traits and describing horrific psychological states. At nearly 13 minutes long, "Veil" is a poster child for anthemic prog metal and the single track on this date where Haken indulge their unabashed worship of Dream Theater. It's a rockist puzzle piece of dazzling variety that furthers the album concept lyrically and Haken's musical viability. The stop-and-start riff-tastic guitar fury on "Nil by Mouth," has thundering, syncopated drums underscored and contrasted with Tejeida's wild, unfettered keyboard sonics. Tejeida also displays the dexterity of a jazz pianist in the closing single "A Cell Divides" -- a labyrinthine prog metal ride through speed and power with an orchestral backing that adds depth to sinister darkness, panic, and confusion in the story. Ultimately, Vector is breathtaking in imagination and execution. Haken's willingness to take chances keeps older fans in the fold because here, they've balanced a far more aggressive direction with more nuanced elements from each phase of their recorded development. Vector is at once a brave new chapter and a logical -- if surprising -- continuation of Haken's always expansive M.O.© Thom Jurek /TiVo