To date, Rammstein haven't been able to equal the excitement and power of their breakthrough 1998 album, SEHNSUCHT, and while ROSENROT suffers that fate, there's an EP's worth of brilliance and one track that towers above them all. Just as exciting as their massive hit "Du Hast," "Te Quiero Puta!" is a glorious blend of the group's usual Teutonic crunch and mariachi music that earns the exclamation point in its title. It's loco to hear Rammstein with bright horns and Latin vocalists and just about as odd to hear them with Sharleen Spiteri -- lead singer for the classy pop act Texas -- whose sweet and somber vocals make "Stirb Nicht Vor Mir (Don't Die Before I Do)" sound very dreamy, very Nightwish. The out of control "Zerstören" and "Benzin," with its biting social commentary on the world's addiction to oil, are the final two tracks for the hypothetical four-star EP, since the rest of ROSENROT sounds a bit too formulaic. Most everything is tense during the verses, then blows up during the choruses, but if there's one area the band has made giant steps, it's with the lyrics. Greed, irresponsible hedonism, and modern-day interpretations of Goethe are touched upon through wordplay and metaphor, all of it lost on the non-Deutsch speaking set. It still doesn't make up for the stale turns the music takes on a good portion of the album, but there are signs that SEHNSUCHT's worthy follow-up is more possible than ever.© David Jeffries /TiVo

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Picking up where Still Life (Talking) leaves off (instead of throwing listeners a curve ball like Song X), the equally triumphant Letter from Home stresses Brazilian elements with superb results. While a number of these treasures -- including "Beat 70," "Have You Heard," and "Every Summer Night" -- are light and accessible enough to have enjoyed exposure on some smooth jazz stations, Letter contains the type of depth and honesty that's sorely lacking in most smooth jazz. Metheny has always known the difference between light and lightweight, and even at his most delicate, he avoids entering "Muzak" territory. True to form, the improviser doesn't shy away from making extensive use of technology, but is insightful enough to do so in a very warm and soulful fashion. Like Still Life, Letter from Home is a fine example of a CD that is both a commercial and an artistic success.© Alex Henderson /TiVo

This recording has been highly anticipated. For years, Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian has been renowned within the international scene, and now she’s finally released her first album: Dissonance, recorded with the Lithuanian-Russian pianist Lukas Geniušas. Dissonance—the name of one of Rachmaninov’s Romances, op. 34—consists of a total of 19 pieces, all of which are filled with intimate conflicts (at least in relation to their lyrics or the circumstances in which they were written). “On the contrary,” says the soprano, "our duo is in perfect harmony."In his Romances, which appeared roughly between 1890 and 1906, Rachmaninov immortalised, in music, poets and writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Afanassi Fet, Heinrich Heine, Anton Tchekov and Fiodor Tiuttchev, to name but a few. The same theme runs through all these texts: the intimate conflicts and sufferings that arise when two lovers are unable to overcome obstacles in order to fully embrace their true feelings for one other.From drama to poetry, from love to death, from beauty to suffering: all these themes are put to music in titles like Child, you are beautiful as a flower, op. 8 No 2, I wait for thee, op. 14 No. 1, How much it hurts, op. 21 no. 12, and the closing title: We shall rest, op. 26 no. 3. “In life,” explains Grigorian, “dissonance serves as a way to make consonance—that is, beauty and harmony—heard again. It helps us recognise and truly feel life’s brightness, something we can’t appreciate when there’s no suffering. "With their masterful technique and unique form of musical expression, Grigorian and Geniušas don’t sound like two musicians who’ve never recorded together before. Their artistic symbiosis creates a balance that’s perhaps further strengthened by the cultural affinity between the two performers and the composer himself. With this release, listeners are treated to a real musical romance. © Lena Germann/Qobuz

After a string of impressive singles and an exciting entry in the Fabriclive series, techno producer Daniel Avery's debut album Drone Logic fulfills all the promise of his early work and delivers something pretty special. Inspired by classic albums by the likes of the Chemical Brothers and Underworld, which were more than just a seemingly random series of tracks strung together and more a kind of listening experience where the sounds, moods, and beats ebb, flow, and build into a cohesive whole, Avery aims very high here. Taking elements from a wide range of electronic styles from acid house and classic Detroit techno to IDM and electro, throwing in some unexpected hints of shoegaze and Neu!, and always making sure to weld mind-expanding melodies onto his alternately soothing and slamming beats, Avery has crafted an album that equals his inspirations and definitely rewards repeated spins. The extremely precise care and feeding of both the rhythms and bleepy synth melodies give the album depth, making it easy to sink deeply into the album's warm textures. Even though almost every song breaks the six-minute mark, there's never a moment of boredom or a time when you start to wonder what the next song sounds like. Avery's skills as a producer and songwriter keep you riveted to the matters at hand, whether you're dancing to the bouncing beats of jams like "All I Need" or drifting off on an inner space journey on songs like the very Autechre-sounding "Free Floating" or the burbling "Need Electric." Even when the beats are tightly wound and punchy, the overall musical equation is tilted more toward the introspective side, with a predominance of melancholy bleeps, chopped-up vocals, and an overall lost-in-thought feeling that gives the album a weighty feel and makes a deep imprint on the listener's brain. That Avery is able to get this deep while still making sure the songs, and therefore the album, have a gently propulsive forward motion is the trick that makes the album something worth exploring. The more you do, the more you'll discover, and the stronger its grip on you will become. The times have changed enough in the music world that Drone Logic won't get the same recognition and acclaim that albums by Underworld or the Chemical Brothers (or even Plastikman or Orbital) received 20 years previously, but it's every bit as good and expansively musical as anything from that era.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

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This Deutsche Grammophon disc, Le Sacre du Printemps -- Los Angeles Philharmonic, is issued to celebrate the opening of L.A.'s new concert venue, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Disney is one of the most controversial structures to go into in the ground in the twenty first century, a twisted, semi-abstract edifice made of polished stainless steel and occupying 293,000 square feet with a seven-level parking lot below. Critics of the Frank Gehry-devised concert hall cum artwork ridiculed it as maximum ugly and overly expensive, and city leaders wondered if the inordinately bright building would need to be sandblasted so as not to blind pilots of commercial jet liners passing overhead. Although Esa-Pekka Salonen has made a number of successful recordings with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for both Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammophon, they have either recorded them out of town or in UCLA's Royce Hall, as the other large concert venue in town, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, simply isn't a good venue for recording an orchestra. Disney Concert Hall was, in part, designed with that in mind. Hopefully Deutsche Grammophon hasn't waited a bit too long to bring out this Super Audio CD of the first commercial recording made at the Disney. Comparatively, a 1964 RCA Victor LP commemorating the Chandler's opening appeared within mere days of the main event, and in some quarters is valued as a keepsake. Nevertheless, the prognosis is good for the sound of Disney Concert Hall as a venue for recording the Los Angeles Philharmonic at home. The recording of Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain is truly wonderful stuff, as every measure of Mussorgsky's clotted and knotty but fearlessly innovative original orchestration is heard here in glassine detail. Percussion strokes are precise, the rendering of brass and wind has an almost photographic quality, and strings are heard as a wave of sound rather than as a mushy tangle of wire. This is one of the most stunningly realistic recordings ever made of a symphony orchestra. The Bartók Miraculous Mandarin in its concert version is new to Salonen's recorded repertoire, and while it is a good performance, it's a little cold, which reflects Salonen's usual M.O. with Bartók. In this rendering of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps, Salonen is far more individual in his handling of the score and its effects, and the sound of Disney Hall almost seems to project Le sacre's extremes. Salonen delivers a performance that is far from the pristine, note-perfect recording by Pierre Boulez, closer in spirit to that of Igor Markevitch.Salonen's rendering of the Stravinsky may not please all who hear it, but this is one of only a few orchestral discs in perhaps 25 years that is an imperative just by virtue of the sonic reproduction of the orchestra alone. Le Sacre du Printemps -- Los Angeles Philharmonic is provocative and intense and will give any decent home system a serious workout; like Disney Hall itself, it is a miracle of engineering.© TiVo

Christian McBride's latest big band session travels back to an incredible moment in 1966 when organist Jimmy Smith, guitarist Wes Montgomery and arranger Oliver Nelson gathered at Rudy Van Gelder's studio for a hard-swinging and ever-so-slightly unconventional big band summit meeting; all were operating at peak creativity. It was the first-ever collaboration between Smith and Montgomery, and the resulting albums (The Dynamic Duo and The Further Adventures Of…) were bursting with feats of highwire soloistic daredevilry. Nelson was the stealth MVP of the date. His arrangements—particularly "Down By The Riverside" and "Milestones"—discovered a lane equidistant between the hard swing of Basie and the floral voicings of Ellington, with intricate full-ensemble taunts giving way to plush pads designed to provoke the soloists. McBride's update uses those and other original Nelson charts, which, after all these decades, exude a freshness that eludes many large-ensemble projects. And it relies on a similarly sparky showdown between strong minded soloists—the organist Joey DeFrancesco and guitarist Mark Whitfield. Both clearly know they're working in the towering shadows of giants; neither seems daunted by that as they explore the hairpin turns of the big-band "Milestones" or the easygoing saunter of Montgomery's "Road Song." There are a few astonishing small-group moments, too, that offer a quick gauge on how far these soloists have evolved— check Whitfield on "Road Song," DeFrancesco's gentle and dramatic reading of the ballad "I Want To Talk About You" and McBride's capricious twenty-fingered trip through "Up Jumped Spring"). One elusive element McBride managed to transfer from the original source: The swing feel. From the opening solo, a twisty-road Whitfield foray on "Night Train," it's clear that the soloists thrive in the McBride sweet spot—everything they do, all the flashy blowing, flows directly from the crisp, uncomplicated grooves established by the bassist and his rhythm section. Big band music would be easier to love if it all felt this good. © Tom Moon/Qobuz

The third in a series of Charlie Haden duet projects for Verve in the 1990s finds the increasingly nostalgia-minded bass player working New York City's Iridium jazz club with pianist Kenny Barron. Moreover, it is entirely possible that we are getting a skewed view of the gig; according to Haden, he and his co-producer wife Ruth tilted this album heavily in the direction of romantic ballads, eliminating the bebop and avant-garde numbers that the two may have also played at the club. Be that as it may, this is still a thoughtful, intensely musical, sometimes haunting set of performances, with Barron displaying a high level of lyrical sensitivity and Haden applying his massive tone sparingly. Most of the seven tracks are fantasias on well-known standards, although one of the most eloquent performances on the disc is Barron's playing on his own "Twilight Song." If Haden deliberately set out to create a single reflective mood, he certainly succeeded, although those coming to Haden for the first time through this and most of his other '90s CDs would never suspect that this man once played such a fire-breathing role in the jazz avant-garde.© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo

Tenor Piotr Beczala is better known for opera than for art song. He has recorded music from his native Poland, but Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky songs (or Romances, as they were known by the Russians) wouldn't necessarily come to mind for him. However, he is a versatile figure, and here, he succeeds and more. The album came together when Beczala and pianist Helmut Deutsch discovered a mutual enthusiasm for these works. Beczala scales his voice back beautifully to song dimensions, and the album is well recorded at the Markus-Sittiges Hall in Salzburg, but the biggest attraction here is the coordination between singer and accompanist, which is extraordinary. Not only Rachmaninov, who was writing for himself, but also Tchaikovsky puts a lot of the action into the piano and in the songs of the latter, which include the entire Op. 73 set (the last pieces he wrote before the final "Pathétique" symphony), the piano introduces a lot of psychological currents beneath the fairly straightforward texts. The pair's performances of these are haunting; sample the final Again, As Before, Alone, which here seems to speak volumes about Tchaikovsky's state of mind. They're equally good in the Rachmaninov songs, tuneful things mostly written during the composer's youth. A casual listen may find the balance tilted too far in the pianist's favor, but listen again; it is carefully controlled by the performers. A major new entry in the discography for these not-terribly-familiar (except for Tchaikovsky's None But the Lonely Heart) songs. © James Manheim /TiVo

With 2016's Evolution, Dr. Lonnie Smith made a flamboyant comeback. The last time the doctor's name graced a Blue Note album was 45 years ago… It was on this famous label, as a sideman to Lou Donaldson (Alligator Bogaloo, Mr. Shing-A-Ling, Midnight Creeper), and then as a band leader (Think!, Turning Point, Move Your Hand, Drives and Live At Club Mozambique) that this master of the Hammond B-3 made a name for himself in the late 1960s, proving that Jimmy Smith wasn't the only one who knew how to tame an electric keyboard... Brilliant and groovy as ever despite the years that have passed, Doc has brought us a live album recorded at New York's Jazz Standard at a concert to mark the 75th anniversary. Smith himself describes the live version as essential: "It is so hard to get across what you're feeling in the moment when you're recording in the studio. Listening to my concerts, it’s like catching me playing in the moment. I like that idea." With guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and drummer Johnathan Blake, the trio form a close-knit fraternity. "My musicians know what I'm trying to do, and they develop my thoughts. When I play, I am always in the moment. They know how to adapt and be there for me." From the famous Juju by Wayne Shorter to Paul Simon's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (with Joe Dyson as a second drummer), the organist revisits an exceptionally eclectic repertoire while still retaining his own style. Time has hardly left a mark on Dr. Lonnie Smith's groove or his sense of swing; he is throwing off some real sparks here throughout this bubbling, visceral record. © CM/Qobuz