When Bloc Party went on a lengthy hiatus after the release of their third album Intimacy, it didn't seem like they needed to get back together. The band's members had moved on, with Kele Okereke releasing his solo album The Boxer and bassist Gordon Moakes forming the group Young Legionnaire. More importantly, it seemed like Bloc Party had said its piece, but Four -- an album title that reflects the years between the band's albums, the number of its members, and its place in Bloc Party's discography -- shows there's more life in their music than most would have predicted. The bands from the post-punk/angular movement of the early 2000s that thrived were the ones who evolved; Bloc Party knew this as early as A Weekend in the City, when they began adding more electronic elements to their sound. This led to some strong moments on that album and Intimacy, but it also felt somewhat obligatory, following the Radiohead-blueprint way for a forward-thinking rock band to push itself. Yet Bloc Party push harder on these songs than they have in years, and there's barely a synthesizer or sequencer to be found. Four is far harder-edged than any of their music since Silent Alarm or their early EPs, and they spend equal time in familiar territory and breaking new ground. "So He Begins to Lie," with its lumbering, angular riffs and political overtones, could have easily appeared on their debut, while "V.A.L.I.S." and the excellent single "Octopus" distill everything great about their pop side -- precise melodies, spring-loaded guitars, expertly deployed tension and release -- into songs that seem poised for flight. Meanwhile, ballads such as "Day Four" and "Truth" are pretty but a touch predictable, serving more as breathers between the album's onslaughts than as attractions in their own right. Four's real star is guitarist Russell Lissack, who unleashes hesher-friendly riffs and solos with the pent-up fury of a four-year break behind him. He gives "Team A"'s menacing dance-punk extra heft and fuels "3 x 3"'s anguished tug-of-war with churning riffs that make it one of the album's most thrilling moments. Things get even gnarlier on "Kettling," which boasts surging riffs that recall P.O.D. and other X Games favorites, and on "Coliseum," which begins as a bluesy shuffle and ends as a metallic grind that would do Helmet proud. It's awkward, but it's also interesting and completely unlike anything they've done before. Songs like this and the album's closing rant "We're Not Good People" show just how much fight there is in this album, and in Bloc Party; they sought new life in their music and their collaboration, and they found it. Four may not be as cohesive as Silent Alarm, but it just might be more vital. © Heather Phares /TiVo

The stated aim of this Signum Classics release is pretty murky: "Inspirations and imaginings, evolving, changing English usage, landscapes, friendships, and passings lie behind this album," reads the booklet. The idea is that the divine relates to beauty these days. More important, perhaps, is another feature: countertenor Iestyn Davies and the superb pianist Joseph Middleton offer a new entry in the increasingly common trend of countertenor performance of music outside the usual Renaissance and Baroque repertory. Davies' program includes some Purcell songs but is mostly drawn from the contemporary era. Listeners will make up their own minds about this, but it is worth noting that Davies has done it quite intelligently. He includes pairs of works by Thomas Adès and Nico Muhly. All of his contemporary pieces refer, some quite subtly, to Renaissance and Baroque styles, even the dissonant The Lover in Winter of Adès. Muhly's Four Traditional Songs are a fascinating modern take-off on the folk music strain in 20th century English music. Perhaps the highlights are the Six Songs from "A Shropshire Lad" of George Butterworth, which retain the foursquare construction of A.E. Housman's poetry but add a deep note of uneasy nostalgia that, although the songs were written prior to World War I, seem to prefigure the losses of that war, losses that included Butterworth's own death. Listeners who find countertenors self-indulgent when they depart from their usual circles should hear this release.© James Manheim /TiVo

This album represents the culmination of what leading British baritone Roderick Williams described as "a dream come true". It features premiere recordings of his orchestrations of songs by Vaughan Williams and other composers associated with him and is released to commemorate those who perished in WWI. Featuring orchestrations by Williams of his favourite songs from the 20th-Century English repertoire, this album contains works by Vaughan Williams and specially commissioned new arrangements of songs by women composers Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Madeleine Dring and Rebecca Clarke. The album features also the work of composers who were killed in the First World War, George Butterworth, William Denis Browne and Ernest Farrar and is released to coincide with Remembrance Day. These songs portray the composers’ evocative responses to the poetry they set, and Williams’s orchestrations further convey the songs meaning through highly effective use of orchestral instruments and textures. © Hallé Concerts Society

Composer James Newton Howard's evocative score was one of the many highlights of director Gary Ross' 2012 big-screen adaptation of author Suzanne Collins' dystopian, young adult blockbuster The Hunger Games. Tense, melodic, and brimming with cues that invoked the tale's rustic Appalachian roots, it helped to ground some of the film's more fantastical elements. For the much anticipated sequel, 2013's Catching Fire, Howard skillfully adapts those themes to a more urban environment, offering up an ethereal mix of stoic melodies and bold action cues that dutifully convey the second film's darker tendencies, while maintaining an undercurrent of soulfulness that reflects the emotional journey of its increasingly complex heroine.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

The credits to the tracks on this album provide an immediate insight to the prolific Mike Post and Pete Carpenter television scoring team -- which was more a TV score factory catering to many of the 1970s/1980s action shows. Several other names are credited along with Post and Carpenter (their full names, alas, are nowhere to be seen); these were apprentices and journeymen, given a template and tasked to turn out specific cues, which would then be orchestrated. In some shows, the duo's hand was seen only at a distance by their score templates, but the work of the factory for the episodes. Silva has reissued a 1984 album that was produced by Michael Jones, though Derek Wadsworth was in fact the man in charge of putting together the various suites and carrying out the new recordings at the time. Wadsworth certainly was a perfect choice for this album, as he himself was a veteran of television scoring in England, with a long list of action shows to his credit, and it certainly is possible to hear his influence at work on this disc. This is a record that might well serve as a guilty pleasure for some. Enjoy it. Just don't start with the Mr. T impressions, okay? © Steven McDonald /TiVo