Karl Jenkins, a British composer who has written award-winning music for advertising, created this choral work for the Royal Armouries, a museum of medieval military objects housed in the Tower of London. The idea, writes the museum's director, was to use the medieval tune L'homme armé (The Armed Man) to create a modern mass, just as composers of half a millennium ago did with some frequency -- and thus "to look back and reflect as we leave behind the most war-torn and destructive century in human history." L'homme armé is a little scrap of music saying basically that "the armed man must be feared." No one really knows why it was so popular in its day, but one theory is that it referred to the mustering of forces that followed in the wake of the fall of Constantinople (now Istanbul) to Islamic forces in 1453.There's nothing in the individual sections of music here that you haven't heard a dozen times in film or television scores, and Jenkins is one of those crossover composers who feel the need to put down those who attempt music of a different kind. It's especially classless of him to disrespect John Cale, who played the viola when Jenkins was an oboist with the Wales National Youth Orchestra and who will be remembered long after The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace has fallen off the charts. Nevertheless, Jenkins' work gets points for sheer ambition, and it's easy to understand the tremendous popularity it has attained in Britain -- it has been programmed by community choirs all over the place. Jenkins does not weave L'homme armé into a flow of polyphony as a Renaissance composer would have done. Instead, he bookends the work with two different treatments of the tune (whose title is mispronounced by the National Youth Choir of Great Britain). In between come parts of the Ordinary of the Mass (the Gloria and Credo are missing), interspersed with other texts pertaining to war and its horrors: a Japanese poem about the firestorms that followed the atomic bombs, Rudyard Kipling's "Hymn Before Action," and an apocalyptic passage from India's Mahabharata. Those who already love this work would be advised to check out Leonard Bernstein's Mass, a similar sort of piece that achieves much more variety and more of a sense of genuine surprise. But Jenkins does manage to weave disparate sources together into a coherent and compelling whole. The Armed Man is much less well known in the U.S. than in Britain, probably because the U.S. crossover market is smaller than Britain's and more oriented toward singers.© TiVo

Right hook, left jab, uppercut! The first album from Enemy makes a radical entrance. Behind the name is the young trio of; pianist Kit Downes, bassist Frans Petter Eldh ​and drummer James Maddren. Three young faces of the international jazz scene who have already made a name for themselves in solo careers or alongside other pathbreakers. They have joined forces in order to give free rein to their creative impulses and their hunger for freedom. Produced by Eldh himself, this album is very physical: a tidal wave of contemporary jazz. It's a polyrhythmic storm which will delight fans of power trios in the style of the Bad Plus. With a bubbling brew of influences running from Keith Jarrett to Oscar Peterson, Kit Downs sketches out some mind blowing multicoloured improvisations. But the strength of the Brit's piano clearly lies in the way it sticks so closely to the rhythms of Eldh and Maddren, who are the core of this jazz reactor. But Enemy isn't just a byword for power and racing rhythms. When the trio take on ballads, they also unleash a captivating narrative force. Enemy: much friendlier than they look… © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Twenty years into their career, Mastodon are harder to describe than ever before. The Georgia group started off playing energetic sludge metal, took a sharp turn into beautifully complex prog, and then spent the 2010's dabbling with hard rock and offering quotes to journalists that disavowed their categorization as a "metal" band. Whatever you want to call them, Mastodon are Mastodon more than anything else, and their new rarities compilation Medium Rarities is a celebration of their elastic identity. The project is a grab bag of covers, instrumentals, live renditions, TV soundtrack contributions, and one brand new track that spans their entire discography and showcases their musical interests both within and outside the metal playbook. If you were to make a venn diagram of the bands Mastodon covers here (Feist, The Flaming Lips, Butthole Surfers, and Metallica) their sound exists in the center, and they excel at taking on the character of each of those acts while still remaining firmly themselves. Their Game of Thrones score "White Walker" and Aqua Teen Hunger Force cameo "Cut You Up With A Linoleum Knife" are respectively stoic and off-the-wall ridiculous, a dichotomy the band have always balanced in their best moments. The myriad instrumental versions of tracks from their 2010s catalog take on a new life without the vocal performances, which some fans found grating compared to their earlier, gnarlier singing deliveries. However, there's plenty of headbanging fodder to be found in the live tracks: the blisteringly technical "Capillarian Crest," the ugly "Circle of Cysquatch," and the raucous "The Crystal Skull" from 2006's Blood Mountain, as well as whipping fan favorites "Blood and Thunder" and "Iron Tusk" from 2004's Leviathan. The new song "Fallen Torches" features guest vocals from Scott Kelly of Neurosis, which serves as a complementary pairing between alt-metal veterans. No matter what era of Mastodon you're most partial to, there's bound to be something on Medium Rarities that connects. © Eli Enis/Qobuz

Download not available