Gavin Bryars – The Fifth Century
The first full ECM album from Bryars in decades includes the seven-part title work: a slowly evolving – yet immediately involving – setting of words by 17th-century English mystic Thomas Traherne. It is performed by the mixed choir of The Crossing with saxophone quartet PRISM.
Gavin Bryars The Crossing – The Fifth Century Movement IV
Frederic Robinson – Flea Waltz
Robinson's second album draws on the vocabularies of jazz, world music, modern classical and drum & bass, mashing them up with a light touch.
Frederic Robinson – Breathing (feat. Lily Juniper)
Metallica – Hardwired… To Self Destruct
Right that's enough of the introspection and contemplation ... or is it? The band who famously took their life coach and a camera crew for Some Kind Of Monster return with an 88-minute monster of their own. Early indications suggest this is not their darkest of angst-laden work and that they're sticking to the chugging riffage they know best.
Metallica - Moth Into Flame
Justice – Woman
The third studio album from crucifix-obsessed French electronic duo Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, lauded fro the first release in 2007, dips more into funk bass, disco grooves and high vocals. Could it catapult them into line with the commercial level of success seen by helmeted friends Daft Punk?
Justice - Safe and Sound
The Human League Anthology – A Very British Synthesiser
There's surely at least one phase of the Sheffield band's career that would appeal to most listeners. This sound and vision set covers them all from the dystopian early synth works with Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware to the perfect pop of Dare and Oakey's commercially successful but less challenging collaborations with Jam & Lewis. The box set has a natty 58-page book and the vinyl version has had a half-speed remastering job at Abbey Road.
The Human League – Empire State Human
This week's selection is by Michael Moloney, aka llamalpaca from the vinyl-only record and design store, Chameleon, with additions by The Landlord.
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This is only a selection, not a catalogue of releases. Feel free to recommend more and comment below.