First things first: let’s take it as read that this is a classic of the 20th century jazz canon and an essential point of reference in Coltrane’s own tumultuous career. 1958 found Coltrane recording for Prestige as a leader, having left Thelonious Monk’s quartet and before heading back to Miles Davis’ band to make history on Kind of Blue the following year. Here, he’s hunkered down with the Red Garland Trio (Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Arthur Taylor on drums), enjoying the easy interplay that had developed between the musicians over years of playing together, and taking the opportunity to throw out his newly-honed chops. Yes, this is the album on which Coltrane first emerged as the primary innovator of the jazz world, wielding an astonishing technical virtuosity and a blinding vision of the possibilities of the tenor sax.

Recorded February 8, 1960, this is another of the sonic spectaculars with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. They were in top virtuoso form on that day (the final movement is one single take), and RCA's recording team brilliantly captured the warmth and clarity of Orchestra Hall. Never before has sound of the mastertape been so vividly replicated, with scintillating high percussion, sonorous bass, and a sense of space missing in many more modern recordings.

Recorded three years before his landmark album Kind Of Blue (Columbia, 1959), Cookin' was part of Davis' remaining five-album commitment to Prestige, recorded a year to the day after Georges Avakian lured him to Columbia in October, 1955. The XRCD remaster is bound to draw comparisons with the equally brilliant but slightly warmer DCC remaster which preceded it, and the later disappointing Rudy Van Gelder remaster.

Adapted from the renowned novel by Shusaku Endo, Masahiro Shinoda’s 1971 film Silence (Chinmoku, co-written with Endo) explores the violent cultural conflict amid the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century Japan. Shinoda’s excellent direction — coupled with a pensive score by the legendary Toru Takemitsu — gives cinematic expression to inner spiritual paradox, and imbues with religious mystery a landscape that seems already sentient with wind, rain, and light.

The final minutes of Flowing offer a quintessential Naruse conclusion. The setting is a traditional geisha house (in actual fact an okiya, a kind of brokerage house which connects geisha up with clients, whom they meet elsewhere) which is undergoing a slow process of decline and disintegration, as the owner Madam Tsutayako finds it increasingly difficult to keep the house running and to make ends meet. In this concluding sequence Tsutayako and another middle-aged geisha Someko perform on the shamisen as six-year-old Fujiko (daughter of Tsutayako’s niece Yoneko and with whom Tsutayako has begun the long period of geisha training) goes through a series of formal dance moves. This scene is an affirmation of the traditional values represented by geisha culture but there’s sadness and poignancy here as well.
Includes a 10-minute program of audio commentary by Kent Jones and Phillip Lopate known as 'Audio Notes.'

Repast is a film about the quotidian, and appropriately enough, it begins and ends with routine. Appropriate to Naruse’s usual milieu, this is largely the routine of women and their work – here, mainly housework – and the morning routine we see in the opening and close of the film is that of women diligently tending to their families. What is perhaps surprising about this image of the everyday is the figure through which Naruse chooses to portray it: Setsuko Hara, looking a good deal more harried, run-down, and frazzled than we are used to seeing her.
Includes a 15-minute program of audio commentary by Kent Jones and Phillip Lopate known as 'Audio Notes.'

Sound of the Mountain begins in the clustered confines of Tokyo’s streets and ends in an expansive urban park with what Kikuko, the film’s heroine, describes aphoristically as “an unobstructed view.” It is a familiar narrative arc: the cluttered, confounding nature of things becomes steadily clearer to the characters, and the story’s denouement entails a physical as well as psychological opening-up, an expansion of horizons, and a view of relationships and circumstances as they are. But here this trajectory is accorded a kind of ambiguity particular to Naruse. Characters and spectators alike see things more clearly perhaps, but the way ahead remains dim. We are optimistic but uncertain, and this opening up of space gives a sense not only of expansiveness, but also of chaos, an indication that life will move forward – in fact, already is moving forward – whether we like it or not.

“Environmentalism is just repackaged Marxism” Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace. Environmentalism, with its attendant army of politicos all armed to the teeth with environmental laws, is, let us make no mistake, the highroad to hell.
Before going all the way green, I urge you to take a longer look into exactly what horse you're backing here: it may well turn out to be a horse of an entirely different colour than you think. Ray Harvey

Though Status Quo is best known for fast and undistinguished hard rock, they were quite capable of subtlety when it suited them. Despite the name, most of the music on Quo's fifth album, Piledriver, is varied and subtle enough to be interesting. The power rock and roll is indeed there, as represented by crowd-pleasers like "Don't Waste My Time" and "Paper Plane," but so also are quieter, softer pieces with acoustic textures and progressive structures. The melancholy "A Year" is a standout track, a stark, melancholy song about carrying on after a loved one has died. The soft rock intro gradually shifts to a more powerful guitar piece in a way that is reminiscent of early Fleetwood Mac and has that band's delicate sense of dynamics. Elsewhere on Piledriver the band turns in a very credible slow blues piece and a folk-inflected duet for 12-string guitars. Still, most of the Status Quo fans wanted power rock, and the band obliged with one of their best pieces, the tempo-shifting "Big Fat Mama," which actually managed some U.S. airplay, though no actual chart position. The album rounds off with a heavy version of The Doors' "Roadhouse Blues". On the whole Piledriver is an enjoyable listen, one that has aged better than much other hard rock from this period. Richard Foss, All Music Guide
Includes bonus track "Don't Waste My Time" (Live at the 1973 Reading Festival).

Crosby is sober now, and his third solo album, Thousand Roads, represents some of his most compelling work to date. By turns witty and wistful, Roads is haunted by a tender nostalgia and empowered by a knowingness that comes only to those who have lived a few years and learned a few lessons. Given that, it's fitting that Crosby has enlisted support from some of the songwriters who have lent their talents to Bonnie Raitt's most recent projects: John Hiatt's "Through Your Hands," with its warm verses and inspiring refrain, is a highlight, while Paul Brady contributes the fragile ballad "Helpless Heart," and Bonnie Hayes lends "Coverage," which alludes to Crosby's previous inclination to get press for all the wrong reasons. "I got a mention in the Monday news," Crosby sings, "I was on my last leg."

AKIRA KUROSAWA'S ''One Wonderful Sunday,'' which opens at the Public today to begin that theater's ''Summer in Japan'' series, is something of an archeological find. Here is an alternately sweet and desperate romantic drama made early in 1947, less than two years after Japan was A-bombed into unconditional surrender and before Kurosawa made his internationally recognized classics, including ''Rashomon,'' ''Ikiru,'' ''Seven Samurai'' and ''Throne of Blood.''

Though ''One Wonderful Sunday'' looks simple, it's a carefully composed, elegant, sometimes prescient work, a small-scale love story set against a background of tumultuous social and political change. We never see any members of the Allied occupation forces, but one is never unaware of their presence, if only because of a litter basket marked ''Trash'' seen, by chance, at the corner of the screen.

In Akira Kurosawa's first film after the end of World War II, future beloved Ozu regular Setsuko Hara gives an astonishing performance as Yukié, the only female protagonist in Kurosawa's body of work and one of his strongest heroes. Transforming herself from genteel bourgeois daughter to independent social activist, Yukié traverses a tumultuous decade in Japanese history. With Takashi Shimura.

There's nothing quite like the Sound of Bread. Since they were first formed in 1969 they have produced some of the most sophisticated pop music the world has ever heard.
It all began when three studio musicians decided to use their considerable talents for their own ends. David Gates, Robb Royer and James Griffin were all fine session men - and knew each other via a group called Pleasure Faire. From that basis came Bread.

Their hit single Make It With You gave them immediate success, and It Don't Matter To Me clinched it. Five albums and a string of hit singles between '70 and '72 kept the band almost constantly in the charts. They changed their line-up twice in that time: Adding drummer Mike Botts and substituting Larry Knechtel for Rob Royer (who left to concentrate on songwriting).

Loaded is without doubt The Velvet Underground's most popular album. At the same time, it is not their least groundbreaking one, considering how revolutionary their earlier works had been. Despite this, however, "Loaded" is a solid album of clever pop tunes, quirky instrumentations, and Reed's simultaneously humorous and sad lyrics.

The opening three tracks, "Who Loves the Sun," "Sweet Jane," and "Rock & Roll," are the album's disputed pop masterpieces, and have grown to become some of the most beloved rock tunes ever. On Loaded: Fully Loaded Edition, "Sweet Jane" and "Rock & Roll" are replaced by their original, full-length version instead of the cut down versions originally released on the album in their radio edit single format. This is a nice touch for the above-average fan of the band, as it allows for the tracks to be heard as they were originally intended. "Cool It Down" is a rockin' tune as well with particularly scratchy and erratic vocals from Lou Reed. On the special edition, "New Age" also sees its paired down version replaced by an original, longer edit. The rest of the album is in its original form as not to differ too much from the original release of Loaded.

Try Whistling This by ex-Crowded House frontman Neil Finn was one of the most awaited releases of 1998, at least outside of North America. Despite frequently being lauded as the most accomplished songwriter since Lennon-McCartney, and despite producing memorable song after memorable song, Finn and his band were never able to really make an impact in this vital market.

Nonetheless, those that did know him eagerly purchased his new album. Established Finn territories New Zealand (his home and birthplace) and Australia (home of Crowded House) sent Try Whistling This to number one in its first week. And the response in the United Kingdom was almost as impressive, with the album having to settle for the number five spot.