Two Miles High Music

Limited double vinyl LP set includes bonus CD version of the album. 2009 release from the veteran British Electronic rockers. Eclectic and energized, the band's new release is their most dazzling and diverse album in decades. Recorded in Santa Barbara and New York, Depeche Mode returned to using a lot of vintage gear, from analogue synthesizers to drum machines, in order to conjure up the retro-futuristic arrangements featured on the album. Lyrically the release contains many of the group's enduring obsessions plus more overt black humor than any of their previous collections. The release marks a reunion between the band and producer Ben Hillier, who worked with the band on Playing The Angel. Features the single 'Wrong'. Mute.

180 Gram/Audiophile pressing Two 10" discs in gatefold jacket Printed sleeves

How is it that Kid A's opening track, laden with an electronic vocal stuttering "bleh, bluh-bleh bleh bluh" is the most fascinating statement made in rock & roll this year? Because somehow, even when Radiohead blathers and blips nonsense, it's profound. The band's future-perfect musical grammar may be hard to decipher, and the melody is even more subliminal, but the journey traveled with Radiohead reveals them to be not only rock music's greatest adventurers in 2000, but teachers as well. --Beth Massa

With every record, Radiohead jump off higher and higher cliffs, daring fans to take the plunge in their artistic feats of derring-do. The journey from that scratchy bit of raw guitar angst in "Creep" (from 1993's Pablo Honey) to any song on Kid A amounts to a high-wire act that few, if any, bands in popular music have ever attempted. It's hard to believe both records come from the same planet, much less the same band. Likewise, the grandiose, Pink Floyd-esque thematic scope of 1997's extraordinary OK Computer is nowhere to be found here. Quiet, contemplative, and less confrontational, it opens with a lack of bombast, as "Everything in Its Right Place" builds tension with ghostly voiceovers, a dry pulse, and a shadowy organ motif. That tension appears over and over on Kid A. On "How to Disappear Completely," the unsettled, atonal keyboard waxing in the background offsets the plaintive Thom Yorke vocal, and on "Idioteque," detached, inorganic rhythms make the melody's despondent aimlessness that much more nerve-racking. Throughout, Radiohead fearlessly explore dissonance and structure, melding twisted, Brian Eno-meets-Aphex Twin sonic landscapes with utter discontent in the world around them. They may sometimes overreach, letting artsy ambition prevent them from giving us the arena rock-god goodies. But their commitment to restless creativity also yields pleasures that don't fade but instead become more resonant upon repeated listenings. If OK Computer was rock's most relevant expression of millennial angst, Kid A is the opposite; it's the 21st century's first record that sounds like the future, barely caring what that Y2K fuss was all about and much more worried about what the hell we're all supposed to do now. --Matthew Cooke

Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier - Limited Edition......... The new studio album from the legendary metal band! To celebrate Iron Maiden's 15th studio release, their first in 4 yearsTrack listing ......... 1. Satellite 15.....the Final Frontier, 2. El Dorado, 3. Mother of Mercy, 4. Coming Home, 5. Alchemist, The, 6. Isle of Avalon, 7. Starblind, 8. Talisman, The, 9. Man Who Would Be King, The, 10. When the Wild Wind Blows.

Ten, the debut album that sold 12 million copies and introduced the world to Pearl Jam in 1991, will be reissued in four (4) new and expanded editions on March 24, 2009. The reissue of Ten serves as the launch of a planned two-year catalogue re-release campaign leading up to the band's 20th anniversary in 2011. Each Ten package will include two versions of the album: the remastered version of the original album PLUS an accompanying remixed version done by the band's long-time producer, Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen,AC/DC, Audioslave). "The band loved the original mix of Ten, but were also interested in what it would sound like if I were to deconstruct and remix it," says producer Brendan O'Brien. "The original Ten sound is what millions of people bought, dug and loved, so I was initially hesitant to mess around with that.After years of persistent nudging from the band, I was able to wrap my head around the idea of offering it as a companion piece to the original - giving a fresh take on it,a more direct sound." Vinyl Collection (2 LP set): LP 1: original Ten tracklisting remastered for vinyl LP 2: original Ten tracklisting remastered for vinyl and remixed by Brendan O'Brien

This double vinyl, 180 gram pressing of The Beach Boys' Endless Summer features endless classics like "Surfin' USA," "Fun, Fun, Fun," "I Get Around," "California Girls," and "Help Me Rhonda." Instant sunshine from your speakers. ©1974 Capitol Records

Brian Wilson's brilliance manifested itself in the euphoric, cheerfully square, sun-and-fun stuff heard here early on, before it got darker and more complicated. Endless Summer runs from the beginning of the Boys' pinstriped career to 1965, right before the melancholy of Pet Sounds, but also includes the inescapable "Good Vibrations." You can hear a few hints of adolescent sadness and fear--"Help Me, Rhonda" is essentially a kids' sing-along about a wrenching emotional rebound, and the shadow of death is hiding somewhere in "Don't Worry, Baby"--but Wilson is mostly concerned with the cars, waves, and girls that made up the Boys' public image, and his ingenious arrangements (coupled with the group's inimitable harmonies) make everything go down as smoothly as lemonade. --Douglas Wolk

Brian Wilson's brilliance manifested itself in the euphoric, cheerfully square, sun-and-fun stuff heard here early on, before it got darker and more complicated. Endless Summer runs from the beginning of the Boys' pinstriped career to 1965, right before the melancholy of Pet Sounds, but also includes the inescapable "Good Vibrations." You can hear a few hints of adolescent sadness and fear--"Help Me, Rhonda" is essentially a kids' sing-along about a wrenching emotional rebound, and the shadow of death is hiding somewhere in "Don't Worry, Baby"--but Wilson is mostly concerned with the cars, waves, and girls that made up the Boys' public image, and his ingenious arrangements (coupled with the group's inimitable harmonies) make everything go down as smoothly as lemonade. --Douglas Wolk

M83 (named for the spiral galaxy Messier 83) is Electronic artist Anthony Gonzalez. M83 's Gonzalez and former member Nicolas Fromageau founded the group in 2001 in Antibes, France. Key to M83's style are attributes often associated with shoegaze which is the emphasis on tonality, extensive use of effects and often softly-spoken lyrics at times submerged in instrumentation. Whether guitar or synthesizer based, M83's parts typify the tone common both to dream Pop and contemporary Electro. All three of M83's albums were well received, in particular Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, their second album, which allowed them to break through to a larger audience.

180 Gram/Audiophile pressing Two 10" discs in gatefold jacket Printed sleeves

More song-driven and acoustic than Kid A, Radiohead's Amnesiac isn't quite "Kid B," but it is unquestionably cut from the same far-out cloth, as the band revels in fascinating quirks and abject nihilism. It's also the first time in Radiohead's career that a new record hasn't meant a complete shift in artistic priorities. Surely, however, regardless of which was released first, they both deserve recognition; after all, Amnesiac, like Kid A, is an amazing piece of work. Only lightly augmented with electronics, songs like "You and Whose Army?" and "I Might Be Wrong" almost sound like they came from a typical five-piece rock band. You may even believe the band still employs a guitarist after hearing Jonny Greenwood's wistful surf-guitar lead on "Knives Out" or his subtle but noticeable contributions to the anticapitalist rant "Dollars and Cents." But inevitably, the band continually shifts gears, moving into Boards of Canada territory on "Like Spinning Plates" and delivering dark, bass-laden oddities like "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," a fuzzed-out piece of avant-garde techno that could just as easily be on an Autechre or Aphex Twin record. The song's half-sung, half-spoken vocal was laid down by either a heavily distorted Thom Yorke or, just perhaps, a loquacious microwave oven. Either way, the music always has momentum, regardless of whether propelled by man or appliance. Radiohead as a band understand how to make rock interesting again, and in the end, that's all they set out to do when they recorded Amnesiac, as well as Kid A. It's more than can be said for the bad frat-punk, teen-pop and soulless techno that currently rules the charts, and for that alone, Radiohead's astonishing exploration of 21st-century anguish deserves credit. --Matthew Cooke