Back catalogue: Classical

Review: Laurie Anderson's latest album, Amelia, marks her first release since the well-received Landfall (2018) and is inspired by the tragic final flight of aviator Amelia Earhart, featuring 22 tracks that delve into her much storied legacy. Collaborating with the Czech orchestra Filharmonie Brno, under Dennis Russell Davies, and a roster of notable musicians including Anohni and Marc Ribot, Anderson crafts a deeply evocative narrative, while the album reflects Anderson's distinct style, blending lyrical introspection with innovative soundscapes. Drawing from Earhart's personal diaries and communications, Amelia explores themes of adventure and disappearance, providing a poignant auditory journey. A renowned avant-garde artist, Anderson's career spans music, visual art, and performance, recognised for her boundary-pushing work and poetic storytelling, and this album continues her tradition of merging the beautiful with the bizarre, as well as offering a fresh perspective on an historic figure.

Review: The 2002 film The Hours starred hefty Hollywood talents Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, and the original score was composed by no lesser titan of his industry than Philip Glass. It is a masterful work from the legendary minimal composer and is here presented across four sides of vinyl by the Nonesuch label. It has plenty of thick, lush strings and lots of tonal suspension with cool piano parts, plenty of heavily pregnant silences and cascading scales that all add plenty to the film itself as well as being a great standalone listen.

Review: Kronos Quartet has now been active for 50 years and to mark the anniversary Nonesuch is putting out tone of their most acclaimed albums on vinyl for the first time. It comes as the Quartet is on a big 50th anniversary tour and almost 30 years after the original Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass album was first released in 1995. David Harrington and John Sherba play violin, Hank Dutt is on viola and Joan Jeanrenaud plays cello as they perform Glass pieces from the early 80s onwards including five which were actually written specifically for this group. They make for some of the best music the great composer has ever written, if you ask us.

Review: Caroline Shaw and So Percussion collaborate on Rectangles & Circumstance, a superb record that blends Shaw's signature vocal textures with So Percussion's rhythmic ingenuity. Released as part of their innovative repertoire, the album explores geometric motifs through intricate percussive arrangements and Shaw's evocative vocal expressions. With its interplay of structured forms and organic flow, your mind is soon locked into a weaving narrative that transcends the conventional boundaries of contemporary music. In merging complex compositions with emotive resonance, these two serve up some real profundity.