This is the third instalment of the Music To Watch Girls By series--a collection of so-called easy listening greats, but defining it as such is to do these songs a serious disservice. How can any album which features such bona fide classics as "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys or Aretha Franklin's "I Say A Little Prayer" ever be deemed kitsch or in any way camp? The best albums seldom need reviewing, a simple tracklisting instead being enticement enough--and so it is with Music to Watch Girls By Volume 3. Make your life just a little sweeter with Bobby Darin's definitive reading of "Mack the Knife" or the melancholic sweep of "Moon River" by Henry Mancini. Romance simply doesn't get any more heartfelt than Doris Day's "Secret Love", or come to that the smouldering velvet tones of Johnny Mathis gliding through "Misty". Far from being "easy", this is music at its most classy, the inclusion of Keith West's largely forgotten "Excerpt From A Teenage Opera" being reason enough to set this collection apart from the usual cobbled-together fare that often makes up such albums. --Billie Swift
£12.43
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Two of the most redolent sounds of Japanese art music are the shakuhachi (end-blown bamboo flute) and the koto (long zither). This praiseworthy mid-price anthology, based on recordings previously issued by Toshiba EMI, brings together various permutations of the two instruments. For example, it opens appropriately (given the album title) with variations on a lullaby by composer Inzan Tanaka played by Hozan Yamamoto and Utazumi Kunishige on shakuhachi and koto. The second piece features two shakuhachi players (Tozan Tanno and Tozan Hara) and the sounds they encounter on an eight-mile journey through a mountain pass. The sounds of nature predominate. Small birds sing from the trees. The two most ambitious of the eight tracks are a trio performance on a theme of cherry blossom for two flutes and one koto and a double shakuhachi and koto quartet on a theme of a ruined castle bathed in moonlight. For anyone wishing to test the waters of Japanese art music, Lullaby For The Moon is an auspicious starting point. --Ken Hunt
£4.99
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Drawing on key tracks from the band's first three albums (1972-1973), The Early Years clarifies that Roxy Music's egg-headed art-rock innovation (the louche and debonair trash-cabaret croon of Bryan Ferry, the wonky metal-detector sonics of Brian Eno's "keyboards"') will forever remain on the right side of chic. Too unique to be duplicated, Roxy Music bequeathed their legacy of noodle-free prog-rock and PhD glam in piecemeal fashion; to chin-stroking New Wavers like Magazine (remember how "Virginia Plain" re-hit the charts at the height of punk?) and more recently to Suede (the grand Jacques Brel sweep of "A Song For Europe" would have slotted nicely into Dog Man Star). The Early Years offers further evidence of Roxy's perma-durability on the classic strut of "Do The Strand" and on the strange "In Every Dream Home A Heartache", a sordid monologue of suburban isolation and auto-erotic relish intoned by Ferry in a manner which even Gary Numan would have found dehumanised. --Kevin Maidment
£4.93
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Track listing
1. Music
2. Impressive Instant
3. Runaway Lover
4. I Deserve It
5. Amazing
6. Nobody's Perfect
7. Don't Tell Me
8. What It Feels Like For A Girl
9. Paradise (Not For Me)
10. Gone
11. American Pie
£4.90
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