The new self-titled album WeArtists is full of power, energy and liveliness. It's definitely Rock'n'Roll but in it's harder version with audible influences from contemporary indie - rock trends. All songs on the album are based on a very powerful rhythm section. It's a combination of catchy tunes and powerful beats and one can't go wrong with it - this music fills the air with strong positive vibes and lots of crazy energy when playing.

Working on the new album WeArtists took less than six months from writing the songs to mastering, the guys did everything on their own, learning lots of new thing in the process of making it.

They built their own studio (rather small one with basic stuff only and it's hard to call a proper Studio) on the money earned from last year's touring. But the result seems to have exceeded expectations proving that the guys didn't spend these last six months in vain.

WeArtists are very excited that their new album is getting so popular around the world, that the number of listeners is also growing worldwide and can't wait to start their imminent new tour.

In helium, prettyhowtown (San Diego area performer John Noble) weaves a more contemplative web. Created entirely on a custom-built modular synthesizer and played live, these are "smaller" works: quietly intense, and truly ambient. As a performer, John is pleased when people react to his music at live shows by using it as a background for conversation, quiet thinking, or even sleeping—this last is a very high form of applause for an ambient live set! Helium is music for a tranquil evening.

We tend to think of The Renaissance as a movement which, above all, rediscovered and celebrated the endless fascination of the individual human life, but the dialogue too was a form close to the heart of renaissance artists and intellectuals - after all, two can be even more fun than one. The dialogue form derived cachet from Classical antiquity, especially the writings of Plato, and was familiar from Christian catechism; it lent drama to every occasion, and the most unlikely treatises and how-to-do-it books, on subjects from music theory to fishing, were framed as dialogues.

In music, renaissance composers turned repeatedly to the dialogue form when treating certain subjects, and this disc, which sets dialogues by the greatest English lute song composer, John Dowland, alongside works by his contemporaries, groups duos, duets and dialogues-proper together according to theme or topic. In fact, in the English lute ayre repertoire some dialogues lurk in the guise of solo songs. 'Say Love if ever thou didst find' [track 2] printed for one or four voices, surely comes from some court entertainment, flattering Queen Elizabeth I, and in fact is very similar in structure to another court piece of Dowland's, 'Humour, say what makest thou here?' which was published as a dialogue and chorus; as far as we know this is the first recording to reconstruct the song in its probable original form, and likewise we give the first recorded dialogue interpretation of 'Awake sweet Love, thou are returned' - a very convoluted soliloquy, but which again makes good sense if it is read as a dialogue between the Lover and Love.

Our first set or genre consists of Conversations with Cupid. We open with Dowland's famous 'Come again, sweet Love doth now invite' [1], which begins as an address to a wavering lover, before the singer turns to the audience to describe his torments, and in the last verse commiserates with Cupid at the impotence of his darts. Next we have a song [2] in which Cupid explains to his interlocutor that his arrows are useless against a certain person - the Queen, of course, who in fact is the true queen of love, and unchangeable. (The line 'yet still the same and she is so' refers to her motto, 'semper eadem', always herself.) 'Tell me, true Love' [3] is another verse and chorus piece, a one-sided address to Love, who does not answer; where after all can we find Love in this wicked world? But true love can be found in the marriage of true minds -this song (of which we perform only two verses) is probably a wedding song. 'Tell me dearest, what is Love?' [4] is a play song sung by the two heroines of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Captain, Frank and Clora. The music was written by Robert Johnson, for a few years the in-house composer of the King's Men, Shakespeare's troupe. 'Awake sweet Love, thou are returned' [5] is one of Dowland's loveliest melodies yet the lyrics can baffle audiences. We think it makes perfect sense as a dialogue between the Lover and Love. In the first verse the Lover tells Cupid to awaken because 'thou are returned' i.e. '[my] love is at last reciprocated'; and he goes on to describe his former pain. In the second verse Cupid consoles the Lover that 'she all this while but played with thee to make thy love more sweet'. We close this set with an anonymous duet setting for two lutes tuned a fourth apart of 'Dowland's Bells' otherwise known as 'The Lady Rich's Galliard'.

In our next set of pieces [tracks 7-9] we pay a visit to Arcadia, the land of fair shepherdesses and love-lorn shepherd lads. Dowland did not write many pastoral pieces, and certainly we under-represent the pastoral mood here. First popularised by Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, pastoral scenes of all kinds grew and grew in popularity until in the late 17th century one feels that 'shepherd' and' shepherdess' are merely synonyms for man and woman. At all events, we present a little vignette of three scenes. In Ferrabosco's 'Fair cruel nymph' [7] the clouds of the swain's despair are very quickly dispelled and the lovers are vowing constancy within a mere two minutes. 'A shepherd in a shade' [8], however, leaves the shepherd dangling; for all the song's joyous part-writing, we do not know if his shepherd maid will respond positively to his threats to pronounce curses on Love itself. 'Tell me, O love', [9] is another of Ferrabosco's micro-dramas. After conventional protestations, we discover that in fact it is some unspecified circumstances keeping these true turtle doves apart (a very common theme in English folksong) and they are left just hoping that their luck will change so that they can be together.

A dialogue with the dead is necessarily a one-sided affair, but perhaps a dialogue is what is subconsciously implied in John Coprario's choice of a two-soprano texture in his cycle of seven Funeral Tears (1606) composed on the death of Duke of Devonshire, of which we perform two songs here. 'O sweet flower' [10] laments a life cut cruelly short, likened to a falling flower or a tired pilgrim, and 'Oft thou hast' [11] recalls music in happier times, now turned to songs of sorrow.

Now we return from death to Cupid, with a second trilogy, this time telling a little love story, beginning with maidenly-modest refusal. Danyel's 'Coy Daphne fled' [12], which opens his rather learned book of songs published in that same year of 1606, gives two opposing views of the Classical myth of Dafne, turned by chaste Diana into a laurel tree to save her from the clutches of the lustful Apollo. To the man this seems a frigid and sterile end, to the maiden it is a blessed preservation of innocence and virginity. Morley's 'Who is that this dark night?' [13] sets to music a balcony scene written by Sir Philip Sidney. The girl on the balcony, initially sceptical of her wooer's constancy, is won over, but the romantic scene is broken up by 'noises off' of approaching family or neighbours. We give our story a happy ending with another of Ferrabosco's dialogues, 'What shall I wish' [14], an avowal of lovers' constancy. 'My Lord Chamberlain his Galliard' [15] is famously written for two to play on one lute - John Dowland's son Robert sitting on his lap perhaps - yet surely it must have been used for wooing and flirtation too, with a young lady on a gentleman's lap. We have re-interpreted it for two lutes, with differing timbres.

Our next set of songs are not dialogues at all, though originating in a dramatic and courtly occasion - the retirement in 1590 of Sir Henry Lee, Queen Elizabeth's self-styled 'champion', on the grounds of old age. These songs are recorded as being sung before the Queen by her favourite singer, Robert Hales, on behalf of old Sir Henry, to the accompaniment of a concealed consort. Yet Dowland printed the trilogy 'Time's eldest son' [16] as a duet for soprano and bass - an ensemble popular on the Continent but which never really caught on in England - and 'His golden locks' [17] as a vocal quartet. The lyrics are distinguished by charm and gentle wit - 'Time's eldest son' in particular ingeniously alludes to liturgical heads of Christian service in the cult of the Virgin Queen.

Orpheus in the underworld was a story especially important to renaissance musicians; at the heart of the story is the idea that the power of music is great enough - almost - to restore the dead to life. Fittingly, Monteverdi's Orfeo was the very first opera, but in fact English composers tackled the story too, and our last track, 'Orpheus I am' [18] tells a part of the story within a play by Beaumont and Fletcher, The Mad Lover; court musicians stage a masque for the benefit of a lovesick general, who has got it into his head that he should commit suicide in order to win the hand of the woman he loves in the next world. They dissuade him by showing him those who commit suicide for love suffer torments not happy union with their loves in the afterlife.

This is not the only Orpheus dialogue in the English renaissance repertoire, nor is our disc exhaustive of Dowland's dialogues: works written for viol consort would be a project for another day!

This new music extravaganza called New Ways To Destroy Music by Spanish guitarist and composer Daniel Bautista brings the listener a new set of pieces rooted as usual in the instrumental Prog Rock/Metal style that Daniel has been playing since 2002 in his solo career. Not only that, but also Classical, Hard Rock, Jazz, Latin and Electronic elements can be found in this album; that might suggest a extreme musical crossover, but all the elements are under Daniel's very personal point of view, conforming a new instrumental-virtuoso-cocktail cohesive pack.

This album has been recorded and mixed as always in a Gentoo Linux box (free music recorded in a free environment) between 2014 and 2015. All themes composed by Daniel Bautista, except track 11 by Brahms.

Inspired by Scandinavian folk music, in Harp Songs of the Midnight Sun, Aryeh Frankfurter arranges traditional Swedish and Norwegian melodies for the Celtic folk harp. Interspersed throughout, the listener will also hear such instruments as the guitar, fiddle, viola, cello, plucked psaltry, baroque flute, recorder, pennywhistle, Swedish bagpipes, overtone flute and mis. percussion which combine to create a rich musical tapestry. This music is at times eerily haunting, at others, charmingly romantic and still others, delightfully playful. Always evocative and beautiful.

Richly textured and orchestrated, this album contains music from Sweden and Norway. Unusual yet extremely haunting and beautiful, the music is rich, deep and evocative. While enjoyable to anyone, the rich accompaniment and complex arrangements have made this album a favorite among my harp colleagues and friends. If you are interested in a truly diverse and unusual musical experience which showcases the full emotive range of the harp, we unreservedly recommend this album above all others - an exciting musical adventure into music from the Land of the Midnight Sun!