Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music's eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock's boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures. Although no musician demonstrates much technical skill at this point, they are driven by boundless imagination – Brian Eno's synthesized "treatments" exploit electronic instruments as electronics, instead of trying to shoehorn them into conventional acoustic patterns. Similarly, Bryan Ferry finds that his vampiric croon is at its most effective when it twists conventional melodies, Phil Manzanera's guitar is terse and unpredictable, while Andy Mackay's saxophone subverts rock & roll clichés by alternating R&B honking with atonal flourishes.

Salisbury is the second album released by British rock band Uriah Heep. The album features forays into both jazz-fusion on "The Park", and progressive rock on the band's first large-scale composition, the 16-minute title track featuring a 24-piece orchestra. It also includes the largely acoustic ballad "Lady In Black." The connection of the artwork to the title is readily explained. Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, is an Army training-area. On the front of the album sleeve is a British Chieftain tank. The original LP release was a gatefold-sleeve. Inside is a b/w picture of a British tank of the First World War, over which were printed Hensley's comments on each track. Later reissues would be in a single sleeve. The American release featured a different sleeve image, as did the original Canadian pressings. Future Canadian pressings used the UK artwork.

Time and a Word, released in July 1970 by Atlantic Records, is the second album by the progressive rock band Yes. The group continued to follow their early musical direction of performing original material and cover versions of songs by pop, jazz, and folk artists. An orchestra was used on most of the album's songs; Peter Banks did not support the idea which resulted in him being replaced by Steve Howe after the album was released. Time and a Word became the group's first release to enter the UK chart at #45. It however failed to chart in the US and received mixed reviews from critics. During their UK tour in April 1970, guitarist Peter Banks was fired from the group. By the time of the album's release, he was replaced by Steve Howe, who is photographed with the group on the album's North American cover.

The most popular and successful lineup of Return to Forever – Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, and Al Di Meola – was coming off the Grammy-winning No Mystery when it recorded its third and final album, Romantic Warrior. It has been suggested that in employing a medieval album cover (drawn by Wilson McLean), using titles like "Medieval Overture" and "Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant," and occasionally playing in a baroque style, particularly in Clarke's "The Magician," Corea was responding to Rick Wakeman's successful string of albums on similar themes. Certainly, the music suggests that the musicians have been listening to Wakeman's band, Yes, among other progressive rock groups.

All credit to Gary Moore for having the courage to leap into the relative unknown with A Different Beat. It is indeed greatly removed from anything he had released prior to 1999. Perhaps it was the new-found freedom from the guitarist's contract with Virgin that fuelled the change of direction–that and Moore's obvious affinity with outfits along the lines of Apollo 440 and Fatboy Slim (to whom "Fatboy" is a tribute).

Eric Clapton’s lifelong passion for the blues burns brightly inNothing But The Blues. The CD of the soundtrack features 17 previously unreleased live performances recorded in 1994 during the legendary guitarist’s tour supportingFrom The Cradle, his GrammyÒ-winning, multi-platinum blues album. Clapton’s longtime co-producer, Simon Climie, has remixed the audio from those performances from the original multi-tracking recordings. -The previously unreleased live performances onNothing But the Bluesserve as a vital counterpart toFrom The Cradle, which was recorded in the studio.

The fourth studio album from the Ventures, 1961's Colorful Ventures was the first in a long line of releases the band built around album title themes. Here the theme is colors, and so listeners get such songs as "Blue Moon," "Yellow Jacket," "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White," and so on. Conceptual themes aside, the album featured more of the group's recognizable instrumental rock & roll, surf rock, and country twang.

The band's fifth release, Rain Dances is Camel at its best, offering the most consistent and representative package in their saga. The addition of Caravan-cofounder Richard Sinclair proves profitable, as do a few colorist touches by Brian Eno on "Elke." Mel Collins' woodwinds are among the highlights, especially on "Tell Me" and the title track. From beginning to end, this project flows gracefully.

Flashback is the second box set compilation by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), released in 2000. In 2000, Jeff Lynne found a new impetus to work on the music of his old band and returned to the recording studio to work on an ELO project for the first time in some 15 years just prior to the comeback album Zoom in 2001. This work resulted in a digitally remastered compilation released in late 2000. Unlike its predecessors, this project, Flashback, was personally approved and endorsed by Lynne. The set includes songs featured from all 11 studio albums up to that point, including an edit of "Great Balls of Fire" from their live album The Night the Light Went On in Long Beach, plus some new recordings amongst the band's extensive back catalog, most notably a reworking of Lynne's only UK number one hit "Xanadu". The album includes liner notes by David Wild with quotes on each song from Lynne and a booklet inside.

Norway's a-ha took "Take on Me" to the number one spot on Billboard's Top 40 in 1985, thanks to the award-winning animated video that accompanied it. Still, a-ha contributed rather accordingly to the '80s pop sound, drenching their music with bouncy riffs and employing the keyboard as the foundation to their colorful formula. Headlines and Deadlines: The Hits of a-ha assembles all of their singles together, a definite one-stop for all of their music. Combining ballads and radiant '80s pop, this set includes their most fervent offering in "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.," which hit number 20 in 1986 and originated from Hunting High and Low, the same album that included "Take on Me."

This incredibly diverse collection was Chicago’s sixth studio album and their final studio-recorded double album to date. Cited for its jazz excursions, Chicago VII reached No. 1 in the US and included three stand-out hits including Searchin’ So Long, Wishing You Were Here and the first single penned by trumpeter Lee Loughnane Call on Me, which reached No. 6 in the US.

Drama is the tenth studio album by the English rock band Yes, released on 18 August 1980 by Atlantic Records. It is their only album to feature Trevor Horn as lead vocalist, following the departure of Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman in March 1980 after unsuccessful recording sessions for a new album in Paris and London. Horn was joined by keyboardist Geoff Downes, his partner in the new wave band The Buggles. Drama was recorded in a short amount of time as a tour was already booked prior to the change in personnel. It marked a departure in the band's musical direction with songs more accessible and aggressive, and featuring the use of modern keyboards and a vocoder.

String Driven Thing may have disintegrated when Chris and Pauline Adams departed, but Graham Smith didn't let that deter him. He rebuilt the band from the foundation up and shifted the focus from progressive folk to a more straight-ahead rock & roll format, a sonic sensibility helped along by vocalist Kim Beacon, whose Rod Stewart-styled vocals provided a front to the heavy-hooked guitar-driven songs. The new format didn't win many points with the band's old fans, but String Driven Thing's more pop-oriented sound fit perfectly with the mainstream marketplace's own drift away from the prog-tinged seas that the band once sailed so masterfully.

Let's Talk About Love is the fifth English-language studio album by Canadian singer Celine Dion, released on 14 November 1997, by Columbia/Epic Records. The follow-up to her commercially successful album Falling into You (1996), Let's Talk About Love showed a further progression of Dion's music. Throughout the project, she collaborated with Barbra Streisand, the Bee Gees, Luciano Pavarotti, Carole King, George Martin, Diana King, Brownstone, Corey Hart and her previous producers: David Foster, Ric Wake, Walter Afanasieff, Humberto Gatica and Jim Steinman. Let's Talk About Love includes Dion's biggest hit, "My Heart Will Go On". Written by James Horner and Will Jennings, and serving as the love theme for the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic, "My Heart Will Go On" topped the charts around the world, and has become Dion's signature song.

Animals is the tenth studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd, released in January 1977. A concept album, it provides a scathing critique of the social-political conditions of late 1970s Britain, and presents a marked change in musical style from their earlier work. Animals was recorded at the band's studio, Britannia Row, in London, but its production was punctuated by the early signs of discord that several years later would culminate in keyboardist Richard Wright leaving the band. The album's cover image, a pig floating between two chimneys on Battersea Power Station, was conceived by bassist and writer Roger Waters, and photographed by long-time collaborators Hipgnosis.