On the release date of our Sir Roger Norrington retrospective boxset, we also release his long-lost instrumental recordings of Brahms. Norrington approached this project after recording his Beethoven cycle, wondering if mid-19th-century would fit with his views on historically informed performance: “Tempos spacious but forthright; tempo modification, sensitive but simple; textures clear, as benefits such polyphonic writing; balance restored in favour of the winds…” A definitively original vision that gives these recordings a unique appeal.

His debut recording devoted to Schumann offered a brilliant opportunity to discover the name of Samuel Hasselhorn, a young baritone deeply invested in the art of lieder. With his collaborator Joseph Middleton, he now turns to Schubert, in an insightful programme evoking some of the themes dear to the Viennese master of song: nature, night-time, parting, absence, and death. Both essential and less familiar songs are featured side by side in this poignant depiction of profound self-reflection that can rank among the most moving examples of what the Romantic temperament has ever produced.

The second Greatest Remix Hits collection continued where the first left off, with rare remixes galore from Kylie's back catalogue. This volume also had the bonus inclusion of the original Australian single version of Locomotion, the first time the track was available other than on its original single release. Also included was a rare track recorded in Australia in 1987 called Getting Closer, which was originally intended to be Kylie's second single and was only ever available as the B-side to Locomotion in Europe.

Roots and groove mark this teaming of John Hiatt and the North Mississippi Allstars. On Master of Disaster, legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson and his sons Luther and Cody (the Allstars' guitarist and drummer, respectively) team with veteran bassist David Hood to give Hiatt's music a slow simmer rather than the high voltage fans might have expected from the collaboration. Yet the airy, organic interplay of the band provides the perfect complement for Hiatt's songs of folkish simplicity and lyrical grace. With the title track, he addresses the artist's midlife crisis and finds creative renewal in the process, a theme revisited in the country balladry of "Old School." There's a ragtime spirit to "Wintertime Blues" and "Back on the Corner," the insistence of a tom-tom's thump on "Love's Not Where We Thought We Left It" and "Find You At Last," a slide guitar that slices and dices through "Ain't Ever Goin' Back." With "When My Love Crosses Over," Hiatt returns to the soulful, soaring romantic balladry that remains a signature specialty, while "Cold River" tells a story that probes the coldest resources of the human heart. The result is his richest and most consistently satisfying release since the late 1980s.

Moonspell continues to delve into slow, Gothic doom-metal on Sin/Pecado, with occasional samples and electronic percussion popping up in the atmospheric arrangements. Still, the band has not yet quite recaptured the spark of their debut, Wolfheart.

A live concert from January 25, 1969, recorded in Los Angeles by soundman Dinky Dawson. The fidelity is very good (excellent, in fact, by late-1960s standards), and the band are good form on a nine-song set (a tenth track is just a "Tune Up") that sticks mostly to lesser-known originals and covers. That means you don't get classics on the order of "Black Magic Woman" or "Oh Well," but on the other hand it's nice to hear different versions of some of the lesser-known early Mac originals, like Peter Green's anguished "Before the Beginning" and one of Danny Kirwan's better tunes, "Something Inside of Me." It's getting hard to keep track because of the bumper crop of official and semi-official live late-sixties Fleetwood Mac releases now available, but this is the first appearance of "Lemon Squeezer" to my knowledge, and "My Baby Sweet" is not easy to come by…

After his remarkably successful acoustic album Wind, Maalouf comes back with a more electric sound on Illusions. It is an album born out of, and designed for, performance on stage. It not only features the members of his regular band, Frank Woeste on the keyboard, François Delporte on the guitar, Xavier Roge on the drums et Laurent David on the bass, but also adds three more quarter-tone trumpeters (Youenn Le Cam, Yann Martin and Martin Saccardy) to bring a even higher level of dynamism to the sound. Maalouf says, "I wanted this album to be festive and full of positive energy… it starts with the most tragic view of the world: cynicism. It then gradually evolves towards light and hope."

With Mundo Civilizado, downtown denizen Arto Lindsay is probably the first person to successfully integrate the sounds of techno and drum'n'bass into an already established pop music style. Others, notably David Bowie, have tried to do something similar, but although Bowie's attempt in particular was more successful than most critics give him credit for, it never sounded as natural and seamless as Lindsay's. That the former king of skronk guitar was able to achieve such a fusion while singing in Portuguese is even more impressive. Highlights include the funky female worship of "Q Samba" and the scattered herky-jerk of "Complicity" (which features the deathless couplet "Complicity, unconscious wit/Borders without borders under eyebrows"). His taste in covers is a bit more suspect – he brings as little to Prince's material as you'd expect, but is surprisingly more adept with Al Green's "Simply Beautiful." Overall, this one's a solid winner, if not quite a classic.