A guide to classical records, of sorts – but one that features older albums all picked by the well-known Japanese writer Haruki Murakami! Murakami is well-known as a lifetime lover of music, which comes through in his fiction, and which is almost more foregrounded in his essays – a body of work that's greatly expanded here – as Haruki presents full color images of treasured albums in his collection – mostly vinyl offerings from the 20th century, with a range of works that goes back to the early years of classical on mono LPs! Each cover image is presented with the label and date in English, and other details in Japanese – but you can easily use Google Translate on your phone to read the rest of these spare details, then set it to translate the longer essays that accompany the images. There's definitely more Japanese text here than in the "disc guides" we stock – but the images alone provided a great start to building a strong classical collection, guided by a true master. Softcover edition is 350 pages, with full color images throughout. (Books, Classical) Book

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Remi Gassman and Oskar Sala each present pieces of modern electronic music in this hard to find LP for Westminster, very much in the style that was in vogue in New York in the 50s and early 60s. Gassman performs his "Electronic Music For the Ballet Electronics", which has a spare spooky sound, and Sala gives us "Five Improvisations On Magnetic Tape" – which are a bunch of short electronic tracks with a fragile, yet noisy feel to them. As the back of the record says "If anyone cares, this record has a dynamic range of 51 dB. Its lowest frequency is 15.4 cycles per second, its highest fundamental 3951 cps, the highest harmonis or overtone 15806 cps. It can blow out speakers, traumatize cats and arouse the landlord." (Out Sound, Classical) LP, Vinyl record album