theartsdesk on Vinyl 92: Marianne Faithful, Crayola Lectern, UK Subs, Black Lips, Stax, Dennis Bovell and more

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Black Lips Season of the Peach (Fire)

Some of the many releases by don’t-give-a-damn southern US rockers Black Lips are of variable quality. They’re actual rockers, not Modern Music BA university graduates, so it depends where their wild heads are at. Their latest is a good one. Their garage instincts are intact, but they also render loose-limbed, fibrous versions of country music, southern soul and indie guitar pop. There aren’t many bands who could write a song with a chorus that runs, “I just want a prick of my own”, and make it a catchy new wave singalong akin to the best by LA punks X. Lo-fi, boisterous, puerile, messy, varied and assured, Season of the Peach is a treat. Comes on white vinyl in art/info inner sleeve.

VINYL REVIEWS

Tony Njoku All Our Knives are Always Sharp (Studio Njoku LLC)

A decade into his career, it’s surely time more light was shone on London producer-singer Tony Njoku. At least his peers have woken to his talents. His fourth album features appearances by Ghostpoet, Tricky and Space Afrika, as well as impressive MCing by James Massiah, and contributions from Coby Sey and others. Njoku mingles glitchy electronica with elements of modern classical, R&B and grime, his doleful but soulful voice turning techy twitching into notable songwriting. There’s a persistent melancholy that may be off-putting to some but his music is also layered, ear-interesting, and different, experimentalism that’s tweaked with a sad-eyed pop edge. Comes on navy blue vinyl with a four-page 12” x 12” photo-art lyric booklet.

Marianne Faithfull Marianne Faithfull + Come My Way + North Country Maid + Love in a Mist + Cast Your Fate to the Wind (Decca)

Marianne Faithfull, in more recent years, has been lauded for music made later in life. Contrarily, her 1960s adventures became the stuff of myth. These reissues, her first four British albums, and a compilation of non-album singles, offcuts and other rarities, showcase another version of Faithfull, a pristine, beautiful young pop star. Also a talent at exploring folk music’s avenues of possibility. Marianne Faithfull and Come My Way were both released in spring 1965, the former a pop album, at Decca’s behest, the latter, a folk album, as per the wishes of Faithfull, who’d come up on the folk scene, posh but broke. Marianne Faithful is not very interesting, generic twee girl-pop of the period, though it contains her breakthrough hit, and first link to the Stones, “As Tears Go By”, written by Jagger & Richards. The pared-back Come My Way has more going for it (and was also the higher charting of the pair). Against minimalist acoustic backing, Faithfull’s quavering, airy, schoolgirl voice wraps around the likes of “The House of the Rising Sun”, as well as arrangements of Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”. When North Country Maid appeared a year later, Faithfull was still with her new husband and child. It’s another folk one but more accomplished. From her father, Faithfull inherited a deep interest in old music, inspired also by early music revivalist Alfred Dellar. She effectively mingles the likes of “Scarborough Fair” with songs by Donovan and Bert Jansch. One can detect within it the seeds of what would happen to British folk and rock in the late-Sixties and early-Seventies. It’s a lovely album. By the time of Love in a Mist in early ’67, Faithfull had left her family and shacked up with Mick Jagger. She was blossoming into an everlasting Sixties icon, and would eventually pay a price. The album, which features songs by Jackie De Shannon and Tim Hardin, opens with an M.O.R. take on “Yesterday”, and contains her Top 10 hit “This Little Bird”, which has a morose Victorian parlour aspect that permeates the album. She dips into chanson, which she also does on a new collection, Cast Your Fate to the Wind. This double set in gatefold contains non-album singles; a rather plain cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind” is put in the shade by the prototype pastoral psyche of “Tomorrow’s Calling”, as well as B-sides like the clappy pop-blues of “The Sha La La Song”, and two versions of “Sister Morphine”, a song she wrote with the Stones when she was influencing some of their best work. While Marianne Faithfull would eventually return for an impressive second act, these reissues remind of her talent and luminosity before she got burnt. They all come with copious inner sleeve notes and photos.

Crayola Lectern Disasternoon (Crayola Lectern)

Aptly, the cover art to Crayola Lectern’s third album is by Alfreda Benge, who is Robert Wyatt’s wife. The Worthing band have often been compared to Wyatt and, unoriginally, I must add to the chorus of comparison. Frontman Chris Anderson, brass-player Alistair Strachan and drummer Damo Waters offer a gently psychedelic chamber music, not a million miles from others on the less proggy side of the early-Seventies Canterbury scene. Crayola Lectern’s music isn’t retro, though, its wafting charms have imbibed, accidentally or purpose, the MDMA cuddliness of Millennial chill-out, without adopting its beats and clichés. This is an organic music, very carefully constructed, with lyrics about the possibility of beauty in tough times (although “Oblivion” seems to submit to its title). The title track is a good place to start but the whole, toasted in quietude, softly breathes into the listener. Comes in art/lyric/info inner sleeve.

Allen Toussaint Toussaint (Kent) + The New Rotary Connection Hey, Love (Ace) + Billy Hawks Heavy Soul! (Ace) + Various Stax Revue: Live in ’65 (Craft)

Four vintage soul gems. Producer and songwriter Allen Toussaint is best-known as one of the key behind-the-scenes dudes who put New Orleans on the map as a popular musical force in the Sixties and Seventies. He was also a recording artist in his own right. 1970’s Toussaint was his first proper album (he released an album of instrumental piano boogie in 1958). The big song on it is the groovy, brassy “Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky”, a slinky whopper. The rest has similar rhythm’n’blues flavouring, but isn’t so explicitly aimed at hip-swaying, going instead for a measured dose of Big Easy pop-soul. By the time the multi-racial Rotary Connection reached their final album, Hey, Love, in 1971, they’d added a “New” to their name. After a five year career blending pop, blues, rock and soul, akin to Sly Stone but to less success, they now plunged into Afro-futurist jazz. There’s a big one here too – “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun” – and it’s a good indicator of where the rest is at, Minnie Ripperton’s extraordinary voice giving classical chorale while, alongside her, a melee of syncopation, male soul vocals, complex, lightly psychedelic arrangements and orchestration, blend into a more experimental version of what Marvin Gaye was up to at the time. History should remember them better. Philadelphia keys-player Billy Hawks’ 1968 album Heavy Soul! exemplifies the connection between soul and jazz (especially the instrumental title track). Yet again, there’s a big tune, at least for rare groove sorts; the dancefloor-friendly belter “O Baby (I Believe I’m Losing You)”. Hawks pumps the organ throughout the album, offering up Northern Soul jump-arounds, James Brown-ish foot-movers and the occasional slowie. He died young decades ago, undiscovered by the world, but Heavy Soul! is a vital testament to his energized talent. Comes in photo/inner sleeve with extensive back story by Acid Jazz bod Dean Rudland. Soul is often associated with smoothness so it’s great to wrap ears around Stax Revue: Live in ’65 which showcases a cross section of greats (and less greats!) in the raw. The two record set in gatefold, including extensive back story by Los Angeles writer Lynell George, contains snapshots of Stax Records roster in concert in Memphis and in L.A during the summer of 1965. On Side One Booker T &The MG’s give a raucous instrumental party, with Side Two bringing in the doo-wop stylings of The Astors, the rough’n’ready singing of Stax songwriter David Poretr, before closing with Wendy Rene’s stomping “Bar-B-Q”. Sides Three and Four showcase The Mar-Keys, The Mad Lads, Carla Thomas and William Bell before closing with the frantic double-punch of an eight-minute “Midnight Hour” from Wilson Pickett, then Rufus Thomas’s “Walking the Dog”. The whole album sounds sweaty and even, in places, punk-spirited.

rRoxymore Juggling Dualities (!K7)

Despite having the most pretentious album title, the third from French DJ-producer Hermione Frank – AKA rRoxymore [sic] – has much to recommend it. It is that moss-covered cliché of electronic music albums… a journey, but one worth taking, downtempo noodle that bubbles along in an ear-pleasing way. “Upward Spiral” (I know, I know) on Side A has a xylophonic Afrodelic aspect, as does “Nectar” at the start of Side B. Much of it has a warm organic feel, as if correlating the experience of a walk in the woods, in places a little like Jean-Michel Jarre’s Amazônia. There is a 4/4 chug at a couple of points but, for the most part, ahem, Juggling Dualities is a contemplative affair.

Alice Châteaux Faibles (Bongo Joe) + Sarah Maison Divad (Capitane)

Two Francophone releases. Alice is a Swiss trio of women whose work is hard to categorize (given what theartsdesk on Vinyl is sent, that’s saying something!). Working with producer Dabid Stampfi, they deliver folky, rough-edged part-song vocals over minimalist backing from a cheap synth. Unbelievably, this works. Sometimes the result is harmonic nursery rhymes, at others they embrace silliness, revelling in playground noises, even cracking up with laughter, on other occasions there’s the feel of sacred music, and at yet others, the music recalls the droney fringes of German 1970s kosmische. Whatever’s going on, it’s appealingly off-the-wall. Comes in lyric inner sleeve. Sarah Maison is a French singer of Moroccan heritage Her debut album draws on Arabic music but is as much a mash-up of chanson, kitsch Seventies film soundtracks, easy listening, Sixties pop, and the kind of music musicians play in the lobbies of some posh hotels. She has the voice for it, breathy and sexy, and she has the tunes, which lushly melt the listener. Comes in lyric inner sleeve.

O$VMV$M Shroud of Fear II (O$VMV$M)

10 years into their career Bristol duo Amos Childs and Sam Barrett push further into the lost jungles of downtempo hip hop ambience. Polish photographer Paulina Korobkiewicz and DJ-producer Intel Mercenary assist in tying it all together. This music is very, very stoned (as its occasional weed-related commentary confirms). The shimmering, echoing backing tracks, found sounds and curious samples are brought to life by a host of vocal guests, all as laid back as possible, MCs but the delivery is more horizontal spoken word than rap. They mean nothing to me but they might to you – their names are as follows: Birthmark, Bogues, DAKN, Yeo Limone, mutil umila, gnome GOD, Manomars and Franco Franco (gnome GOD is a superb name!). There’s also saxophone on the final track from Lorenzo Prati. Whether you’ve been anywhere near a spliff or not, Shroud of Fear II will leave you feeling pleasantly woozy. Comes with 12” x 12” info insert. 

Tidiani Kone and T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo Fangati Djangele et Djanga Magni (Acid Jazz) + Madalitso Band Mi Gitala (Bongo Joe)

A couple of vibrant releases by African artists, one old one new. Back in 1977 The People’s Republic of Benin was a difficult place to live, a repressive communist state. Nonethless, T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo thrived. Their records have graced theartsdesk on Vinyl before and now Acid Jazz reissues one of their rarest, 1977’s Fangati Djangele et Djanga Magni, a collaboration with Malian sax and trumpet player Tidiani Kone. Since there are no master tapes available, it’s been created from an existing vinyl copy, cleaned up using magical contemporary tech. A good job they’ve made of it too. Not perfect but completely listenable, give its origins. The hypno-rhythms wind into the mind as the vocals and brass lick the surface, giving an exuberantly human dimension. It’s a smashing disinterment of something lost. And so to the present with Madalitso Band. Most buskers we see are out to make a few quid and showcase their musical skills. In Malawian capital Lilongwe, though, busking was a matter of life and death for Yosefe Kalekeni and Yobu Maligwa. The teenagers, hungry and with no safety net, came together over a love of the guitar and earned their keep. Three albums later and with a host of European festival appearances under their belt, life is better. Their third, featuring straightforward songs on acoustic guitar and a homemade oil can bass known as a babatoni, has a cheerful charm and rhythmic persistence. Madalitso Band’s music doesn’t fuss. It’s immediate and suggests the listener bobs from foot to foot.

Luke Marzec Something Good Out of Nothing (Swift Half) + Frazey Ford Indian Ocean (Nettwerk)

theartsdesk on Vinyl has never had much time for retro-soul revivalism. That thing where they try and reproduce exactly the soul studio sound of 60 years ago. Remember Joss Stone? Jeez. That. But if it has to exist, it needs to bring something to the party. The debut album from Polish-British singer Luke Marzec does. It’s deep-dipped in jazz but is more old-fashioned soul than, say Gregory Porter. Marzec has a voice of light gravel, slightly adenoidal, a tiny bit Louis Armstrong, which doesn’t sound promising on the page but works, whether the arrangements are acoustic and simple or dense and plush. It’s not my thing but he has something. If he makes it, I will regret this review. I remember when I was nice about The Kooks once before they made it. Haunts me. Frazey Ford is more my thing. A member of successful Canadian folkies The Be Good Tanyas, her second solo album, Indian Ocean, was originally out in 2014 but is now reissued. Recorded in Memphis with Al Green’s band, it balances the gulping vulnerability of her voice with succulent slow-rolling rhythm and brass. The songs are there too. Comes in lyric/info inner sleeve.

Isambard Khroustaliov & Ben Carey Field Recordings from Other Constellations (Not Applicable)

Aussie Ben Carey and Brit Isambard Khroustaliov both exist in that place where electronic music meets avant-garde art, installations and the like. They’ve been drawn to Polish science-fiction writer Stanislav Lem’s beautifully out-there 1965 book of robotic fables and quantum fairytales, The Cyberiad. Their new album is a tribute. Over four tracks, it consists of analogue soundscaping that ranges from bleepy-creepy to humming tone music to fuzzed radio static, all blended in such a way it makes for intriguing listening. Well, possibly not for the majority but, for fans of long-ago electronic experimentalists such as Tom Dissevelt, Mort Garson and Bebe & Louis Baron, who associated their studio dreamings with the outer space, Carey & Khroustaliov’s strange unearthly noodlings hold appeal. The inner sleeve contains one of Lem’s fabulist yarns. Comes on transparent vinyl.

Various Edna Martinez presents Picó: Sound System Culture from the Colombian Caribbean (Strut)

Strut Records have given their latest compilation over to Berlin-based Colombian DJ-producer Edna Martinez. She offers up four sides devoted to records played at her home country’s sound system street gatherings known as Picó’s. The records come with a 12-page 12” x 12” booklet in which she explains the origins of the multi-city scene, how the working class pooled resources to make parties happen in marketplaces. Naturally the music is lively and very percussive, dating between the Sixties and the Eighties, often featuring enthused whooping. The only artist name I recognise is Nigerian trumpet-player Zeal Onyia, who contributes a particularly effervescent cut, but obscurity is no barrier to enjoying a rich array of music that should set open-minded dancefloors afire. Aware of this fact, Martinez has remixed and edited three tracks. A melting pot of soca, cumbia, highlife and more, and a wonderful collection of ebullient music.

Rhodar Dakar Version Girl in Dub (Sunday Best) + Dennis Bovell Wise Music in Dub (Wise) + Dennis Bovell Train to Dubville/Dubhead (Wise) + Dennis Bovell My Heart is Gone/Black and White (Wise) + Early B Meets Super Cat Roots (Midnight Rock/Acid Jazz)

Three reggae outings, one with a couple of accompanying singles. 2-Tone queenpin Rhodar Dakar has been busy lately, with Sunday Best releasing a string of 7” single reggae cover versions, some of which were great (notably “The Man Who Sold the World” and “Everyday is Like a Sunday”). Collected together, they made a pleasant album but this dub companion is more consistent. The original album was produced by Lenny Bignell and he’s put together these new versions with his band The Juks. Their unpickings of her takes of everything from “What a Wonderful World” to Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” deconstruct them further away from the covered songs, which turns out to lead to somewhere more interesting. Comes in art/info inner sleeve, and initial editions come on glow-in-the-dark vinyl. Reggae production master Dennis Bovell also majors in cover versions on his new album. On well-mastered gatefold double, it’s entitled Wise Music in Dub but is more adventurous than just dub. His take on The Zombies’ “The Time of the Season”, with its widdly guitar, for instance, recalls mid-period Tackhead. He has a bunch of guest singers to help out, ranging from Carroll Thompson gamely tackling Minnie Ripperton’s “Les Fleurs” to Imagination’s Leee John with a spacey Lovers Rock take on The Stylistics’s “You’re a Big Girl Now”. On two records in gatefold, Bovell is clearly having fun and the results, even including a boisterous take on “Pass the Dutchie”, are unforced and genial. A couple of 10” singles are drawn from it, offering four songs, including Aswad’s Brinsley Forde on a twee version of Peter Seeger’s anti-racist primary school banger “Black and White”. Back in 1985 Jamaican producer Jah Thomas and his Midnight Rock label were having a moment. He decided to put an album together devoting one side each to established dancehall MC Early B and then-rising talent Super Cat (who would go onto big things). It never received full release but does now. For this listener, while Super Cat’s unstoppable spieling is rhythmical dynamite, Early B’s cuts are the more interesting, partly due to their witty content, narratives around everything from what it’s like being a pedestrian to Haile Sellassie’s 1966 visit to Jamaica. Both sides have bubbling potency.

Sophie Product (Numbers)

A decade after the release of Sophie’s debut album, a collection of her 2013-2015 singles, and four years since she died, Product still sounds well ahead of the game. Charli XCX eventually took this ball and ran with it – hyperpop – but Sophie’s chopped-about rave meta-pop is the raw original deal (as XCX happily acknowledges). Kooky samples and childish singing collide with Oneohtrix Point Never-ish iron-hard synth clattering and thumping. But the joy is that there are catchy tunes too. This is pop smuggling in the freakishy new. The original album is supplemented by four extra tracks, “Ooh”, “Unisil”, and “Just Like We Never Said Goodbye” and the fabulously demented “Get Higher”. Comes on milky pink vinyl with a set of seven 12” x 12” art print inserts.

Babo Moreno Babo Moreno (Mika) + Ouzo Bazooka Kapaim (Batov)

Two albums that fuse their makers’ cultural heritage with more modernist genres. Babo Moreno is the project of London-based Brazilian percussionist Fabio de Oliveria. He’s worked with Sault and Airto Moreira in the past, and now brings his skills to a Latin jazz imbued with Tropicalia and other Brazilian styles, sometimes flutey bubblin’ upbeat but equally capable of wandering to a hammock in the nearby rainforest. It builds an atmosphere that’s part Pizza Express jazz club and part poky Porto Alegre backstreet bar. Israeli musician Uri Brauner Kinrot has played with Balkan Beat Box and others in the past. His own solo project, Ouzo Bazooka, now reaches its fifth album, Kapaim. On it he feistily combines Middle Easten scaling and Turkish psyche vibes with a splash of Sixties rock feel. He can write a song – check out “Home” – but is as happy taking us down to the souk for a funky instrumental wander. Comes on vinyl that looks like gold spattered in oil.

Judy Blank Big Mood (Rounder) + Laura-Mary Carpenter Bye Bye Jackie (Jazzlife) + Pearl Charles Desert Queen (Late Night From Glasgow)

Three female singer-songwriters who do things their own way. Dutch singer Judy Blank has been firing our music for over a decade but seems to be having a moment. Since moving to the States she’s gathered more interest, even supporting the currently ubiquitous Noah Kahan on tour. Her latest album is chocka with bubbly indie-pop, sometimes the guitar sort but as often frothy bedroom pop. It’s lyrically quirky but able and ready with a catchy tune. Comes on hot pink vinyl in lyric inner sleeve. For 20 years Laura-Mary Carpenter has been guitarist and sometimes singer in Brighton punk-garage duoBlood Red Shoes. Now she releases her debut solo album. It's twangy but has a bluesy intimacy. Wanda Jackson and Nancy Sinatra spring to mind, but with more guitar buzz, akin to Richard Hawley at his most rockin’. The songs have legs. One could imagine them in a David Lynch film. Comes on transparent scarlet vinyl with an 11” x 11” photo/lyric card insert. Once drummer for Californian indie curio Blank Tapes, Pearl Charles is now onto her third solo album, Desert Queen, which arrives with a tastefully shadowy 12” x 12” photo insert of her wearing not very much. Her soft, pliant voice weaves about songs that range from country to southern soul to her very own kind of disco-rock, buts she seems happiest riding a slinkin’ stoned West Coast groove. The songs are hazy but stick. Of these, it's theartsdesk on Vinyl’s favourite, but all three sound to be on the cusp of bigger things. Or deserve to be.

ALSO WORTHY OF MENTION

Jehnny Beth You Heartbreaker, You (Fiction): Savages were one of this century’s great guitar bands. Frontwoman Jehnny Beth is a multifaceted character (she’s also a successful actor – she’s in that new Suranne Jones thriller Hostage). Her debut solo album explored various styles. Her new one harks back to the caustic attack of Savages. It’s underpinned with electronic skronk but a punk edge to the forefront, the lyrics a welter of dissatisfaction, rage, self-loathing and the visceral impact of love. Coming on somewhere between Idles and late-period Prodigy, at its best, it thrills. Comes in art-photo gatefold with 12” x 12” lyric sheet.

Mac DeMarco Guitar (Mac’s Record Label): The Canadian singer has walked his own path, balancing musical eclecticism with emotional honesty and touch of whimsy. His last album was entirely instrumental. His new one tones down his indie rock leanings and is closer in scope to Devendra Banhart, or maybe even Cat Stevens. It’s a delicate set of strummed, open-hearted campfire sweetness. The production is crystal clear, giving a sense he’s right there with the listener, opening up about love and life (and death). It’s an unforced and likeable set. Comes in gatefold in a sleeve that looks as homemade as the recordings sound.

Guerilla Toss You’re Weird Now (Sub Pop): A dozen years into their career Massachusetts wonk-rockers Guerilla Toss remain a fascinating proposition. Their tricksy angular guitar work and skronk-jazz licks, theatrically fronted by Kassie Carlson as if she were in a New York art loft in 1980, can be no-one’s idea of commercial jollies. And yet, and yet, with every album, they tease and tickle well-constructed songs within which friendly melodies wriggle about. Like tUnE-yArDs (although not sounding like them) they continually seem about to tip into acceptance by the indie/alt rock mainstream. Such is ever more the case with You’re Weird Now. They’re poppier than ever. In their peculiar way. Comes in photo collage/lyric inner sleeve.

Wevie Stonder Sure Beats Living (Skam): Remember when underground electronic music was full of noisy surrealist madness? The turn of the century was a good time for such looning. Think Cassette Boy, Osymyso, Speedranch & Jansky Noise, all those Brighton Trash nutters. Among them was Wevie Stonder whose Drawing On Other People’s Heads album briefly cast a spotlight their way. Their new album, their first in at least a decade-and-a-half is rammed with welcome weirdness, Planet Mu-ish electronic obfuscation, offbeat samples, and lots of chatter. “Songs” run the gamut from a list of possible album titles (they claim the reason the album took so long as they couldn’t decide on a title), to an Autotuned R&B number about a bass guitar cable, to a rambling Ivor Cutler-esque description of a demented magic trick. Never straightforward, often funny, always unhinged, it’s not an album most will put on often but when they do, they’ll nod their head in grinning disbelief.

Lyra Pramuk Hymnal (7K!): Berlin-based American producer Lyra Pramuk gives us her second album. It’s a maximalist attack from the speakers. This isn’t to say it's indulgently noisy, but that it comes at the ears on a mass of frequencies. She has, over four sides of vinyl, taken the raw materials of strings, flute, double bass, her own voice, and more, and chopped them about, interwoven them. She embraces the spirit but not the substance of glitch-techno, bringing it to a modern classical palette, using technology to create something hefty but not bombastic. It’s original stuff. Comes on double in photo/art gatefold.

The Sound of Money TWO: RHYME ON – An Anagrammatic Exorcism of the 70s (BB*Island) + Swearing at Motorists While Laughing, The Joker Tells the Truth (BB*Island) + Herman Dune Odysseús (BB+Island): Hamburg’s BB*Island have become a label whose releases I eagerly await. So it’s great to receive a batch of three. The Sound of Money are band from Munich. Eight years ago they created an album whose song titles were anagrams of various 1960s albums. Now they do the same for the Seventies, with each number devoted to the artist in question. For instance, the opening “Dr Dr Themefart Frustrating Himself Posed As Gay Old Nazi SS” is drawn from “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars”, and is a punk-indie Bowie pastiche that focuses on the Thin White Duke’s notorious fascist salute and penchant for nicking other peoples' ideas. Other artists paid attention range from Chic to Bob Marley to The Residents. Most of it is clever and interesting, occasionally annoying, rather than compulsive, but the lilting Kraftwerk one, “Aha But No”, is rather lovely. Comes in lyric inner sleeve. Swearing At Motorists are an obscure Ohio indie band who’ve been releasing music, not very often, since the mid-Nineties. With a new album due soon, BB*Island reissue their last one, originally out in 2014. It’s a chewy set of tunes that dip into styles ranging from Seventies rock to electronic post-punk minimalism to grungey indie, injecting personality throughout. It’s music of character and easy to hear why this cult band have devotees. Comes in lyric inner sleeve. US outfit Herman Dune was once a band but is now its sole remaining member, David Ivar Dune. His latest album was conceived and begun when trapped in Canada, away from his family, due to the pandemic. He worked up the material later with indie-Americana producer David Garza. It’s come out well; thoughtful, wittily literate, small ensemble indie-folk. It's rustic, lyrically engaged, in places moving, and features a smorgasbord on instrumentation, ranging from jaw harp to fiddle. Herman Dune have released so many albums, I’ve only heard bits here and there, but Odysseús is one of the best that’s passed my ears. Comes in lyric inner sleeve.

Richard Hawley Coles Corner (Parlophone): Terrifyingly it’s 20 years since Richard Hawley released Coles Corner, the album that, commercially and critically, put him on the map. Hawley seems a good egg and his 28 Little Bangers compilation of gnarly old twangy guitar rockabilly is an essential release, but I’ve never really “got” his music. Trying again with Coles Corner, it’s not that I don’t like it. The songs are craftedly cute, redolent of post-rock’n’roll, pre-Beatles, balladry, that Roy Orbison thing, albeit with a snifter of Peter Green-ish Sixties guitar feel. It’s luscious stuff, but I tend to go back to the source if I’m in this mood. Nevertheless, pressed well to plastic and my edition is a zoetrope picture with miniature Hawleys moving about on it.

Benét Make ‘Em Laugh (Bayonet): Not to be confused with US R&B smoothie Eric Benét or Aussie freak popster Donny Benét, the New York-based Virginian known simply as Benét offers up a second album. It’s been described as indie but these gently personal soul-flecked songs dip into pop, grunge and other places. The defining factor is his voice, an instrument that sounds both childlike and feminine, giving the music an additional indefinable extra something. Easy music, laced with sunshine, one can imagine it gaining a wider audience. Comes in photo inner sleeve with 12” x 24” poster/lyric sheet.

Metallica Load (Blackened): Having ruled the 1980s as thrash kingpins, Metallica’s music drifted during the Nineties. In their case, this meant selling between five and ten million copies of their albums instead of between 10 and 20 million. Load, from 1996, saw the band acknowledging what grunge had done to American rock. This is exemplified by the UK Top Five hit “Until It Sleeps”. Load sees Metallica embrace their punky side, their power pop abilities and tune-writing, rather than operating on sheer riffology. As such, it’s an often enjoyable listen, more like a cross between Motorhead and Soundgarden than, say, Slayer. Comes on double in gatefold on “poor twisted orange” vinyl.

Whitney K Bubble (Fire): Canadian singer-songwriter Konner Whitney fits loosely into the category of freak-folk. But only loosely. He has as much in common with Beck in the way he plays with loops and technology or simply throws in electronic noodles such as “Something Strange” on the latest album of his prolific decade-long career. He often sounds like Lou Reed, something he seems to acknowledge on “Sunshine2”, with its “Sunday Morning” riff and ultra-Lou talk-singing. Bubble is a juicy set of lo-fi bedroom songs. File next to Jeffrey Lewis and The Burning Hell. Comes on transparent vinyl.

Various Invictus: The Definitive Collection (Demon) + Various Hot Wax: The Singles (Demon): When the superhero songwriting team of Lamont Dozier and Brian & Eddie Holland left Motown, Berry Gordy was not at all happy. Legal wrangles followed. Gordy was even less happy when the trio set up their own label, Invictus. Given all that, he must have been apoplectic when Invictus started having whopping, deathless hits such as Chairmen of the Board’s “Give Me Just a Little More Time” and Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold”. These two songs are on The Definitive Collection, alongside other successes like 8^th Day’s “She’s Not Just Another Woman” and lesser-known fare such as Geordie blues singer Ruth Copeland’s take on “Gimme Shelter” and the psychedelic funk of 8^th Day’s “Free Your Mind”. Other artists on board include New York Port Authority, Laura Lee, The Glass House and Eloise Laws. It’s a feisty varied set repping what was bubblin’ in Detroit in the early Seventies. As Stuart Copeland’s expansive sleeve notes on both inner sleeves explain, Hot Wax was initially a repository for overflow material from Invictus. Their most famous act is Honey Cone, Holland-Dozier-Holland’s stab at their own Supremes. When they had a US chart-topper with “Small Ads” in 1971, it looked like the dream coming true but Honey Cone turned out to be a flash-in-the-pan. Hot Wax: The Singles is, for obvious reasons, less immediately “Wow!” than the Invictus collection but there’s good things from the likes of Lee Charles, the convolutedly titled 100 Proof (Aged in Soul), Silent Majority and the Detroit label’s token rock(ish) band Flaming Ember. Both sets are a great way to pick up rare and expensive soul singles.

The Snipers Three Peace Suite EP (Crass) + The Mob No Doves Fly Here (Crass): Crass Records continue their 12” reissue series with a couple of early-Eighties EPs. Oxford’s The Snipers’ sole release (ever, I think?) was in 1981 and consists of these three tracks. “The Parents of God” is a doomed tribal-drum stomp, increasingly sinister and overlaid with guitar effects as it goes on, its lyrical content akin to Public Image Ltd’s “Religion”. On the flip are the choppy atonal “Piece” and slightly more tuneful “Nothing New”, both redolent of No Wave, Pere Ubu and such. Comes in lyric gatefold. Yeovil’s The Mob were a more prolific outfit, mustering a couple of albums and bunch of singles in their original incarnation (they reformed in 2011). Of this 1982 double-header the title track, “No Doves Fly Here” is by far the more compulsive, a plaintive, bass-based, atmospheric antiwar dirge, in the vein of early Chameleons rather than their fellow punks (the flip is “I Hear You Laughing”). Comes shrouded in a classic large Crass antiwar poster, with lyrics and art on the back. Contrary to what many might assume of Crass, the production on both has clarity and breadth, and the mastering depth.

Madonna Veronica Electronica (Rhino): This set of seven remixes, plus a demo version of “Gone Gone Gone”, dates from the end of the 1990s, a remix companion to Madonna’s Ray of Light album. It was never released at the time. Ray of Light saw Madonna escape her super-sex-vixen-24/7 dead-end and embrace trancey contemporary clubland with production assistance from William Orbit. It was one of her career highs. The remixes are very much of their time, tribalist rollers laced with hard house, or long, floaty, prog-housey 4/4 chuggers, one explicitly aimed at New York’s TWILO Club. Remixers include Sasha, Club 69, BT, and Victor Calderone. Fabien’s machine-grimey take on “The Power of Good-Bye” holds interest but, by far the highlight, is the Widescreen Mix and Drums version of “Frozen”. It’s the only one I’d actively seek out, although it doesn’t differ massively from the eight-minute Meltdown Mix – Long Version on the flip of the original “Frozen” 12”.

Cal Tjader Amazonas (Craft) + Outside The Rough and the Smooth (Dorado) + Hector Plimmer Infinity Mirrors (Power in Comfort): Three swerving in from the world of jazz. Two old, one new. First off, Cal Tjader. His story is atypical for a musician associated with Latin jazz. Of Swedish-American stock, he saw plenty of action in the Pacific theatre during World War II, then returned to university, and became a percussionist for fellow student Dave Brubeck. Success came when his own band were swept up in the 1950s craze for mambo. By the Seventies he was established on the Latin scene, known for his vibraphone-playing. Amazonas is a groovy 1975 fusion album, produced by Airto Moreira. It’s easy-going but complex, one for the proggy jazzers but also light and funky in way that has appeal for the casual listener. Nineties jazz-tronic label Dorado continue their welcome reappearance with a reissue of musician-producer Matt Cooper’s second Outside album, which first appeared 30 years ago. It's a perfect summation of the quantum leaps forward occurring in young jazz during that period, even featuring fellow travellers such as Cleveland Watkiss, Jhelisa and Imaani. Well remastered and cut to plastic over two records, it runs the gamut from drum & bass to loping trip hoppy piano to songs that recall early Seventies Motown. Virtuosic and eclectic it’s serves as an idealised snapshot of a time and place, as well as a bubbly and varied listen. Finally, the new release by composer-producer-drummer Hector Plimmer. The London artist has previously veered towards the soundtracky, creating music that mingles jazz with filmic stylings. On Infinity Mirrors moves firmly into the jazzual, featuring a host of guest singers and collaborators: Laura Misch, Tawiah, Andrew Ashong, Alexa Harley, Julia Biele, Marysia Osu, Rohan Ayinde and Dariés Street-Soul. It’s classy and easy going. It’s less what theartsdesk on Vinyl is into than what came before, but those into the mellower end of Alberts Favourites, Tru Thoughts et al will likely enjoy. Comes with 12” x 12" art/info insert.

UK Subs Peel Sessions 1978-79 (Demon) + UK Subs 1978-1981 Singles Boxset (Demon): Two from the perennial survivors of original 1970s London punk, both focusing on the start of their long and prolific career. When UK Subs formed, singer Charlie Harper had already been in bands since the early-Sixties and brought to his new group’s sound a rhythm’n’blues roll that can be easily heard on the opening “I Couldn’t Be You” from their John Peel BBC sessions. The album consists of three sessions, two from 1978 and one from 1979. This was when the band were in their pomp, firing out six (low-level) hit singles. The Peel sessions revel in scuzzy one-take shouty punk, but also contain solid riffage such as “Emotional Blackmail”. The boxset of 7” singles includes all those aforementioned hits – the Dickies-like cover of The Zombies’ “She’s Not There”, the Sixties-beat-pop-disguised-as-new-wave “Tomorrow’s Girls”, the tasty, relentless anti-nukes rocker “Warhead”, the OI!-ish terrace anthem bellow-along “Teenage”, the boozy frolic “Party in Paris”, and their most famous cut, the catchy ”Stranglehold”. Alongside these are four other singles, including the Sabbath-like “Countdown” as well, of course, as their B-sides. It’s more Charlie Harper shouting than most will need but (what some now call) street punk has grown a global following which will enjoy this lot. For the rest, there are juicy nuggets amongst it.

Paranoid London Talk Dirty (Nu Groove): On their latest 12” single Gerardo Delgado and Quinn Whalley give the people what they want from Paranoid London, a stark, gritty techno take on the darker side of original Chicago acid house sound (think Bam Bam’s “Where’s Your Child?”). The title cut features their onstage ringmaster Josh Caffe sex-sneering over a relentless squelchy ping’n’pulse that gnaws the brain. The flip has an instrumental version, as well as Caffe’s acapellas, and there’s also the head-frying “Revolution”, which repeats that word, again and again and again, over a creepy, coming-up-on-a-dodgy-pill loop, until it all folds into a 303 meltdown.

Allo Darlin’ Bright Nights (Fika/Slumberland): Allo Darlin' reformed a couple of years ago. During their initial incarnation they released three albums between 2010 and 2014, gathered a few fans, and a few lines in the music press. Always as much a vehicle for Aussie singer Elizabeth Morris, their fourth album feels even more like a singer-songwriter affair, with less emphasis (excepting one track) on amped indie rock tropes (there is one song written and sung by bassist Bill Botting). Whether jangling or acoustic or riding Vampire Weekend-ish Afro backing, the songs of love, dreams and poetic observations are delivered with an instrumental sweetness and clear vocal prowess, all clearly produced. Comes in photo/info/lyric inner sleeve.

His Lordship Bored Animal (Psychonaut Sounds) + Ganser Animal Hospital (Felte): A couple of albums imbued with punk rock. Chrissie Hynde’s associates, guitarist-vocalist James Walbourne and drummer Kristoffer Sonne, came together three years ago and decided to go on a noisy rock’n’roll mission. On their second album it continues. It’s akin to The Jim Jones Revue on steroids, with an occasional side order of Gallon Drunk. It’s in-yer-face. Good live, I should think. Comes in photo info inner sleeve. Chicago quartet Ganser are capable of mustering similar fare, when they wish but, a decade into their career, they’re equally into lower key, downtempo numbers such as “Stripe” or even outright psychedelia, as on “Grounding Exercises”. Such musical variety keeps the listener hooked in, as do the dual vocals of Nadia Garofalo and Alicia Gaines. Comes on transparent electric blue vinyl in photo/lyrics inner sleeve.

AND WHILE WE’RE HERE…

• Portuguese composer and artist Bernardo Devlin returns with a new album, The Night Before the Space Age on Stereo-B Records. He applies his multifarious arrangement skills to a rock-based set that showcases his bass-voice-chatted Leonard Cohen-esque poet-songs.
• Boozy country and western star Charlie Rich tried on a few hats. Back in the mid-Sixties he recorded a bunch of soul tracks which have long been Northern Soul favourites. Two relatively rare ones, the horn-fuelled deliciousness of “Don’t Tear Me Down” and Wigan dancefloor payload of “Hotels, Motels” now receive 7” release by Kent Records.
• Cam Muncey’s day job is guitarist with Aussie rockers Jet. He’s now released an eponymous debut album, Cam Muncy & The Delusions of Grandeur on Impressed Records. The band also contains fellow Jet member Mark Wilson and these 12 songs are lightly tuneful indie pop. Comes in obi strip with photo/info inner sleeve.
• Swedish techno DJ-producer Adam Beyer first appeared from the Nineties underground techno firmament, then blew up to superstar DJ status this century. Explorer Vol. 1 on his own Drumcode Records is his first album in over two decades. It’s as much a collection of bangers for DJs, featuring tasty contributions from the likes of Layton Giordani, Chris Avantgarde, Julian Jeweil and Kyozo, as well as repurposing Rickie Lee Jones’ famous “What were the skies like when you were young?” 1989 interview. Meaty stuff. Try resisting the gnarly likes of “Desolate” on a dancefloor! Comes on double, loud-mastered.
• The third album from Australian singer-producer Gordi, AKA Sophie Payten, is called Like Plasticine and is on Mushroom Music. I don’t like the anthemic “big” songs but the ones where she sticks to broken, fuzzed-out, emotive glitch-pop are worthwhile. Comes on white vinyl in gatefold with a poster insert.
• The third volume of The Kinks’ The Journey series of compilations on BMG reaches the years 1977 to 1984, a period when they finally had a run of hit albums in the States, featuring, in note-filled gatefold, 12 band-chosen songs and two sides of a 1993 Albert Hall set.
• The second album from New Zealand collective The Circling Sun is called Orbits and is on Soundwave Records. It’s deep-dipped in cosmic Afrofuturism and features a choir to add ethereal lightness to its gumbo of Brazilian jazz flavours and exotica pop. There’s a lot going on, an album unpretentiously rich in spirit, retro but modern. Comes on transparent aquamarine vinyl.
• The debut album from Norwegian jazz-pop trio Orbits is Blood Red Sky on Jazzland Records. Vocalist Natalie Sandtorv leads a set that’s plush and easy, R&B-smooth but with jazz chops and a toe dipped in broken beats. It’s too easy for these ears but fans of Tru Thoughts Records’ gentler fare, and the like, should dig it. Comes in lyric gatefold in bright scarlet vinyl.
• And if the above two weren’t enough “orbit”-related titling, here comes Orbital Ensemble with debut album Orbital on the label We Are Busy Bodies. The Hartnoll brothers must be looking on in bemusement as their band name wanders off into the realms of crossover jazz. Orbital Ensemble are a Canadian outfit whose Latin-flavoured flutey jazzual loungings are well assembled and as fluffy as running through a cinematic sunlit meadow in soft focus. Comes on transparent vinyl.
• When Pendulum first appeared, 20 years ago, their Aussie-Prodigy-go-drum-&-bass schtick was a tonic, but, by the time I saw them play Glastonbury in 2011, the wannabe-metal aspect was weighing their sound down. They disappeared for a bit while frontman Rob Swire focused on his Knife Party bro’step project, and the first new album since their reformation is Inertia on Mushroom Music. Odd title. It’s not inert. Despite leaning too hard into stadium rock it occasionally shows off solid thrash D&B moments. Comes on double.
• During the latter half of the 1990s, Texan duo Stars Of The Lid put out a series of ambient releases that bridged into modern classical’s interest in tone music rather than the MDMA psychedelica then popular. On their 1995 debut album, Music For Nitrous Oxide (it’s not!), they showcased a serious music, peaceful, beatless, layered, relying on deep immersion for engagement. It now reappears on double in gatefold, via Diggers Records, well-mastered. Perhaps it honours one half of the duo, Brian McBride, who died in 2023.
• Keeping our ambience siloed together, longstanding trio Marconi Union are closer in scope to chill-out, their twelfth album, The Fear of Never Landing, on Just Music, sways into Millennial Balearic fluffing, but happily not too far. Filmic and warm, it bides its time, providing a mind-bath over sedate beats, revolving and cuddly, akin to Air in places. On double, their fans will not be disappointed.
• Later Youth is a side project of Jo Dudderidge, singer with Manchester folk-rockers The Travelling Band. His debut solo outing is released under the title Living History, Sideways Saloon Records. Melding indie with poky songwriting and, importantly, a dose of piano-led barroom/festival honkytonk, it’s an immediate affair that will tour well. Comes on Photo/lyric inner sleeve
• Californian singer Annahstasia Enuke, who goes solely by her forename, is near the start of her career and announces her talent with two songs on 7”, “Saturday” and “Sunday”, on the drink sum wtr label. They are both delicately gospel-folky love songs, raw, acoustic-backed, with her quietly urgent, broken-sounding voice doing then heavy lifting. One to watch. Comes in lyric inner sleeve.
• In 1977 Elton John did a series of shows at London’s Rainbow Theatre, solo at piano, occasionally accompanied by Ray Cooper, drummer and percussionist to a who’s who of rock stars, from The Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to various Beatles. Live From the Rainbow with Ray Cooper, via the BBC, who originally broadcast it, captures the moment, Elton turning his back on stadium enormity and smash singles, for a low key set of deep cuts (the biggest singles on it are “Border Song” and “I Feel Like a Bullet (in the Gun of Robert Ford)”, both hardly whoppers). One for the fans.
• That the kids love shoegaze is evident everywhere. At the Great Escape Festival this year, every second new band quoted it as an influences. This is the case with teenage smeared guitar popsters Everything Else whose debut album Another One Making Clouds arrives via big Big Potato. It even features a guest appearance by the now gigantic Slowdive’s Neil Halstead. Under heaps of effects, smudged vocals and washes of tune float about. It’s not unpleasant, either, but same as it ever was. Comes with 12” x 12” photo/lyric insert.
• Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs are, between them, responsible for tons of themed compilation albums. Many are excellent (the country-gothic songwriting collected on Choctaw Ridge: New Fables of the American South 1968-1973 is an especial favourite at theartsdesk on Vinyl Mansions), but Stanley is pushing it with Chip Shop Pop: The Sound of Denmark Street 1970-1975, a collection of “airplay-friendly pop” that you might’ve heard on holiday, created by London’s pro songwriters of the era. Hits and (mostly) non-hits by the likes of Stormy Petrel, Candlewick Green, Currant Kraze, Silver Lining and many more cover four sides of vinyl in densely informational gatefold. Cheery studio pop fluff is what it is, maybe it holds charms for those who miss the Bay City Rollers, Smokie and Typically Tropical but, really, even 50 years down the line, punk getting rid of this stuff was a blessing.
• The music of Los Angeles rocker Alex E.T. harks back to the brief bloom of her city’s Paisley Underground scene 40 years ago. Which is to say that her second album, Color of Strange on Curation Records, takes the psychedelic jangle of The Byrds et al, and flecks it with heavier modern guitar styles. Given grunge has happened since those days, she’s also able to throw flickers of that into the melting pot. Adequate but could do with more memorable songs.
• Bassist Shez Raja is clearly in thrall to the moment in the 1970s when jazz fusion rock flared up. His third album, Spellbound, on his own Raja Records, is full of energy and virtuosic jamming, tinted with his Indo-Asian musical heritage. While it’s prog tendencies are not to this writer’s taste, it’s a muscular, in-yer-face music, and feels live and enthused.
• The Fall’s Seminal Live album on Beggars Banquet was released at the end of then Brix Smith era and features live cuts and speedily knocked-out studio material recorded in Rochdale, Edinburgh, Manchester and, er, Vienna. Sometimes dismissed as a contract-filler, it’s not really seminal but the opening “Dead Beat Descendent” and cover of Lonnie Irving’s old country song “Pinball Machine” are worth the price of entry.
• Listening to Sabrina Kennedy’s 7” single “Witch of the West”, on Lilith Eve Records, first thoughts are not of uber-producer and Killing Joker Youth. These days I usually associate him with dubby outings or material vaguely in that direction, but, indeed, he produces London-based US singer Carpenter. She deals in punky gothy heavy rock on the A-side while the flip, “Hold Tight”, is an acoustic number in similarly coven-friendly vein. They have a smidgeon of something but it’s not there yet.
• Morgan Wade is known as country singer, but the fact she supported alt-rockers Shinedown on tour this year tells you as much about her music. Her fifth album The Party is Over (Recovered) on RCA attaches country’s prosaic lyricism and structure to an FM radio hard rock backing. The production and general fist-pumping stadium vibe isn’t to my taste but, beneath all that, the songs are often decent, many of lost love. Given the title, at least it’s not another musical sobriety memoir. Comes in photo/lyric gatefold.
• Hull singer-songwriter Katie Spencer is one of those committed musicians who tours and devotes her life to music, whether wider support comes or not. It’s her life. You can tell. Her third album What Love Is on Lightship Records contains ten songs wherein her breathy voice enunciates her emotional landscape over well-calibrated acoustic band backing, with folky, jazzy trimmings. If she was on in your local pub, you’d nod along. Comes in lyric inner sleeve.
• Ben Le Jeune was once frontman of Nineties Manc rockers The Creature Comfort, a band who rubbed shoulders both Oasis and The Stone Roses, but who never gathered the necessary tailwind to become more than a local phenomenon. Now based in France Le Jeune’s debut solo album, A Stranger to Your City on Missing Door Music, is chocka with chunky Iggy-adjacent rock’n’roll, made from the gut.
• Danish trumpet player Rolfe Thofte presents the debut from his Quintet. Entitled Martha’s Dance on April Records, it’s straightforward jazzers’ jazz, with Thofte’s blowing matched by piano from rising Scandy talent Rasmus Sørensen. It pootles along cheerfully, doing what it well within the parameters of the expected.
• The fifth album for longstanding Rwandan duo (once trio) The Good Ones was recorded without overdubs in a hotel room, accompanied by cello and violin, and produced by global roots music don Ian Brennan. Entitled Rwanda Sings With Strings, on Glitterbeat Records, it’s a successful experiment, its rawness matching the sweetness of the songs and the emotion of the singing. It has the feel of a very old blues or country record captured by John or Alan Lomax, way back when, but is, instead, brand new and full of light. Comes in photo gatefold.
• More strings are to be found on the latest album from prolific Danish film and TV composer Emil Friis, albeit used in a rather different way. Entitled Moving Images on the Fat Fat Records-affiliated 130701 imprint, it’s a solemn affair, one for silent contemplation. My preference is for the ghostly atmospheric reverbed piano cuts over the ones featuring melancholic ambient-leaning washes of the aforementioned strings. An earnest, careful, sometimes darkly pretty slice of modern classical.
• London-based Liverpudlian Lein Sangster was once in bands KIT and Bad Anorak 404 (neither of whom, I confess, I’ve heard of). Their debut album is In Spite of Everything, The Stars, on Chemin de Fer Records. It’s a mingling of jazz flavours, baroque pop and supper club songwriting, well-sung, intimate yet fringed with an old-fashioned theatricality. Comes on dark cerise vinyl in lyric inner sleeve.
• Michael Robert Murphy is another Liverpudlian who’s fronted a few bands in his time, most notably The Wicked Whispers, one of those Sixties-tinted psychedelic pop-rock bands his native city often produces. His debut solo album, Chaos Magick on Rabbit Hole Records, covers territory not a million miles away, but more indebted to classic janglin’ West Coast US sounds. The production could be fatter but those after a tuneful retro feel may find what they’re after. Comes in gatefold on creamy off-white vinyl.
• 35 miles to the west, over in Manchester, soul outfit The 7:45s also delve into retro territory with their debut album, Spinning on LRK Records. Led by bass-playing songwriter Sam Flynn it veers between northern soul stompers and Curtis Mayfield-esque lush brassy cuts. Cleanly produced and upbeat, it borrows from the past withy panache.
• Staying in Manchester but offering production that’s deliberately murkier, is another debut album, this time from firmly old school indie outfit Autocamper. It’s called What Do You Do All Day and is on Safe Suburban Home Records (my copy came with a stylish label sticker). Their lo-fi guitar sound and occasional male-female vocal dynamics are redolent of the classic C86 sound, notably The Pastels. In that vein, they succeed, sweet and messy. Comes on milky yellow vinyl with a 12” x 12” photo-art insert.
• OMD’s 1984 album Junk Culture saw them step hard away from the commercial failure of its experimental predecessor, Dazzle Ships. Now reissued by Virgin, singles such as “Tesla Girls”, “Locomotion” and “Talking Loud and Clear” sound as twee and nursery rhyme catchy as they did then, but there’s also interesting material such as the reggae-influenced title track.
• Muito Kaballa is a German band led by saxophonist composer Niklas Mündemann. Their previous two albums have been centred more directly on jazz than their latest, Tomorrow a Flower on Batov Records. It's more playful, offering a modern equivalent to ye olde easy listening exotica, dipping into global sounds but maintaining a smart loungey feel, also willing to bubble into Confidence Man-style kitsch dance froth. Very European, it’s polished and would fit neatly in a Berlin cocktail club.
• The Ninja Tune and Mo’Wax labels gave turntablism a new musical legitimacy in the UK during the latter half of the 1990s. The key album may be DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing but Canadian scratcholologist Kid Koala’s Ninja Tune debut, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in 2000 is a key entry in the canon of this era. Playful, fast-thinking, and multi-layered, it still holds enjoyments.
• Ethan Johns is a producer of repute who’s worked with everyone from Paul McCartney to Laura Marling. When he came across Ann Liu Cannon playing a Camden Bar, he decided to work with her on a debut album. Entitled Clever Rabbits, on JJ Records, its piano-led mingling of eccentric baroque pop, mannered vocalising, and prog-folk set pieces reminds of Kate Bush. It’s easy to see why Johns was drawn. Something different is going on here. But will it have legs? Comes in lyric gatefold and photo inner sleeve.
• For a decade Ohio five-piece Caamp have been building a reputation as young bluegrass cavaliers. Their fifth studio album, Copper Changes Color on Mom+Pop Records, sees them push further into crossover territory, the banjo-pickin’ taking a back seat to indie-style pop-rock songs that have a twinkle in their make-up. Comes on bright red vinyl in gatefold with a 12” x 12” band photo insert.

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