VINYL OF THE MONTH
Congotronics International Where’s the One (Crammed Discs)
Crammed Discs is a label that understands how music can join completely different cultures and sounds. They put their cash the place their mouth is after they put crossover African percussion-led outfits Konono No.1 and Kasai Allstars along with with exploratory indie types Deerhoof, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Juana Molina and Skeletons. This brilliantly conceived, albeit weird, supergroup performed the 2019 Congotronics vs Rockers tour, about which a movie, Kinsasha Superband: Congotronics vs. Rockers, was made by Pierre Laffargue. They additionally made an album, which arrives on photograph/gatefold double with a 12” x 12” booklet filled with pictures and background data and quotes from members. From studying the booklet, it sounds prefer it was generally a difficult collaboration, with language issues and different points, however, in the long run, finally a rewarding course of. The outcomes run the gamut from the ballistic to the gorgeous to the head-fryingly hypnotic, various between Afro-techno-noise music and lighter items with uplifting stringed devices. Sometimes African voices are to the fore and, at others, indie singing in English. It’s such a feast I’ve solely simply began to get my head spherical it, so many sounds, a lot happening, and all of it so authentic. Get concerned. This lot actually did.
VINYL REVIEWS
Prince and the Revolution Live (NPG/Sony)
In 1985 Prince was at a industrial peak, driving the again of the Purple Rain phenomenon, the album and movie from the earlier 12 months whose gross sales figures had been nonetheless robust and would rise once more when the Live live performance movie and CD appeared in July. The precise gig was in March at New York’s 35,000 capability Syracuse Dome (now the JMA Wireless Dome) and it reappears for the primary time on vinyl on three discs accompanied by a 12” x 12” 16-page booklet of images which have beforehand not been publicly accessible. Cut loud and recent, remastered, that is the sound of Prince having fun with his super-massive pop-rock pomp, earlier than he began to really feel trapped by it. The opening facet is simply phenomenal, “Let’s Go Crazy”, “Delirious”, “1999”, “Little Red Corvette” and “Take Me With You” seamlessly bumping towards one another with about as a lot joyous funk-rock sass as is humanly doable, the group clearly going completely nuts. While issues settle because the set progresses, the sense that anybody at this gig witnessed one thing extraordinary by no means goes away. Mostly centered on Purple Rain, there are different cuts right here delivered with equal panache (as an illustration, 1982 B-side “Irresistible Bitch” ripped out with battering slap bass aplomb). Anyone who wants a pointy reminder of Prince at his most dynamic, speedy and accessible ought to slap this album on the decks.
The Dream Machine Vol: 1 – 3 (Run On)
Wirral band The Dream Machine collect collectively their first three EPs – Sacraments, On the Water and Pooch Slinger’s Wild Round-Up – on a single, autographed, limited-edition-of-300 album in a plastic sleeve with a 12” x 12″ photo/info card insert. Fronted by singer Zak McDonnell, son of David McDonnell of The Coral/The Sand Band, their work is like a psychedelic progression of those bands, fired also with Seventies rock verve. Opener “Introduction” and cuts such as “The Sea is My Friend” have that phasing sound of LSD-era Beatles, or deliberate imitators such as The Dukes of Stratosphear, but elsewhere are songs such as, say, “Days of Heaven”, that come on like a Rolling Stones slowie fighting it out with Stone Roses. Alternately jangling and rocking harder, it’s retro indie dipped in well-chosen historical flavours and (it sounds like) the right drugs.
J.Rocc A Wonderful Letter (Stones Throw) + Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel & the Furious Five Sugarhill Adventures: The Collection (Cherry Red)
Hip hop old and new. J.Rock is, clearly, the new. Although he’s been around for yonks this is only his second proper album (the rest are beat collections and such). In The Beat Junkies long ago, later a regular collaborator with Madlib and J Dilla, the LA turntablist-producer is in possibly his finest form here. In a similar vein to the recently re-released Edan album Beauty and the Beat, J.Rocc paints a psychedelic sample-quilt, smooth yet utterly stoned, a groove rolling underneath, constant voices entertaining the ear (“In synch with the universe”!), and a well-chosen collection of mellow-mouthed MCs contributing (LMNO, Hey Kool, Frank Nitt, Med, plus singing and funk-chat from Steve Arrington on “All I Wanna Do (Remix)”). Quite simply a classily stoned package. Cherry Red Records are winding the 
clock back to the very beginning of hip hop with an art/info gatefold double collating the messy early days of the Furious Five. Not messy musically; the mess in question was the tangle of who did what, who was owed what, and a blizzard of cocaine. It undermined the immense career possibilities of this group of New Yorkers who, among much else, coined the term “hip hop”. The biggies are here, “The Message” and “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”, but so are lesser known gems such as the winding bounce of “Step Off”, the dated electro-funk throughout balanced by the now basic-sounding but elastic, enthused early rap style. The best of it is when Melle Mel, the true verbal talent, is to the fore, which is for much of it, including tracks such as the Jesse Jackson voter plea “Jesse” which was, in fact, a solo single. Essential stuff.
Sinead O’Brien Time Bend and Break the Bower (Chess Club)
Sinead O’Brien is a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary talent whose primary work thus far has been in the world of fashion, where she’s a designer for John Galliano. Her debut album is driven by stripped back, percussive groove-driven, post-punk backing tracks, over which her heavily Irish-accented voice lets rip with sometimes forceful, sometimes dryly stated, spoken word. She paints Yeats-ian impressionistic pictures: “Bowed heads see futures in points of the needle/The demon with two heads/Does not know it from itself/Consumes itself away”. These combine with no wavey grit-funk to darkly groovy effect, building a sound that could even work on some dancefloors. Comes on baby blue vinyl with a giant fold-out, poster-sized sheet containing photos and lyrics.
Various Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes: The Telstar Story (CR) + Heinz Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes: The Heinz Sessions Vol.1 (CR)
These two 10” EPs offer a stylishly presented and intelligently researched glimpse into the recording world of Joe Meek, the London-based producer whose run of hits in the late-Fifties and early-Sixties represented a quantum leap in how studios were used, equivalent, in a different way, to what Phil Spector was up to in the States. When Meek killed his landlady and shot himself in February 1967, his career on the wane, he left behind a tea chest of unreleased tapes with little indication of their contents. In recent years an archive project has started to go though these and seek the proper permissions to release them. These two records are part of the result. Both are in gatefold with densely written text that illuminates the contents excellently, giving overview, as well as specific background to each track. The Telstar Story is as much as anyone could need on The Tornados’ 1962 classic sci-fi-surf instrumental (perhaps even too much!). The tracklisting follows the tune from its earliest idea demos by Meek and various associates, through The Tornados’ version in its original form (before Meek added all his studio effects and 
eccentricity), an alternate edit, a version by another band called The Rhythmics, and the rare “Magic Star” wherein Meek and the singer Glenda Collins attempted to give the tune another life as a vocal song. If that 10” is a historically intriguing deep-dive, the Heinz sessions are a more varied and entertaining listen. Heinz Schwartz was a young singer who the semi-closeted homosexual Meek took a fancy to (at a time when gay sexuality was illegal). He was made part of The Tornados and then, with hair bleached platinum blonde, Meek tried to launch him as a solo star. Aside from the 1963 Top Five hit “Just Like Eddie”, it didn’t take, partly because times were changing (Beatles!) and partly because Heinz’s singing and playing were rough round the edges. These many decades later, especially in light of punk’s aesthetic, there’s a charm to most of these nine songs, especially the rockin’ version of “Movin’ In” and the unrefined but likeable ode to Eddie Cochran, “Tribute to Eddie”.
Various Horse Meat Disco: Back to Mine (Back to Mine)
The latest volume of the Back to Mine after-party comps comes from queer club culture doyens and Glastonbury Festival south-east corner party beasts Horse Meat Disco. While I like their nights, I had a suspicion that this album, going for the late-late thing, might wallow in that Too Slow To Disco thing which is overly yacht rock smooth for theartsdesk on Vinyl. I needn’t have worried, Horse Meat Disco are still racking up decent shit as dawn peeks through the curtains. There’s disco here, of course, such as William Stuckey’s jolly 1979 Memphis oddity “Just Around the Corner” and many others, including a couple of Horse Meat Disco originals, one featuring Kathy Sledge, but there are also flavours ranging from the spaced-out bongo Balearica of Ray Mang and Severino Panzetta’s remix of “Perfidia” by Alien Alien featuring Igino, to the cheap synth Latinate sunshine of “Avèou Doudou” by French musician Jean-Claude Naimro’s Kassav outfit, to Marianne Faithful’s ultra-sleazy electro “Sex With Strangers”, to Severino & Nico de Ceglia’s mix of Róisín Murphy’s stately, hypno-groove “Ancora Ancora Ancora”. A double set well worth cherry-picking.
Tumi Mogorosi Group Theory: Black Music (Mushroom Hour x New Soil)
South African drummer Tumi Mogorosi has established himself as a name on the international jazz scene, among other things with Shabaka and The Ancestors. His second solo album, and first in eight years, strides out into original territory. While, at heart, it’s spaciously improvised jazz with great solo work from trumpet-player Tumi Pheko, alto sax-player Mthunzi Mvubi, and guitarist Reza Khota, the whole thing is set apart by the way it plays off against a minor key backing chorus that keeps popping up, part Wagner, part ecclesiastical, part horror film. There are words spun by poet Lesego Rampolokeng on one cut, and the overall spooked effect is extended on an almost sinister-sounding version of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”. Strikingly different.
Nuklear Prophet Prophecies 11:21 (U-Trax) + Low End Activist Hostile Utopia (Sneaker Social Club)
Two albums of apocalyptic electro, not in the sense of being noisy, although they sometimes are, but due to the fact they’re both themed around end times. Nuklear Prophet is LA producer Erik Villalpando whose roots are in hip hop, and whose debut album owes a large debt to Eighties electro, but via the starker sound of Detroit and booty-bass. Opening with a remix by retro-analog hip hop don Egyptian Lover, its four sides match occasional vocoder vocals with stuttering beats and the kind of gloomed technolectro that techno master Dave Clarke sometimes plays. Comes in a gatefold 
featuring a nuclear bomb going off in smog-sun-drenched Los Angeles. Low End Activist’s debut album offers a more direct reflection, via doomy, dub-flecked electro, of a society on the ropes. Hailing from Oxford’s Blackbird Leys Estate, the album’s creator has suggested that it plays on “how it’s possible to feel nostalgic for the griminess of urban and suburban Britain”. I’m not getting that but the pervasive sense of subtle threat is effective. When Killa P pops up on the mic for the ragga-dour “OFRNT Style” it reminds that the music also has much in common with Kevin Martin, notably The Bug’s less frantic fare. Comes on double.
Madness Mad Not Mad (Virgin)
The latest Madness reissue comes with extensive sleeve notes by the band on a 12” x 12” insert. They are unlike sleeve notes for any other reissued album, except perhaps those for their own recently reissued The Madness album. This is because they essentially state that making the album was a miserable experience and that the results are far from the band’s best work. Hardly selling it! Released in 1985, it’s the only proper Madness album to be made without pianist and founder member Mike Barson, who had left to live in Holland with his girlfriend. The band weren’t, they feel, working as a team. Their new label, Virgin, was not a good fit, and they were, they reckon, experimenting with new technologies that ill-suited their style. Squeaky, dry mid-Eighties digital production aside, however, I must disagree with them. It’s a lovely album, a continuation of 1984’s melancholy-tinged Keep Moving. It contains songs that are contemplative but tinted with a longing for better. I’m not alone in my assessment. Years ago, I recall the NME staff voting it one of the 100 best albums ever made. It isn’t, but it’s a worthwhile addition to the band’s catalogue: the plush, lyrically twisty ride of “I’ll Compete”, the queasy waltz of the title track, the philosophical “Time”, the singles “Yesterday’s Men” and “Uncle Sam”. It’s not all juice but there’s plenty to love. Comes in a reproduction of the photo/info inner sleeve.
Various Minions: The Rise of Gru: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Decca)
Who’d-a-thunk, when Despicable Me appeared in 2010, that it would become such a juggernaut? At the time I recall preferring the similarly-plotted animation Megamind, which came out a few months later, but the Will Ferrell-voiced good-baddy did not have minions, did he! Those ubiquitous dungaree’d beans have thrived everywhere, like mould, and when “Happy” from the soundtrack of Despicable Me 2 became one of the biggest hits in the world, the soundtracks to these films also became a thing. Thus, on double minion-art gatefold double, on splattered yellow’n’denim blue vinyl (of course), arrives the soundtrack to the latest prequel chapter, Minions: The Rise of Gru. The film is set in 1975 and the music consists of contemporary artists (and RZA) tackling songs you might come across at a typical Seventies party night. The choice of artists is solid and they veer to differing degrees from the originals, adding their own little something, more of it in the case of Brockhampton’s take on Kool & the Gang’s “Hollywood Swinging”, less in the case of H.E.R.’s Sly Stone classic “Dance to the Music”. Given this is an ultra-mainstream exercise, it’s an impressive collection, with the songs having a spacey, spliffed-out groove, from Tierra Whack’s “Black Magic Woman” to Thundercat’s “Fly Like an Eagle”. Other names on board include St Vincent (a lightly tweaked “Funkytown”), Phoebe Bridgers (Carpenters!), Caroline Polacheck, Kali Uchis and the bizarre combo of Diana Ross with Tame Impala. Comes with 12” x 12” info sheet.
Ferry Djimmy and his Dji-Kins Rhythm Revolution (Acid Jazz)
This album deserves a well-researched popular history book rather than the brief summation I’m about to give. It’s a whopper of a story. Ferry Djimmy was born Jean Ogoudjoubi in 1939 in West French Africa but given his nickname at an early age (which means “Please forgive me” in Yoruba as he was a naughty child). He had brief careers as a teacher and a boxer, and a period spent in Paris as a policeman, but making music increasingly ran parallel. Convoluted story told short, he moved back to Africa and was resident when his homeland of Dahomey became the République Populaire de Bénin in 1975 under born again Marxist leader Mathieu Kerekou, with whom he became close friends. Kerekou gave Djimmy a budget to set up a record label and record Fela Kuti-flavoured socialist Afro-funk-rock to light up the kids to the cause. This album is the result, but it never caught on and, within a couple of years, the political tides changed and Djimmy moved to Lagos (where he died of heart failure in 1996). The music is banged-out garage Afrobeat. Imagine The Seeds or similar having a crack at Afrobeat; that sort of thing. After a couple of listens, no particular tune has yet stood out but the general vibe is great. Various cuts would be great for rockin’ certain dancefloors; blaxploitation wah-wah guitar, strident Hammond and boisterous vocals, presumably urging revolution, a rowdy, rambunctious, lo-fi listen bleeding out a historical moment. On double, it arrives on a gatefold containing its story, as told by African music expert Florent Mazzolini.
Blondie Against the Odds 1974-1982 Boxset (UMC)
It’s Christmas time for Blondie fans this August. Word of a new Blondie collection, unearthing all sorts of rare golden era odds’n’ends, first surfaced four years ago. The key juicy stuff for most of us will be the four LP vinyl set which arrives with a 112 page hardback book that outlines the band history, album by album, including fresh interviews with band members and producers such as Giorgio Moroder, Mike Chapman and Richard Gottehrer. There’s also background to each of the four new albums of material, which are remastered from the original analog tapes, and sound rich, raw and in-the-flesh. These are Out in the Streets, which is way-pre-fame early-Seventies Blondie from 1974-75, lo-fi studio cuts and home demos, but it’s all already there; “Disco Song” is a jangly take on “Heart of Glass”, and the spell-binding Velvet Underground-go-synth throb of a primitive “Sunday Girl” is fantastic. The CBGBs New York energy creeps further into the next album, Plaza Sound, Side A of which contains alternate versions of songs from the self-titled debut album, while Side B does the same for breakthrough album Plastic Letters, including a Terry Ellis mix of their first charting single “Denis Denis” (except in ahead-of-the-curve Australia where they’d already been having hits). There’s also a lively take on The Doors’ “Moonlight Drive”. Parallel Beats is Blondie in their ’78-’80 pop pomp, including a Spanish version of “Call Me”, and “Hanging on the Telephone” with a B52s-gone-punk vibe and male guide vocals. Finally, Blondie takes us through to 1982, includes the Christmas hip hop tune “Yuletide Throwdown”, recently unearthed song “I Love You Honey. Give Me a Beer (Go Through It)”, and more male guide vocals on the strangely likeable demo for “Angels on the Balcony” from the Autoamerican album. Overall, it’s a smashing set over which time and care has been spent. There’s another much larger vinyl version that also contains all six original Blondie albums, a 10” of outtakes and a 7” featuring “Moonlight Drive” and a “Mr Sightseer” demo. It also has an additional book full of visuals and more. It’s massive! For me, though, the four album version is a complete treat and all I need.
Asha Puthli The Essential (Mr Bongo)
The ever-impressive Mr Bongo Records continue their revelatory archival digging with a double set compiling the work of Indian-born singer Asha Puthli. If people know her at all – at least in the circles in which theartsdesk on Vinyl travels – it’s because of the single “Space Talk”, a 1976 Balearic bongo roller that was favoured by seminal New York DJ David Mancuso at his Loft nights. However, Puthli’s work is not genre-specific and she dived into all sorts of areas. Raised in the Indian classical tradition, which can be heard on the scaling of cuts such as the smooth disco of “1001 Nights of Love (Reprise)”, her Seventies career was in the UK and US. Going further back, she sang with Ornette Coleman (“All My Life” and “What Reason Could I Give” are here) and, further still, the first side is filled with Sixties pop-folk-psyche covers that offer yet another side to her. All in all, a multifarious and eclectic but always elegant collection which comes with a 12” x 12” photo info sheet containing a short new interview with Puthli.
L’Exotighost Kamongo (Everlasting)
On their second album Madrid’s trickily-named L’Exotighost channel the classic kitsch exotica of Martin Denny and the like. In other words, they take a deep dip into the era between rock’n’roll and The Beatles, when there was a hugely popular strata of music aimed at the newly affordable home hi-fi systems taking listeners daydreaming to other locations, often Hawaii, but anywhere tropical, and sometimes even space and the future. Such releases now sound superbly kitsch yet adventurous, preposterous easy listening with an almost-psychedelic edge. This outfit completely understand the dynamic and their Mondo schtick is delightfully rendered, perfect for cocktails at the palm-themed bar in the corner of your pastel-bright bubble-chair lounge. Apparently it’s loosely themed around the classic monster B-movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, but you don’t need to know that to enjoy it’s freaky-tuneful waltz’n’wibble delights.
Various On Record (BMA)
On Record celebrates the Birmingham 2022 Festival and the town being residence to the Commonwealth Games. Indeed, it opens with the joyful dancehall bounce of Friendly Fire Band’s “It’s a Brum T’ing” which has been used on the BBC’s adverts for the Games. Arriving on yellow vinyl in photograph gatefold with a 12” x 12” insert detailing the varied bands on board, and a proudly Brummie big-up to the town from Birmingham Music Archive founder Jez Collins, the album has a persistent geographical assertiveness however stands up fully by way of the numerous music on board. This ranges from the poetic pared-back folks of We Are Muffy to the C86-style indie of Cherry Pickles, to the sensible Afro-jazz of Kate Luxmore & Lekan Bablola to the pure 2022 wanna-be-chart-pop of Bambi Bains “My City”. UB40, Soweto Kinch and TJ Rehmi additionally characteristic. A wonderful ear-pleasing pay attention.
ALSO WORTHY OF MENTION
Lynyn Lexicon (Sooper): This one comes on essentially the most bizarre-looking vinyl I’ve seen shortly. Looks like a 3D pizza! It’s a restricted run of 25 by way of specialist urgent plant Wax Mage in Ohio, an imprint run by vinyl manufacturing skilled Heath Gmucs. They deal with one-of-a-kind vinyl and the debut album from Chicago digital kind Conor Mackey is one other instance of the bodily thing-ness that makes their output collectible. The music too, in fact, which owes a big debt to Nineteen Nineties Warp Records, particularly Aphex Twin, however has sufficient seat-of-the-pants dynamism and twitch to carry the eye. There’s additionally gloopy digital artwork on the sleeve and in an insert from Mackey’s pal Owen Blodgett. A strong bundle.
Pose Dia Front View (Bureau B): Pose Dia is Hamburg renaissance lady Helen Ratka, a film-maker/theatre composer/DJ who’s additionally half of alt-electro-pop outfit Shari Vari. Her debut solo album shouldn’t be one million miles from the latter band however with extra of a post-punky ZE Records really feel. Over clickety, gloopy, moody, downtempo rhythm tracks she deadpans intriguing abstractions. The mixture of her and these cranky, barely sinister pulsations works nicely and is a deal extra more-ish than it sounds.
Noori & his Dorpa Band Beja Power: Electric soul & Brass from Sudan’s Red Sea Coast (Ostinato): The focus of this band is drawing consideration to a forgotten African individuals and tradition, oppressed by the standard western greed. The Beja individuals’s Red Sea-adjacent land in Eastern Sudan has lengthy been mined for gold by non-local corporations, the rights of indigenous individuals ignored. The six tracks are all Beja items, some conventional, some newer, performed by band-leader Noori on a singular electrical stringed instrument constructed from scraps of guitar and a four-string tambour, a type of lute. With wheezing wind instrumentation, a clattering rhythm observe, the closest I can muster to an outline is that’s it’s type of Arabic-scaled, uncooked surf music, however slower and extra contemplative. In Sudan, nonetheless, it’s the sound of social protest, change and upheaval, as is described on the ten” x 10” photograph/data insert. The inside sleeve has an awesome photograph of Noori on.
Arp New Pleasures (Mexican Summer): Brooklyn producer Alexis Georgopoulos’s newest is the second a part of his Zebra trilogy, named after the opening 2018 album. This time around the music is much less wafty and straightforward, extra jagged, the underlying theme being, maybe, a xylophonic sound from which a lot of it appears constructed (there’s numerous marimba on it). It’s squiggly and tricksy but in addition boasts an summary funk that’s ear-intriguing. It steps away from the type of basic Nineties-rooted avant-electronic awkwardness that Lynyn (a few critiques above) is in thrall too and, as a substitute, brings in a snifter of world roots to the celebration. But then warps that too. The result’s nicely price a pay attention.
Bad Breeding Human Capital (One Little Independent) + Froggy & The Ringes Ringe Rock Pond Scum (Amok/Kibou) + Loose Nukes Fast Forward to Extinction (Cimex/Kibou): Three bunches of noisy fuckers, two of them eager to take down the person. Stevenage hardcore punks Bad Breeding are on One Little Indian and hark again to that label’s origins amongst Crass-related Eighties bands, notably Flux of Pink Indians. It arrives on scarlet vinyl with a samizdat-style poster-pamphlet (once more very a lot in Crass band mode) that eruditely attracts traces between social media isolation and political divide-and-conquer, and a 12-page booklet of lyrics in an analogous vein. The album, their fourth, is a relentless roar of rage, purposely extra catalytic than tuneful, spewing out of the audio system with untrammelled urgency. Texan punks Loose Nukes are much less particular of their political ire however the music is vocally puked out with equal aplomb, backed by jarring speed-riff assaults. Take “Slaves”, as an illustration: “Corporate future/Always slaves/Consume, comply, reproduce/Go and die”. The document, on purple vinyl, is marinated in additional nihilism than Bad Breeding however fuelled by the identical rage. Comes with 12” x 12” photograph/lyric card. Finally, Froggy & The Ringes are the equal of the above in cacophony, though nearer in tone to sped-up Nineteen Seventies prole-punk of the Cockney Rejects selection, however their “content” has extra in frequent with Peter & the Test Tube Babies and the like, as their songs take care of frogs, tadpoles and different pond-related silliness. There are tunes in right here too, however largely it’s a little bit of amusing, Bet they’d be a riot reside. Comes with 12” x 12” lyric sheet so you may work out sing alongside to “Do the Frog”, “Fuck You, Kermit!”, “One Chord Frog” and the like.
Mustafa Khetty/Morpheus Project Mozaick Remixed (Morpheus Musica): Mustafa Khetty is a New York-based globetrotter of Sri Lankan origin whose background is as a really profitable businessman, however who cashed that every one in round 5 years in the past to deal with music. Initially dabbling in classical types, he transitioned simply to prog together with his Morpheus Project and their 2021 debut album Mozaick. Three tracks from that album now seem of their authentic kind, global-flavoured new age-tinted fare, on an EP with remixes on the flip by Seahawks, Andy Votel and The Grid’s Richard Norris. The first two of those are satisfactory noodle nevertheless it’s Norris’s bongo-tastic tribal groover that takes the cake, constructing into one thing pared-back however funky, in a relaxing type of method.
On Man On Man (Houndstooth): Respect, as at all times, to Houndstooth Records, the material nightclub-affiliated label that’s unafraid of getting behind music which isn’t speedy or simple. On Man is a Hertfordshire-based singer-producer whose music ranges from Howling/Ry X/Anohni-style falsetto-tronica to the crunching post-grime of “Darks” to phased squelch-pop with a touch of Aphex to it (generally even a bit like label mate Aisha Devi). It’s experimental, often abject alt-pop, which instantly flits into self-revealing singer-songwriter territory. Comes on artwork gatefold with a 12-page 12” x 12” art-lyric booklet. The artwork is worthy of particular point out. Rising blended digital artist Salvi de Sena excels with the grotesque but fascinating visuals on the quilt and, certainly, the photographs all through. Pictured left/proper.
Wendy Carlos Tron: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Walt Disney): “Music by Wendy Carlos,” it says on the sleeve. What it doesn’t inform the unsuspecting listener is that there are additionally two songs by US FM radio behemoths Journey. One of them is usually hideous however the greater shock is that the opposite, “1990’s Theme”, a sound effect-swathed electro-rock instrumental, is kitsch and fairly amusing. Fans of the movie will recall its groundbreaking visible model, the premise for a lot of Daft Punk’s profession (they soundtracked the sequel too!). The music, nonetheless, shouldn’t be as retro-future digital as reminiscence may recommend. Much of it’s energetic John Williams-ish orchestration with solely occasional synthesizer intrusions on cuts similar to “TRON Scherzo” and “We’ve Got Company”. Overall, one for hardcore TRON followers.
Healing Force Project Drifted Entities Vol. 1 (BM): Prolific digital producer Antonio Marini’s output shouldn’t be simple to bracket. His newest mini-album/EP accommodates 5 tracks which have an natural really feel – the basslines and organ sounds – but in addition hooked up to a sensibility that appears indebted to prog rock (a kind that continues to be large in Italy). Partly that is all the way down to the wilfully perverse stop-start rhythmic adjustments. The entire factor is instrumental, a key characteristic being the infinite interjections of various sorts of percussion, as if the central observe had been underneath assault by toddlers. Fans of San Diego’s I-think-now-defunct – and legendarily off-the-wall – Accretions Records might very nicely get pleasure from.
Ace Hansel Jr Songs from Croix-Noire (Madhouse Rag): Where to start out with this one? It’s by a fictional character, a Parisian superhero who can manipulate individuals’s feelings as he oversees the welfare of bawdy, crime-filled, dystopian arrondissemont Croix-Noire. Ace Hansel Jr is voiced by singer Jean-Charles Capelli and the entire mission arrives hooked up to a sequence of seven comics and a ROBLOX recreation. The crew behind it contains unstoppable Melua/Wombles imaginator Mike Batt, Marvel comics artist Mike Collins and the dryly humorous journo-writer-wit David Quantick. The music is a frothy concoction laced with Batt’s present for melody; theatrically-aligned narrative songs. It’s a Comicon-friendly pop-conceit burlesque of sub-Gorillaz whimsy that those that come throughout it would both be amused by or scoffily reject out of hand. It ought to, on the very least, obtain plaudits for holding the road “He tells me that he’s got a pill-popping parrot”. Comes in a sleeve that relates the backstory and a four-page 12” x 12” art-lyric insert. Mine got here with three comics too however you’ll probably have to trace them down if you wish to become involved…
The Kills No Wow: The Tchad Blake Mix 2022 (Domino): Black Keys/Arctic Monkeys producer Tchad Blake has been introduced in to revitalize an already sturdily noisy and in-yer-face album, and he does a wonderful job, bringing out the underlying percussive punch. The album is the duo’s second, from 2005, when The Kills had been recent on the block; after they and White Stripes had been providing up a vibrant mannequin of what a guitar-led two-piece might sound like. It has a fuzzed, frazzled efficiency, easy however efficient, Alison Mosshart’s bored, spiky vocals taking part in nicely towards the damaged amp snark-rock guitar and results. Comes with 12” x 12” four-page artwork/lyric booklet.
Michael Shaw He Rode On (Wolfhard Productions): Michael Shaw has lived a correct backwoods cowboy life. He’s a horseman who’s spent a lot of his life off-grid, caretaking middle-of-nowhere locations in Montana and the like, dwelling off the land. His music, which gestated in nearly equally remoted haunts, with a late nice pal, Colin McKnight, to whom the album is devoted, generally descends into nation’n’western lyrical-conceptual cliché however can also be spirited, and bursts, once in a while, right into a blues-rockin’ bar celebration. If he can channel extra of the lonely wastelands into his sound and tone down the extra apparent references, musical and lyrical, he’ll be on his method. Comes in photograph/lyric inside sleeve.
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer Recordings From the Åland Islands (International Anthem): Some information are, basically, travelogues, reportages, representations of geographical expertise, and such is the case with this one. Åland is an archipelago within the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, consisting of 1000’s of islands. Cerebral US West Coast modern-classical academic-experimental musicians Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer found {that a} pal’s mom needed to construct a small lodge in an space there referred to as Kumlinge, and would welcome help, in order that they went to assist. They additionally invested themselves in an artwork mission. This album is that, a group of semi-ambient, rustic instrumental tone poems, mingling natural and digital, overlaid with pure sounds, wheezy accordion-esque notes, and different squiggles, all including as much as an impressionistic snapshot of the place they had been. Best-consumed, then, with the 16-page booklet concerning the mission, replete with pictures that set the scene. Gently fascinating.
AND WHILE WE’RE HERE
CoN&KwAkE is the London pairing of Confucius MC and Kwake Bass. They current their jazz-laced hip hop album Eyes within the Tower on Shabaka Hutchings’ Native Rebel label. In reality, Hutchings is throughout it, co-writing the music and co-producing. The music is a reside three-piece band – keys, bass and drums – fronted by clearly, calmly enunciated lyrics that match the observational with social commentary. It comes on two discs with photograph/data inside sleeves and does what it does with calm panache. Cherry Red re-release The Blue Meaning, the 1980 second album from Toyah, the band fronted by the girl of the identical identify. She’s just like the noiser, much less cool, youthful sister of Kate Bush, each artists filtering prog rock’s fantastical conceptual wibble and experimentalism by way of post-punk tropes of their very other ways. The Blue Meaning is available in photograph/data inside sleeve and is full of quirky, squeak-voiced new wave numbers that obtain the unlikely feat of being each playful and severe of their execution (one tune, “Space Walking”, even sends up the squeaky facet by that includes Toyah delivering the traces on helium!). Cherry Red are additionally behind the five-track 12” EP of Dinosaur Jr reside on MTV’s 120 Minutes in March 1993, entitled SeventyTwoHundredSeconds, and that includes prime smeary grunge takes from throughout their profession as much as that time, proper again to “Severed Lips” from their 1985 debut. It all sounds a bit sludgy to me, however I assume that’s type of the purpose. Sharper but in addition on 12” and that includes no guitars in any respect is the brand new, eponymous four-tracker from Italian electro trio Qualia on Dutch label U-Trax. It veers in direction of the back-room fairly than bangers, main with the squelchy acidic “Perception”, the most effective lower, and likewise that includes the industrial-flavoured wash of the title observe and two different ambient tone items. Comes with sticker and artwork card insert. Also on the ambient facet is Luke Howard, an Australian composer, who returns with a string-laden COVID lockdown meditation All of Us on Mercury KX (his native Melbourne had the longest lockdown on this planet). Drawing sustenance, as many did, from Albert Camus’ allegory of fascism as a illness, The Plague, his work, in data inside sleeve, is sweeping, romantically melancholic and filmic, however tinted with simply sufficient minimalist underlay, right here and there. Szun Waves are Luke Abbott, PVT’s Laurence Pike, and Portico Quartet’s Jack Wylie, and their third album, Earth Patterns on the Leaf Label, in artwork inside sleeve, often options an specific kozmische pulse however extra often the rhythm observe is subsumed by psychedelic electro-jazz that’s well-crafted brain-phasing however doesn’t ever go for the jugular. Its antithesis is perhaps Hot Hot Hot, a best-of compilation by way of BMG of the late Montserratian soca star Arrow (AKA Alphonsus Cassell) whose tune of the identical identify because the comp has haunted dancefloors for many years. There are percussive workouts that begin to pull me in however, consumed as a complete, the first colored, main key super-good-cheer is simply too relentlessly one observe. The debut album from London producer Ben Marc is Glass Effect on Innovative Leisure. It arrives in art-info inside sleeve and is a hazy, summery train in damaged beat-jazz-tronica that noodles alongside ear-pleasingly with out ever putting out in new instructions. Mind you, when you reside in Brighton or, significantly, when you reside in Brighton and assume the Love Supreme Festival is the most effective factor ever, you’ll most likely find it irresistible to bits. 2 Tone acolyte Rhodar Dakar drops one other 7” ska cowl model on Sunday Best, this time a jolly assay at The Rolling Stones’ “As Tears Go By” with an honest dub-out on the flip. I’d nonetheless say that the already-released variations of “The Man Who Sold the World” and “Everyday is Like a Sunday” are the most effective ones to date. Scottish musician Jackie Leven led a storied life, not all of it joyful, and is severely rated by many, together with uber-fan and crime writer Ian Rankin, with whom he as soon as made an album. A cult grew round him throughout his life and extends now past his 2011 demise with the reissue, on double in gatefold with in depth sleeve-notes, of 1994’s The Mystery of Love is Greater Than the Mystery of Death (Cooking Vinyl). It’s a folk-blues affair; the very fact Waterboy Mike Scott is concerned says one thing concerning the vibe. It’s all too portentously Celtic-mystic for me however price a shout for individuals who like that type of factor. Comes on vinyl that appears like water into which black ink has been dribbled.
Finally, three which have already been reviewed on theartsdesk however that are nicely price proudly owning on plastic
Kathryn Williams Night Drives (One Little Independent): While too persistently forlorn general, there are nonetheless some nice songs on the most recent from folks perennial Kathryn Williams, right here investigating an opulent musical palette. Full assessment right here.
Ibibio Sound Machine Electricity (Merge): The fourth album from London’s Afro-techno-soul-pop party-starters could also be their finest, a energetic and diverse outing, reviewed totally right here.
Lettuce Unify (Round Hill): “There isn’t a duff track here,” reckons Guy Oddy on this assessment of the most recent from Boston’s three decade-old funk juggernaut.
We welcome any and all vinyl for assessment. Please hit thomash.inexperienced@theartsdesk.com for a postal deal with.
Read extra vinyl critiques on theartsdesk
