Best Reissues of 2008, part 2
Steve Stein, the man who first made mash-ups art as half of Double Dee & Steinski, gets a thoroughly deserved two-disc retrospective from the label that’s hitting it big with Girl Talk’s modern take on the genre. It starts with his classic, groundbreaking ‘80s white-label mixes (they had to be – they so wouldn’t have ever been cleared, and thus were illegal) with sound engineer Douglas Di Franco, the three famous lessons. There’s even a reunion track. This stuff is still totally radical. There follows Steinski’s later material on his own and in collaboration with other people, and then disc 2 is one long mix. Genius.
My review is here.
Yeah, this is sort of probably a bootleg of this 1974 Polydor LP. I don’t care, I love his AR & Machines Krautrock phase and couldn’t wait for hell to freeze over after which Polydor still might not reissue this droning, blipping, throbbing space-rock classic.
By far Mariano’s best fusion album, this 1976 release pairs the former alto sax bebopper-turned-multi-genre-multi-instrumentalist with an all-star group including Jan Hammer and Jack Bruce. Mixing not only rock and jazz but also world music styles, it’s a hard-hitting gem that has undeservedly languished in obscurity. Now that it’s reappeared, grab it while you can.
This 1969 album slots firmly into the niche of Tropicalia with its fuzz guitar riffs, funk-rock rhythms, exotic world-music appropriations (African and Middle Eastern), and psychedelic production. Gilberto Gil contributes three songs, Caetano Veloso two, and Jorge Ben another two out of the nine total. This was Costa’s second LP, light years ahead of the first in terms of risk-taking, and a stone classic of the Tropicalia movement, as radical and adventurous as anything even Os Mutantes ever did.
Mike VanPortfleet (guitars, vocals, drum and synth programs) and David Galas (sampler, bass, drum and synth programs), having worked together on two previous albums, brought their construction of majestically icy cathedrals of sound to new heights on this 1996 CD, and with Tara VanFlower’s vocals on half the tracks, the classic Lycia sound was achieved. It’s all very desolate and alienated, of course, but also quite beautiful, and with none of the over-the-top vocals and overemoting of less subtle goth, it can be enjoyed as a purely musical experience.
One of the great outsider obscurities of the ‘70s, Gary Wilson’s first album, You Think You Really Know Me, is a bizarre mix of DIY, prog, pop, new wave, electronica, and lounge jazz – and lyrics of freakishly awkward fantasies of lust and romance. (Anybody who is not made uncomfortable by listening to “6.4=Makeout” probably needs psychological help.) The awkwardness and outsiderness is accented by Wilson’s stiff whoops and gasps, probably meant to sound hip and spontaneous, but more like unintentional parody of soul singing, an ungainly collection of vocal tics bordering on Tourette’s. This new reissue, a decade after the previous one, adds a documentary DVD.
Wailing like a less subtle but more Southern soulful Aretha over James Brown-worthy grooves, Ms. Lyons unbelievably made only this album, then faded into the mists of history. It’s hard to understand how something this powerful was never followed up on. Her radical revision of the old song “Fever” has to be heard.
Live at the Shepherds Bush Empire, London, 1996 (Discipline Global Media)
Another double CD in this invaluable series, this time documenting the so-called double trio lineup: Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, and Trey Gunn on guitars, Tony Levin on bass and Chapman Stick, and drummers Bill Bruford and Pat Mastelotto. The first musical track is a 20-minute Frippertronic soundscape atypically including tuned percussion; it develops slowly but surely. There are two (or three if one counts “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part 2”) Crims oldies, “Red” and “21st Century Schizoid Man,” with the power the sextet can put forth fully needed. The ‘80s period is most heavily represented, even slightly more than the THRAK period of this band. Just before the end there’s the surprise of a cover of Pierre Favre’s avant-garde percussion classic “Prism” played by the drummers, which sort of closes the circle with the Fripp opener before “Elephant Talk” ends this triumphant two-set concert.
Returning in time for its 30th anniversary, this underrated album may not quite match the glories of her 1967-71 heyday, but it comes very close, and with so few studio albums having come from Nyro before her untimely death at age 50, that makes this a reissue to be cherished as it appears for the first time on CD. With the arrangements here not as bombastic, or as intricate, as on her earlier albums (“Crazy Love” is just piano and voice), the focus is on the songs and Nyro’s spectacular singing. Even when she’s complaining about past lovers (including the father of the child she was carrying as this album was recorded and then toured), there’s a warmth and joyous expressiveness in her singing that’s magical.
