Recent Reissues & Historical Releases
Pitchfork’s reviewer gave this a 3.3 and complained that this band plays out of tune. He’s lost his damn mind. Yeah they play out of tune – it’s a post-punk band captured in concert, what’d he expect? OF COURSE their studio recordings are less sloppy, and a better place to begin appreciating this band’s greatness (yeah, it’s one band, the name had to be changed due to obvious copyright issues). Kill Rock Stars issued a complete two-CD set just for that purpose. But no post-punk aficionado will blink twice over the quality of the 1979 Kleenex gig, 1983 LiLiPUT show, and five previously unreleased songs on the CD portion of this album. This is a wonderful discovery from the vaults, in all its jagged, jangly, ramshackle glory. The television appearances on the DVD are equally glorious. “Roadmovie,” yeah, you can skip the hand-held-camera movies of Swiss landscape. But the rest of this is a must-own for fans, and if you’re not a fan of LiLiPUT, get working on it or you’re missing out on one of the great post-punk pleasures.
Dengue Fever Presents Electric Cambodia (Minky)
Ignore the cheesy cover painting – it’s the music inside that matters, and this is a wonderful compilation of Cambodian rock, curated by Dengue Fever. From the ’60s until the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, there was a period of incredible artistic fermentation that produced a style of rock that features some great guitar work, but traditional Cambodian influences are also strong, making for a powerful hybrid. The star of the set is Ros Sereysothea (Dengue Fever covered some of his songs on their early albums), whose tunes are utterly infectious, but Pan Ron comes in a close second with his energetic garage-psych. Dengue Fever’s members drew on their collections of vintage cassette tapes for this collection, but don’t worry, the sound quality is more than acceptable.
Gods Gift – Pathology: Manchester 1979-84 (Hyped to Death)
One of the rare Messthetics compilations dedicated to just one band, and Gods Gift (no apostrophe) certainly deserves it – not for nothing did this post-punk quartet earn a couple of releases on New Hormones. At times it recalls early Fall (especially when vocalist Steven Edwards declaims rather than singing), but often has a droning, throbbing sound of its own, occasionally ornamented by scrappy sax from Edwards. Guitarist Stephen Murphy‘s “turbine” sound is dissonant and motorik and suggests Pink Flag-era Wire at half speed. There are some spectacularly good songs here, such as “Soldiers” and “Creeps In,” but it’s the darkly intense and noisy sound that keeps me replaying it with pleasure.
Jimi Hendrix – Valleys of Neptune (Experience Hendrix/Sony Legacy)
This is much better than I expected. Not “twelve never before released songs,” as the second sentence of John McDermott‘s booklet notes claims, but at least some of the songs are relatively less familiar none of the tracks have been officially released on CD before, and only three tracks have posthumous bass and drum additions (and there’s no added guitar – though I think Crash Landing is a very enjoyable album). All but one track comes from 1969 sessions. None of the familiar songs are better than their more famous incarnations, but most offer interesting alternative readings. Sometimes things are obviously unfinished – no way the long meandering jam in the middle of “Sunshine of Your Love” (2/26/69) would’ve been issued as-is in Jimi’s lifetime – but most of the time loose ends, if any (aside from fade-outs and abrupt endings), are pretty insignificant. Nonetheless, as far as official CD releases, this is the least of the studio -recorded albums, but the least of Hendrix is still well worth having.
Nigeria Afrobeat Special: The New Explosive Sound in 1970s Nigeria (Soundway)
Soundway has done a great job with this. Even the Fela Kuti cut — an early 7” version of “Who’re You?” that’s rawer than the more familiar version — has not previously been reissued. The other big name here, Orlando Julius, is also represented by a track new to CD, “Afro-Blues”; only one track here has been reissued outside of Nigeria before now. One of the revelatory factors of this compilation is how different everything is from Fela: his invention of the Afrobeat style inspired the other ten bands included here to follow him into the style, but in their own ways, so there’s more variety here than you might expect. The three-LP set has five additional tracks not on the CD.
Nigeria Special volume 2: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6 (Soundway)
This album’s lengthy subtitle still doesn’t encompass all of the sounds on display here. The Don Issac Ezekiel Combination has gospel-group harmonizing, several groups deploy jazz-tinged stylings, and Joy Nwoso even displays the influence of opera. Buttressing most tracks, and tying together the album, are the highlife grooves (conveyed not only on percussion but also the cyclical guitar riffs) that modernized traditional polyrhythms. The three-LP set has three additional tracks not on the CD.
The Blank Generation: Blank Tapes NYC 1975-1985 (Strut)
Bob Blank’s studio Blank Tapes was associated with disco, a producer-friendly genre, but he lent his talents to a broader range of artists and is retrospectively seen as an icon of “mutant disco,” the NYC-based avant-underground’s dalliance with beat-heavy production. So there are relatively straightforward (but fresh-sounding) disco songs here, but also two tracks by Arthur Russell projects (The Necessaries‘ “State of Art” and Lola‘s “Wax the Van”) and one each by Sun Ra, Lydia Lunch, and James “Blood” Ulmer. It’s music that’s very much a product of its time and place, but a quarter-century on, it sounds more relevant to our time than the more famous products of 1975-1985.
Next Stop…Soweto: Township Sounds from the Golden Age of Mbaqanga (Strut)
This is hardly the first compilation to focus on the bright, upbeat Mbaqanga (AKA “township jive”) style of South Africa in the ’60s and ’70s, but it delves a little deeper than many, including some non-album singles and a broad range of artists. The cornerstone artists of the style, Mahlathini & Mahotella Queens, are represented, of course, but the less famous deliver equal highlights, such as S. Poliso & His Super Seven’s “Kuya Hanjwa.” Whether you’re a dedicated Afrophile or a Vampire Weekend fan interested in learning about their influences, this collection will satisfy. And, good news, it’s just the first of three volumes.
Can You Dig It? The Music and Politics of Black Action Films (Soul Jazz)
Musically this is well up to the high standards Soul Jazz has long maintained in its compilations, albeit including more mainstream material than usual (I suppose blaxploitation soundtracks are naturally more familiar fare to us than the Brits). So James Brown, Roy Ayers, Willie Hutch, Marvin Gaye, Bobby Womack, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Joe Simon, Martha Reeves, Grant Green, Booker T & the MG’s, Edwin Starr, The Impressions, The Blackbyrds, Solomon Burke, and Quincy Jones are here, along with slightly less famous but still less-than-obscure artists including Dennis Coffey, Gene Page, Johnny Pate, and J.J. Johnson, and a few artists below that tier but still common knowledge among soul and funk fans. That said, even the famous names are heard in some of their less famous work; Hayes, of course represented by the title theme of Shaft, is also heard from for “Pursuit of the Pimpmobile” from Truck Turner, and the Starr track is “Easin’ In” from Hell Up in Harlem, to cite a few examples. Almost as enjoyable as the two CDs of get-down goodness (or should I say “badness”?) is the faaaat booklet full of not only perceptive commentary but a treasure trove of movie stills.
Damin Eih, A.L.K. and Brother Clark – Never Mind (Nero’s Neptune)
Unless you have a profound affection for psychedelia, this 1973 rarity will be of little interest. But psych collectors live for stuff like this: privately pressed by a Minneapolis loner (Eih) who subsequently went to India (of course) and hasn’t been heard from since. It’s a little hard to figure out what it’s about – it includes such WTF lyric gems as ,“So I can touch every part of you, take off your eyes” – but it seems to be a concept album, since the first track is “Tourniquet” and the violent final track, “Return Naked,” ends with “And blindly the fetus loosens the tourniquet.” Musically there’s an attractive mix of electric fuzz guitar and acoustic strumming; the other instruments can be rather buried in the mix, though that might be partly a problem of the master tapes being unavailable (though the remastering from two LPs seems largely successful, and sonics are no impediment to enjoyment here). This album was included in Patrick Lundborg‘s book Acid Archives, and on that recommendation along many collectors will want to pick this up. They won’t be disappointed.
