Comps, recent essentials, and a rundown of some of the bits we haven’t mentioned yet.
This edition of Best New Reissues covers some great reissues and compilations that have just landed, plus an opportunity to look back over the last few weeks as lots have arrived unannounced. And we really should have announced!
Firstly the compilations, and two really excellent ones at that. Music For A Revolution Vol.1 is a really engrossing new set with songs from post-colonial Guinea. From 1967 to 1983, Guinea’s government released selections of songs from the Voix de la Révolution catalogue on its own recording label, Syliphone. Some sublime examples of traditional African music, plus progression into more western grooves via calypso, highlife, Cuban jazz and samba. These recordings were described as ‘the fruit of the revolution’. We are so in!
The second comp getting us spinning is a full pressing of the amazing ‘Gilles Peterson Presents International Anthem’, that debuted on Record Store Day this year. The tracks were chosen by Peterson via an extensive review of track lists from his broadcasts on BBC 6 Music, Worldwide FM, and various syndicated radio programs. It is absolutely ALL killer.
Whilst we are talking International Anthem, the label have reissued new IA11 Editions of some absolute stonkers from the archives, with Jeff Parker’s The New Breed, the self-titled Irreversible Entanglements and Carlos Niño & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s Chicago Waves. Straight up, that label have been putting out banger after banger after banger.
Portland experimentalists Jackie-O Motherfucker reissue a 20th anniversary pressing of their utterly brilliant Flags Of The Sacred Harp. The album reimagines songs from the original American songbook (first published in 1844), with gospel drones, raw folk and other traditionals getting psychedelic. Very us. Very splendid.
Also tuning twenty and being reissued (on limited double Wispy Red & White vinyl) is The White Stripes’ Get Behind Me Satan. Retains the raw spirit of their earliest work but the sheer power of the production is something else. Remains a belter.
Also in the shop recently; Dexter Gordon’s Landslide as part of the Tone Poet series, The III’d LP from experimental duo Crystal Castles, Tracks II: The Lost Albums - a selection of cuts from ‘The Employer' Bruce Springsteen, Jim O'Rourke’s Shutting Down Here and Stephen O'Malley’s But remember what you have had on the esteemed Portraits GRM (Shelter Press) label, new pressings and colours of Codeine’s Frigid Stars and The White Birch albums on Numero, who also present a new pressing of The Lijadu Sisters’ Danger on Telepathy Blue vinyl!
A couple of limited bits to put under your ears, with a new 12” edition of Ty Segall’s multi-dimensional Mr. Face. Daniel Johnston’s BBC Sessions have been compiled as Love Lives Forever and we have a limited Red vinyl pressing. A little bit heartbreaking, to be honest. In very short supply is Yerself Is Steam + Car Wash Hair, a new (orange vinyl) pressing of Mercury Rev’s critically acclaimed 1991 debut LP, plus their debut 12” EP in a gatefold sleeve. Lastly, a Purple Splatter vinyl pressing of Pusha T’s Kanye West-produced DAYTONA. Not many of them.