We’re still resisting the festive playlist as there are reissues of serious note.
Hello, Friends.
Well, it’s always a day to rejoice when we have Arthur Russell back in the racks! Rough Trade continue their partnership with Audika Records to ensure that Arthur’s work is kept in print. Starting with one of my absolute favourites, Love Is Overtaking Me is an album that every serious collection should have. Originally released in 2008, it comprises demos and home recordings of unreleased pop, folk and country songs from Arthur’s vast catalogue. The collection is so dynamic, brilliant songs and brilliant ideas that flow through genres with such grace. An amazing songwriter and these are some of his finest. Also reissued this week is Corn, tracks recorded between 1982 and 1983 that lean more towards his electro-pop mode output. The collection sits together as some of his most focused, whilst still bubbling over into weird and wild ideas.
Two amazing releases and two wonderfully different entrance points into a mercurial talent and an essential catalogue.
Fela Kuti’s iconic London-based Afrodisiac album gets a limited 50th Anniversary Edition pressing this week via Knitting Factory Records. The sessions - recorded in 1972 at Abbey Road Studios - were new recordings of Nigerian 45 singles. Afrodisiac is the fifth in the series of celebratory Fela 50th reissues and - like its predecessors in the series - this double LP edition is pressed on colour vinyl. LP 1 is green marble and LP 2 is on red marble. A real nice package.
Chet Baker & Art Pepper’s collaborative work gets revisited this week with the 1956 Pacific Jazz album Picture of Heath (originally released as Playboys), pressed up as part of the superb Tone Poet Series. This mono edition was produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog master tapes and pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI. Boppin’!
Also released under the Tone Poet Series banner is Blue Mitchell’s Bring It Home To Me. Trumpeter Blue Mitchell was a member of Horace Silver’s Quintet before he began recording his own leader albums for Blue Note through the 1960s. This one is in stereo, but the same ‘luxe Tone Poet Series specifications for a rich listen.
Western Vinyl have repressed Euclid, the absolutely sublime debut LP from Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. It was primarily written on a Buchla Music Easel synthesiser and the tones are so seriously rich. She has proved herself to be a proper sonic explorer in the years since, but there is something so wonderfully timeless about this one; old, otherworldly sounds.
Burial’s Untrue is pressed up on double wax for the first time in a yonk this week too. Released in Late 2007, it followed his eponymous debut and went on to score a Mercury Prize nomination. It still sounds so murky, a right classic.
Sub Pop have remastered and reissued Hot Hot Heat’s 2002 debut album - Make Up The Breakdown - just in time for its 20th anniversary. It sounds great and still rattles along with great energy. Available on limited Yellow colour vinyl.
Ending today’s dispatch with a wallop and the reissue of Lightning Bolt’s Earthly Delights. Less thrashing than some of the LB discography, this one, their fifth album, but it has a lot of build to it, a sort of hypnotic doom. Pressed as a double LP with a D-side etching from the band’s own Brian Chippendale.
Have a good old dive into that lot and we’ll be right back.
- Drift