The lost, re-found, early Fairport and Serge’s other masterpiece.
Hello, Friends.
A breezy start to this new week, thanks to the heads at Be With Records and a reissue of Lewis Taylor’s The Lost Album. It was intended as a follow-up to his self-titled debut, but Island rejected it and it floated around in the ether for a few years, before Taylor and longtime partner Sabina Smyth revisited the tracks, re-arranged them, re-recorded them and then self-released them in 2004 as “The Lost Album”. It doesn’t really carry any production cues from the last forty years to be honest, it’s just one that flows with a CSN meets Steely Dan energy and hopefully now finds the audience it deserves.
“A tip of the hat to the soul man who was more Captain Beefheart than Jay Kay”
- The Guardian.
A deep dive into the Fairport Convention vaults has also been dominating the weekend and early week stereo with the iconic bands first three albums - Fairport Convention (1968), What We Did on Our Holidays (1969) and Unhalfbricking (1969) - reissued for the first time in a long time. Weird and genuinely psychedelic, they still don't sound much like anyone else.
It’s also worth us flagging up now that the band’s fourth album, Liege & Lief - doubtless one of the most influential folk albums of all time - will follow in a couple of weeks.
Seriously, Take Me To Your Leader! Big Dada reissue the first full-length album released by MF DOOM under the Godzilla-inspired alias, King Geedorah. Arriving just a few years after his Operation: Doomsday debut and in the same twelve-month period that brought Vaudeville Villain and VV:2 as Viktor Vaughn and the iconic Mm..Food back under his MF DOOM nom de plume. It’s an often-missed gem in a classic run and they’ve done a lovely job on this one physically.
+ Features the original artwork, 2LP black vinyl and packaged with the original 7” black vinyl of Anti-Matter. Original 12” insert “cutout” design reimagined on a perforated card insert.
An absolutely lush compilation (aren’t they always!) via Ace this week called Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night. “Before there was Saturday Night Fever there was underground disco.” Soul grooves and the roads that led to disco for the dancers, really great stuff.
Sub Pop celebrate the 30th anniversary of Six Finger Satellite’s debut album, The Pigeon Is the Most Popular Bird with a brand new, fully remastered CD and double-LP reissue. Noisy, loud and messy post-punk that was produced with Bob Weston of Shellac.
+ Available as a limited Loser Edition, pressed on Red and Blue vinyl.
Wewantsounds have made the first international reissue of Ayako Shinozaki’s ethereal and elusive 1974 album, Music Now For Harp. Really graceful and not afraid to drift off into huge, spacious epics.
Newly remastered by Nippon Columbia and reissued with its original artwork designed by legendary Japanese graphic designer Kohei Sugiura.
Lastly today and often considered as "the other" masterpiece of Serge Gainsbourg's discography, l'homme A Tete De Chou is reissued this week and the restoration work is insane. Almost 45 years after its release, the rediscovery of the multitrack tapes recorded in London in the summer of 1976 offered a new sonic inflection. This new 2023 mix rebalances the vocal and instrumental parts - drenched in Jean-Claude Vannier’s sumptuous string arrangements - while retaining its original intent. It’s pretty magic, to be honest.
- Drift