Ghana slaps hard. In The Beginning There WAS Rhythm. Jazz Guitar. Jazz Organ and Jimi floats.

Welcome to a new week at the Record Shop, with our best new reissues and some sterling compilations for your consideration. We’ll start on comps and the absolutely wonderful Ghana Special 2.

The esteemed Soundway label highlight a time (1980-93) when new music technology and recording techniques offered experimentation in ‘Electronic Highlife & Afro Sounds’ across the west of Africa. It’s all so vibrant, with plenty of hot swaying, blazing horns and squelching beats. There actually isn’t a wasted minute here! Bangers.

This week’s Soul Jazz offering is ‘In The Beginning There Was Rhythm’, a first pressing in some twenty years for the label’s first foray into post-punk and punk-funk in the UK. The venn of noise, punk and dance music, with pioneers like A Certain Ratio, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, The Human League, The Pop Group and This Heat all featuring. This one really does pack a punch.

On the punch-packing topic, Numero explore American hardcore band Universal Order Of Armageddon. This new self-titled release compiles the band's recordings for the Gravity, Vermin Scum and Kill Rock Stars labels, full of pounding riffs and full-throated wails.

+ Available on limited double Clear colour vinyl.
+ Remixed and remastered from the original session tapes, and housed in a deluxe gatefold jacket with a chunky 24-page book packed with photos and notes.

We have a double this week from iconic Detroit jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, with
A Night At The Vanguard Chess as part of the Verve By Request series, and the much-revered Guitar Forms under the Acoustic Sounds umbrella. Guitar Forms really is an amazing example of his abilities, and A Night At The Vanguard really is an extraordinary performance.

Also as part of the Verve By Request reissue series, organist Sam Lazar’s bubblin’ Space Flight. Hammond vibes with a very young Grant Green and Chicago blues legend Willie Dixon on bass too. Good vibes, sick sleeve.

Also This Week

• Queen Rock Montreal
• ALFA/YEN Records 1980-1987
• Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death

Lastly for today's reissue coverage we have the mind-expanding 1997 First Rays of the Rising Sun LP from Jimi Hendrix. Seventeen songs whose creation spans from March 1968 through to Jimi’s final sessions at Electric Lady Studios in August 1970, all prepared under the direct supervision of the Hendrix family. Such beautiful psychedelic explorations, full of smooth soul and knotty changes of pace. A really great collection, but the frustration of never knowing where he would have gone next remains.