theartsdesk on Vinyl 87: Roots Manuva, Bogdan Raczynski, Songhoy Blues, The Special AKA, Jhelisa, Tina Turner and more

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Blood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)

When death metal takes LSD it’s quite a thing. Whether this band have done acid or not, the output of Colorado's Blood Incantation feels that way on their fourth album. Each side is one long suite. “The Stargate” and “The Message”, 20 minutes and 23 minutes respectively, both three-part odysseys that take in Floydian guitar solos, ambient Gregorian-style chanting, Seventies synth-wizarding, lilting reggae rhythms and much else, occasionally and suddenly exploding into galloping guitar squalls underpinned by frenetic blast beats, laced with gurgle-growled vocals. This sort of music is usually dismissed by both the mainstream and by media taste-arbiters, but take a listen, it’s going unlikely places most wouldn’t dare, while also tearing the roof off. To add to the metal fun, they even have a band ident that no person on earth could read. Arrives in old-fashioned prog rock sci-fi cover art gatefold with a 12” x 12” photo/info/lyric insert and a black’n’white poster of the band.

VINYL REVIEWS

Tucker Zimmerman Dance of Love (4AD) + Jane Frances Graceful Wanderer (Stash)

Two albums that have their roots in the folkish 1970s. I “discovered” Belgium-based American singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman last year when I was sent a reissue of his wonderful Over Here in Europe album from 1974. I haven’t stopped playing it since. He’s now 83 and I had the rare privilege of seeing him recently in London (reviewed here), a set almost entirely drawn from his new album, Dance of Love. Happily, it’s a fine collection, energized by the feeling it’s been thrown together spontaneously with a pick-up band (that includes Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker on vocals) but grounded in Zimmerman’s impeccable songwriting which, in old age, has become wistful, occasionally nostalgic, but always speckled with hippy peace’n’love. His voice is gentle and quavering but his lyrics are always meaty and thought-provoking. A fine comeback which arrives with a 12” x 12" photo/info insert. Jane Francis, meanwhile, is fresh to these ears, an Edinburgh singer who has recorded an album with Stash Records’ collective of Worthing musicians. Graceful Wanderer offers a hazed, delightful Sandy Denny-adjacent set that seems to have wandered straight in from 40 years ago. Held aloft on the flights of her pure voice and the impressively showy David Gilmour-esque guitar play of Rowan Chapman, the production has an autumnal warmth and the songs are the sort that slowly reveal themselves on repeated listens. A friend to tuck up with during the Winter months.

Roots Manuva Brand New Second Hand + Run Come Save Me (Big Dada)

Back in the pre-grime 1990s UK hip hop was in a completely different place. Not a good place. The decade’s electronic music revolution had given such voices more power as MCs and guest artists, but the actual scene wasn’t much further forward than it had been the previous decade. At the end of the Nineties, one key artist finally moving things forward, south London rapper Roots Manuva. His 1999 debut Brand New Second Hand also helped put a key label, the Ninja Tune-affiliated Big Dada, on the map. It launched the uniquely wordy, spliffed, Jamaican-London, laid back sound of Rodney Smith. As well as his way with words, his unpretentiousness was his gift, both facets carrying the album, but it was with the follow-up, 2001’s Run Come Save Me, that everything gelled, the music rising up to match the flow, as showcased on standout single “Witness (1 Hope)”. The former album now receives a 25th anniversary reissue on gatefold double on smoked clear vinyl, with a portrait print. The latter also appears in the same format (without print).

Various Mr Bongo Record Club Vol 7 (Mr Bongo) + Various Ayo Ke Disco: Boogie, Pop and Funk from the South China Sea (1974-1988) (Soundway) + Various The Psychedelic Scene (Decca) + Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktonica, Uygher Rock & Crimean Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia (Ostinato)

Four very different compilations, three of them juicy and entertaining, and one outstanding. Mr Bongo’s Record Club series digs about for old tunes most will never have heard but which will work alongside classics in any DJ's set focusing on (sides one and two) global grooves or (sides three and four) disco, funk and soul. Which is to say the whole thing illustrates the pure luck of the music biz, how a decent tune is only a tenth of the game. Check out the sing-along disco-pop of Claude Jay’s “Find Your Light”, which you wouldn’t be surprised to hear had been a long ago Top 20 hit (it wasn't). The whole set bubbles with Craig Charles-friendly hip-wigglers, spiked with occasionally wonky numbers that make the ears prick up further, such as JC Lodge’s dancefloor-dub cover of The Isley Brothers’ "In Between the Sheets” or a psychedelic percussive oddity by Romeu Fernandes. Personally, I prefer when Mr Bongo go deeper into the more idiosyncratic, but this is a fine addition to the series. Comes on double with 12” x 12” info sheet with background on tunes. Soundway Records’ Ayo Ke Disco comes from a similar place as sides three and four of the above, but with a lively idiomatic twist attributable to its South-East Asian origins. Put together by DJ (and, apparently, “supper club chef”) Alice Whittington, AKA Norsicaa, there are some dancefloor belters in the disco vein, such as the title track by John Philips & The Steps (from Indonesia), but also fabulous funk such as Black Brothers’ “Mangge Mangge” (from New Guinea) and even Arabic-sounding bubblers like Ahmadi Hassan’s “Habibi (Mari Bersatu)” (from Malaysia). Comes in info-packed gatefold and is a treat. The back cover of Decca’s The Psychedelic Scene made my eyes prickle, a photo of World of Oz, one of the many flash-in-the-pan Sixties bands featured, decked in de rigeur primary-coloured ruffed shirt finery, their eager grinning faces full of excited conviction that they’re the next Beatles or, at the very least, the next Move. This isn’t surprising if their output was akin to the hash-soaked tabla-backed slowie “Like a Tear”, one of the most genuinely out-there tunes here. These four sides, on pink transparent vinyl, contain only a few whose names still resonate – The Moody Blues, Small Faces, Al Stewart, and 10cc’s Graham Gouldman who was, er, Garden Odyssey Enterprise. The music runs the gamut from R&B punkers amping up the early Stones game, blatant attempts to join the Fab Four’s Magical Mystery Tour, straight-ish Sixties pop with a pastoral rainbow twist, and a few genuinely stoned-out numbers such as The Fairytale’s welcome “Guess I Was Dreaming”. It all speaks of a more innocent time when the counterculture was rising and drugs WERE the answer. Nice. Nothing meta about it. But, the outstanding pick of these four comps is Synthesizing the Silk Roads, a fantastic double set in a triple foldout sleeve of fab graphic art and detailed info. All 15 tracks were recorded in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, and the notes detail the complex relationship between the Soviet Union and the local music scene, both oppressive and sometimes encouraging. The music is approachable yet off-the -wall, from the awesome 6’30” bongo-synth head-fry of “Aarezoo Gom Kardam” by Nasiba Abdullaeva to sweet mournful strange easy listening by Makhfirat Khamrakulova, to masses of brilliantly demented and hectic disco-rock, oddball synth-pop and more. This one is essential.

The Special AKA In the Studio (Chrysalis) + Rhoda Dakar Sings The Bodysnatchers: 45 Year Edition (Sunday Best)

By 1984 The Specials had mutated into various line-ups put together by founder Jerry Dammers. While original singer Terry Hall had been having hits with Fun Boy Three, The Special AKA was flopping about, musically interesting but lacking direction. With the hit “Free Nelson Mandela” in March 1984, one the greatest, most effective protest songs of all time, the band were well-paced to make a comeback. They now consisted of Dammers, his old pal Rhoda Dakar from 2 Tone band The Bodysnatchers, fresh young singer Stan Campbell, original Specials drummer John Bradbury, Swinging Cats guitarist John Shipley and new bassist Gary McManus. But, as important, were guest personnel, most especially long-term Specials brass man Dick Cuthell, who co-wrote a number of the songs and aided Jerry Dammers in his increasing exploration of jazz. There was, at the time, a jazz revival in the UK, or so the NME had you believe, extensively covering now forgotten bands such as Working Week. But the public weren’t buying it, or, indeed, In the Studio (which scraped into the Top 40). It’s not an immediate listen. As a teenager, I found it disappointing. Then again, it’s not really an album for most teenagers. As a middle-aged bloke, I can hear more in the bleak, biting lyrics and tricky musicality of “Racist Friend”, “War Crimes” and, most especially, the excellent “Alcohol”. “Free Nelson Mandela” is here too. Cut deep and well at 45 on two records, there’s also a 12” x 12” photo/info insert. Returning to Rhoda Dakar, her band The Bodysnatchers had a single hit, “Let’s Do Rock Steady” (reached No.22 in 1979). They didn’t exist long and are primarily known for becoming The Belle Stars, but Dakar joined Dammers instead. 10 years ago, she put together a band, including Horace Panter and Lynval Golding from The Specials, for an album representing a Bodysnatchers live set, what might have become their debut album if they’d ever made one. Now available on vinyl, and featuring three extra cuts, including one featuring L.A. ska-punk Aimee Interrupter, it also includes the band's two singles and “Hiawatha”, which went on to be The Belle Stars debut. Comes on vinyl coloured black, white and maroon in thirds, in an info inner sleeve containing extensive reflections from its maker.

Saagara 3 (Glitterbeat)

Waclav Zimpel is a Polish musician whose work is usually experimental, exploring the fringes of jazz and electronica and moving them towards abstraction. It’s avant-garde in places. With Saagara, while still on the artistic fringes, he becomes more approachable, joining forces with four south Indian musicians, three percussionists, Giridhar Udupa, K Raja, Aggu Baba, and a violinist, Mysore Karthik. This quartet bring a base of Carnatic Indian classical music stewed in jazz sensibility. This is the quintet’s third album together and it successfully blends the hypnotic potency of drone music with something more propulsive. Only the weirdest dancefloors will actually move their feet to it but put it on the turntable and your brain will dance itself into dervish-like whirls, becoming lost in its Indo-kosmische journeying.

Warhaus Karaoke Moon (PIAS) + Aron Dahl Moth/Flame (Abstract Tits)

Two albums by singer-songwriters who don’t stick to a predictable main drag, wandering off into the undergrowth to explore and showcase their own particular visions. Maarten Devoldere, of the band Balthazar, records solo as Warhaus. Karaoke Moon is his fourth album. All his output that I’ve heard is worthwhile, strongly channelling I’m Your Man-era Leonard Cohen against a modern palette of classy bedroom electro-pop. His latest is as vital as ever, a tasty addition to his oeuvre, thoughtful, tuneful and sedately emotive. Comes in photo/lyric inner sleeve. Norwegian singer Aron Dahl’s songs, which mingle gentle synth-pop with occasional acoustic guitar pieces, are quietly straightforward and approachable, but the subject matter sets them apart. They are literate, precise lyrics about his love life and sex life as a gay man, filled with diaristic detail that unexpectedly finds “quiet tenderness” in clubland sex dungeons, as well as a multitude of observational brilliance. It’s a beautiful album that offers an unlikely heartfelt window into aspects of life which seldom make it onto vinyl. Comes in lyric gatefold. Bonus points for being on a label called Abstract Tits.

Aboubakar Traoré & Balima Sababu (Zephyrus) + Songhoy Blues Héritage (Transgressive) + Various The Albarika Story (Acid Jazz)

Three with an African back story. First off, Aboubakar Traoré, the Belgium-based Burkina Faso singer and virtuoso on the ngoni (the west African gourd-bellied, stringed instrument) and his band Balima. Their second album travels in the footsteps of Mandingo griot storytellers but updates the sonic backdrop, which is hypnotic but also has an oomph that might appeal to rock-friendly festival audiences. Songs such as “Djarabi” are almost an Afro-take on accessible pop-rock. There’s jazz in there too. It’s a well-crafted album that bridges mainstream western tastes and something more interesting. Displaced Malian outfit Songhoy Blues are forced to live away from their Niger River homeland due to idiotic anti-music religious nonsense that would be dismissably pathetic if it wasn’t so dangerous and terrible. As it is, they’ve carved themselves a career outside Africa and, as anyone who’s seen them live will attest, deliver a feisty version of desert blues-rock. Their fourth album though, is a mellower affair, as rhythmically groovy as usual but with their plaintive singing over acoustic instrumentation. It is apparently closer to the root sound from whence their music is drawn. This might have deprived the band of their edge but, instead, replaces it with a sweetness that fits just as well. Comes on transparent orange vinyl in photo/info inner sleeve. On the inner sleeves of double set The Albarika Story, the label’s illustrious history is laid out in a densely informative piece by French expert on African music, Florent Mazzolini. The label was set up from a music store in Porto Nuevo, Benin, and throughout the Seventies (I think – all sources are vague on dates!) fired out the tunes included here (they also released the fabulous Les Sympathics de Porto Novo Benin album). At the heart of the operation was the supremely talented Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, who are all over these two discs like rash. It is the sound of an African country excitedly absorbing Cuban jazz stylings and James Brown, all at the same time, into their own music scene. This music buzzes with upward movement.

Various Like Someone We Know: A Celebration of Margo Guryan (Sub Pop)

Big up Sub Pop for putting this together. I confess I’d never heard of Margo Guryan, although it turns out I know her delicious song “Sunday Morning”. Initially a pure jazzer, walled in by the snobbery of her community towards pop during that her era (Fifties/Sixties), upon hearing The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds she had an epiphany and started writing songs, some of which became her sole album, 1968’s Take a Picture. Like Someone We Know is a reinterpretation of that album by artists ranging from the vaguely known (Clairo, Rahill, Margo Price, Pearl & the Oysters) to those more obscure (June McDoom, Barrie, Frankie Cosmos and Good Morning, etc). Research reveals that Guryan was, accidentally (I’m being presumptuous), one of the first to tune into the opiated narcotic quality certain easy listening has. This engendered later interest in her from rock bands and electronica sorts. This double in art/info gatefold gorgeously exaggerates such tendencies (but not too much) and is a lovely gouched-out listen. Guryan died in in 2021, aged 84, and this is an apt and delightful tribute. Comes on hot pink “loser” vinyl and “a portion of the proceeds … will be donated to providing and advocating for affordable reproductive health services”.

Pearl & The Oysters Planet Pearl (Stones Throw) + Common Saints Cinema 3000 (Starsonics) + Abstract Crimewave The Longest Night (Chimp Limbs)

As per the above review, these three albums all owe a small debt to the place where easy listening becomes something more, perhaps due to an ingestion of mind-expanders, perhaps of rock music, perhaps both. It says something that all three albums boast space imagery cover art, whether kitsch, prog rock-ish or post-modern. Los Angeles-based French duo Pearl & The Oysters consciously emulate lounge exotica, singer Juliette Pearl Davis’s voice perfectly sugared for the task, but they also inject some of the funkiness we associate with label Stones Throw. In lyric gatefold, there’s an airy sweetness that’s endearing. Comes on vinyl that looks like the start of Doctor Who in 1974 on a black’n’white TV. Common Saints’ album is prog-ish but not in the “aren’t I clever” key changes sense, more akin to a fusion of prime mid-Seventies Pink Floyd with French Moogonauts Air. It sounds like a band but is, in fact, the solo work of Charlie J Perry, a successful producer who’s worked with Jorja Smith and others. When left to his own devices, he’s clearly into something more epic. Happily, he’s also adept at finding his way to an actual tune. Comes on blue “meteorite splatter” vinyl. Abstract Crimewave also have pop pedigree as they are Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John, and Joakim Åhlund, producer of Charli XCX, Robyn and others. Hence, presumably, how they can persuade Chrissie Hynde, Lykke Li and Dungen on to their album. This is actually their third album – but it’s not because they used to be called Smile for two albums until that Radiohead spin-off hijacked the name. The pair aren’t afraid of lounge saccharine but combine it with wibbly production redolent of the early electronic noodles of Klaus Wunderlich and the like. The chorusey upbeatness can get a bit “Yellow Submarine” – ie too much – but, overall, there’s enough odd-pop here to make it worth a dip.

Jerron Paxton Things Done Changed (Smithsonian Folkways) + Katie Knipp Me (KatieKnipp)

A couple of very different decent swipes at the blues. 35-year-old Jerron Paxton describes himself thus: “I grew up in Los Angeles playing for the last generation of folks who grew up listening to Black banjo players”. Despite being raised on the border between Watts and South Central, a region more associated with gangsta rap than traditional music, he was drawn towards the banjo and older music styles. Although all the songs are of his own creation, they sound as if they might derive from the American folk canon. Injected with occasional harmonica and basic percussion, Things Done Changed is a raw and persuasive album in the tradition of the great bluesmen of the mid-20th century. Comes with a 12” x 12” four-page booklet that lays out background and lyrics. If Jerron Paxton harks back to where the blues came from, Katie Knipp exuberantly wanders a variety of places it ended up. Also from California, and with a following in that state, her sixth album ranges across blues rock, piano ballads and even songs with operatic leanings that sound like they might hail from a lost musical. Whatever style she playfully adopts, she does so with conviction and musical muscle, the blues element swirling about somewhere in the mix, however loosely. I would love to see her play live.

Gallops The Offa Society for Psychicalm Research (SKANDALKONZERT) + Bogdan Raczynski You’re Only Young Once but You Can be Stupid Forever (Disciples) + Sal Dulu Naguschia in Fantasy (LEX) + ADRA Music for Psychiatric Wards and Fluid Structures (ADRA)

Four electronic outings, each in a very different vein. Starting with the noisiest, Welsh trio Gallops fire out a loosely occult-themed five-track EP they describe, rather excellently, as “like a provincial Ghostbusters without the budget or sense of humour”. What this means, in practice, is hammering, noisy-bastard industrial techno, post-Rephlex-ian splatterings, and the sound of a robot uprising buggering your head with machinery. Loudly produced, with occasional slivers of tune (notably on the less frantic “The Crunching Teeth of Sharks”, it’s a tonic, if you’re in the mood. Talking of Rehlex Records, one of their old boys, Bogdan Raczynski, is the king of pissing-about electronica, as the title of his latest suggests. However, this is misleading as this may be the most cohesive and all-round listenable album he’s ever made (he will probably be appalled to hear!). The Polish-American experimentalist has created a work that drops the demented post-junglist rhythmics and focuses on lovely synthesized melodies flittering like android butterflies between wonk-beats and strangeness. One of the year’s best electronica albums. Dublin producer Sal Dulu, on the other hand, has returned to those chopped-about beats for his second album, which is hip hop-tronica that pays conscious tribute to saxy jazz, submerging the whole concoction in a mush of ambient smudge and found sound voices. Well, produced, dense, abstract, fudgy-stoned and ear intriguing, it’s an album for heads. Comes on very light pink vinyl. Much more chilled is theartsdesk on Vinyl’s ambient album of the month, which is by Yorkshire musician Andy Abbott; nine pieces of music that he has developed playing in psychiatric wards, using electronics, loop pedals, thumb piano, guitar, harp strings, springs and other oddments. He explains that, “If it was a flat day, I may decide to do something a bit more upbeat or if it was a very chaotic day or people were agitated, I would play ambient music to try and calm things down.” It’s a great idea and the music lives up to the promise, a cup of spicy tea for the mind, soothing without being dull or new age bland.

Jhelisa Galactica Rush (Dorado)

One of the more unlikely emails I received this year was a PR telling me Jhelisa had blown up on TikTok, one billion views, 500,000 items of related created content (“creations”), all for the Sunship “Into the Sunshine” remix of her song “Friendly Pressure”. Actually, in the age of SZA et al, her brand of stoned trip hop makes perfect sense. It’s chill, as the younglings persistently say. I first came across Jhelisa Anderson as a singer with The Shamen at the start of the 1990s and followed her career, buying a couple of 12”s along the way, so I’m curiously chuffed that this flashlight of recognition has suddenly been cast her way, and that she’s taking advantage of it (new music and live shows in the offing). Her 1994 debut album stands up, richly stoned funk grooves although not all super-laidback (as per the shouty urgency of “There’s Nothing Wrong”). Welcome back Jhelisa, sounding good remastered and half-speed cut at Abbey Road.

Kiddus I, Bazbaz & Tchiky The Salmon (X-Ray Production/22D)

Kiddus I is best-known for an appearance in the groundbreaking 1978 reggae flick Rockers. He’s been around the block a few times since and now returns with an album of pop-reggae, blending into funk and rock, a cheerfully easy going set, utterly unconcerned with purism. Perhaps this is because he’s accompanied by the French duo of pianist Bazbaz and De La Soul’s touring guitarist Tchiky. Although recorded in Jamaica, such a collaboration doesn’t sound promising on paper, but still works. It makes no attempt to be a cutting-edge effort. Or even hark back to any classic reggae style. Instead, it’s a spirited amalgam, its own thing, fusing the musical chops of all three. Comes in photo/lyric inner sleeve.

ALSO WORTHY OF MENTION

James Taylor Quartet Hung Up on You (JTI): Hammond-centric Kentish mods, the James Taylor Quartet have had so many spin-offs, directions and incarnations in their 40 year existence. Notably among these are their Eighties retro film music persona and their 1990s acid jazz iteration, but they’ve also done everything from funk side-projects to library music. Always prolific, their latest doesn’t sound like a band of their tenure, boasting punk chops, the spirit of The Who, and a genially lively channelling of late 1960s pop. A nice surprise.

Dylan Rippon Destroy the Now (Hero Rhymes With Zero): Dylan Rippon is, I think, a Holland-based Brit. While you’ve been doing whatever you’ve been doing this century, he’s been turning out album after album. Last year’s Destroy the Now garnered a small tail wind, in terms of his profile, and now appears on vinyl. Themed around digital dissonance, his music is as likely to muster an Eighties-sounding synth-pop, channelling Suicide and early Human League, as it is a Psychedelic Furs-type post-punk-pop sound. It’s well-produced and mastered, as well as being hooky.

Dar Disku Dar Disku (Soundway): Dar Disku are a Bristolian duo who have Arabic heritage and their debut album, partly recorded in Turkey, Algeria and Tunisia, reflects that. But mostly, it reflects their love of disco. Almost everywhere the album goes, whether dipping deep into Middle Eastern scaling, it seems underpinned by the idioms of New York’s late 1970s dancefloors. As if to ram this point home, one highlight is a song featuring the mighty Indian-American cult disco star Asha Puthli. On photo/info gatefold, this is a fine set, much of which will capture a forward-thinking dancefloor.

Dead Chic Serenades & Damnation (Upton Park): Emanating a Birthday Party/Bookhouse Boys/Gallon Drunk feel, Franco-English rock four-piece Dead Chic sound like they’d be great live. Their debut album is engagingly fervent. Singer Andy Balcon has a gruff voice that swerves to howls where necessary, accompanied by a band who bridge mariachi spirit and twangin’ rock’n’roll. With a raw fierceness spiked with slinky internationalism – as well as actual songs – these are ones to watch. I can imagine them in those Warmduscher/Viagra Boys festival slots.

Tina Turner Turns the Country On + Acid Queen + Love Explosion (Parlophone): The first second and fourth solo albums by Tina Turner. The best of them, by some considerable distance, is Acid Queen from 1975, the last album she made with notorious husband Ike Turner still in the picture (she left him a year later). In the wake of her role in the film Tommy (from where the title derives) and her recognition by The Rolling Stones and other stars, Tina Turner was coming into her own. That said, Ike wrote or co-wrote the whole of Side Two and was involved in the arrangements (bizarre-fact fans will enjoy that Ray Parker Jr, of Ghostbusters fame, plays guitar). The music is a superb combination of bawdy soul-funk and Stonesy honkytonk rock, sexy as hell, and ripe for dancefloor boogaloo. This reaches its apex at the end of cover version-filled Side One (two Stones cuts, two by The Who) with a fantastic, stripped-back funk take of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”. Turns the Country On was Ike’s 1974 attempt to broaden Tina’s appeal with white audiences. Her take on tunes by Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and James Taylor are sturdy and enjoyable enough. 1979’s Love Explosion is the least of the three, an attempt to blend in with Donna Summer disco that only occasionally lights up, as on then manic jazz-funk of “Music Keeps me Dancin’”. After the latter album Tina Turner’s career was a dead duck which only made her (initially Heaven 17-engineered) Eighties super-comeback all the more astonishing. All three albums are mastered fat’n’loud.

Thee Headshrinkers Head Cheese (Property of the Lost): Those who know Hastings label Property of the Lost may guess that local trio Thee Headshrinkers are rooted deep in the rock’n’roll dirt. Remember when The Fall would cover old psyche classics. There’s sometimes something of that here, albeit these 12 songs are all originals. Then again, sometimes, we wander into New York Dolls territory. Or party like The Jim Jones Revue. Wherever it goes, Head Cheese smears bar rock sass about like beer spray. Comes on scarlet vinyl with a four-page photo/lyric booklet.

Lisa Gerrard Come Tenderness (Gerrard): Aussie singer-musician Lisa Gerrard has carved herself out a lucrative career as the movie world’s go-to for mystic-sounding vocal cuts that add atmosphere, from Gladiator to Dune. She’s likely also popular in new agey shops once the sun sets. Come Tenderness is her own curated selection of songs from her huge back catalogue. When speaking of its theme she describes it as “a meditation of subliminal attempts to subtly embrace the soul tissues.” Gerrard’s language-less vocalising is its own thing, is immediately recognisable and does, indeed, have a certain wafty, 4AD-records-on-spliffs potency.

Utah Saints Utah Saints (London) + Energy 52 Café Del Mar Boxset (Superstition): A couple of packages that celebrate (slightly) seminal Nineties rave biz. Yorkshire duo Utah Saints broken ground in 1991 when they took the principles of KLF’s notorious The Manual into the charts with pummelling bangers that sampled famous pop songs, “What Can You Do For Me” (the Annie Lennox one) and “Something Good” (actually ’92, the Kate Bush one). Sadly, the album versions don’t contain the chopped shouts of “Ya-ya-ya-ya-Utah Saints” at the start but are, nonetheless, bullishly of their time, basically constructed rave monsters. More interesting are cuts such as the tuneful semi-Balearic flow of “Trance Atlantic Glide” or the Slayer-sampling, hip hop-rock of “I Want You”, the latter well ahead of The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land. On double, with a tasty interview/essay by DJ Magazine’s Carl Loben on the inner sleeves, the final side contains remixes by CJ Bolland, Union Jack and DJ Misjah, of which the latter’s acid techno assault is the best. Move on a couple of years to 1993 and German outfit Energy 52, consisting of DJ Kid Paul and Cosmic Baby, laid down one of the defining tunes for what became known as trance (this initially meant applying European classical-flavoured synth lines to techno beats). “Café Del Mar” has since been a deathless clubland staple, regularly topping broad-based polls. Its central riff is immediately recognisable and, while very worn, still sounds like MDMA-induced euphoria. Now Superstition Records have put together a boxset with four 12”s and a bonus 10” (the latter featuring new remixes by Amirali and Rezarin). The defining Three ‘N One remix, which gave the tune its initial longevity, is there, alongside the original and more recent takes, including Paul Van Dyk’s suitably epic XOXO remix from 2021 and an Orbital version from earlier this year. There are also remakes by Michael Mayer, Tale of Us, Nalin & Kane and Deadmaus. The truth is that, tied hard to that infamous riff, none of them go too far away from the original (although Mayer makes a game effort). It’s in a limited edition of 500.

Public Service Broadcasting The Last Flight (SO): Public Service Broadcasting always do what they do with dedication and class. For those unfamiliar, their work takes a subject, such as, in the past, the space race or Britain’s coal industry, and, using historical samples, electronics and more traditional indie musicianship, builds an album around it. They have been consistent but one does have to be in the right mood. Their latest is conceived around Amelia Earhart’s final, fatal flight, attempting to circumnavigate the globe (coincidentally also the subject of Laurie Anderson’s recent Amelia album). The music is effective, whether mood pieces or actual songs, and this is another solid addition to Public Service Broadcasting’s canon, with “Towards the Dawn” an especially euphoric highlight. Comes in gatefold.

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp Ventre Unique (Bongo Joe): With a name that is never going to garner them commercial purchase, Swiss-French collective Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp continue their fascinating journey into… well, what, exactly? There’s African music in here, for sure, also a post-punk desire to jar, as well as a smattering of sing-along Gallic pop. The album makes no particular attempt to gel as a whole but has a piecemeal brilliance. When things start drifting into the wilfully tricksy a percussive roll returns and draws the listener back in. This is their sixth album and is as defiantly unique as they always are, whether noisy, brass-led or indulging in skittering rhythm exercises. Comes with 12” x 12” info insert.

Douze & Lo Galbo Dawn: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Love Ltd): This is cleverly executed. The front and back cover make it look so like an Eighties soundtrack reissue that I spent some time searching Google for info about the original film (the promo for Fame, from 1980, and Cat People, from 1982, spring to mind as a visual reference). The music backs this up. It sounds like incidental music found in films ranging from Scarface to War Games, Moroder-esque, yacht rock-ish, disco-lite. In fact, it’s an exact pastiche, the work of Parisian Arnault Esteve, AKA Douze, a production associate of clubland sorts Alan Braxe and Kris Menace, and Dutch producer Martijn Poulus, AKA, Lo Galbo. Their imitation game is hot. The vinyl is also classy, featuring a smattering of blackened red over the label, which looks like lava at night, or an apocalyptic Los Angeles sunset.

Gitkin Golden Age (Wonderwheel): Brian J Gitkin is a New Orleans musician who has achieved a degree of recognition working with Cedric Burnside. As I write, he’s touring the world as support for New York soul-funkers Say She She. His latest solo outing is a lot of fun. He plays the guitar in a twangy, globally flavoured style, that owes most of its debt to Africa, over keyboard backing tracks. That sounds rudimentary but it’s done in a way that’s charming, jolly, and full of bounce. It’s modernist exotica easy listening and the mood reminds me of producers from a couple of decades back, the likes of Jaffa, Pimpie Jackson and Q Burns Abstract Message, ie providers of lively, bubbly yet unobtrusive soundtracks to late night chatting.

Duran Duran Danse Macabre De Luxe Boxset (BMG): Last year’s Halloween-themed album from the 1980s new romantic superstars receives a boxset rerelease. The original album is here on gatefold double, with an additional disc of unreleased extras. The original was a patchwork of iffy cover versions, just-passable cover versions, reworked old Duran tunes (some half-decent), and three originals, one of which holds its own. Of note on the third disc is a giallo-like synth instrumental called “Masque of the Pink Death” and a fresh “Dark Phase” version of the band’s “New Moon on Monday” hit. So, one for the completists then. The extra record feels very much like a Nick Rhodes project. He likes to keep busy, that one! Of course there is other gumph inside: a Ouija board and metal planchette, a booklet, Danse Macabre tarot cards and four black’n’white postcard art prints.

Dora Morelenbaum Pique (Mr Bongo): Virtuosic musician and singer Dora Morelenbaum is a member of super-sexy Brazilian combo Bala Desojo (by which I mean genuinely sexy music and live shows, rather than simply exposed flesh and relentless intimations of fuck-availability). She is also part of a Brazilian musical dynasty, perhaps explaining her skillsets. Her solo debut does not wander a million miles from Bala Desojo but is also not as musically varied, having, instead, a light jazz-funk underpinning throughout. It’s classily done and makes clear that she’s very much a talent in her own right. Comes in lyric inner sleeve.

Gavin Friday Ecce Homo (BMG): Gavin Friday is a true Irish renaissance man, painter, actor, composer, etc, but is, perhaps best-known as the lead singer of U2-adjacent goths The Virgin Prunes, a band that featured The Edge’s brother on guitar. An old and close mate of Bono, his career has always wandered along oft-connected to doors opened by Ireland’s biggest band. His new album, however, was created with another longstanding pal, Dave Ball, and is bangin’ club-pop, not a million miles from Ball’s most famous band, Soft Cell. Ecce Homo, though, is tougher, offering hi-NRG hard house thrust, as it’s title hints. There are catchy songs along the way too. It comes on transparent dark blue vinyl in a three-way fold-out sleeve featuring info and striking high camp portraits of Friday.

Queen Queen I (EMI): It’s hard to imagine Queen, from the distance of half a century, as just another band, suddenly thrust into the studio, scrabbling to find their sound. But this what 1973’s Queen I is, a unit in thrall to their times, a lively mingling of prog and heavy rock. That said, they are unmistakably Queen, that operatic intensity is present, Freddie Mercury’s vocals immediately recognisable too, and songs such as “Great King Rat” and “Liar” showcase sweaty heft. Included for the first time on this reissue is the epic folk strum of “Mad the Swine”, originally left off due to the band’s sonic perfectionism. The album closes with a one minute instrumental taster for “Seven Seas of Rye” which, when completed, would later be their breakthrough hit and on the album that followed.

Bryan Ferry Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1972-2023 (BMG): A two-record gatefold collection which Bryan Ferry’s website says, will “fully explore the depth and breadth” of his solo output. And, indeed, it showcases Ferry’s propensity for exploring different musical styles, from the Roxy-ish 1973 reinvention of Bob Dylan’s "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” to the whispery Todd Terje-produced Balearica of “Johnny and Mary” at the album’s close. The latter was originally by Robert Palmer, and the other thing this ear-pleasing set showcases is how much Ferry enjoys a cover version, although his own cuts own hold up (albeit I prefer his atmospheric pared back rejig of Roxy’s “Casanova” to the mid-Eighties smoothery of “Slave to Love”).

MDC Multi Death Corporations EP (Crass) + Hit Parade Plastic Culture (Crass): Two more from Crass Records’ compelling 2 By 2 And Back Again reissue series. These are always a welcome window into the urgent countercultural politics of the 1980s, reminding how much I miss the will to change appearing in musical form. MDC’s 1983 12” is what most people – wrongly – think anything associated with Crass sounds like, ie, ballistic political shouting over a catalytic but unmemorable guitar racket. It arrives inside a fanzine-like art/words poster which like, the music, decries the USA’s brutal, disgraceful interventions in the statehood of its Central and South American neighbours. Hit Parade, on the other hand, is Belfast native Dave Hyndeman, and his 12” double-header, “Product of the Troubles"/ "Media Song”, is more sonically interesting, consisting of electronics somewhere between Art of Noise, Fad Gadget and early Tackhead, playful but battering where necessary, with spoken-spat lyrics about life in Belfast at that time and the inanity of mainstream TV. It’s not more-ish but, from 1984, it’s ahead of its time.

Green Day American Idiot (Reprise): This album takes me straight back 20 years to when it was inescapable. Well into their career, the Californian pop-punkers decided to make a rock epic that reflected the times, notably pissed-off at the idiotic foreign policies of George W Bush. At the time, it was always a pleasure to hear “Holiday/Boulevard of Broken Dreams” on the radio (remember that, the radio?), even if the album was not one I ever bought (remember that, buying songs rather than renting them?). It remains a ballsy, catchy hunk of multi-tracked guitar power pop, filled with tune and ebullient feeling. There’s ambition in the “suite” songs “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Homecoming”, but their piecemeal nature isn’t consistent, and this listener has a better time with lyrically tight stadium boshers such as “Letterbomb”. Comes on double in gatefold on vinyl that’s a smirch of red and black.

AND WHILE WE’RE HERE…

• Marysia Osu is a Londoner of Polish heritage whose debut album harp, beats & dreams arrives on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label. As the title suggests, it twinkles with harp play, but is as much an airy exercise in jazz-ambience, broken beats filtered through a rustling reverbed backdrop, occasional singing from fellow Brownswood alumna and south Londoner Plumm, and wafting clarinet by Osu herself. It’s an ultra-calm listen, for sure.
• In a similar vein to the above is the latest from Nikolaj Svaneborg and Jonas Kardyb, AKA Svaneborg Kardyb. Entitled Superkilen and on Gondwana Records, it has the same rustling reverbed “active environment” quality as Marysia Osu, a production technique I like (my favourite in this vein, since you ask, is Swedish pianist Matti Bye’s This Forgotten Land). The duo combine keys and percussion into another solid dose of chillage.
• Sometimes an album arrives which is evidence of such unimaginable pain and upset it’s hard, in terms of a review, to know where to begin. Such is the case with Diamond Falls, the second album from Sephine Llo, the musical project of folk-fluid composer Josie Lloyd-Wilson. The music and lyrics reflect the death of her husband Robert while she was pregnant, and combine her work with his unheard demos (he was in proggy Brighton alt-folkers Autumn Chorus). The result is surprisingly un-morose, much of it containing a string-swathed lightness, also resonating, especially in the crystal vocals, with sadness. Clearly a cathartic work, those taking a dip should check “Rest With Me”. On her own eponymous label, it comes in lyric/info gatefold.
• The latest from hip hop-tinted singer Maverick Sabre has a great title, Burn the Right Things Down. On Famm Records, it’s constructed from loping breakbeats of the kind that were popular late at night in the 1990s, but overlaid with a modernist rock-soul flavour, not too distant from Rag’n’Bone Man, Teddy Swims et al. His vocals not always to the forefront, sometimes it’s just a groove, pleasantly listenable but without stand-outs. Comes on 45 RPM double transparent vinyl with 12” x 12” lyric insert
• Welcome but unexpected from Los Angeles alt-tronic label Brainfeeder is the third album, New Internationale, by London-based, female-fronted English-French-Turkish duo Kit Sebastian who, as ever, deliver a likeable modernist take on global exotica-versed easy listening, with an edge of kitsch psychedelia. Comes on red vinyl in photo/lyric inner sleeve.
• Meanwhile, from Switzerland, via the north-east German label YNFND comes the smudgy head-wobbly music of Ali Dada, whose latest album, SUM, consists of ultra-laidback, trip hoppy beats, over which reverbed soundscaping and ambient-to-fuzzed instrumental band interplay occurs. Head music that arrives on bright aquamarine vinyl with a 12” x 12” art/photo insert and a nice ABOLISH THE POLICE postcard art print.
• After being away for a while – which makes it sound like they’ve been to prison – they haven’t – Austrian duo Leyya return on Minor Changes Records with a third album, Half Asleep, on 45 RPM double in lyric gatefold, with a die-cut cover art. On it they combine Rephlex-ish post-drum & bass skittering, indie songwriting interludes, and electronic trickery with airy female vocals from Sophie Lingdinger. Ear-interesting but needs more hooks.
• Acid Jazz love their reissues – and why not, as Barry Norman used to see. Their latest is a tenth anniversary edition of London outfit New Street Adventure’s only album, No Hard Feelings. It comes with inner sleeve notes from frontman Nick Corbin and Acid Jazz’s Dean Rudland. The latter suggests the music was original because it isn’t derivative of The Jam, however, I’d disagree, it’s like a fusion of late-period Jam/early Style Council instrumentation but with a singer whose style and way with words is very 21st century. Comes on very dark green vinyl.
• Saloon are not a band I recall but, apparently, John Peel had a soft spot for them at the start of the millennium and featured sets by them twice on his BBC radio show, once in August 2001 and once in April 2003. Now these sessions appear on Precious Records, one per each side of vinyl. The first set comes on like femme-fronted, supremely C86 indie, cute but a bit noisy, but by the second set they’ve developed into a more interesting proposition, allowing space and psyche vibes into their music. Comes in photo inner sleeve.
• Tim Bowness is a good mate of the emperor of 21st century prog, Steven Wilson. The pair comprise the duo No-Man and do podcasts together and, indeed, Wilson masters Bowness’s latest album, Powder Dry on Kscope, although the production (and everything else) is by Bowness himself. There is something of indie psychedelicists such as The Chrysanthemums and the fey tones of Momus about Bowness’s work, but it’s more consciously crafted as experimental, albeit wandering about without losing sight of the actual tunes (mostly). Comes in art/lyric inner sleeve.
• I’m assuming Oslo band Mayflower Madame have listened to a few Sisters of Mercy records in their time. They put this to good use on their third album, Insight on Up In Her Room Records, which even opens with a track channelling “Marian”. Overall, they’re twangier and rockier than the Sisters, akin to Fews and Editors, but the songs are persuasive and, at their heart, is an Eldritch charm. Comes on vinyl that looks like an aquamarine black hole (aquamarine is a popular look with vinyl this month).
• Clive Langer is pop royalty, for his work with Madness alone (although he also co-wrote “Shipbuilding” and has worked with everyone from David Bowie to Dexys). Now he gets together with two members of his original alma mater, cult Liverpool outfit Deaf School, for a new outfit called The Clang Group. Their album New Clang on Fretsore Records sounds thrown-together, boisterous pop-rock lyrically spiked with dry humour and lyrics that emphasise the prosaic, the whole package owing a small debt to early-Seventies LSD singer-songwriter eccentrics. Comes in lyric inner sleeve.
• Danish guitarist Sara Lew (Sara Lewis Sørensen) has a distinctively spaced-out style, clanging and echoing, a dreamy feel, even on harsher tracks. Jazz flavoured but with rock intent, her new album, LOUD on Cloudland Records is atmospheric, her light voice weaving about the echoing FX-laden guitar.
• British duo Maven Grace were a trio last time I came across them (on last year’s debut album Sleep Standing Up). The pairing of singer Mary Home and producer-instrumentalist Henry Jack return with Surface With a Smile on Helium Records. They major in elegant easy listening, orchestrated largesse over trip hop beats, seasoned with elements of John Barry film theme opulence and melodic suss. Comes in photo/info inner sleeve.
• Brooklyn-based soul and jazz lovers Big Crown Records make a good home for the debut album, Ruby, from Dave Guy. Who? He’s a sidesman who’s worked with everyone from Amy Winehouse to the Lizzo, as well as being a key player in The Budos Band and The Dap-Kings (of Sharon Jones fame). The album is as you might expect, skilfully composed, easy rollers that foreground his trumpet. It borders into easy listening but does so with stoop summer evening aplomb.
• Los Angeles’s Stones Throw, meanwhile, have built up a solid rep for gauging where vanguard sounds bleed into something more approachable and, when they’re lucky, even sellable (hello Aloe Blacc). Thus it is with local duo King Pari and debut album There It Goes, which mingles head-nod electro-funk soul with occasional squallier sounds and warpier beats. It’s all very Brighton, very Love Supreme Festival… niiiiiice…
• 1980s Norwegian post-punkers Permafrost have their origins in the early Eighties but were, it seems, dormant for the next four decades (I love the way the press release bypasses this by observing that their debut appeared on cassette in 1983, then “they followed this up” in 2019). With British Depeche Mode associate Daryl Bamonte now in the band, their first “proper” album, The Light Coming Through on Fear of Music Records, is crisply produced, dripping a sound midway between Joy Division and something poppier (snifters of The Cure in the guitars and A-Ha in the melodies).
• The third album from Lisbon-based Londoner Leifur James continues his mission into combining post-Jeff Buckley vocal stylings with electronic boundary-pushing, as James Blake might have done if he hadn’t opted into anxiety music for the anxious masses. Magic Seeds has moments of that but counterpointed with a wide palette of ear-pleasing wonkiness and zig-zag rhythms. It appears on NightTimeStories.
• The music of Danish outfit Efterklang foreshadowed the direction of contemporary pop. Which is to say they have usually balanced electronic production with careful orchestration and vulnerable, sometimes falsetto vocals. They’ve been going for yonks and their eighth album, Things We Have in Common on City Slang Records, is a delicate late-night affair for ruminating over. Not my thing but, hell, if it’s got to be someone, it should probably be them. Comes on azure-blue vinyl in info inner sleeve.
• Bath prog-metallers Sergeant Thunderhoof dip into their local myth and legend for the Arthurian The Ghost of Badon Hill on the appropriately named Pale Wizard Records. Vocalist Dan Flitcroft has a suitably epic voice for the job and is accompanied with sufficient guitar/bass/drums ballast. Whether one has an interest in folklore or not, this one is an old school headbanger.
• Glaswegian poet-writer-performer Kenny P. Gilday, together with musician Ralph Hector, AKA The Glasgow Cross, release (I think) their third album, How I Won the Culture War on Iffy Folk Records. It combines epic-tinged indie rock with spoken word, breathily melodramatic vocals, and occasionally intriguing lyrical content. Comes on yellow vinyl with a small, folded lyric/photo insert.
• Liz Jones & Broken Windows sound like a band you might come across in a bar in their native Edinburgh. Their second studio album, Double Measures, is an easy-going blend of folk and rock with playful forays into jazzy honkytonk, loose muso jams, and more. On Jones’s own eponymous label, it contains straightforward bar rock but the best of it is more musically playful. The fourth side contains songs from their debut, Bricks & Martyrs. Comes on double on aquamarine vinyl in info gatefold with an A4 photo/info insert.
• Ian Hunter has been around the block more times than most. He was already in his mid-thirties, well over a decade into his music career, when Mott The Hoople broke through with “All The Young Dudes” in the early-Seventies. After that group folded he had a period of low-level solo success in the States with the albums You’re Never Alone with a Schizophrenic (1979) and Short Back n’ Sides (1981). On the former he’s backed by The E-Street Band and, on the latter, by members of The Clash and, on both, by Bowie sidesman Mick Ronson. Both albums contain fruity, tuneful rock that, at its best, sounds like an amalgam of The Rolling Stones and Roxy Music, fronted by Hunter’s distinctive vocals. Both albums, via Chrysalis, come on double on gatefold with the second record full of bonus cuts.
• Glaswegian rockers Twin Atlantic are huge in their native Scotland and, although the wider UK has taken to them, their main fan base is north of Hadrian’s Wall. Vocals aside, the music on their latest album, Meltdown on Staple Diet Records, is not especially Scottish. It is polished, passionate alt-rock of a type one could easily imagine topping the US charts.
• Down in Cornwall, Falmouth to be precise, three-piece Rizts are onto their second album of what they’re calling “gothic grunge”. It’s self-titled and appears on Krautpop! Records, also Cornwall-based. Their music is morose punk-metal which occasionally, and entertainingly, veers into dub. The attitude is welcome but less moodiness and more outright energy would be welcome too. Comes on scarlet transparent vinyl on lyric inner sleeve.
• Move to the east a couple of counties and we find Taunton rockers October Drift, whose third album is called Blame the Young and is out on Physical Education Records. Fired with passion, this may be a band who listens to Fontaines DC. Whether they do or not, a smidgeon of that band’s in there somewhere, only amped up with stadium drama in indie-fuelled songs with big room feeling that look towards the big time. Comes on transparent vinyl.
• Things are not good over in Beirut, to put it mildly, and the latest from Lebanese duo Snakeskin acknowledges this on a hazed-out new album, They Kept Our Photographs on Mais Um Records. Vocalist Julia Sabral whisper-singers over gnarled but glinting soundscapes and spacey electropop, the whole emanating a muffled melancholy that sometimes intrigues. Comes with a sturdy 12” x 12” photo/info card insert.
• Klô Pelag – AKA Chloé Pelletier-Gagnon – is a well-established Quebecois singer who’s received acclaim in her native Canada. Her latest album, Abracadabra on Secret City Records, sung in French, contains maximalist pop, orchestrated and largescale, which has elements of Kate Bush, St Vincent, and Arcade Fire, but sounds like none of those. I’m now so keen on the OTT melodrama but some of the musical theatre-ish songs are more likeable. Comes on transparent blue vinyl in tricksily designed sleeve with a die-cut hole on the front that reveals a photograph.
• The third album from virtuosic Leeds noisies KOYO is called Onism (not “Onanism”!). Arriving on Watt Records, it showcases a variety of prog that owes more to Mogwai than the 1970s. The guitar/synth/bass/drums line-up offers a playful and accessible take on prog which drifts into funk-metal when it fancies. It’s fussy music but with enough pop suss to retain the interest.
• The Hard Quartet is, essentially, Pavement’s Stephen Malmus getting together with musical mates most won’t have heard of but who he’s known for years (their pedigree including outfits such as Chavez. Double, Dirty Three, The Cairo Gang and Will Oldham’s touring band). The eponymous debut album on Matador comes on double on transparent aquamarine vinyl in lyric inner sleeve. It’s jangly, quirky, easy-going US indie, relaxed on whimsy (“I smell a rat/I’m a cemetery cat”) and exactly the sort of thing Malkmus’s fans would expect from him.

• Bryan Adams was a retrogressive cliché when he first appeared in the 1980s, but the Europeans lapped it up (as did the US, initially), a Canadian who delivered a soft drink-suppin’, frat party version of blues-rock, kind of ZZ Top-lite. I always try to listen to old music I recall disliking with fresh ears for theartsdesk on Vinyl, but am struggling with Adams’ new four record Live at the Royal Albert Hall 2024 boxset on Bad Records. It comes with a booklet and Blu-Ray and I am going to take it off now.

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