March 2024
Psychedelic Rave, Heavenly Recordings, horror soundtracks and city pop plus a slew of new recommendations
Joe Muggs on Psychedelic Rave
In one sense, raving really was just a continuation of what began in the 60s. All nighters, pill-popping, delirium, strobes and smoke, immersive lightshows, freaky dancing – hell, the beautiful people of the 60s even called themselves “ravers”.
Chris Catchpole on Heavenly Recordings
…Barrett never considered limiting Heavenly’s horizons to just being a dance imprint and as such over its thirty plus year history, releases have roved across styles and genres, led mainly by Barrett’s magpie tastes and reliably good ears.
Collections
Harold Heath on City Pop
Musically, City Pop was influenced by disco, boogie, jazz funk and soft rock, and the best of the genre was characterised by superb songwriting, lush, opulent orchestration, complex arrangements, and production values as sleek and burnished as a brand new Mitsubishi.
Chris Catchpole on Horror Soundtracks
Many of these records have an allure of their own when extricated from their source material. You can enjoy much of Philip Glass’ work for the original Candyman without losing a wink of sleep, whereas the same couldn’t be said for Italian prog rock outfit Goblin’s masterful terror fest on 1977’s Suspiria (on the subject, there is a list in itself to be made solely on Italian horror soundtracks of the era).
Reviews
Jon Dale
I Am a Lineman for the County: Glen Campbell Sings Jimmy Webb
Webb’s songs were able to make simple things feel eternal, and Campbell’s voice carried Webb’s lyrics and melodies effortlessly, but without blanding everything out, and there was never any sense that he hadn’t connected with the material.
Magazine - Real Life
Magazine’s great achievement was to both surface and square the artfulness that was an undercurrent of punk, while making apparent its hidden connections with progressive rock.
Magazine - Secondhand Daylight
The group are clearly more aware of what they can achieve together, but they seem to be developing at an accelerated clip; the thing that stands out here, more than most anything, is the unrelenting energy of Barry Adamson’s bass playing, its wayward creativity.
Magazine - The Correct Use of Soap
Neither as indecisive as Real Life or as preserved in amber as Secondhand Daylight, the multiple moving parts of The Correct Use of Soap slide together perfectly; Magazine, as a playing unit, are on their best form here.
Nate Patrin
Kelela - Raven
Kelela’s formidable presence as a singer comes from her ability to heighten an emotional starkness amidst any sense of calm that surrounds her. If the backing track is steeped in warm-bath ambience, she makes it feel like euphoria; if it’s a stark and minimalist groove she pulls the tension to the forefront; if there’s a melancholy at the margins she’ll bring out a level of intense longing that feels explosive even when it’s quiet.
Blockhead - The Aux
…there’s a difference betwen having nothing left to prove and being a consistent presence long enough that he might get taken for granted — and The Aux sounds like the kind of album purpose-built to thoroughly discredit that tendency.
Harold Heath
Joe Bataan - SalSoul
This 1973 set from Latin-soul singer, musician, producer and songwriter Joe Bataan is an important and influential album, while also being an absolute joy too.
Andy Beta
Kali Malone - All Life Long
Highlighting work for brass quintet, chamber choir, and an array of antique pipe organs scattered across European cathedrals, All Life Long is Malone’s most assured and personal album to date.
Black Jazz Records: The Complete Singles
Black Jazz only issued 20 albums during their run, but this compilation shows that they also released a batch of 45s aimed directly at the jukebox.
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou - Souvenirs
…these recordings feel not just familiar, but furtive, made in secret and smuggled out with her when she left her homeland for the very last time, moving to a cell at the Church of Kidane Mehret in Jerusalem.
Jeff Treppel
Christian Death - Only Theatre of Pain
Cemetery-gated drums, eldritch intonations, toothsome belfry bat basslines – death rock began here. Not exactly goth but Christian Death definitely hung out in the same hallway behind the theater in high school.
Megan Iacobini de Fazio
Ibaaku - Joola Jazz
Even more so than on Alien Cartoon, his first album, all of Ibaaku’s different facets come together on Joola Jazz, whether on the heady mix of polyrhythmic percussion and thick basslines and soaring synths on “Bombolong” and “Buku,” two of the album’s most club oriented tracks, or the blend of jazz and more traditional sounds on “Jazz Griots” and “Bumiro.”
Wagadu Grooves: The Hypnotic Sound of Camara 1987-2016
African music flourished in Paris in the 1970s and ‘80s: whether soukous or mbalax, electro-raï or Mandingo zouk, the cosmopolitan city fostered the fusion of traditional sounds and modern technology, and the kind of musical syncretism that gave birth to countless modern African styles.
Rick Anderson
Louis Armstrong - The Complete Hot Five & Hot Seven Recordings
Initially forming a quintet with his wife Lil Hardin (piano), Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), and Johnny St. Cyr (guitar/banjo), Armstrong and his colleagues proceeded to redefine the sound of jazz, bringing his particular affinity for collective improvisation and his joyful, free-swinging performance style to the fore.
Ned Raggett
Xmal Deutschland - Early Singles (1981-1982)
If anything, their ear for working in electronics on many tracks lends them a synth-punk edge also very much in keeping with other acts in the general Neue Deutsche Welle atmosphere of the time.
Ben Frost - Scope Neglect
If you knew absolutely nothing about Ben Frost’s creative approach before listening to the first notes of his 2024 album Scope Neglect, his first non-soundtrack solo release in seven years, you’d be forgiven for assuming he was a straight-up metal musician with a fondness for stark pauses in between riffs.
Shy Thompson
Moe Kamura - うさぎのくらし [Usagi no Kurashi]
Her eventual pivot to the leftfield may seem stark, but the transition is gentle when you consider the totality of her output — and Usagi no Kurashi is a vital part of her evolution.
Chris Catchpole
Plush - More You Becomes You
The almost demo-y, home recorded intimacy (at one point he bursts out laughing, at others you can hear him leave the room) masks the fact that Hayes meticulously recorded, re-recorded, mixed and remixed the record to create a listening experience that feels like having a front row seat for that rare moment where inspiration and genius collide.
Can - Live in Paris 1973
Live In Paris 1973 turns the clock back a few years to capture what many consider to be the group’s greatest line-up at the absolute peak of their powers.