The Beatles are a singularly iconic rock band. While plenty of classic rock groups, like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and, most successfully, Queen, continue to rack up tens of millions of monthly Spotify streams, no other band remains as relevant as the Beatles. Many YouTubers build popular channels by explaining musical theory through their songs or by delving into the supposed mysteries of how their music was created.
That makes it increasingly more challenging to find a new perspective on the group. With a Little Help from My Friends: Covers of the Beatles 1967-1970 may well provide some interesting new points of discussion. Does it make for an equally enjoyable listening experience?
This 3-disc box set from Cherry Red Records…
Category: box-set
This is a huge undertaking, an eight-CD set comprising all the band’s official studio albums released between 2006 and 2014, with a few added extras. It features not just the original albums, remixed and remastered (and notably not by Steven Wilson, prog’s ‘go-to’ man for this task), but also rarities, bonus tracks and acoustic reinterpretations, as well as new stereo and immersive mixes. Together, these highlight the journey The Pineapple Thief has been on since taking their early formative steps.
Retracing Our Steps is the second such release commemorating the legacy of The Pineapple Thief, following on from 2023’s How Did We Find Our Way, 1999–2006, which serves as almost the definitive guide to the band and their early…
Compiled by Jonny Slut of the influential mid-week London club night Nag Nag Nag, When the 2000s Clashed: Machine Music for a New Millennium anthologizes the hipster club scene of the decade, starting with the electroclash movement and moving through dance-punk revival on to blog-house. Electroclash stapes like Peaches, ADULT., Fischerspooner, and Ladytron all appear on the first two discs, which also feature neo-electro classics like Vitalic’s vampire-rave bloodcurdler “Poney Pt. I” and Legowelt’s sublime “Disco Rout.” The haunting vibes continue with a remix of Golden Boy and Miss Kittin’s “Rippin Kittin” and Pet Shop Boys’ remix of Atomizer’s “Hooked on Radiation,” while the likes of Detroit Grand Pubahs’ “Sandwiches” and Avenue D’s “Do I Look Like a Slut?” revel…
…’Power to the People’ features 9CD, 123 tracks (90 of which are previously unreleased) to chronicle the story of Lennon and Ono’s political activism, spanning the prolific period between 1969’s anthem “Give Peace a Chance” and 1972’s controversial live album ‘Sometime in New York City’ as well as that year’s One to One concerts at Madison Square Garden.
The most challenging of John Lennon’s post-Beatles albums, there was latterly an additional barrier to Some Time in New York City being afforded the lavish box set treatment: namely that opening track, the still contentious, ‘Woman Is the N***** of the World’.
With said song now removed, a newly remixed version of the album – retitled New York City…
Concord Music Group reissue R.E.M. at the BBC, originally released in 2018, the comprehensive broadcast collection from R.E.M.
R.E.M. grew up with the BBC, and this historic relationship is lovingly celebrated across an incredible collection that beautifully illustrates the career trajectory of one of modern music’s greatest bands. The collection—available as a super-deluxe edition 8-CD/1-DVD box set, as well as 2-CD, 2-LP and digital formats—comprises a treasure trove of rare and unreleased live and studio recordings culled from theBBC and band archives. This is a must-have collection for R.E.M. fans and an authoritative introduction for newcomers.
In-studio performances featured in the 8-CD/1-DVD box set include a John Peel Session…
…Tentative Decisions includes the baker’s dozen of 1975-1976 demos (plus one live recording and two tracks from The Artistics, an embryonic version of the band) that was released on one clear vinyl LP and 7″ last November, adding an impressive 32 additional demos (taken from an abortive session to audition for CBS Records) and live cuts from early shows performed as a trio of David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth.
While Talking Heads were one of the most striking acts to come out of New York’s late ’70s punk scene, Tentative Decisions shows they didn’t start there, offering early versions of single “Psycho Killer” and deep cut “Warning Sign” credited to The Artistics, a group frontman Byrne and drummer Frantz formed with bassist…
In January 1984, The Colourfield released their eponymous debut single. It stalled just outside the Top 40, a better fate than that awaiting its follow-up, ‘Take’, a few months later, which barely made the Top 75 at all. It was a markedly different reception to that afforded frontman Terry Hall’s previous enterprises, both of which had been successful from the get-go: The Specials’ debut single ‘Gangsters’ was a Top 10 smash, while The Fun Boy Three debuted in the Top 20, the British public having chosen to ignore the fact that ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum’ was wildly uncommercial.
But the fans that were happy to send that gloomy stew of lumbering percussion, needling organ and lyrics about famine, nuclear war and…
5CD set featuring two solo albums from The Byrds/Flying Burrito Brothers member, plus solo live recordings spanning his career and a live album from the Gene Parsons Band, along with unreleased studio demos.
Recorded between multi-instrumentalist Gene Parsons’ membership of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, his 1973 debut solo album ‘Kindling’ is a country rock and bluegrass classic that also features his friend and fellow ex-Byrd Clarence White on several tracks. Parsons demonstrates his versatility by contributing guitar, banjo, pedal steel, harmonica, bass and drums.
Acclaimed author of Are You Ready for the Country, Peter Doggett has written the notes for this box and describes ‘Kindling’ as “a joyous…
Historic 4 hours of previously unissued 1959 live Art Pepper recorded at Vancouver, Canada’s legendary jazz club The Cellar.
The release of Art Pepper’s Everything Happens To Me: 1959 – Live at the Cellar is the stuff music archivists can only dream of finding. Recordings by an historic and important jazz artist, at a storied venue, at a time when the artist was making some of their most essential work. In this case, catching Pepper on tape at The Cellar in 1959 finds him in the midst of creating and straddling landmark releases like, Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section (1957), Modern Art (1957), Art Pepper + Eleven (1959) and Gettin’ Together (1960). Though Pepper was going through a down time, Vancouver, Canada’s jazz club, The Cellar was in full swing…
Compiling music from throughout continental Europe during the height of psychedelia and progressive rock, So High I’ve Been: A European Rock Anthology 1967-1973 touches on several different styles and movements, from Dutch Nederbeat to Krautrock. This ranges from more blues-based rock & roll and beat music to groups exploring the outer limits, either through cosmic jamming or more ambitious and conceptual means, like French Zeuhl legends Magma, who sing in a self-invented language. Selections by a few groups like the Rattles and Necronomicon are occupied with occult themes, but the music is closer to the dark side of prog, and not heavy enough to be deemed metal. Other material runs the gamut from druggy freak-outs to more…
…digital release with 7 bonus songs.
Congolese guitarist, composer and singer Dr. Nicolas Kasanda wa Mikalayi, aka Docteur Nico, reigned supreme during the ’60s and ’70s as a key innovator of African rumba.
This three-LP package includes 30 of his songs, from the African Fiesta Sukisa catalogue, featuring hits, never-before-reissued recordings and bonus tracks available digitally via Bandcamp, alongside a 28-page booklet containing expert commentary and previously unpublished photos from the Kasanda family archive.
The music testifies to Dr. Nico’s technical virtuosity and adventurous creative control of the African Fiesta band. A heavy Cuban sway drives songs like ‘A la Savana’, ‘Alto Songo’,…
A live album capturing their first Japan tour in 2005, realized 33 years after their formation, is finally being officially released 20 years after the recording!
Emerging from the Canterbury, England musical community that also launched Gong and Kevin Ayers’ the Whole World, the whimsical progressive rock unit Hatfield and the North formed in 1972. Named in honor of a motorway sign outside of London, the group’s founding membership brought together a who’s who of the Canterbury art rock scene – vocalist/bassist Richard Sinclair was a former member of Caravan, guitarist Phil Miller had tenured with Robert Wyatt in Matching Mole, and drummer Pip Pyle had served with both Gong and Delivery. After a series of lineup…
Wild Horses originally formed in 1978, when guitarist Brian Robertson left Thin Lizzy after the legendary ‘Live And Dangerous’ record, and bassist Jimmy Bain left Rainbow following the double live ‘On Stage’ album, joining forces to create this melodic, hard rock supergroup.
Originally featuring drummer Kenney Jones (Faces, The Who) and guitarist Jimmy McCulloch (Wings, Stone The Crows), the line-up stabilised when Robertson and Bain were joined by drummer Clive Edwards (Uli Jon Roth, UFO, Pat Travers) and multi-instrumentalist Neil Carter (UFO, Gary Moore).
They were signed to EMI following their appearance at the 1979 Reading Rock Festival, releasing their Trevor Rabin (Yes) produced debut ‘The First Album’ in 1980. Featuring the singles…
Backtracking a bit from previously issued volumes of the series, Musik Music Musique 1979: The Roots of Synth Pop functions as a sort of prequel, mapping out the blueprint of the new wave revolution of the ’80s, from synth-heavy post-punk and art rock to some of synth pop’s earliest chart-toppers. It’s not as if electronic instruments weren’t prominent in popular music before 1979, but synthesizers were clearly well on their way to being a defining characteristic of the musical landscape. The set starts with the Buggles’ “Technopop,” proposing a name for the music of the future — Kraftwerk would later give a song a similar title on 1986’s Electric Café, which originally had the working title Techno Pop as well, and decades later, a reissue retroactively bore…
…The long-standing duo of percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys, hereafter GBSR and augmented here by flautist Taylor MacLennan, offers Morton Feldman’s homage to his erstwhile artistic comrade Guston, along with Why Patterns? (1978) and Crippled Symmetry (1983) in a wonderfully annotated six-disc set commensurate with the label’s other Feldman and Cage boxes, for which all involved have been justly lauded. The label has made a specialty of these two composers who are, clumsily and too often, still associated with the New York School, a designation that does the individuality of their work no justice. It is, however, music for which performance traditions are still in formation, making these sets doubly important for the deep dives…
Spectralism is a type of composition that is organized by taking as its basis aspects of the harmonic series, or the overtones resulting from a sounding pitch. From the ’70s onward, composers, many of them residing in France or Romania, have looked at spectrograms of sounds to plot out the harmonies that they will deploy over time in a piece. This may sound rarified, but it is also one of the oldest traditions in music. Early humans listened for resonances, particularly in caves, some even using conch shells (brought in from many miles away) to create loud enough sounds to hear lots of reverberating overtones. Throat singers manipulate their voices to sound more than a single pitch at a time. If you have ever heard a bunch of higher sounds…
…40CD box set houses 319 tracks; the playing time is more than 28 hours. If features seven-inch single versions, 12-inch single versions, remixes, B-sides and non-album tracks.
Summer Time: The Singles Collection 1974-2010, coming from the late singer’s Driven by the Music catalogue imprint, is set to be a staggering tribute to Donna Summer’s decades-long presence as a dancefloor filler. Timed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough hit “Love to Love You, Baby,” this 40CD set will highlight five decades’ worth of single sides she issued all over the world, from early Dutch single-only tracks to material from her tenures on Casablanca, Geffen, Mercury, Warner Bros., Atlantic and more. Amidst the familiar hits (“Love to Love…
On February 10, Roberta Flack would have celebrated her 90th birthday. Though Flack passed away in February 2025, the occasion is being marked with a new box set from Rhino. With Her Songs: The Atlantic Albums 1969-1978 brings together the late artist’s first eight studio albums in one compact package.
With Her Songs kicks off with 1969’s First Take. Upon its expanded release in 2020 – still the only time an album of Flack’s has received a physical expanded edition – The Second Disc wrote, “Recorded in February 1969, the aptly titled First Take introduced the world to Flack’s talents. But it wasn’t until 1972 – after her version of Ewan MacColl’s ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ was featured in Clint Eastwood’s…
Five days after the all-star Clifton Chenier tribute album A Tribute to the King of Zydeco won a Grammy Award for best regional roots music album, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and Arhoolie Records are releasing a massive box set of Chenier’s original recordings.
Clifton Chenier: King of Louisiana Blues & Zydeco contains 67 tracks recorded from 1954 to 1983. The box set samples Chenier’s recordings for the Elko, Specialty, Chess and Zynn labels and, most of all, Arhoolie label. Unreleased in-concert performances also appear on the four-CD and six-LP retrospective, a project that marks last year’s 100th anniversary of the zydeco pioneer’s birth near Opelousas, Louisiana. Adam Machado, executive director of the Arhoolie…
CBGB’s was the center of the N.Y.C. punk explosion, as well as a welcoming place to play for all the artists and bands who followed in the wake. CBGB: A New York City Soundtrack 1975-1986 is a four-disc set that seeks to paint a picture of the original scene as it burst out into the open as well as detailing the various sounds and movements, like no wave and hardcore, that were born in the ensuing years. All the groups one would hope for are here, represented by slightly deeper cuts — Talking Heads’ sprightly live version of “A Clean Break” for one — along with a ton of lesser-known bands and a healthy dose of super-obscure ones. It’s the kind of collection where even someone with a healthy knowledge of the scene will be constantly surprised. One surprise element…