Setting the tenor for his career as a world music pioneer, Yusef Lateef mingles Islamic sounds with jazz aesthetic on this, his first album. After touring with Dizzy Gillespie, he went on to release this hard-bop masterpiece in 1957, backed by bassist Ernest Farrow (Alice Coltrane’s sibling) and trombonist Curtis Fuller. Here, Lateef plays everything from tenor saxophone to the lute-like rabat (on the mercurial meditation, “Morning”) and the flute-like argol (on the bright, punctuated sonic excursion, “Metaphor”). Ultimately, his mingling of East and West feels as intriguing as it is effortless. Upon its release, DownBeat praised that “Almost without exception the tracks give a feeling of warmth, a mood of relaxation, and good feeling, an uncomplicated emotional propulsion.”
Category: *editions*
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Clannad’s 1985 album, Macalla (meaning “Echo” in Irish) and newly remastered by Phil Kinrade at Air Studios. This ninth studio album became their first international success and marked a significant point in the band’s career, showcasing a blend of their traditional Irish folk roots with a more mainstream, pop-influenced sound.
Building on the momentum from previous successes like “Theme from Harry’s Game” (1982), which gained international attention and was even used by U2 as concert outro music, and their award-winning soundtrack for the TV series “Robin of Sherwood” (released as the album Legend in 1984), Clannad was poised for a breakthrough in markets like America.
After years of obscurity, Pulp shot to stardom in Britain with 1994’s His ‘n’ Hers. By the time Different Class was released at the end of October 1995, the band, particularly lead singer Jarvis Cocker, were genuine British superstars, with two number two singles and a triumphant last-minute performance at Glastonbury under their belts, as well as one tabloid scandal.
On the heels of such excitement, anticipation for Different Class ran high, and not only does it deliver, it blows away all their previous albums, including the fine His ‘n’ Hers. Pulp don’t stray from their signature formula at all — it’s still grandly theatrical, synth-spiked pop with new wave and disco flourishes, but they have mastered it here. Not only are the melodies and…
Jeremy Allen White becomes the Boss in biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Directed by Scott Cooper and based on the book of the same name by Warren Zanes, the film charts Bruce Springsteen’s personal and professional struggles during the creation of his 1982 album ‘Nebraska’. Other cast members in the film include Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Gaby Hoffmann, Marc Maron and David Krumholtz.
The film’s score is by Jeremiah Fraites, who is best known as a co-founder of The Lumineers. He recently provided the score for this year’s film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk.
Columbia Records will release a separate soundtrack featuring the songs from…
…The box set collects the two albums the band recorded for Atlantic Records during their peak commercial period: ‘Spend the Night’ (2002) and ‘Gold Medal’ (2004). The third disc is a collection of bonus tracks, B-sides, acoustic versions, and live performances.
So said the publicity at the time of its release, this despite these four girls being, “Every mother’s nightmare, every school boy’s dream,” according to Spin magazine. Spin also reckoned they were, “The coolest band in America,” whereas Kerrang! recognised their, “Grimy, glorious rock ‘n’ roll… dripping star power and packing irresistible pop-rock.”
Taking inspiration from the punky pop rock of the Ramones and The Runaways, mixed with..
Kiss’ third album Dressed to Kill – the edge of their commercial breakthrough – is getting done up to the nines for its 50th anniversary.
…The 1975 release, featuring “C’mon and Love Me” and, arguably the group’s signature song “Rock and Roll All Nite,” has been newly remastered by Bernie Grundman. Bonus audio material includes 23 unreleased demos and outtakes, including the unissued songs “Mistake” and “Burning Up with Fever,” and the debut release of two concerts recorded in 1975 and utilized for the group’s breakthrough Alive! Here, they’ve newly mixed by Alive! engineer Eddie Kramer – and, crucially, stripped of any studio overdubs utilized on that “concert” LP.
…Though the New York quartet had a taste for…
…remastered from the original tapes.
Tom Jenkinson’s first release appeared in a limited edition of 1,000 vinyl copies in 1994, issued by Spymania sublabel Nothings Clear (which didn’t put out anything else). Preceding his earliest releases as Squarepusher or under his own name, the initially self-titled Stereotype remained one of the artist’s rarest recordings until Warp finally gave it a proper reissue as a Squarepusher album more than 30 years later.
The album has none of the jazzy bass guitar or blitzkrieg drill’n’bass that Squarepusher is best known for, instead exploring acid hardcore. The first two of the album’s six tracks each pass the ten-minute mark, with “Whooshki” looping a cerebral synth sequence for 16 minutes,…
In every permutation, Bad Company were a rollicking good-time band, but it’s fair to say that the six albums Paul Rodgers fronted remain the most beloved by the fan base. Much like Black Sabbath, it was the Ozzy Osbourne years that have stood the test of time, demonstrating the importance of a lead singer to a group. On this tribute album, Can’t Get Enough: A Tribute to Bad Company, Rodgers guests on three different tracks, gently guiding younger artists in their efforts to find truth in his work.
Drummer Simon Kirke, like Rodgers, appears on “Seagull”, which boasts Def Leppard songwriters Joe Elliott and Phil Collen as well. In this stripped-down fashion, this arrangement recalls Elliott’s yearning “Two Steps Behind”. A vocal spar…
…An expanded reissue of their stellar “Acoustic Junk” (2009) record, this album features five new acoustic recordings alongside five tracks from the original album — three of which have been remixed for this compilation.
Known for their haunting melodies and introspective songwriting, the band’s acoustic arrangements on this collection showcase the raw beauty and emotional depth that have been at the centre of their individual sound since their inception. The band comprises Margo Timmins (vocals), Michael Timmins (guitar), Jeff Bird (mandolin, harmonica, bass, percussion), Andy Maize (backup vocals), Josh Finlayson (banjo), and Jaro Czerwinec (accordion). The album was produced, partially recorded, and…
Recorded in Lisbon in 2023, ‘Cornucopia Live’ documents Björk’s expansive tour, presenting high-quality live versions of the album’s best tracks alongside updated fan favorites like ‘Isobel’ and ‘Pagan Poetry’.
Björk has always gone all-out on her live productions, and ‘Cornucopia’ was her most monumental tour yet, billed as an attempt to unite her various interests – nature, technology and sound. She directed the ambitious event herself of course, but brought in help from James Merry, and had Andrew Thomas Huang, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Pierre-Alain Giraud, Nick Knight, Tobias Gremmler and Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton-Jones along for the ride. There’s a filmed version recorded beautifully by cinematographer…
The four-CD Deluxe Edition of the set includes a remastered version of the original album, discs of rarities and previously unreleased songs, and a live show recorded just weeks after the album’s release in October 1975.
…Though The Last Record Album was not Little Feat’s final effort, it did mark a significant change in the band’s process. Frontman, producer and songwriter Lowell George ceded some compositional ground to keyboardist Bill Payne and guitarist Paul Barrere. Their growing interest in jazz fusion would push the band away from the southern-inspired boogie rock George favored. (He sang lead on five of the album’s nine tracks, and wrote or co-wrote only three.) Despite this increasingly fractious arrangement,…
In the 2020s, Elton John started offering 50th anniversary deluxe editions of classic albums in his catalogue that hadn’t been expanded to multi-disc sets yet. After Madman Across the Water and Honky Château, expansions of Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player and Caribou were only made available as vinyl expansions for Record Store Day activations. That changes with a new general retail expansion of Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy arriving this fall with a bonus disc of unreleased material.
Due October 24, the album (remastered in 2016) will be paired with a second disc featuring unreleased session demo versions of five songs from the original LP (including two takes on the title track) as well as a near-full…
…The album’s original 12-tracks return in freshly remastered form, while the total number of rarities spread across CD and digital versions totals 23 tracks, including early demos, remixes and B-sides including four previously unreleased.
As Super Furry Animals settle into their second decade of recording and with it their status as veteran rockers, they’re inevitably less surprising than they were at the outset of their career, when their music not only had an exhilarating rush, but there was a sense of impish glee, the sense that they were getting away with something that they shouldn’t. That naturally has declined with the passage of time, yet with their seventh album, 2005’s Love Kraft, SFA show signs of settling comfortably into their status as…
5-CD Super Deluxe Edition that features Zappa’s entire October 31, 1978, performance as well as a bonus gig from earlier in the Palladium residency on October 27.
…Zappa’s annual Halloween shows took root at New Jersey’s (also sadly demolished) Capitol Theatre in 1972 before moving to Chicago in 1973 and then, finally, New York City in 1974. Zappa knew how special these yearly events were, even filming Baby Snakes: The Movie at the 1977 shows. Sadly, the tradition was short-lived, taking a break in 1979 and 1980 (the latter year for health reasons) before returning in 1981 with two shows taped for broadcast on MTV and therefore designed as much for the at-home viewing audience as those in the Palladium’s seats.
Nebraska occupies a pivotal place in Bruce Springsteen’s catalogue, but for some that has never been enough. Ever since the legend of Electric Nebraska – Nebraska’s band-recorded alter ego – emerged, fans have wanted to unpick the knotty relationship between Nebraska and Born in the USA and hear electrified E Street versions of this sombre acoustic album.
As recently as June 2025, Springsteen was denying Electric Nebraska even existed – and nothing appeared on the recent, epic Tracks II set – but the mythical album is finally here, thanks to the deus ex machina of Deliver Me From Nowhere, a Bruce biopic that focuses on his angsty wrestling match between artistry and commerce (spoiler alert: he could have both).
Guardian Alien, the ecstatic experimentalists that singer-songwriter Alexandra Drewchin has run with over the last few years, have been described as “psychedelic.” But despite that tag — and despite the fact that they had a Rastafarian extraterrestrial on one of their record sleeves — the rapturous emotional peaks and torturous noisemaking that Drewchin contributed to the group always rendered their explorations more ritualistic and earthy than that label suggests. Their interest in psychedelic experience is more ideological than aesthetic, an idea that carries through on Drewchin’s first full-length release as Eartheater, Metalepsis.
Drewchin displays an all-consuming interest in blurring boundaries that burrows all the way down to the record’s textural details.