Category: *editions*


Donald Fagen’s Kamakiriad would be notable if only for the fact the album marks a full-on reunion of the two principal Steely Dan staples more than a decade after they splintered. For all the creative sparks and thrilling musicianship that result from the long-awaited regrouping of Fagen and Walter Becker, the 1993 record remains significant for many other reasons — from the hopeful narrative to the sharp playing, adventurous arrangements, and crisp production. More than 30 years later, those facets coalesce like never before on this reference-quality reissue.
Sourced from the original masters, mastered by engineer Rob LoVerde, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD presents the Grammy-nominated Kamakiriad with expansive…

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…newly mastered by Matt Colon at Metropolis Studios (under the supervision of Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes) and features the original track list alongside a curated selection of B-sides and rarities.
Primal Scream found themselves in danger of losing their hip audience in the wake of their misconceived trad-rock record, Give Out But Don’t Give Up. As a reaction, they returned to the genre-bending, electronic dance-rock of the seminal Screamadelica for Give Out‘s follow-up, Vanishing Point. Instead of recycling the dazzlingly bright neo-psychedelia of Screamadelica, Primal Scream reaches deep into cavernous dub and ’60s pop. Vanishing Point is a dark, trippy album, filled with mind-bending rhythms and cinematic flourishes.

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Multiple BMA winner, vocalist, songwriter, and song interpreter Janiva Magness has delivered her first comprehensive live album, 18 albums into her storied career, with Truth in the Room: The Clearmountain Sessions. The fact that she uses “Sessions” in the title suggests this is not your typical live date. You could call Magness a perfectionist. She wanted to be sure that she had the consummate engineer by calling on the legendary Bob Clearmountain. She recorded at Berkeley Street Studios (formerly Apogee Studios) to an intimate gathering of 150 invited friends and music industry guests. So, every possible element was in her favor. The terms had to be right. That being said, the album still has plenty of energy and emotional weight. Magness would…

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In the mid ’60s, Chess Records released a series of The Real Folk Blues albums that compiled singles from the careers of some of its greatest artists. John Lee Hooker’s The Real Folk Blues differed from many of the other compilations as it featured newly-recorded sessions for the label. These legendary 1966 recordings capture the essence of his signature sound and approach to the blues. Standout tracks include “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” “Stella Mae” and “I’m in the Mood.”
Bring home the sound of America’s greatest blues label in high fidelity with the Chess Records Acoustic Sounds Series. These audiophile reissues of classic albums and compilations from the Chess discography are remastered from the original analog tapes and pressed…

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Fondly referred to as “The Rockin’ Chair Album” due to the depiction of a rocking chair on its cover, Howlin’ Wolf by Howlin’ Wolf is rockin’ in more ways than one. This record captures the true sound of the electric blues with a compilation of singles previously released between 1957 and 1961. Featuring the talents of Chess mainstays including Willie Dixon, Hubert Sumlin, Sam Lay, and Jimmy Rogers, the album delivers a powerful sound. Standout tracks include “Little Red Rooster,” “Spoonful,” and “Back Door Man,” among others.
Bring home the sound of America’s greatest blues label in high fidelity with the Chess Records Acoustic Sounds Series. These audiophile reissues of classic albums and compilations from the Chess discography are remastered…

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CD 83-track box set tracing the development of indie music from the height of the Britpop explosion in 1995 through its aftershocks to the post-Britpop period in 1999, on the cusp of the new millennium. This box continues the story of indie/Britpop from Cherry Red’s Popscene: From Baggy to Britpop 1989-1994.
…1995 was the year that Britpop exploded into mainstream consciousness due to the infamous Blur vs Oasis chart battle that was even covered on the national News at Ten. Both bands had already scored UK number one albums in 1994 but going head-to-head in the singles chart ensured maximum media coverage. Their success focussed attention on a revolution in music that included acts such as Elastica, Paul Weller,…

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Kaiso Power: Sound Revolution in Trinidad 1970- 1980 is a collection of rare jazz, calypso and percussive gems from Trinidad and Tobago from the revolutionary generation of the ’70s, bringing radical new political vision and reclaiming ancient spiritual consciousness through music.
…From Soundway comes a slim (just ten tracks) and somewhat understated, but no less sublime, compilation of calypso and jazz from a time of political unrest and sonic experimentation in Trinidad. It’s with the second track, ‘Tabu’, that this compilation makes its personality clear – a laid-back feel that yields dancing alongside revolution. ‘River Comes Down’ is a welcome moment of slightly wilder abandon among the more easygoing pieces – it’s also one of…

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Following the 2LP vinyl edition for Record Store Day, XTC’s 17 April 1981 gig at Emerald City in New Jersey is released once again as Live Boots – Official Bootleg but this time as a 2CD set.
Dave Gregory recalls this as “Gig 11 on a 19-date U.S. tour, planned to promote the living daylights out of our Black Sea album, this night was a return to a hot venue we’d previously visited in January 1980 as part of the gruelling Drums & Wires campaign…. XTC at that time was a performing machine capable of creating megawatts of excitement.” Andy Partridge says: “We were tighter than a firefly’s fundament that night, even more astounding was the adrenaline-soaked speed we took every song at”.
This is apparently the first of a planned…

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In addition to being one-half of synth pop legends Erasure for over 40 years and engaging in numerous other solo and collaborative projects, Vince Clarke has racked up a sizeable discography of remixes. Remix/Remodel: The Vince Clarke Remixes selects 26 of them, though that’s nowhere close to complete.
The set begins with the first remix he ever did back in the late ’80s, a house-inspired version of Happy Mondays’ “Wrote for Luck” which stripped out the guitars and placed a thumping kick drum up front. The remix ended up being a bigger hit than the original album version, and helped define the alternative dance sound of the Madchester scene. Aside from this remix, however, the collection skips ahead two decades (leaving…

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Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux picked the band’s September 26, 1991 show at Boston Garden for release as Dave’s Picks Volume 59.
…the new collection features the most recent Grateful Dead concert date ever selected for the long-running live archival series.
Keyboardist Bruce Hornsby had been touring with the band for a year by the time the Grateful Dead arrived in Boston for a sold-out six-night run in September 1991. The two-keyboard iteration of the lineup — Hornsby and Vince Welnick along with bassist Phil Lesh, guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann — would remain intact through Hornsby’s departure the following March.
Dave’s Picks Volume 59 features the complete,…

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In the late 1970s, Neil Fraser, AKA Mad Professor, and his wife moved into a house in Croydon. “The normal thing would be to put in some chairs, a table,” he said in a podcast last year. Instead, the legendary dub producer fitted his living room with a four-track mixing desk and his collection of homemade gear, thus marking the beginning of the studio and label Ariwa Sounds.
The early years of Ariwa were captured in a 1984 album, which was reissued by Melodies International in 2023. Now, the two labels reunite to document the sounds that followed. This double compilation isn’t an attempt at a greatest hits collection, nor a chronological history, but an insight into the label’s expansive output between 1984 and 2026, featuring big names…

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…6CD special edition featuring unheard material, including early demos, alternate takes, and unreleased songs.
There’s a live recording on this boxset that seems to perfectly embody the challenges faced by Paul Weller after he split up The Jam. He and his new band, The Style Council, are playing the Goldiggers in Chippenham, Wiltshire, in March 1984, showcasing tracks from the upcoming Cafe Bleu album to an increasingly restless audience.
“I need absolute quiet for this number,” Weller insists, before a bossa nova called “The Whole Point of No Return”. The crowd start wolf-whistling as Dee C Lee comes out to sing “Paris Match” and, as the band perform low-key acoustic songs inspired, variously, by Antonio Carlos Jobim, …

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…the 2CD edition adds rare live recordings and early demos on CD2.
…The London-based three-piece, led by Brian Molko, caused a stir in the mid-’90s with a couple of singles on indies (‘Bruise Pristine’ on a Fierce Panda split 7” and ‘Come Home’ on Deceptive) before signing to Virgin subsidiary Hut. Placebo’s glammed-up image, post-grunge riffs and Molko’s distinctive vocals (not to mention the singer’s talent for promotion) quickly earnt them a besotted fanbase and in 1997 they broke through, with the spikey and sassy ‘Nancy Boy’ reaching No 4 in the singles chart and helping their debut album to go platinum.
Thirty years on, the band have returned to Placebo to give the album’s 10 tracks, plus…

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…new 50th anniversary 2CD expansion of The Flamin’ Groovies’ 1976 Sire debut is built around a new remaster of the original album from the analog tapes. The bonus disc adds previously unreleased outtakes and alternates as well as the existing audio from a Roxy show in ’76.
A lot had happened with the Flamin’ Groovies in the nearly five years that separated the epochal Teenage Head album and their return to American record racks with Shake Some Action. The Groovies lost their record deal with Buddah; lead singer Roy Loney had quit the band, leaving Cyril Jordan as the uncontested leader; and they had spent a lot of time in Europe, building a significant following in the United Kingdom. As a result, the Flamin’ Groovies on Shake Some Action…

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Peals — the Baltimore duo of William Cashion (Future Islands) and Bruce Willen (Double Dagger) — return with twin releases via Thrill Jockey: The Compound 76 and Le Pantoum 46.
Both albums document live performances in artist-run rooms separated by three years and a continent. Le Pantoum 46 was recorded in 2013 at Le Pantoum, a long-running DIY space in Quebec City partly run by friend of the band Jean-Michel Letendre Veilleux, during a North American tour with Small Sur that followed Peals’ debut Walking Field. Andy Abelow, then of Small Sur, joined the duo on that tour and plays saxophone on Blue Elvis and Floating Leaf — both Walking Field originals — beginning a collaboration that would continue on subsequent Peals records.

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Twenty-five years on from its original release, Warp Records brings Aphex Twin’s Drukqs back into print on vinyl and CD. Often proclaimed as electronica’s one true genius, Richard James, AKA Aphex Twin, returns with a double CD that showcases his cleverness as well as his inevitable inscrutability. Still, amid macabre birthday songs, unsettling screams, and other bizarre touches, Drukqs offers the most technically accomplished and beautiful tracks of Aphex Twin’s career. Every aspect of the Aphex brain is on display here, from stark pieces performed on sampled piano and zither to Squarepusher-styled drum and bass implosions, all informed by that peculiar Aphex treatment of bittersweet melody and unparalleled programming.

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