…remastered by Kevin Gray from original analog masters recorded by Rudy Van Gelder.
On View at the Five Spot Café: The Complete Masters collects the original 1960 album, recorded in New York City with a killer quintet line-up, along with nine additional tracks from the same club dates – six of which are being released for the first time. Burrell, a classically-trained guitarist who’d logged time with giants like Dizzy Gillespie (his first professional gig), Oscar Peterson, Billie Holiday and Tony Bennett, made his debut as a bandleader on Blue Note’s 1956 release Introducing Kenny Burrell. He’d cut two more LPs for the label by the start of the decade and several more for Prestige, but Blue Note was behind his first live recording as a bandleader. Working with hard bop…
Category: remastered
Freshly remastered as part of Lo Recordings’ long overdue campaign to reissue all the releases on Susumu Yokota‘s Skintone label, Magic Thread is the first in a series of 14 individual albums. And honestly, we’d forgotten exactly how this one sounded. Yokota was a great producer – maybe one of THE greats – but he released a lot and it’s been easy to fixate on the biggies. But listening back now, it’s fair to say that Magic Thread has been overlooked for too long. It’s not as immediately satisfying as ‘Grinning Cat’, but its textures and techniques are just as impressive. Just check the pitch-bent loops on opening track ‘Weave’, or ‘Unravel’ with its layers of crunchy, evocative noise.
And Yokota isn’t completely operating in the ambient zone. On ‘Circular’, he drowns out…
…The record has been lovingly remastered and cut from the original tapes by John Baldwin at Infrasonic Sound in Nashville, TN.
After recording the material that would later comprise the bulk of Invisible Hits, The Soft Boys recorded their masterpiece, the shimmering neo-psychedelic Underwater Moonlight.
Essentially, the band didn’t change their style for the record — they merely perfected it. The Soft Boys don’t hide their influences — whether its the ringing guitars of the Beatles and Byrds or the surreal humor of John Lennon and Syd Barrett — but they assimilate them, resulting in a fresh, edgy take on ’60s guitar pop. Robyn Hitchcock‘s subject matter tends to be more explicitly weird and absurdist than his influences, as titles…
…restored and remastered by The Carvery Studio.
Originally released in 1976, K. Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas is widely considered one of the greatest highlife albums ever recorded. Although initially popular in Ghana, these albums were never widely distributed internationally, and original copies are now extremely rare. After a limited reissue in 2011, the albums have been unavailable since, with even reissue copies commanding high prices on the second-hand market.
…Led by the enigmatic Alhaji K. Frimpong and backed by the legendary Vis-A-Vis band, this cult Ghanaian classic fuses traditional percussion and horns with early synth experimentation, pushing highlife into bold, avant-garde territory. The album features the beloved anthem…
‘Can You Fly’ is the second critically hailed album by singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston. It was released in 1992 on Bar/None Records. Remastered with bonus tracks.
A giant step forward from his likeable but ragged debut, Freedy Johnston’s Can You Fly is a stunningly accomplished and coherent album that recalls the raw lyricism of such quintessentially American writers as Raymond Carver and Richard Hugo. Johnston sold his family’s Kansas farm to finance the recording of Can You Fly, a fact that’s cited in the record’s opening line and reflected in several autobiographical songs about the guilty downside of pursuing a dream. Elsewhere, Johnston creates rich character studies of people who are vaguely aware that their lives…
A twenty-minute video filmed at Other Music, a record store in New York, captures Stars of the Lid live in 1996. Shot on a camcorder, the duo, the late Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie, are playing in a seemingly ad hoc space. While the latter stands next to a bookcase and a ladder, the former is perched left of frame by a door opening onto a packed closet. They tune up and chat, a guitar chord hits a longtailed delay and starts looping. The point where the banter stops and performance starts isn’t clear cut.
In terms of video, it captures a sparsely documented stage of Stars Of The Lid’s history, nearly two decades before they would return to NYC to play in a church for Boiler Room, but this time bolstered by a chamber orchestra.
…features a remastered LP of Mic City Sons’ 12 original songs, plus a set of rare demos and unreleased tracks.
Heatmiser was an indie rock supergroup of sorts, featuring songwriters Elliott Smith and Neil Gust (No. 2), as well as Sam Coomes (Quasi) and the multitalented Tony Lash. The quartet’s finest and final album, Mic City Sons features a decidedly more pop feel than its predecessors and marks Smith’s maturation into the role of the band’s visionary. From the opening notes of the swaggering, bass-heavy “Get Lucky” to conclusion of the album with a soothingly soft hidden track, Mic City Sons is an outstanding collection of diverse and invigorating tracks. Songs like “Plain Clothes Man” and “You Gotta Move” exhibit…
A new 4CD clamshell box set by the acclaimed British ‘retro rockers’ Cats in Space. This special collection features the band’s first four albums with original singer Paul Manzi, ‘Too Many Gods’, ‘Scarescrow’, ‘Cats Alive!’ (recorded at The Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff) & ‘Daytrip To Narnia’.
Chapter 1 gathers together these deleted and sold-out albums in this remastered collection which also includes some exclusive bonus tracks, a historical, illustrated booklet with essay and a pull-out colour poster.
Announcing this release Cats in Space said: “Our early albums are no longer available, so it made sense to re-release them with our record label team at Esoteric Recordings and Cherry Red Records orchestrating something extra special…
…feature new remastering from the original analog tapes and include two bonus tracks, “Some Kind of Woman” and “Black Moon”.
After years of playing a dispiriting game of musical chairs with various lead singers during the early ’80s, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi finally stumbled upon a dependable frontman when he admitted relative unknown Tony Martin into the fold, thereby initiating the original heavy metal band’s long awaited return to respectability — if not chart-topping success. Martin joined the oft-interrupted sessions for what would become 1987’s The Eternal Idol album already in progress, stepping in for an unreliable Ray Gillen when the latter moved on to Jake E. Lee’s Badlands, and helping Iommi rescue an astonishingly….
Cosmopolitanism, scholar Paul Gilroy tells us in his 2004 work After Empire, is a dangerous framework when applied from the top of the power structure downward. Too often, he writes, powerful agents who participate in such “have never paused over the actual history of past imperialism and the ongoing effects of colonial and imperial governance” (66), an eliding of the experiences of those subjected to such – the majority of the world’s population, Gilroy notes.
In the world of reissued 1970s records originating in the Global South, there is no shortage of narratives — and counternarratives — that emerge from cosmopolitan phenomena. Ken Andi Habib, an album by Algerian singer-saxophonist Freh Khodja, has just been rereleased on…
…Originally issued on CD in 2003 and unavailable for some years, this new edition has been remastered and expanded to include two previously unreleased tracks recorded in a session for Pennine Radio in 1978.
After parting company with Genesis shortly after the release of Trespass in 1970, Anthony Phillips went quiet for a fair few years. Although he overcame the illness and stage fright that led to his disappearance, he took a while to establish himself as a solo act. But by the time he recorded this album-long session for Radio Clyde in 1978, he was balancing increasingly experimental urges with pressure from his label to pen something short and friendly, as punk relegated his sort to persona non grata.
…remastered by Mark Wingfield and includes two bonus tracks, recorded in Tokyo, Japan, on August 10, 2003.
On this 2003 effort, ex-members of the fabled British band Soft Machine reunite as Soft Works for a set consisting of loosely visualized pieces. And while Soft Works’ roots harken back to the late-’60s to early-’70s prog rock-based Canterbury Scene, the band spanned genres including jazz fusion and free jazz during its tenure.
Bassist Hugh Hopper, saxophonist Elton Dean, and drummer John Marshall are noted for their longstanding tenure with this time-honored outfit. In addition, guitar hero Allan Holdsworth periodically performed and recorded with the group during the mid-’70s and early ’80s.
Remastered by Technology Works.
Strut presents a new edition of one of Sun Ra‘s most celebrated albums, Sleeping Beauty, reissued in its original artwork for the first time. Originally released in 1979 on his independent Saturn label, Sleeping Beauty captures Sun Ra and his Arkestra at their most soulful and serene. A masterclass in cosmic jazz, the album blends lush grooves, celestial soul, and meditative funk with Ra’s singular spiritual vision — a sound both grounded and otherworldly. The album emerged during an extraordinarily fertile period for Sun Ra in late-‘70s New York. Between 1978 and 1982, Ra “occupied” Variety Recording Studios on West 42nd Street, often staging marathon sessions following late-night Arkestra gigs around…
One listen to Koko Taylor growling out the names of folks she hung with like “Automatic Slim,” “Razor -Totin’ Jim,” “Pistol Pete” and “Kudu-Crawlin’ Red” on her 1965 breakout “Wang Dang Doodle,” and you knew she wasn’t the shy, retiring type. Although the song was originally performed by its writer Willie Dixon, Taylor’s snarling, raspy, take-no-prisoners voice created a blues classic.
It was a fitting debut for the woman who would come to be acknowledged as the Queen of Contemporary Blues; one who continued her reign until passing in 2009 at the age of eighty. She was nominated for a staggering 11 GRAMMY’s (winning one), and became the standard that other tough women blues belters would be compared to. The careers of artists from Janis Joplin…
…re-mixed by the legendary Sylvia Massy (Prince, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty)
Jason Isbell’s 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern was written and recorded in the wake of Isbell’s newfound sobriety, and it often sounded and felt like a musical version of the Fourth Step, in which Isbell took a long, hard look in the mirror as he came to terms with the emotional wreckage he left in his wake during his years as a drunk. By comparison, Something More Than Free, Isbell’s 2015 follow-up, plays out as the work of a man a year or so into his recovery, grateful but still working with the nuts and bolts of living as a better and more mature man while the shadows of the past remain faintly but clearly visible. The opening tune, “If It Takes a Lifetime,”…
Martha celebrate over a decade of fiercely melodic power-pop with Standing Where It All Began: Singles and B-Sides 2012–2025, a 20-track collection gathering deep cuts, rarities and out-of-print favourites.
…Standing Where It All Began has been lovingly re-mastered by the brilliant Dave Williams (Eight Floors Above). The band felt it would be fitting to use the remastered version of the first song they ever recorded and released, “1978, Smiling Politely”, as the de-facto ‘single’ to promote this collection. It’s a song inspired by Audre Lorde, that they still love, but it’s one that has never been available on streaming platforms before.
The band had the following to say about the release: “It’s been cool going back to these…
Recorded over a year after Chick Corea’s debut Tones for Joan’s Bones – a record cut in late 1966 but not appearing until 1968 – Now He Sings, Now He Sobs feels like his true first album, the place where he put all the pieces in motion for his long, adventurous career. Much of that has to do with the closed quarters of its recording. Supported by drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Miroslav Vitous, Corea has the freedom to run wild on his five original compositions, letting chords cluster alongside fleet melodic runs. Haynes and Vitous play with the same sense of liberation, which pushes Now He Sings, Now He Sobs into a sweet spot where hard bop and avant intersect. There’s an intellectual rigor balanced by an instinctual…
Remastered and beefed up with an extra disc of archival tracks and unreleased live recordings
Flags of the Sacred Harp is a comeback album of sorts, released after a hiatus in the band’s activity and a lineup reconfiguration that sees the return of Nudge leader Honey Owens and the arrival of guitarist Adam Forkner. The break was beneficial, because this is the group’s tightest, most pleasant album to date. What strikes first is the song orientation: at least five of the seven pieces can be rightfully called songs. That said, fans of the group’s experimental side need not worry.
The 16-minute instrumental “Spirit” aptly illustrates that persona of Jackie-O, while a song like “Nice One” develops into looser sections that surely couldn’t be interpreted as a sellout decision.
Chris Rea’s 1988 compilation, New Light Through Old Windows, will reissued in June. The ‘best of’ was unusual in that Rea re-recorded most of the songs (hence the title) and it also featured a brand new song called ‘Working On It’.
New Light Through Old Windows capitalised on the success of Chris Rea’s previous studio album, 1987’s Dancing With Strangers, which had reached number two in the UK, and the re-recording of ‘On The Beach’ was released as a single, reaching No 12 in the UK. The collection went triple platinum, peaking at No 5 in the UK album charts and paved the way for the massive success of 1989’s The Road to Hell. For this reissue, the compilation has been remastered and is issued on CD and as a 2LP set pressed on recycled black vinyl.
…Intrada revisits one of the most notable reissues of their catalogue as a tribute to the label’s 40th anniversary and the passing of its founder Douglass Fake last year, with a fresh new revisiting of Jerry Goldsmith’s score to First Blood.
One of his most respected scores of the ’80s, First Blood adapted David Morrell’s novel about John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran whose mistreatment by law enforcement in a small Washington town unlocks his capabilities as a ruthless Green Beret. Following a trio of Rocky films that elevated him as writer and star (and, for the latter two, director), First Blood offered Sylvester Stallone a second iconic character and franchise – one he reprised in four sequels between 1985 and 2019.
Goldsmith’s bold work was an early release as…