Welsh hard rockers Budgie are often cited as one of the first U.K. heavy metal bands, known for their dark, blues-infused sound built from gloomy melodies and fierce guitar riffs. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Budgie made music that hit harder than their peers, and without the smiling disposition that was common among bands of the psychedelic era.
Budgie’s 1978 offering, Impeckable, is a very uninspired affair, lacking both the adventurous songwriting and refreshing sense of humor characteristic of the band’s early records. The group continues exploring its funk obsessions on “Dish It Up” and “Love for You and Me” while shelling out boring metallic riffs on “Melt the Ice Away” and “Smile Boy Smile.”
Category: remastered
Pavement took different forms on each of the five albums they released during their initial hot streak in the ’90s, setting the tone for both the indie rock of their day and all that followed with each iteration. While their album output was relatively scant, the impression they made was outsized, and their combination of songwriting excellence and genre-defining laconic style made for multiple classic tunes on most of their albums. Hecklers Choice: Big Gums and Heavy Lifters is like a best-of compilation, and not Pavement’s first. In 2010, Quarantine the Past collected over 20 of the band’s best-loved and most-requested songs, making for a playlist that omitted a lot of the experimental sidetracks and oddball moments that showed up on most of the albums.
Including sessions recorded by Art Pepper for Savoy from 1952-54 Surf Ride was originally released in 1956. Featuring three groups of players, the album collects twelve, mostly Pepper composed, cuts including “Holiday Flight” – with Pepper’s playing throughout on superior form. This new edition of the album is released as part of the Original Jazz Classics Series on 180-gram vinyl pressed at RTI with all-analog mastering from the original tapes at Cohearent Audio and a Stoughton Tip-On Jacket.
The music on this Savoy LP is quite brilliant, but the packaging leaves something to be desired. The recording dates are all incorrect and there are only 12 performances included (around 37 minutes). There are quartet outings with either Russ Freeman or Hampton Hawes on piano and tracks…
…2025 Kevin Vanbergen remaster.
Serving as an introduction to the U.S. market, Gala compiles the band’s first three EPs and adds a couple outtakes. One thing that went overlooked about Lush was their ability to veer from violent and edgy noise breaks to pop effervescence. They were always capable of spewing out Saturday morning glow and Sunday evening doom from song to song. Their early reliance on sheets of distortion, buried vocals, and production issues didn’t help this situation. As a result, their out-the-gate raw talent went rather unnoticed, evidenced on their earliest works. Scar demonstrated their under-appreciated diversity immediately. “Thoughtforms” is an example of their heavenly pop greatness, with the vocals sweeter and…
…features the 15-track album remixed by its original producer David Barbe and remastered by Greg Calbi. The new collection includes the previously unreleased double album Heathens Live at Flicker Bar, Athens, GA – June 20, 2002.
For a musician, the trouble with making your best album is you have to figure out a way to top it next time out, and that isn’t always easy. On their first three albums, the Drive-By Truckers were a better-than-average band from the harder-and-faster end of the alt-country spectrum who blended Replacements-esque snot and slop with a Lynyrd Skynyrd-influenced shot of twangy hard rock. But it was when the Truckers confronted the ghost of Skynyrd as well as the often confusing legacy of both Southern rock and what…
…newly mixed with the supervision of Roger Glover and analogue-mastered at renowned Chameleon Studios in Hamburg, this new edition includes a bonus CD featuring previously unreleased instrumental takes and studio rehearsals recorded during the songwriting process.
Deep Purple’s 2005 album Rapture of the Deep generally maintains the quality of 2003’s surprisingly sturdy Bananas. It’s the second release from the re-energized lineup of vocalist Ian Gillan, guitarist Steve Morse, bass guitarist Roger Glover, drummer Ian Paice, and keyboardist Don Airey, who replaced the retired Jon Lord. The band’s comfort level has increased, and after nearly a decade onboard, Morse’s stamp is all over the place. At first, this guitar genius’ presence…
Perception is the 1973 second album by Catalyst, the Philadelphia jazz-funk quartet whose blend of soul jazz, fusion, and avant-garde set them apart as a cult phenomenon. Featuring Zuri Tyrone Brown (bass), Onaje Sherman Ferguson (drums, percussion), Nwalinu Odean Pope (tenor saxophone, flute), and Sanifu Eddie Green (electric piano), the album stretches from spacious, electric fusion to driving, groove-forward funk and episodes of free improvisation. Recently reissued to renewed acclaim, Perception is recognized for its raw, inventive energy and genre-defying musicianship that prefigures later jazz fusion movements.
Emerging from the fertile musical landscape of early-1970s Philadelphia, Catalyst…
…featuring the previously unreleased bonus track “SEC FOUR (Demo)”. Remastered by Sebastian Komor.
Imagine an electronic industrial act putting together a release that was a collection of songs, each and every one carefully constructed to be destined for a dancefloor. Full electro sounds, driving beats, and most tracks with the beats-per-minute turned up. That release is Serenity Is the Devil. Icon of Coil has distilled the dance industrial experience with this release, in ways that peers such as Apoptygma Bezerk and Convenant have not before. Each track drives its way forward, through tracks destined for club longevity, such as “Shallow Nation,” “Former Self,” and “Floorkiller,” with just enough variety to stop the whole album…
VA – Jazz Dispensary Presents: Dream a Dream with Studio G: Cratedigger’s Archive (1970-2009) (2025)
Established by John Gale in London in 1966, Studio G produced a wide range of genres and styles, geared toward local TV, sports programming and adverts. As Ryan Jebavy, producer of Dream a Dream, explains in his liner notes, it unleashed “pastoral folk, maniacal horror, funk-spat jazz, quixotic pop, alluring electro and the usual novelty side spells of national anthems, children’s music and whatever other utilitarian cues society demanded of the moment” upon the commercial space. Even as more sizable outfits such as KPM, Bruton, De Wolfe and Chappell consumed the majority of the marketplace, Studio G offered a truly fetching alternative-sleek, hip art not previously seen on mostly unremarkable album covers released by neighboring companies…
…This new remaster, lovingly rendered from an almost impeccable source, is a revelation for anyone who wished to hear more of how this music was meant to sound. Our longtime collaborator Jessica Thompson carefully restored it with updated tools in her state-of-the-art studio.
Struggling artists looking for a break can take comfort in knowing that today it’s not just hard work and dedication that can get you heard. You might need a little patience though: over twenty years in the case of Yaw Atta-Owusu aka Ata Kak. He joins the ranks of the “Sugarmen”, among them Detroit proto-punkers Death, soft-pop balladeer Lewis, and the original Sugarman, Sixto Rodriguez, who remained oblivious for many years to the roaring success of his ‘flop’…
…expanded 25th anniversary edition featuring additional live bonus tracks from other periods in Wilson’s solo touring career.
When Brian Wilson took to the stage at Lou Adler’s Roxy on the Sunset Strip in April 2000, the tiny, 500-capacity venue was filled with love. Friends (Nancy Sinatra, Jackie DeShannon, Don Was), fans (Jon Bon Jovi, Bette Midler, Lindsay Buckingham), and family members (daughters Carnie and Wendy, nephews Jonah and Patrick, wife Melinda) packed into the venue to see the Beach Boys’ leader reinvent himself as a solo artist. Though a famously recalcitrant live performer, he’d embarked on his first full solo tour in 1999 and emerged triumphant. The Roxy shows on Friday and Saturday, April 7 and 8, 2000 would cap off that…
Nina Simone burst into the world with 1959’s Little Girl Blue, and music would never be the same. For over five decades, Nina entertained, enthralled, and educated listeners across her extraordinary recording and performance career.
After a triumphant concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1992, Nina was approached by Elektra A&R executive Michael Alago (whose previous work at the label included Tracy Chapman and Metallica). When asked if Nina was ready to record again, she replied, “Get me the money… then we can talk!” Modeled around two of Simone’s favorites, Frank Sinatra’s A Man Alone (The Words and Music of Rod McKuen) and Billie Holidays’ Lady in Satin — with the common element that both were recorded with full orchestral accompaniment,…
Since first bursting onto the scene with her classic Number One hit singles ‘Can The Can’ and ‘Devil Gate Drive’, Suzi Quatro has sold over 50 million records worldwide and is recognized as a true rock ‘n’ roll legend and feminist icon. Over her 50-year career, Suzi has inspired countless artists from Joan Jett to Debbie Harry and KT Tunstall. She is also known for her role as the Leather Tuscadero in ‘Happy Days’.
A’s, B’s & Rarities is a collection putting the spotlight on her classic ‘70s singles. Packed with hits including ‘The Wild One’, ‘Devil Gate Drive’, ’48 Crash’ and ‘Can The Can’, alongside the Quatro-penned B-sides which accompanied those iconic rock singles.
Out-of-print on CD for almost two decades…
Remastered by Mark Beazley.
After the calm, measured beauty of Sakura, versatile Japanese producer Susumu Yokota followed a comparatively experimental and eclectic path on Grinning Cat.
The beats are more prevalent (though never as floor-friendly as his voluminous house, trance, and techno releases), the instrumentation is more varied, and the overall feel shifts markedly from track to track. Piano is the dominant instrument here, just as guitar was for Sakura. But Yokota’s skill with context finds him tailoring the sound of the instrument to suit each individual track. “Imagine” uses a hazy piano loop and vocal samples seemingly lifted from sacred music to achieve a thoughtful, meditative effect.
In 1982, London-based Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra recorded a true oddity. Accompanied by her son Kuljit on an early Roland synthesiser and drum machine, the pair laid down nine tracks of Punjabi folk vocals backed by hammering electronic percussion, disco basslines and fizzing synth melody.
Only 500 copies of the resulting album, Punjabi Disco, were pressed; it was released to confusion from a diaspora audience used to the bombast of bhangra. In the decades since, rare LPs have appeared on resale sites, but Kuljit’s recent rediscovery of the master tapes has now made the record widely available for the first time.
The blipping electronic toms and rattling shaker of opening number ‘Disco Wich Aa’ set…
…features remastered audio by Heba Kadry.
Originally issued as a 45 rpm 12″ on Restless Records, You Must Be Certain of the Devil was, at the time, Diamanda Galás‘ most song-oriented and rockish release and would remain so until her collaboration with John Paul Jones.
Though inconsistent, at its best it reveals her as a remarkably strong and effective regular singer (if that term may ever be applied to her), delivering bluesy, hook-filled songs with drive and conviction. This is seen both in her chilling, re-worded version of “Let My People Go” and, most effectively, in the remarkable “Let’s Not Chat About Despair,” possibly the most piercing, eyes-wide-open song about AIDS, its symptoms, and societal prejudice against sufferers ever recorded.
After a 2+-year break, Neil Young is continuing his Official Release Series with new box sets on both CD and LP rounding up another four albums from the 1990s. ORS Vol. 6 arrives on the Reprise label with newly remastered editions of Harvest Moon (1992, ORS Disc 26), Unplugged (1993, ORS Disc 27), Sleeps with Angels (1993, ORS Disc 28), and Mirror Ball (1995, ORS Disc 29).
…Following the heavy rock of the Crazy Horse collaborations Ragged Glory, Arc, and Weld – the latter an experimental sound collage – Young cooled down with a return to the mellow milieu of 1972’s chart-topping Harvest. Young picked up his acoustic guitar and reteamed with co-producer/guitarist Ben Keith for Harvest Moon. Though the songs had been written over…
With Fur & Gold, Bat for Lashes – aka Natasha Khan – brings a fairytale quality and air of mystery to her music, performing a delicate balancing act between everyday emotions and the power of fantasy. As the title suggests, there’s something gorgeous but raw about her songs, which fly from spare British chamber folk to shades of lavish rock, pop, and dance as she throws herself into stories that update the traditions of other iconic female artists. She’s a warrior princess of the moors with only her steed to keep her company on “Horse and I,” a song whose dramatic sweep would do Kate Bush proud; on the fable-like sensual duet “Trophy,” Khan sings “creatures of mercy/shoot them down and set me free” with Björk-like urgency. Despite Fur & Gold’s unabashedly mystical vibe, Khan emphasizes…
Originally released in 1999, No Exit marked a bold and fearless reinvention — bridging Blondie’s punk roots with a contemporary pop sensibility that resonated across generations.
The album was their first for 17 years at the time and features what was, frankly, a surprise UK number one single in ‘Maria’ along with its less successful follow-up, ‘Nothing Is Real But the Girl’. The new deluxe edition features a remastered version of the standard 14-track album on the first disc while CD 2 offers Japan-only bonus track ‘Hot Shot’ (with additional production and mix by David Wrench) along with a selection of seven remixes (from the many that were issued back in the day).
…“It’s been an idea that’s been hatching for a while, but it’s only just come to fruition now,”…
Strangely, Red Record’s 2025 remastered reissue of Bobby Watson’s Perpetual Groove omits the “Live in Europe” designation included in the 1984 release’s title. Perhaps it’s because one can tell from the first few notes that the set doesn’t take place in a studio – this is jazz meant to excite an audience with each musician’s spellbinding technique. With three Italian musicians (Attilio Zanchi – bass, Piero Bassini – piano, and Giampiero Prina – drums), saxophonist Watson tears it up on five tracks taken from two 1983 concert recordings. Though it’s certainly impressive to hear Kansas City, Kansas native Watson wail, some tracks fare better than others. More importantly, the quartet seems more focused on proving themselves, rather than creating memorable jazz.