British reggae artist Dennis Bovell had his own sensibilities when it came to production. Active in the same vibrant era in the late ’70s that created some of reggae’s most lasting sounds, his take on reggae and dub was a little more reined in than his Jamaican contemporaries like King Tubby or Lee “Scratch” Perry. While his production was less chaotic, with clearer details and space made for every rebound of echo and thunderclap of reverb, Bovell’s style wasn’t lacking in excitement or daring. The anthology collection Different: The Singles Collection 1977-1981 zeros in on his unique and wide-ranging style as a studio mastermind, presenting Bovell productions originally released as singles that run the gamut from roots reggae tunes to lovers rock…
Tag Archive: Cherry Red
The grunge explosion that took over the world in the early ’90s exists in iceberg form, with ubiquitously popular bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam as the most visible examples of the sound. As with any iceberg, these bands are just what’s most apparent sitting atop a mass of other active and influential but less immediately traceable players. You’re No Big Deal explores the grunge iceberg extensively, collecting over 80 tracks of heavy, ragged, and righteous noise recorded between 1984 and 1994 by some of the most- and least-known acts in and around the grunge movement. The tracks here were curated with help from Mark Arm, whose late-‘80s band Green River starts things off with the crude and metallic “Come On Down.”
Extensive seven-CD box set following the career of English singer-songwriter Thea Gilmore. Covering her recordings from 2008 to 2015.
Released in 2008, ‘Liejacker’ was Thea Gilmore’s eighth album featuring contributions from Joan Baez, Dave McCabe, and Erin McKeown. Following in 2009 was Gilmore’s first live album, ‘Recorded Delivery’, with recordings taken from UK shows during 2006 and 2008, with the first half of the album being acoustic and the second half electric, with a full band.
Gilmore rounded out 2009 with the release of an album of winter-themed songs, ‘Strange Communion’, featuring eight originals penned by Gilmore with Nigel Stonier, as well as two cover versions – Yoko Ono’s ‘Listen, the Snow…
‘Leftovers (1970-1988)’ compiles the “accidental” Leftovers trilogy of limited edition Record Store Day-exclusive vinyl releases, ‘Leftovers Again?!’, ‘Leftovers Again?! AGAIN?!’, and ‘Leftovers Again?! Again!?! (Again)’ (released between 2021 and 2025) into a two disc pREServed CD collection.
Formed in the early ’70s, The Residents have now been charting a unique path through the musical landscape for over half a century now. From far-out, experimental recordings to highly conceptual, innovative multi-platform projects, the band refuses to stand still, and continues to move in several different directions at once.
Combining new RDX mixes produced by The Residents using their original multitrack tapes under lockdown conditions during 2020,…
Chameleon: The Very Best of Toyah is the first career-spanning collection to encompass Toyah Willcox’s full recording history.
…Spanning 45 years of music, the impressive collection includes the top 40 singles ‘I Want to Be Free’, ‘It’s a Mystery’, ‘Thunder in the Mountains’, ‘Brave New World’, ‘Good Morning Universe’, ‘Rebel Run’ and ‘Don’t Fall in Love’, alongside classic cuts right up to the 2021 Top 20 album Posh Pop. Chameleon lives up to its name and highlights Toyah’s musical longevity as a singer/actress that burst out of the punk/new wave scene in the late 1970s, became a pop icon in the ’80s and who has remained an ever-evolving creative force across five decades. Toyah has made an indelible mark on the entertainment industry with…
Andromeda was a psychedelic/progressive rock trio formed by singer-guitarist John Cann (also known as John Du Cann), formerly of the psychedelic garage band the Attack, Mick Hawksworth (bass, vocals), and Ian McClane (drums, vocals). The group performed in various London venues including Middle Earth and the Marquee Club. Cann’s guitar was the dominant instrument, leading listeners through classically based psychedelic and progressive directions and creative dissonances, contributing to the trio’s impressive live sets. Andromeda combined their own original writing with elements appropriated out of familiar classical material. They were signed to RCA in 1969 but before that they’d appeared live on the BBC’s Top Gear program in 1968, and in…
…This edition of ‘Ramshackled’ has been newly remastered from the original master tapes and features the single versions of ‘Ooh Baby (Goin’ to Pieces)’ and ‘One Way Rag’ as two bonus tracks (issued on CD for the first time).
It’s worth remembering that between the release of 1971’s Fragile and 1974’s Relayer, Yes had steadily risen from plucky progressive rock hopefuls to become bona fide superstars, selling millions of albums around the globe and effortlessly filling arenas around North America and Europe.
With relationships souring due to clashing egos and the financial imperative to keep the cash-cow rolling, the idea of enabling every band member to record a solo album could be viewed either as a cunning managerial sleight of hand,…
As the late ’60s rolled unsteadily into the early ’70s, the U.K. music scene was in understandable flux. The last stages of psychedelia were burning out, and musicians were looking for new sounds to fill the void. Some turned to the freedoms of jazz, others looked to the countryside for laid-back vibes, while some rocked up the blues or started heading in the direction of prog. A few intrepid explorers even tried to meld it all together into something new and magical, though most bands just seemed happy to be free of the influence of the Beatles and Carnaby Street.
Strawberry’s 2025 collection Feelin’ Alright: Mod Rock, Funky Prog & Heavy Jazz 1967-1972 is a fun and educational survey of groups and artists who tried one or more of these paths.
72-track / 3 CD box set containing four hours of both groove-laden and downright rocking music from the (mostly London) Pub Rock scene’s heyday of the mid ’70s through to the early ’80s. Every track expertly and lovingly remastered by renowned studio wizard Tim Turan.
In some respects, a lavish follow-up to Grapefruit’s highly successful 2019 Surrender to the Rhythm set which highlighted Pub Rock’s pioneers. Time! Gentlemen! features a selection of cuts from many of the usual suspects of the genre such as Brinsley Schwarz, Dr. Feelgood, Chilli Willi and The Red Hot Peppers and Kokomo, but excitingly, goes beyond the usual fare by including some of their lesser-known gems. Not only a virtual treasure trove of great ’70s rock, the set also…
Unique among the 1960s pop landscape, and facilitated by his own home studio set-up, Joe Meek pursued and expressed a passion for his countless hobbies through his hit records and studio productions. From the legendary ‘I Hear A New World’ sonic landscapes and the Tornados’ global hit ‘Telstar!’ to several successful horror-themed records with Screaming Lord Sutch and his smash hit laments to both Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, Meek’s fascinations were never far from his thoughts, often resulting in wildly imaginative and way ahead of their time recordings.
Laden with sound effects, experimental electronics, eccentric lyrics and themes that often stretched the boundaries of what pop music could be in the early 1960s, A Curious Mind showcases…
By the summer of 1971, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry was widely recognised as Jamaica’s most creative music-maker. Since launching his career as an independent producer in 1968, his experimentations with sound and style had resulted in some of the most exciting and popular works to see issue during reggae’s formative years. Now, primarily employing one of the island’s most accomplished band, The Now Generation as his regular session crew, the sound of Perry’s output from the latter half of 1971 contrasted strongly with the more rugged style the epitomised many of his earlier productions.
Otherwise, however, his general approach to music-making remained unaltered and during this six-month period, he released…
If the 1970s were when power pop was invented and made into one of the more exciting styles of music around, and even occasionally very popular, the ’80s were when the style permeated the music scene as it split into multiple tendrils of guitar-based pop. Following up on their excellent collection Looking for the Magic: American Power Pop in the ’70s, Grapefruit Records delivers another brilliant set of freshly scrubbed power pop tracks on I Wanna Be a Teen Again: American Power Pop, 1980-1989. On the three-disc set, one gets to listen as the classic power pop sound of the previous decade shoots off in different directions. Its chiming guitars and swirls of sound inform the paisley underground, a slicked-up version wends its way through the new wave…
Features Leeds based cult mod band The Outer Limits’ complete recordings. Including their rare, sought after pop soul singles ‘When The Work Is Through’ and ‘Just One More Chance’ plus freakbeat flip ‘Help Me Please’ and the psychedelic pop gem ‘Great Train Robbery’. Featuring 14 previously unreleased demos from the vaults of The Outer Limits’ singer songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist Jeff Christie who has compiled this set. Alongside the recordings from their three singles; ‘When The Work Is Through’ originally issued on an impossibly rare 1965 Leeds Students Charity Rag flexidisc, Just One More Chance released in 1967 on Deram and ‘Great Train Robbery’ recorded for Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label in 1968…
As unlikely as it may seem, the pairing of Luke Haines and Peter Buck has proven to be a fertile one. Of course, we had enough distractions in 2020 to include the meeting of a stadium-honed US guitarist with a British outsider art-rocker on our bingo cards. Yet when Buck bought one of Haines’ paintings, the connection would lead to a debut album, Beat Poetry for Survivalists (2020), and its sprawling, experimental sequel, All the Kids Are Super Bummed Out (2022). Across both records, it emerged that Buck and Haines had found harmony in an encyclopaedic musical knowledge and a shared conviction that rock’n’roll is best pursued in prolific practice.
The sense of a band caught in motion energises this marvellous third entry in their self-billed…
If you’ve ever wanted to search beyond “Just Got Lucky,” the worldwide hit from British New Wave group JoBoxers, a new triple-disc anthology from Cherry Red has you covered.
The aptly-titled Just Got Lucky: The Complete Works 1983-1986 highlights the release of the band’s sole album, 1983’s Like Gangbusters, along with material from two planned follow-up records and a live recording from the band’s commercial peak – some 28 unreleased tracks in all.
The group, recently reunited in the 2020s, is on board with the release: bassist Chris Bostock has overseen and compiled the unreleased studio material, while all five band members participated for interviews for the liner notes, penned by Lois Wilson of MOJO.
…5CD 83 track box set rounds up all of punk legends Peter & The Test Tube Babies releases throughout the 90s.
Peter and the Test Tube Babies were formed in 1978 by singer Peter Bywaters, guitarist Derek “Strangefish” Greening, bassist Chris “Trapper” Marchant, and drummer Nicholas “Ogs” Loizides.
Known as much for their snarky sense of humor and working-class outlook as for their music, Peter and the Test Tube Babies were one of the early bands to emerge on the Brighton U.K. punk scene. It took the group a while to find their footing, but once they clicked, they became one of the most enduring bands in British punk, still recording and touring four decades after they made their debut.
After crashing onto the reggae music scene in 1977 with their debut single ‘Two Sevens Clash’, Culture demonstrated the depth of their talent with further powerful and inspirational 7” and 12” singles for leading Jamaican producer, Joe Gibbs.
Formed the previous year by Joseph Hill, his cousin Albert Walker and friend Roy Dayes, the trio first assumed the title of The African Disciples before adopting their more familiar moniker just prior to joining Gibbs’s impressive artist roster.
Thereafter, they wasted little time recording new works, cutting enough high-quality material over the next 12 months to ultimately comprise four whole albums. Yet, despite the popularity of their output throughout this time, Culture brought their working relationship with Gibbs…
3CD anthology of recordings from British harmony pop maestro John Carter and friends under their flower-power era guise The Flower Pot Men. Includes Summer of Love hit ‘Let’s Go to San Francisco’, further 45s (some using alternative period aliases), two unreleased-at-the-time concept albums and several tracks now gaining their first-ever issue.
Inspired equally by the Haight-Ashbury scene, the worldwide Summer of Love and Brian Wilson’s recent groundbreaking work, in mid-1967 former Ivy Leaguers John Carter and Ken Lewis pieced together the hugely ambitious, six-minute ‘Let’s Go to San Francisco’.
The result was a UK Top Five hit, a success that encouraged Carter to record more material…
Following his departure from Fairport Convention in 1969, singer and songwriter Iain Matthews formed the folk-rock band Matthews Southern Comfort. They released three albums in 1970: an eponymously titled debut, Second Spring in June, and Later That Same Year in August. Matthews dissolved the band and signed a solo deal with Philips’ brand-new Vertigo label – he was the first artist they signed. Between 1971 and 1974, he recorded three albums for the label: 1971’s If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes, 1972’s Tigers Will Survive, and 1974’s Journeys from Gospel Oak. The five-disc Thro’ My Eyes: The Vertigo Years 1970-1974, contains these records and two discs of unissued studio and live material. In addition to the music, the booklet features rare photos…
After the Madchester scene of the late ’80s merged neo-psychedelic indie pop with acid house, the crossover between club culture and alternative rock reached new heights during the second half of the ’90s, when journalists touted “electronica” as the next big thing. Going Out of My Head: Adventures on the Indie Dancefloor 1995-1999 attempts to anthologize the peak era of big beat, trip-hop, and alternative dance, giving space to DJ/producer acts and dance-influenced rock bands as well as rare remixes previously tucked away on CD singles. Compared to most Cherry Red compilations, this one amusingly seems to contain a higher percentage of songs that were actually hits, including U.K. chart-toppers such as the Prodigy’s “Breathe” and Norman Cook’s remix…