Ah, Ghana Special: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-81 — a classic compilation. Released in 2009 by Soundway Records, it’s an epic five-LP set held in the highest esteem by those among us whose attention was caught by the fiery sounds of old West African music. Sixteen years later, the label is giving the album a second life by whittling it down into a lean 10-song suite titled Ghana Special: Highlife. Dedicated fans of retro Ghanaian sounds might be disappointed by the lack of fresh catches here (Soundway did actually release a direct sequel last year), but that doesn’t diminish the fact that every song is a killer example of how great this music could be. And given the shorter running time when compared to its lengthy forefather, it’s easy to envision…
Tag Archive: Various Artists
1. Big Thief – No Fear
2. Patterson Hood – The Van Pelt Parties
3. Edwyn Collins – Knowledge
4. Pulp – Farmers Market
5. Robert Plant – As I Roved Out (feat. Suzi Dian)
6. Stereolab – Melodie Is a Wound
7. Baxter Dury – Allbarone
8. Suede – June Rain
9. Horsegirl – Rock City
10. Annie & The Caldwells – Wrong
11. Jeff Tweedy – Out in the Dark
12. Perfume Genius – It’s a Mirror
13. Bon Iver – Day One
14. William Tyler – Concern
15. Margo Price – Love Me Like You Used to Do (feat. Tyler Childers)
As we’ve come to expect from Ace’s much-admired series of Jon Savage-curated two-CD collections, this new – and sadly final – volume is a multi-genre delight, taking the listener from house to baggy via post-punk, proto-grunge, minimalist avant-garde, the advent of sampling and more.
Among the many highlights are ‘Mystery of Love’ by Mr Fingers, a track that turned Savage’s head during a trip to New York in early 1986; Hüsker Dü’s ‘Could You Be the One?’ from 1987, a perfect example of their melodic abilities; the action-packed ‘It Takes Two’ by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock, which could be heard blasting out of boomboxes all over New York in spring 1988; Paul Oakenfold’s 1989 remix of Happy Mondays’ ‘Wrote for Luck’ into the early baggy classic…
By the end of the ’60s, pop had undergone several all-consuming metamorphoses. Rock music and youth culture at large were changing by the minute, and there were more landmark albums that represented universal shifts in the way music was composed, produced, conceptualized, and consumed. For every Pet Sounds, Revolver, Forever Changes, or Axis: Bold as Love, there were less visible ripples throughout all of music, as psychedelic thinking and a softly adventurous spirit overtook bands and artists who were stuck in their by-the-numbers garage rock ways before this enlightenment. Safe in My Garden: American Pop in the Shadows 1967-1972 takes a look at some of the best, strangest, and most interesting examples of lesser-known purveyors of…
The Gold Rush: The Songs of Neil Young features 15 of Young‘s classics and deep cuts reinterpreted exclusively for Uncut in tribute to Shakey’s 80th birthday.
There’s some ragged, glorious rock from Kurt Vile & The Sadies, J Mascis, Alan Sparhawk‘s Tired Eyes and MJ Lenderman & The Wind; there are tender ballads from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Joan Shelley & Nathan Salzburg, Drive By Truckers‘ Mike Cooley, and Sharon Van Otten & The Attachment Theory; and there are wilder, more experimental versions from Orcutt Shelley Miller and Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection.
Plus it all kicks off with a stunning 8-and-a-half-minute “Ambulance Blues” from Phosphorescent.
In the early 1970s San Diego was a sleepy Southern California Navy town on the Mexican border and a seemingly unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their era. Yet the presence of Harry Partch – hobo composer, iconoclast and inventor of instruments such as the Harmonic Canon and Quadrangularis Reversum – and a newly established and highly experimental music department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) ushered in a revolution that was as much social as it was musical. Drawing from the occult, self-realization and radical political movements of 70s Southern California, these artists sought to dismantle the established control systems of American life, looking to the future even as they sometimes referenced a distant…
The band members’ musical history prior to the band’s formation and the blues numbers they covered are all on this one disc! Little Feat was one of the most important bands that led the American rock scene in the 70’s with their unique sound that digested and absorbed various kinds of roots music. This CD is a collection of the blues numbers they covered on their albums and live shows, as well as the recordings they left before Little Feat was formed, which were also full of great players. Many people associate Little Feat with Lowell George’s slide guitar and the groovy rock sound of New Orleans funky music such as Alan Toussaint and the Meaters. Starting with the opening number from the famous live album “Waiting For Columbus”, an original song that…
1. Young Marble Giants – Final Day
2. The Fall – Totally Wired
3. Arthur Russell – I Couldn’t Say It to Your Face
4. Warpaint – Undertow
5. Robert Wyatt – At Last I Am Free
6. 1990s – You Made Me Like It
7. Cabaret Voltaire – Nag Nag Nag
8. Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – The Neighbors
9. Galaxie 500 – Blue Thunder (W / Sax)
10. Ivor Cutler & Linda Hurst – Women of the World
11. Tav Falco’s Panther Burns – She’s the One…
12. Anohni and The Johnsons – It Must Change
13. The Strange Boys – Be Brave
14. Honey Hahs – I Know You Know
15. Jeffrey Lewis – The Chelsea Hotel Oral…
1. Alan Sparhawk – Not Broken
2. BC Camplight – Where You Taking My Baby?
3. Matt Berninger – Bonnet of Pins
4. Peggy Seeger – Slow
5. Steve Queralt – Swiss Air (feat. Emma Anderson)
6. Nathan Salsburg – Ipsa Corpora (Excerpt)
7. Poor Creature – The Whole Town Knows
8. Natalie Bergman – Dance
9. Holden & Zimpel – Incredible Bliss
10. Witch – Dancer On a Trip
11. S.G. Goodman – Snapping Turtle
12. The Wildmans – Sometimes
13. Faun Fables – Widdershins
14. Tropical Fuck Storm – Teeth Marche
15. North Mississippi Allstars – Preachin’ Blues
This is Independent Project Records’ own take on digging deep and unearthing revelatory treasures from its 45-year history. A trip through the past, present and future of a label that since 1980 has made the most prominent part of its name, that resounding “Independent”, not a trendy epithet but a mission. This two-album compilation is an invite to join the dots and find out what makes Afterimage – the early ’80s band the Los Angeles Times once called “LA’s own Joy Division” – and Alison Clancy – the artist making ethereal ambient dream pop in the basement of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, where she works as a dancer – kindred spirits. You’re invited to find similarities in the way The Ophelias reclaimed San Francisco’s unfettered psychedelic rock roots…
The Raspberries blazed briefly but brightly.
When Eric Carmen and Wally Bryson of Cyrus Eyrie teamed up with Jim Bonfanti and Dave Smalley of The Choir, the result was pure bliss. The Raspberries emerged from the ashes from the two bands, and over the course of four albums originally released between 1972 and 1974 – three with the original line-up, and one with just Carmen and Bryson joined by new members Michael McBride and Scott McCarl – they came to define power pop. Despite placing just one Top 5 single in the U.S. and two more Top 20s, The Raspberries’ influence has happily endured for decades, inspiring countless other groups and setting a joyful standard for impeccably crafted rock with big melodies, crisp guitars, youthful…
These new ethnographic-oriented albums document recent Pacific projects initiated by Australian-based label Wantok Musik in the two formerly war-torn island nations of Bougainville and Timor-Leste (East Timor). Encouraging connections in both countries between younger up-and-coming musicians and their local community elders, the aim is to ensure the regions’ unique songs, languages and history are properly passed on, while the elders are still able to do so.
Lek Mak celebrates the distinctive Pacific culture of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, which includes Buka and several smaller islands that lie between Papua New Guinea and the northern tip of the Solomon Islands archipelago. Previously considered part of PNG, there have…
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…
Heavy Metal and Punk Rock! It’s fair to say that these two noisy tribes now have a great deal in common, often melding together to produce bastard offspring of their own. But it wasn’t always this way. Indeed, there was a time when fists were more likely to be thrown than bumped, and beers more likely to be hurled than shared, except when it came to Motörhead. That was the one band all could agree on. The one band that was truly ours! But while Motörhead’s impact on metal has long been acknowledged, their influence on punk, particularly the post-Sex Pistols second wave shouldn’t be underestimated. Cause and effect: It’s that simple. And such is the case with hundreds, thousands, of other bands, all made faster, dirtier, louder, better, by Motörhead.
It’s always interesting to see where the next Imaginational Anthem compilation will take us, and this fourteenth addition (in time for Tompkins Square’s twentieth anniversary) has hopped us over to one of the traditional music hubs of the world to show us some of the instrumental guitar talent operating in Ireland.
Cian Nugent has his hand on the curating tiller and has chosen nine other tracks to sandwich his own little number, the lovely ‘I am Asleep and do not Wake Me’, a traditional Irish tune that he learned from a harp arrangement. As you would expect from Cian, the playing here on solo acoustic is finely nuanced and unshowy, with a couple of softly audible knocks on the body giving the sound an intimate feel.
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…
Soul Jazz Records’ new Soul Jamaica brings together a wicked selection of reggae funk and soul tracks from the legendary Studio One stable, featuring a stellar line-up of artists including Jackie Mittoo, The Heptones, The Gladiators, Sim Smith, Peter Tosh and The Wailers, Cedric ‘Im’ Brooks and many more. For a short period of time at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, nestled between the end of rocksteady and the arrival of roots reggae, Studio One released a small stream of superb soul and funk reggae tunes – covering everyone from Sly and The Family Stone, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Nina Simone, Gene Chandler, Tyrone Davis and more.
Most of the tracks featured on Soul Jamaica were only ever released on Studio One’s…
Cryo Chamber’s seventh entry in its ongoing Tomb series opens strongly with a pairing of Apocryphos & Pœna Sensus. Their track, ‘The Sigh of Archaic Tragedy’, is weighty and oppressive, built from deep drones, bass-heavy descending chords, and unstructured percussion that evokes places of burial and stillness.
The rest of the album explores similar themes in different ways. The variety on this compilation is remarkable considering that each piece adheres to a common aesthetic framework.
Dødsmaskin’s Messiaskomplekset’ is borderline post-industrial with rattling textures accompanied by haunting melodies and tones. Fractalyst’s ‘Those Who Slither’ is cinematic and varied, with abrupt changes in volume and palette.