‘An extraordinarily lush, poignant collaboration… Bombscare bleeds mood, space, and texture as sounds ring out and echo into the distance. Hand So Small works like a literate lullaby as musical flourishes appear from thin air, a piano haunts the outskirts of the song, and Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker take turns singing about life “getting smaller.” So Easy (So Far) is perhaps the most traditional Low song, but Spring Heel Jack manages to make the band sound like they’re singing modern day Brothers Grimm tales. Way Behind is a stunning closer. It’s a truly exhilarating song that sounds like it was recorded in heaven, as Parker and Sparhawk again take turns singing angelically that they’ve left someone “way behind” over a jazzy electronic stew full of subtle found-sounds…
‘It’s too bad the collaborators didn’t compile an entire album’s worth of material, as these sixteen minutes seem magically fleeting. Bombscare couldn’t be a more superb collaboration between these innovative artists’ (AllMusic).
First reissue of the original release in 2000.

Though music journalists made a big deal recently about the release of a 1965 rehearsal tape by Derek Bailey’s Joseph Holbrooke trio with Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley, those early efforts were mere tentative steps along a cliff edge wearing a line safely attached to Coltrane. There’s still a whiff of jazz to Bailey and Parker’s work with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble up to and including 1968’s Karyobin.
But with the addition of Jamie Muir — the first great free improvising percussionist who didn’t start out as a jazz drummer — and the way-leftfield electronics of Hugh Davies, the MIC leapt right off that cliff.
These six tracks — tight, electric, pointillistic, brilliant, uncompromising and exhilarating — sound like nothing else that came before.
In a word, seminal.

West Coast soul from the Bihari brothers’ Kent and Modern labels, out of Los Angeles.
Plenty of groovy southern blues, besides shots of gospel and Motown.

Supersedes the Timmion LP from ten years ago by unearthing a markedly different take of Who Are You Trying To Fool, I Gotta Have You with added backing vocals, and a cleaner version of Wigan monster What Should I Do. It also dips into Ann’s only other known recordings, cut in Canada under her real name of Ann Bridgeforth, in 1972 and 1973: her self-penned ballad That’s All I Want From You is right up there with Deep Shadows.
The CD has twice the number of tracks.

An anti-war garage-punk onslaught from 1966, doing Bo Diddley proud.
Backed here by The Leaves (plus drummer Don Conka from Love), BJ knocked around with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Frank Zappa.
Anyway… they brought it to Jerome.

Hard-rocking, rawly soulful gospel.
The highly-prized original LP was issued by Hoyt Sullivan on his HSE label out of South Carolina and then Nashville.
Nuff highlights but Hold Out is utterly devastating and unmissable (the band almost nodding out with tribulation).
Hotly recommended.

After recent recordings with Mark Turner and Billy Hart, the pianist leads his own quartet through a programme of standards and blues, live at the Village Vanguard.
‘Its prime melodic voice is the veteran trumpeter Tom Harrell. Iverson extols the poetic vulnerability in his playing, particularly in such ballads as The Man I Love and Polka Dots and Moonbeam. The album’s effervescent swing is thanks to the top-flight rhythm team of bassist Ben Street and drummer Eric McPherson, whose subtle invention helps drive Denzil Best’s bebop groover Wee and two irresistibly bluesy Iverson originals.’

One of the all-time great guitarists, Nolen was with the James Brown band from the mid-sixties till his death in 1983.
Strollin’ collects 78s and 45s released before 1961, both under his own name and as a much in demand session guitarist and touring band member with artists like Monte Easter, Johnny Otis and George Smith.
Don.

‘Triumphant experiments in privately-issued sci-fi soul music; lonely transmissions from a planet in a state of cultural fugue. Packaged in a one-way portal to the further limits of expression. Some assembly required.’

Smash hits by the greatest mbaqanga girl group in history.
‘With its pulsating rhythm, sunny guitar phrases and resonant close harmony, Umculo Kawupheli — the music never ends —  celebrates music as a source of joy and healing.’ As ripped off by Malcolm McLaren for Bow Wow and Duck Rock.
Handsomely presented, with original label artwork, in a printed sleeve, with new notes on the back.

A set of five throbbing, twinkling, oscillating excursions on analogue synth. Cosmic but intriguingly personable. Have a listen!

Besides the debut single She Is Beyond Good And Evil adding the ten-track album Alien Blood and Y Live.
Alien Blood unearths revelatory, never-before-heard material, including the studio recording of Kiss The Book,  a gloves-off version of We Are Time (Ricochet) and Words Disobey Me (Dennis The Menace Mix). It exposes the raw skeletons of iconic tracks such as Thief of Fire (Bass Addict), at its original velocity.
Y Live captures all the fierce urgency of the group’s live performances at the time, at a variety of locations including New York, Manchester and — on a bill with William Burroughs and Joy Division — Brussels. It bottles what was so thrilling about The Pop Group.

‘The second of our odes to soundsystem culture. Logos back-burners the weightless sound for a minute and brings forward a chop-up laced with such tasty ingredients as the Bloom-era Aardvarck white labels, Shed’s Panamax Project and Wormhole-era Ed Rush and Optical.
‘To cap it off, Ossia delivers one of the heaviest remixes of the year. The ice-cold grime sensibilities of Eska infused with the militant sound of early Aba Shanti I on that Jah Lightning album.’