Various – Time To Go, The Southern Psychedelic Moment : 1981 – 1986 - April 2012 April 22nd, 2012

The no-budget brilliance of the Eighties New Zealand indie-scene inspired a generation of post-punks, from Pavement to My Bloody Valentine, to stop worrying and splash some sloppy psychedelic Spector-style spillages on their reactionary rockist riffs. Bruce Russel’s insider overview avoids regularly anthologised standards to create a secret mirror history of the DIY decade, from the…

Various Artists – Still Going On In Offices - January 2012 January 22nd, 2012

The slovenly combo’s pictured on this vinyl compilation look like rabid bedsit theorists from the early eighties DIY scene, but only three of the eleven tracks date from the era, including The Passionate Winemakers’ snotty strum Disintegrating Jellyfish. New recordings indicate the spirit still spurts. Electricity In Our Homes’ Here I Am is limply upbeat;…

Various Artists – The Story Of Trojan Records - August 2011 August 28th, 2011

Trojan records’ vast back catalogue of essential Jamaican reggae is a valuable property, but how can Universal exploit an asset already so thoroughly strip-mined? Disc one of this five CD, budget priced, set The Story Of Trojan Records, features familiar UK reggae hits of the sixties and seventies – The Pioneers’ Longshot Kick De Bucket,…

Various Artists – The Inner Octave - August 2011 August 14th, 2011

Mumford and Sons, and their singer-songwriter followers, aren’t really folk musicians. Folk fans, still looking to the likes of Topic records and the Waterson-Carthy dynasty for an uncut fix might wonder, wither the next generation? But the Rif Mountain label, comprehensively showcased here, offers a cross-fertilised family of younger artists, quietly future-proofing the form. The…

Various Artists – Trojan Presents Dub, 40 Deep And Heavy Hits - July 2011 July 17th, 2011

Trojan’s catalogue of reggae classics re-emerges in another series of compilations, now under the ‘Trojan Presents’ banner. This re-packaging process has been ongoing for over a decade, but this latest petit dejeuner de dog is a doozy. In the Seventies, Jamaican engineers with an instinctive understanding of sonic drama stripped existing recordings of distinguishing features,…

Various Artists – Messthetics 108 South Coast DIY ’77-’81 - June 2011 June 5th, 2011

The Messthetics series assembles extremely raw punk era ephemera, culled from demos and cassette releases, into documents of distinct regional undergrounds, this time making the case for a South Coast sensibility. The airy, post-pop of Chichester’s Indifferent Dance Centre should have blossomed; Portsmouth’s Parasites sound utterly inept, but O.D. Baby’s has a haunted grandeur; from…