Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Last year, an eagle-eyed researcher discovered a genuine slept-on gem in the archives of New York Public Library: a forgotten, unreleased recording of the John Coltrane Quintet playing - alongside bass clarinettist Eric Dolphy, at the iconic Village Gate venue in August 1961. Here, that recording - now freshly mastered - is released to the public for the first time, and as you'd expect it's rather special. Coltrane is at his magical, blistering best throughout, with his band offering similarly impressive support throughout. Highlights include the only live recording yet discovered of the quintet performing 'Africa', an insanely good 10-minute take on Coltrane classic 'Impressions', and Dolphy's star turn on 'When Lights Are Low'. In a word: essential!

Review: Seven arresting, original new exercises from E-Saggila aka Canadian producer Rita Mikhael. She wears her love of dub on her sleeve - see the slow motion skank of 'Amnesiac' aming others - but not in the usual reassuring, bubbling echoes of dub techno, aiming for something much more angular and alarming. "Breaks remain staccato hammers," says the blurb, with maximum accuracy, "and kicks are cast to negate cardiac systems," while the rhythms veer from off kilter to nailed down and the sonics vary from the lush to the caustic. This territory to the left(field) of electronica is over saturated with identikit productions, but Mikhael does it like you've never quite heard before.

Review: A decade after making his major label with Doris, all all-star affair featuring contributions from the RZA, Frank Ocean and Tyler The Creator, Los Angeles MC Earl Sweatshirt delivers album number six - a two-way hoedown with acclaimed beat-maker, Cypress Hill affiliate and fellow LA resident The Alchemist. It's a musical marriage with great potential, all told, as Earl Sweatshirt delivers distinctively enigmatic lyrical flows in his distinctive timbre over impeccable beats that draw on an impressively diverse range of samples. Compare and contrast, for example, the sparse, bluesy brilliance of 'Vin Skully' and the West Coast synth-funk influenced smoothness of 'Heat Check', or gospel-influenced Vince Staples hook-up 'Mancula' and the slow-motion drowsiness and aural beauty of 'Sirius Blac'.

Review: Although it didn't make huge waves commercially on its initial release in the early 90s, East Village's sole album, Drop Out, has long been considered a cult classic by observers of British indie music in the pre-Britpop era. Listening back three decades on, it's easy to see why. The band's sound was simultaneously nostalgic and contemporary, combining wide-eyed late 60s psychedelic pop flavours, minor chord-heavy 80s alternative jangliness and nods to soul-inspired Mod stompers with the distinctively loose, funky and loved-up MDMA-pop so beloved of indie bands at the turn of the 90s. This anniversary reissue does a great job in celebrating both band and album, with the original ten-track set coming with a bonus disc of singles and alternative versions. Throw in on-point sleeve notes by Jon Savage and you have an irresistible package.

Review: Easy Star All Stars are back, refreshing a simple yet effective formula - melodic reggae covers of titanic rock albums. The New York natives have released several tribute albums to said figureheads, not least Pink Floyd, Radiohead, The Beatles and Michael Jackson. Ziggy Stardub, evidently, is a reggae version of David Bowie's 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowiemaniacs will be Bowie-led over by this 15-track collective vision in dub, which comprehensively serves up serene versions of 'Starman', 'Five Years' and 'Moonage Daydream' and four actual dub versions. To top it off, there are myriad features from fellow coverer fanatics, including Macy Gray, Steel Pulse, Mortimer and Carlton Livingston.

Review: It's now 25 years since Echo and the Bunnymen reformed (the Liverpool-born band initially disbanded in 1993) and recorded 'Evergreen', their seventh studio album. While reviews were mixed at the time, there's no doubt that it's as jangly, timeless-sounding and sonically gorgeous as any of their more acclaimed albums of the '80s and early '90s. Given that it was released at the height of 'Britpop' (Liam Gallagher provided backing vocals on 'Nothing Lasts Forever', a by-product of Oasis recording in the studio next-door), it's sound is far baggier, looser and warmer than much of the music being made by their younger rivals. On this expanded anniversary edition, the original (if remastered) set is joined by a disc of live recordings, both from their own shows and promotional radio sessions, all of which were laid to tape between 1997 and '99.

Review: Ahbe, Nature Boy, Eden Ahbez, whatever you want to call him, the original hippie is back. Now, Light In The Attic deliver on the proto-psychedelic's only ever album, repackaging it in all its glory for a deluxe box set edition. Containing the original album, as well as a 24-page booklet, collectors are touting it as the defining reissue for 60s music freaks. An original 1960s mono pressing will fetch upwards of L400, and for good reason: Ahbez' original compositions for piano, xylophone, flute and spoken word, from 'Myna Bird' through to 'Full Moon', completely transcend his jazz standard associations for a more pioneering, visionary ambient breakthrough into a new genre, which later came to be known as 'exotica'.

Review: Einsturzende Neubauten's description by label Potomoak - as a band that constantly evolves - is accurate enough. Over forty years on from their debut album Kollaps in 1981, Rampen appears as the latest and most unruly incarnation of their sound yet. Here, Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser and Felix Gebhard present their least predictable and conventional sides: APM is described as alien pop music; the songs therein have been specially crafted not only for our universe but for every adjacent parallel universe to ours, with every slight multiversal variation in humanity's collective tastes held firmly in mind. The album fully lives up to its billing as anti-pop as alien pop, its challenging twists and turns fully sating the difficult whims of society's outcasts and cosmic punks.

Review:  If you read any interviews around Elbow's ninth studio album, Guy Garvey's open admissions that this is the Bury, Greater Manchester band's most patient and hushed work to date are unlikely to pass you by. The frontman is clearly pleased with what the outfit managed to pull together, offering a great example of why remote working during lockdown actually led to some pretty inspired projects if you look in the right places.

Whether Flying Dream 1 would have sounded like this had it been made through a standard studio process is a big question mark we're not in a position to answer. The group themselves are probably still pondering that one. What is clear is that it feels like a coherent, complete work, which is somewhat at odds with the reality of members contributing individual elements from different locations. Technicalities aside, this is a step away from the grandeur Elbow are often associated with, and distinctly void of gnarl, and it sounds excellent.

Review: Electribe 101's 1990 debut album, Electribal Memories, is undoubtedly one of the strongest sets of the loved-up Balearic house era - a long-player firmly rooted in the Ecstasy experience, from the piano-sporting, wide-eyed tactility of house music of the period, to the after-hours, comedown-friendly downtempo soulfulness that the band's creative force and lead singer, Billie Ray Martin, was always so adept at delivering. This 'Deluxe Edition' expands the album across four CDs via a deep archive dive from dance music historian Bill Brewster. The DJ and author offers-up a wealth of released (and unreleased) club mixes, early versions and alternate takes, while the accompanying booklet features reflections from Billie-Ray Martin and an extensive essay from Pete Paphides.

Review: First released back in 2006, Electronic's on-point 'best of' collection returns in expanded, double-disc form. So, alongside the original collection (CD1), with its mix of singles and cuts plucked from Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr's three collaborative albums, we're treated to a second disc packed with rarities, lesser-known remixes and largely forgotten B-sides. There are some genuine treats to be found, including a swathe of club-focused mixes that showcase the project's dance music roots. Highlights include 808 State's majestic, breakbeat-driven 12" mix of Neil Tennant collaboration 'Disappointed', the piano-rich "peak-time at the Hacienda" 'DNA Groove Mix' of 'Get The Message', Graeme Park and Mike Pickering's similarly superb 'Vocal Remix' of 'Getting Away With It', and 'Idiot Country 2', a rushing club workout remixed by Stereo MCs under their forgotten Ultimatum alias.

Review: The LILA label is dropping a wealth of essential new ambient albums this month and Eternell is one of the artists behind them, an alias of Ludvig Cimbrelius who says he has been hearing new music in his mind all of his life. Here he gives it a form in the real world as he offers up real emotional depths and wondrous highs that will encourage deep introspection and firm connections with your inner most self. Mira is full of widescreen pieces, smeared pads and gently rising lines that subsume you in heavenly sonics.

Review: It's not often that a previous unheard recording of a giant of jazz is found loitering in the depths of someone's personal collection, but that's the case here. These recordings of legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans, laid to high-quality tape in 1964, were discovered last year in the personal archive of jazz musician Ole Matthiessen. Now fully mastered, it's a genuine unheard "Holy grail" - a set of recordings that show the versatility and quality of Evans' playing. Basically, it's a fantastic collection of piano jazz numbers, with Evans either playing solo, or accompanied by little more than a drummer and a double bassist. If you love jazz, you need this in your life.

Review: Astonishingly, almost 14 years have passed since the release of Everything But The Girl's previous - and many assumed final - album, 'Temperamental'. Since then, husband-and-wife team Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn have delivered plenty of solo music rooted in deep house, nu-disco and contemporary synth-pop, and it is those sounds - along with nods to their acoustic past - that dominate Fuse, their surprise new album. While the set undoubtedly feels fresh and contemporary, the key ingredients that made their music so alluring - not least Thorn's distinctive, world-weary lead vocals and introspective lyrics - remain front and centre. The results are uniformly impressive, with highlights including the slow-motion, piano-laden r&b-pop of 'Run a Red Light', the sub-heavy, garage-influenced brilliance of 'Nothing Left To Lose' and the glossy IDM-pop shimmer of 'No One Knows We're Dancing'.

Review: A triumphant return for modern synth-pop chart-toppers Everything Everything, Mountainhead is an album-length analogy for our present condition, and an oozing forth of slick, joyous music at that. "Making a mountain out of a molehill" is certainly lent a positive spin when considered in light of "starting from nothing", i.e. music career-making; Everything Everything did just that in the mid 2010s when they charmed their burgeoning audience with their sophisti-synth prowess, and this is a sophistication that can only be continually reinforced hereon. For their latest concept album Mountainhead, all of society is imagined as working towards the creation of a manmade mountain; at the top is rumoured to be a huge mirror that reflects endlessly recurring images of the self, and at the bottom of the pit is a giant golden snake; the primal fear of all believers. Everything Everything make joyous work of the dreaded maxim, "the taller the mountain, the deeper the hole", delivering glitzing, falsetto'ing gems in the form of 'Cold Reactor' and 'R U Happy?', both of which transcend their initial synthpop reveries to become more than their constituent sum.

Review: Returning with their first full-length in seven long arduous years, Texan post-rock pioneers Explosions In The Sky rediscover their purpose and poise on eighth full-length End. Following on from 2016's The Wilderness, which toyed with ambient segues and electronic moments of respite to compartmentalise the epic song-structures, this latest batch of material opts to eschew many of these meanderings in order to prioritise their bombastic, emotive, swelling spectacles with little in the way of sonic dressing. Mercurial, thoughtfully paced and potently cathartic, the work serves as a revitalised and transient embracing of classic post-rock motifs, crafted by some of the very hands that initially begat the forms.

Review: Ezra Collective has described their hotly anticipated second album, 'Where I'm Meant To Be', as "a thumping celebration of life". As with their previous work, it's rooted in the band's love of on-stage improvisation - call-and-response instrument solos abound throughout - and peppered with contributions from guest vocalists including Sampa The Great, Emeli Sande and Nao. Musically, it's undoubtedly joyous, blurring the boundaries between contemporary UK jazz, afrobeat, hip-hop, dub, Latin rhythms and soft-touch electronics. The plentiful highlights include steppers-powered dub-jazz workout 'Ego Killah', sparkling opener 'Life Goes On' and the Afro-Cuban brilliance of 'Victory Dance'.

Review: In 2009, longtime collaborators Frankie Knuckles and Eric Kupper made their production partnership official via the Director's Cut project. This epic retrospective gathers together the best tracks and remixes the duo completed prior to Knuckles' death in 2014. Disc one offers up original productions, including ear-catching re-makes of some of Knuckles' most famous early works (we're particularly fond of the versions of "The Whistle Song", "Your Love" and "I'll Take U There"). On the second disc you'll find the best of their remix work, with standouts including a sublime take on Candi Staton's "Hallelujah Anyway" and a storming, previously unreleased version of Lou Rawls' "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine". As a bonus, the third disc mixes the best of the lot together in one suitably gorgeous, non-stop journey.