Emotional Rescue レコード& CD

Review: Emotional Rescue label boss Stuart Leath is particularly excited about this release, and it's not hard to see why. While Spanish singer/songwriter Javier Bergia is not widely known in the UK, his releases - either solo, or as part of the Finas Africae and Arium Musicae groups - are held in high regard by those of a Balearic persuasion. Eclipse is something of a treat, gathering together the best of Bergia's solo work from 1985 to the present day. Featuring Bergia's spoken and sung vocals atop a mix of gentle acoustics, atmospheric strings, delay-laden percussion and subtle global rhythms, Eclipse impresses from start to finish. It should be essential listening for anyone with even the tiniest interest in Balearica.

Review: The second part of the Dancefloor Records reissue series on Emotional Rescue comes in the form a true house classic - Chicago legend Andrew Komis' 'It's You' is an original deep house bomb. It's essentially a cover/updated version of ESP's track of the same name, but this 1989 version is tougher, heavier and deeper with a variety of mixes - the New York-London, acid-infused Free House and drum heavy NU Style Mix - all designed to rock big sound systems.

Review: Emotional Rescue go hunting in the reeds for forgotten projects, and come up trumps once again. Delay Tactics formed at the beginning of the 80s as a tape looping project from Carl Weingarten and Reed Nesbit before expanding their palette with Walter Whitney's synth vamping. They didn't last past their second album, 1984's Any Questions?, but now the finest of the band's catalogue has been documented here. The sound is prime inquisitive 80s, teetering between the traditional band dynamic and the experimental pastures of technology-powered music. At times infectiously playful ('Oyster') and at others compellingly beautiful ('Kites'), Delay Tactics are exactly the kind of band that deserve another moment in the sunshine.

Review: South African Warrick Sony is a ground breaking composer who was behind the Kalahari Surfers project which now gets a vital spotlight courtesy of Emotional Rescue. This compilation shows how effortlessly eclectic his sound was - from jive rhythms to jazz, tabla to political speeches and much more in between. A Hindu pacifist who was once conscripted into the South African Defense Force, he founded this group as a way out getting his ides out there, calling on other musicians as and when he needed them. It was the first radical white anti-apartheid pop in South Africa and as this vital collection shows it explored polyrhythms, slow motorik, dub sound collage and even a goofy cover of Nancy Sinatra.

Review: Nowhere Like Here: Love Songs From The Caribbean & Diaspora is a perfectly escapist new double album from Emotional Rescue that has been drawn from the "off kilter digging of archivist, DJ and collector Bruno." It's a sister collection to the Perfect Motion album that focuses on new wave and leftfield pop and is already a cult classic. This lovely album also makes ten years of this fine label and is a tasteful assembled selection perfectly befitting of that occasion from this much-loved imprint. Here's to the next ten years.

Review: The Emotional Rescue label has done a superb job of shining a light on the British post punk scene over the last decade or so. It now does so once more in fantastic fashion with a compilation of tunes from Bristol's short lived but much loved Recreational Records. The 10 tunes have been remastered and recut and they all sound as good now as ever. Highlights include X-Certs - 'Untogether' and Electric Guitar's 'Don't Wake The Baby' which sum up the collection perfect with their jangling dub rhythms, heavily treated vocals and oodles of delay all twisting your melon. This releases was included in Bandcamp's Essential Releases 2022.

Review: Glen Velez is perhaps not a household name, but let Emotional Rescue change that with this wonderfully curated collection of works from a masterful drum devotee. Velez has Latin American roots, and he has performed since the late 60s in New York, but his interest in percussion spans the globe and all kinds of hand drums. His respected techniques have been snapped up by collaborators like John Cage and Steve Reich, not least thanks to the advanced polyrhythmic modes he operates in. Don't be fooled though - this isn't just a drum record. Accompanying musicians shape out the hypnotic percussion in a variety of transcendental moods that make this an invigorating listen start to finish.

Review: Cult French outfit Vox Populi! have already put out a subversive and superb album this year back in April on Touch Sensitive. Here it is the good folk at Emotional Rescue who snap up another one in the form of Aither, which has been remastered and repackaged 30 years after it first landed. We're told it is the first of many to come in 2022 and that's good news because it's class - numerous musicians played as part of the band and traditional instrumental paired with folklore vocals make for a majestic melting pot of sound from the world of dub, funk, soul, psyche and oriental.