Back catalogue: Psych/Garage Rock

Review: Brooklyn-born Dennis Harte might only have been eleven when he picked up a Sears Silvertone, but the music on this anthologyirecorded between 1973 and 1974iis anything but juvenile. Collected here for the first time on a single release, these four singles originally appeared under shifting monikers (Dennis Harte, Harte Attack, Harte Brothers and Pure Madness), a strategy cooked up by mentor Carl Edelson to maximise industry exposure. The sound veers between garage soul, basement psych, and scrappy blue-eyed r&bian adolescent echo of The Rascals, The Youngbloods or early Spoonful. 'Summer's Over', written by Edelson, is the emotional peak: a world-weary soul lament, rendered uncanny by Harte's teenaged delivery. 'Running Thru My Mind' plays it cooler but still flickers with melodic instinct and wiry guitar interplay. 'Freedom Rides' charges out with organ-stabbed garage grit, a protest anthem wrapped in biker-jacket energy. 'Treat Me Like a Man' flips a Beatles-influenced B-side by Long Island group The Shandels into something looser and more ragged. Harte would go on to tour with Wilson Pickett, but these early 7"sinever before compiledishowcase a raw, regional talent teetering on the edge of real experience. Efficient Space lands another killer excavation from North America's fringe.

Review: The little known folk-funk genre does what it says on the tin. Here on this third volume in a wonderful series so far, compilation curator Paul Hilery does a fine job of portraying the best obscurios in the style, salvaging the very best of such flukily serene funk music and its stylistic cognates. Classic cuts from unlikely celestials such as Tim Green and Jeff Outterman are paired with case examples of neo-psychedelia, vocal raga, soft rock, and trip-hop, at once stretching the very furthest definitional corners of the term "funk" while making for a shimmering trip. Bobbi Keith's 'Give Me Time' has to be the highlight, coming agogo with chord-soaked backings and pealing electric piano, as Keith's nearly genderless voice flits over the mix.

Review: From an ardent blogger to an in-demand compiler, Paul Hillery's obsessive approach to music discovery has taken him far. As well as working with the likes of BBE, he's been fostering a working relationship with Re:Warm which now yields a second volume of the fantastic Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours series. The title is instructive, and somewhere in the folds of private press joints and forgotten album cuts Hillery finds a thread which binds together seemingly disparate sounds. There's delicate singer-songwriter seances from the likes of Lucy Kitchen and psychedelic, roving magic from Stallions remixing Findlay Brown and much more besides.