Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: Echo & The Bunnymen's first ever best-of compilation, first released in 1985, gets a reissue. Accruing all the hits, we begin with the seminal 'Rescue' before careening through 'Never Stop', 'The Killing Moon' and 'Seven Seas', recalling the new wave band's emotive drawl and gushing instrumentals, coinciding with the time in which their contemporaneous album, 'Songs To Learn and Sing', was released.

Review: Rhino have embarked on a grand reissue mission and plan to put out all of the Echo & The Bunnymen's first four albums. Here we have a remastered version of Ocean Rain on 180-gram black vinyl. It was the fourth of the band's albums and was related back in 1984. It reached number four on the UK Albums Chart thanks to singles like 'Silver', 'Seven Seas' and personal favourite 'The Killing Moon.' The album got the band back to the top of their game after the rather less than warm reception to previous album Porcupine the year before thanks to its new found romantic sweetness and the band's bittersweet melodies.

Review: Talk about taking your sweet time. Anyone want to hazard a guess at how long Blinking Lights & Other Revelations took to finish? Thought not. In truth, Eels started work on it in 1998, but it wouldn't see the light of day until 2005. Marking the start of a new era for the band, contractually at least - their deal with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Records having dissolved the previous year - the album was high concept, too.
As per frontman E, writing on the band's official website at the time of Blinking Lights' release, the record is about "God and all the questions relating to the subject of God." Suddenly the extended production period makes sense. Then you see it has 33 tracks listed on the sleeve and it all becomes clear. A classic piece of alternative rock with big, bold ideas, it should always be remembered as one of the first landmarks to come from America this millennium.

Review: Ammar El Sherei's intoxicating instrumental album Oriental Music was written in 1976 and has remained a cult classic for all the deep diggers, world music lovers and curio obsessives. For this record, the iconic Egyptian artist, composer and producer actually served up his own take on six classic compositions by another Egyptian legend, Mohamed Abdel Wahab. The results are utterly hypnotic and majestic melodic affairs with organic drums and percussion and North African melodies that worm their way deep into your brain and transport you to the hustle and bustle of a dusty open air market or street side coffee spot.

Review: Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou is an Ethiopian nun known for her unique solo piano playing. For three decades she lived a reclusive life with only rare performances, including one at the Jewish Community Center in Washington, D.C. in 2008. Featured here are recordings sourced from the '60s of her truly captivating performances and are deservedly reissued by the Portland, Oregon based Mississippi/Little Axe Records. Featured here are all original compositions available for the first time on vinyl beyond the original early editions, said to be near impossible to find.

Review: By the time they released "Amplified Heart" in 1994, Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn had spent a decade churning out admired but relatively commercially unsuccessful "lite-jazz" albums. Then, on the back of a string of on-point club remixes (Todd Terry's chart-topping version of "Missing" included), the set surprisingly became a runaway success. To celebrate the album's 25th birthday, "Amplified Heart" has been given the audiophile reissue treatment. It suits the album's gently breezy, emotion-rich feel, with Thorn's evocative, lovelorn vocals perfectly matching Watt's sunset-friendly blend of acoustic guitars, soft-touch double bass, trip-hop style beats and Balearic-minded electronics. It remains one of the duo's greatest albums and should be in every discerning listener's collection.