Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: House lover and studio wizard Qwartz has been at it again, with 'it' being editing some classic rock tunes into club-ready sounds for DJs and dancers. This time he tackles 'Baba O' Riley' firstly with an extended mix that brings all new life into The Who's original. It has a prickly low end with eerie guitars and disco motifs making it a raw, heads-down sound. The dub remix brings a little extra low-end weight.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


The tenth studio album from Tom Waits, released in 1987 via Island Records, was yet another landmark in a career which, by this point, had already given us a raft of stone cold classics. The last two of those LPs, Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs, certainly swerved expectations, marking a new period in the life and times of an acclaimed jazz and blues man. Taking its name from a track on Swordfish, Frank's Wild Years is actually "Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts" according to the subtitle, with several songs here taken from a play of the same name which premiered in Chicago a year prior. In many ways, the theatrical side story was an inevitability, with the previous records all pointing in the direction of a gravelly blues-jazz-rock core with a vaudeville, spoken word, and narrative disposition.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve slightly damaged, slight surface marks on record***


To say that Tom Waits' eighth studio album marked a stylistic shift would be like saying winter is markedly different to summer. Having established himself as one of the finest piano-based songwriters of his generation - or any other for that matter - Swordfishtrombones was the first LP from the artist to lay out what was to come. Something very, very unusual, as visionary as it is bizarre, a celebration of the beauty of surrealism and the joy of having fun with music. Whether it's the opening number, 'Underground', and its strange, almost cartoonish chain gang jazz-blues stomp, the quiet keys and solitary vocals of 'Johnsburg, Illinois', or the distorted, compressed electronic jangling and organ riffs of 'Dave The Butcher', within the first few tracks alone you're presented with a vast and varied universe of ideas.

Review: The most eminent British rock opera of all time, The Who's Quadrophenia, released in 1973, hears Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Roger Daltrey conceive and narrate the angst of a young postroom worker, Jimmy, living in post-war Britain amid the schismatics of the mods and rockers, as they warred in converse step. Exploring rebellion, let-off steam, and alienation through music, the record firmly set the stage for the 1979 film adaptation of the same name, which popularised the thoroughfare connecting London-Brighton as a vital identificatory artery for a certain angst-ridden generation. The album features standout tracks like '5:15' and 'Love, Reign O'er Me', and remains one of The Who's most celebrated works. It's now reissued through Bespoke Editions, with two CDs of Pete Townshend's demos, and a 5.1 DVD-A remix of eight tracks, plus handwritten lyrics in a book and a 13,000-word essay from Townshend.

Review: Hard rockers unite. Or at least they used to. In an age when it often feels like even the last remaining vestiges of whatever subcultures survived MTV and the Millennium are themselves divided, every once in a while a record comes along that acts like a rousing call for unilateral response. The Satanic Rites Of is exactly that album. Reading reviews is smile-inducing, if for no other reason than the references to frontman Ginger as a 'godfather' of the British heavy-hard guitar scene. It's hard to deny, except if in your mind he still invokes images of a sprightly enfant terrible. In all honestly, the latest is both - an outfit that have lost none of their high energy snarl and commitment to doing interesting, ferocious things, but have years of wisdom on their side to achieve them.