REISSUES EXTRA

The Fall

★★★★

The Infotainment Scan DEMON. LP

A Fall diamond from ’93, MES’s Number 9 hit(!) brings polished electronics, crisp tunes and counterblasts against pop nostalgia and celeb fawning. On swish clear vinyl, as are ’94’s Middle Class Revolt and ’95’s live The Twenty-Seven Points. IH

Ziad Rahbani

★★★★ Bennesbeh Labokra… Chou? WE WANT SOUNDS. LP

Intriguing score for Rahbani’s 1978 play, a Beirut social critique during the Lebanese civil war. The producer son of pop star Fairuz mixes Arabic music with jazz and bossa nova in a reflection of political and ideological tensions. JB

Spiritualized

★★★★ Pure Phase FAT POSSUM. LP

SPZ’s vinyl campaign rolls on with their second album, a relatively overlooked set of looser garage jams, whispered gospel, detailed ambience and frazzled mix science. Neon-lit systems instrumental Electric Mainline remains a pulsating career highlight. JM

Derrick Harriott

★★★★ Presents Earthly Sounds DOCTOR BIRD. CD

Producer Harriott marshalls The Crystalites, The Ethiopians

et al for soulful vocals, Rasta drumming and instrumentals, with Big Youth, I Roy et al on rhythm re-rubs, DJing and dubs. Twenty new to CD! IH

Lucas Santtana

★★★★

3 Sessions In A Greenhouse MAIS UM. CD/DL/LP

A 2006 Brazilian cult item: flautist Santtana’s futuristic splicing of samba with Black Ark-style dub, over three weed-enhanced nights in Rio. New remastering by Stefan Betke, AKA Pole, heightens the ping-boing fluency. JB

The Wedding Present

★★★★ Seamonsters SONY LEGACY. LP

Two-LP-plus-CD edition of ’91 album that saw David Gedge’s Leeds stalwarts swap chaste jangles for blasted, Steve Albini-enabled landscapes of obsession and betrayal (see Corduroy and Dalliance). Peel Sessions/B-sides augment. DE

Madness

★★★ 7 UNION SQUARE. LP

Maddies’ third LP, from 1981, now on 180g vinyl. Still gamely bouncing, though songs about depression, heart attacks, vivisection and urban drifting make for uneasy listening, segueing into 1982’s concept piece The Rise & Fall. IH

The Shins

★★★★

Oh, Inverted World SUB POP. LP

Twenty-year Bob Ludwig remaster of an album that reset US indie with judicious deployment of ’60 psych pop and James Mercer’s balance of ebullience with doubt. The newly finessed sound is consistent with Mercer’s erudite craftsmanship. JB

Various

★★★★

A Revolution In Sound CHERRY RED. CD

This 4-CD trawl through popular music’s outré limits acts like an Observer’s Book of muso name-dropping: from modern classical (Stockhausen, Ives) to free jazz (Coltrane, Coleman) and early electronics (Daphne Oram), on to Indian classical (Ravi Shankar). JB