Giant Sand – Chore Of Enchantment - October 2011 October 16th, 2011

The back catalogue of Giant Sand, Howe Gelb’s durable desert rock disguise, has been leaking out anew from Fire Records, though usually without much bonus material. But the band’s pivotal 2000 release arrives as a laden double. A trio of name producers, including Jim Dickinson, coaxed the serrated edges and ragged rambles of Gelb’s unruly…

John Fahey – Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965) - October 2011 October 16th, 2011

Today’s youngsters download all their music illegally. But this five CD archive of juvenilia by the kind of cult artist disposable income laden old men admire, packaged with a ninety page tome a foot square, just wouldn’t be the same as a stolen zip file. John Fahey reinvented the acoustic guitar, taking blues and folk…

Evan Parker, Kenny Wheeler, Paul Dunmall, Tony Levin and John Edwards – Live at the Vortex, London - October 2011 October 9th, 2011

The drummer Tony Levin died in February, aged 71, and this is one of six previously unissued recordings offered by Rare Music in tribute. Live in London in 2003, Levin chooses perfect points at which to interrupt and investigate a slowly gathering storm of horns, featuring two veterans from free improvisation’s first wave, Evan Parker…

Luke Haines – Nine And A Half Psychedelic Meditations On British Wrestling Of The 1970s and Early ‘80s - October 2011 October 9th, 2011

Britpop’s hardy nearly man Luke Haines’ new album, Nine And A Half Psychedelic Meditations On British Wrestling of The 1970s and Early ‘80s, splices Proustian childhood memories with the spandex flare of naïve pre-WWF Saturday stage fights. Cheap eighties keyboards burble and clatter. Ringside chants become meaningful mantras. Haines whispers intimately, often about sausages. The…

Lydia Loveless – Indestructible Machine - October 2011 October 2nd, 2011

Had Neko Case not made a belated splash with her own punk Patsy Cline schtick, Lydia Loveless’ second album would seem astounding. As it is, it’s still pretty good. Loveless’ holler is just the right side of wrecked and, on Learn To Say No and More Like Them, Todd May leavens the roots rock with…

Beautiful Rivers And Mountains : The Psychedelic Sound Of South Korea’s Shin Joong Hyun 1958 – 1974 - October 2011 October 2nd, 2011

Shin Joong Hyun was South Korea’s answer to Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix and Simon Cowell, an acid rock auteur and guitar virtuoso with a sassy svengali sideline. Thus, this superb compilation slips sugary dream-pop bubblegum nuggets, Shin at the controls coaxing emotional peaks from would-be divas and sharp-shirted singers, in-between psychedelic epics, like the slow-burning…