FILTER REISSUES

Sister Irene O’Connor ★★★★

Fire Of God’s Love

RVNG INTL/FREEDOM TO SPEND. DL/LP

Uncanny religious recording by Sydney-based nun duo restored and remastered to a superior state.

It was at the Ave Maria Provincial House of the Roman Catholic order of the Franciscan Missionaries Of Mary, back in 1973, that the critical meeting between Sister Irene O’Connor and Sister Marimil Lobregat took place. The two nuns had already met in Singapore in 1965 when Sister Irene was teaching children with learning difficulties and recording songs under the pseudonym Myriam Frances. Sister Marimil was also a musician and by the time the duo reconnected in 1973 she’d decided she could enhance Irene’s simple songs in ways miraculous. Recorded on a Teac 3340S 4-track reel-to-reel, with Irene’s angelic soprano bounced through a tapestry of reverb, electric organ, and drum machine, this is a record of curiously eerie power, reminiscent of Jacky’s White Horses if reworked by Broadcast as a Halloween tribute to God’s eternal light.

Andrew Male

Kate Bush ★★★

Best Of The Other Sides

FISH PEOPLE. CD/DL/LP The director’s deep cuts.

Released in 2018, Kate Bush’s prosaically-titled Remastered In Vinyl IV box brought four discs of long unavailable flipsides, remixes and covers back into the public domain. This new set distils that career scree down to 11 tracks, with a small amount of new tinkering: some extra guitar in the intro to dystopian 1986 single Experiment IV, and technical fixes to Walk Straight Down The Middle (the CD bonus track from The Sensual World) and Bush’s luscious, Prince-toned beekeeper fantasia You Want Alchemy. The reggae lilt on her version of Elton John’s Rocket Man has not aged well, and the 12-inch mixes of The Big Sky and Running Up That Hill are a missed opportunity, but Lyra and her prospective theme for Terry Gilliam’s Brazil are reasonably spectacular, while Under The Ivy – a throwaway hurriedly hacked together for a 1985 B-side – is an enchanting trip to Bush’s “favourite place”. Follow if you dare.