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This month…

P44 ALBERT AYLER

P45 SUARASAMA

P46 DEBBIE HARRY

P47 PERNICE BROTHERS

P48 NEIL YOUNG

P50 SISTERS OF MERCY

P51 SHARON VAN ETTEN

P51 JAH WOBBLE

10cc

The Original Soundtrack (reissue, 1975) PROPER

8/10

Vinyl reissue series continues with pop subversives’ fatechanging third

An early taste of “I’m Not In Love” was enough to convince Phonogram to sign up the song’s creators for a five-album deal in 1975, thereby much improving 10cc’s declining fortunes (alas, the band had hoped to sign to Virgin instead). Now reissued alongside 1978’s Bloody Tourists, the group’s third album marks a significant advance in several respects, with their experimental soft-rock smash pointing toward future subversions of form. Nine-minute opener “Un Nuit A Paris” remains the best realised of their stabs at prog-operetta, and the glam pomp of “Life Is A Minestrone” is equally exhilarating. That said, the racial epithet that mars “The Second Sitting Of The Last Supper” is one of several aspects that mark The Original Soundtrack as a product of its era, the album’s arch music-hall trappings being less compelling than its displays of post-Beatles innovation and proto-Britpop brashness.

Extras:6/10. 180g vinyl comes packaged in faithful replica of original Hipgnosis gatefold sleeve.

JASON ANDERSON

Experiments insoft rock: 10cc in1976

LICHFIELD ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES; HOLLY ANDRES

ALBERT AYLER

Europe 1966 ORG MUSIC

9/10

Sax great’s singular live set

Taken from the same run of shows as his acclaimed Lorrach/ Paris 1966 LP, this lovingly curated set represents an artist at the veryheight of an incendiarycareer tragically curtailed by his death in 1970. The evidence here is that Ayler was only just beginning to unlock unmapped stratospheres. The Berlin set’s opener, “Truth Is Marching On”, is a phasing, juddering, warped assault on the brass band, at once a brutal eulogy and a revolutionary call to arms. The Stockholm version highlights the singularity of the piece with its blurred monophony; the highly underrated Donald Ayler on trumpet shines until Albert scorches at the climax. It’s a marvel that Ayler’s technical ability and scope were documented with such reverence then, and issued here with such care.

JACK MILNER

BEF

Music For Stowaways COLD SPRING

8/10

Lost synthpop statement restored to print

As the ’80s dawned, Sheffield electronic vanguardists The Human League were shucking off their experimental beginnings and eyeing the charts. But vocalist Phil Oakey’s pop instincts brought him into conflict with founders Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, who in 1980 jumped ship to pursue a new vision. British Electric Foundation were not just a group, but a production company working under the auspices of Virgin Records, churning out cutting-edge electronics on a project-by-project basis. Music For Stowaways was the first fruits of this new approach: eight sleek instrumentals designed to be listened to on a Walkman. The cranky industrial funk of “Uptown Apocalypse”, featuring Adi Newton of Clock DVA, gives a hint of where BEF might have gone. We glimpse where they actually went on “Groove Thang”, which with the addition of vocalist Glenn Gregory became “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”, the debut single of Ware and Marsh’s new group, Heaven 17.

LOUIS PATTISON

BEF: bright electronic facilitators

CARTER USM

30 Something – Deluxe Edition CHRYSALIS

6/10

Expanded reissue for bombastic busker-punk duo’s ’91 breakthrough

Unlikely charttopping, festivalheadlining indie-rock stars in the pre-Britpop early ’90s, south London duo James “Jim Bob” Morrison and Leslie “Fruitbat” Carter made a sample-heavy punk-pop racket akin to Bo Diddley with a beatbox. The bludgeoning power chords and pun-heavy wordplay of their breakthrough Top 10 album, released in 1991, work better live than on record. But softer numbers like “Falling On A Bruise” and “The Final Comedown” better showcase Morrison’s caustic humour and omnivorous pop-culture plundering. The plentiful bonus tracks on this expanded triple-disc reissue include agreeably raucous live covers of Soft Cell’s “Bedsitter” and Pet Shop Boys classic “Rent”, plus a long-awaited DVD transfer of the duo’s 1991 Brixton concert film, In Bed With Carter. Even if its clobbering buskerpunk cockney knees-up stompers have not aged gracefully, 30 Something still has a sharp wit and a social conscience, laying the foundations for Arctic Monkeys and Sleaford Mods.

Extras:9/10. Two discs of bonus/live tracks; concert DVD.

STEPHEN DALTON

CHRIS & COSEY

Elemental 7 (reissue,1984) CTI

8/10

Norfolk synth titans’ occult classics appear on vinyl

Elemental 7 is a gem hidden in the depths of Chris & Cosey’s catalogue. The soundtrack to an experimental film released on Cabaret Voltaire’s Doublevision video imprint, it saw them (on paper) step away from the synthpop of “October (Love Song)” to work with former COUM Transmissions member John Lacey in 1982 and explore that post-industrial, pre-techno zone. Its 10-minute opening track “Dancing Ghosts” – a sublime proto-acid groove – is one of the first recordings to use Roland’s 303 and 808 devices together, and though its percolating dub still sounds futuristic, Carter was digging this seam on his 1980 collection The Space Between. There are freakier passages – the metallic riffs of “The Final Calling”, “Sidereal”’s whiplash – and birdsong (“Well Spring Of Life”). Elemental 7, out of print on vinyl since 1984, joins two other C&C albums pressed to wax for the first time: Muzik Fantastique! (1992) and Carter Tutti’s folk vision Feral Vapours Of The Silver Ether (2007).