ARTHUR RUSSELL Schallplatten & CDs

Review: First released in 2004, nearly twenty years after much of the material was recorded in 1985, Calling Out Of Context reveals yet another facet of the ever-fascinating Russell, the New York polymath who defied generic categorisation even as he married pop melody and avant-garde abstraction in an aural outer space. This is an album that showcases the more melodious side of Russell's work, and for all the stylistic touches that may remind of its '80s origins, Russell's emotional voice and mercurial sleight-of-hand render these otherworldly ditties an experience unto themselves. An essential testimony of a talent never to be matched, yet also less a rarities collection than a dreamlike experience of considerable psychic charge.