Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: Ed Black, aka "edbl," is an increasingly prominent hip-hop and R&B artist and composer who has emerged from South London's indie music scene alongside luminaries like Jorja Smith and Jamie Isaac. His sound, a blend of lo-fi soul and hip-hop akin to Jordan Rakei and Tom Misch, garnered attention when Spotify UK featured him on their New Music Friday cover. Additionally, Music Business Worldwide Magazine nominated him as one of The Hottest Independent Artists In The World and now he backs up that potential with 'The Way Things Were,' featuring the mellifluous vocals of Isaac Waddington.

Review: This marks a first ever reissue of this cult-status punk-funk, no wave electro post-punk fusion 45 from 1979. It's by post-Wayne County Electric Chairs and has been produced by David Cunningam and now expanded to 12". The first tune 'So Many Ways' has Val Haller on lead vocals and sounded at the time very different from anything else the band had done. A hypnotic, sure charged groove that still sounds years ahead of its time. 'J'attends Les Marines' is a rework of 'Waiting For The Marines' from the Things Your Mother album but with some added dub and experimental flourishes. Two versions of 'So Many Ways' then close out this fine curio.

Review: Liverpool's legendary Echo & The Bunnymen add to their 30-plus years of service to music with a new album, of sorts, that in fact delivers two new compositions and 13 other songs plucked from their vast and expansive catalog. Long-time fans will no doubt be pleased to hear the new beatless tinges given to their 1984 classic "Seven Seas", while of course the album is a perfect diving point for new audience to come to grips with the band too. Take, for example, the gnarlyish drawl of "Nothing Lasts Forever" that helps offset the Bowie-like tendencies heard in numbers like "Lips like Sugar" and "The Somnambulist". Sounds like a cliche, but seriously, still as good as it ever was.

Review: Echo & The Bunnymen's first ever best-of compilation, first released in 1985, gets a reissue. Accruing all the hits, we begin with the seminal 'Rescue' before careening through 'Never Stop', 'The Killing Moon' and 'Seven Seas', recalling the new wave band's emotive drawl and gushing instrumentals, coinciding with the time in which their contemporaneous album, 'Songs To Learn and Sing', was released.

Review: Echo & The Bunnymen came back with renewed vigour when they reformed in 1997 and recorded Evergreen. The album was headed up by 'Nothing Lasts Forever', which lodged in the UK's musical psyche as the Britpop wave receded and everyone was craving a little more maturity in their indie bands. 25 years on, the album ranks as of the band's finest, as vital to their story as the classic 80s records, and it's a welcome treat to see it pressed up once again, on fetching white vinyl with a yolky centre, no less.

Review: Rhino have embarked on a grand reissue mission and plan to put out all of the Echo & The Bunnymen's first four albums. Here we have a remastered version of Ocean Rain on 180-gram black vinyl. It was the fourth of the band's albums and was related back in 1984. It reached number four on the UK Albums Chart thanks to singles like 'Silver', 'Seven Seas' and personal favourite 'The Killing Moon.' The album got the band back to the top of their game after the rather less than warm reception to previous album Porcupine the year before thanks to its new found romantic sweetness and the band's bittersweet melodies.

Review: Much loved UK outfit Editors have that tag because they always manage to confound expectation and stay one step ahead. They first emerged more than 20 years ago now as a group of friends who formed a band at university. Their debut album was Mercury Prize-shortlisted and since then thy have always been bold and brave in their approach. EBM is their first album since Blanck Mass became a full time member and, as the title suggests, is heavily influenced by EBM with physical and angular grooves, soot black moods and real urgency.

Review: Talk about taking your sweet time. Anyone want to hazard a guess at how long Blinking Lights & Other Revelations took to finish? Thought not. In truth, Eels started work on it in 1998, but it wouldn't see the light of day until 2005. Marking the start of a new era for the band, contractually at least - their deal with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Records having dissolved the previous year - the album was high concept, too.
As per frontman E, writing on the band's official website at the time of Blinking Lights' release, the record is about "God and all the questions relating to the subject of God." Suddenly the extended production period makes sense. Then you see it has 33 tracks listed on the sleeve and it all becomes clear. A classic piece of alternative rock with big, bold ideas, it should always be remembered as one of the first landmarks to come from America this millennium.

Review: Lora Logic, co-founder of UK punk band X-Ray Spex, was unexpectedly ousted before the recording of their 1977 debut Germ Free Adolescents. Undeterred, she formed the post-punk band Essential Logic which became known for its angular sax lines and distinctive vocals. Their 1979 debut album Beat Rhythm News (Waddle Ya Play?) reached number 11 on the UK Indie chart. In 1995, she rejoined X-Ray Spex for Conscious Consumer and in 2022, Essential Logic returned with the boxset Logically Yours, followed by 2024's Rekalibrated, featuring diverse remixers. This 45th Anniversary Deluxe edition includes the original album, a bonus album of Essential Logic's 1978-1983 recordings and new sleeve notes by Lora.

Review: A third album of wonderfully intimate, idiosyncratic songwriting from multi-instrumentalist Stephen Gilchrist - formerly the Stuffy in the much loved Stuffy & The Fuses - in his Stephen EvEns guise. The name may be singular, but from the choir of voices singing the opening tune 'A Song For Europe' to the child's voice at the end of seafaring epic 'Hello Salty Salty', this is very much a community effort and feels like it, with Stephen's core collaborators Jimi Scandal (guitar) and Crompton Whesp (drums) joined by guests like former Curve/Echobelly bassist Debbie Smith, longtime Cardiacs keyboard player William D Drake and Hurtling/My Bloody Valentine guitarist and keyboard player Jen Macro. The mood palate is on just as grand a scale as the personnel list, from the Nick Drake-style acoustic guitar/strings interplay of 'Firefly' to the beefy hip-hop backbeat of 'BBQ Head & 7 Bells', a two part track, the first half dedicated to the joys of cooking in the garden, the second about paranoia and the threat of violence. Elements of psychedelia, some gorgeous analogue synth tones, a penchant for a quirky time signature and/or arrangement all add to what's already a very tasty concoction that anyone with an ear for a tenacious earworm or two will love.

Review: By the time they released "Amplified Heart" in 1994, Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn had spent a decade churning out admired but relatively commercially unsuccessful "lite-jazz" albums. Then, on the back of a string of on-point club remixes (Todd Terry's chart-topping version of "Missing" included), the set surprisingly became a runaway success. To celebrate the album's 25th birthday, "Amplified Heart" has been given the audiophile reissue treatment. It suits the album's gently breezy, emotion-rich feel, with Thorn's evocative, lovelorn vocals perfectly matching Watt's sunset-friendly blend of acoustic guitars, soft-touch double bass, trip-hop style beats and Balearic-minded electronics. It remains one of the duo's greatest albums and should be in every discerning listener's collection.

Review: Back in 1984 music bible NME ranked Eden 20th best album of that year. Skip forward nearly 40 more and it has lost none of its unique charm and intoxicating sense of personality, bringing in an array of elements that weren't par for the course in those days and largely still aren't.

Everything But the Girl's first album, it arrived four years before 1988's groundbreaking Idlewild - by which time their acoustic instrumentation fully shared the space with dance synthesisation - and was considered part of a long-since almost-forgotten sub-canon, sophisti-pop. Bringing elements of jazz, bossa nova, and jangly indie together, it also aimed a sucker punch at the eyes of critics with lead single 'Each & Every One', in which Tracey Thorn focuses anger from being frequently ignored and patronised for being female into a volley of poetic, deceptively laidback lyrical fury.