Back catalogue: Experimental/Electronic

Review: Thankfully, plenty of material by the late, great Arthur Russell is being reissued on vinyl, but it's only natural given just how timeless all his work was. Tower Of Meaning is perhaps one of his most curious works, and the craziest thing is that it's actually his first album, a 1983 experiment that sounds totally out of place and utterly sublime. With strings and plenty of electronic manipulation, Russell managed to conjure a world of his own on this LP, a melancholic but strangely beautiful cascade of melodies that could have been made in the Baroque period, or 2,000 years from now by a future society on a different planet. Fantastic stuff.

Review: Up until Peter Gordon's recent revival, excerpts from Arthur Russell's 1975 composition Instrumentals - inspired by his studies of Indian and western music while in San Francisco a few years previously - had only ever been performed in public on a handful of occasions. While this may have partly been due to the Russell's desire for it to be performed in a single 48-hour cycle, it has meant that the few recordings that do exist have remained hidden for decades. This superb double album gathers together those excerpts, recorded between 1974 and 78 in New York, alongside recordings of two other early Russell works. Musically, it's as strange, imaginative and touching as you'd expect, with Instrumentals variously fusing pastoral classical music, Indian mysticism, and (then) contemporary Americana.

Review: Well, we couldn't really be happier. In fact, there is almost nothing to say about this album apart from the fact that it is absolutely, downright essential. Originally released in 1986 on Rough Trade here in the UK, it has been reissued a few time over the years but has always vanished in the blink of an eye and reappeared on the EBay and Discogs circuits for big bucks. Finally, you can indulge in a beautifully remastered version on virgin vinyl. In what is seen by many cultic Russell fans as perhaps his biggest achievement, the LP drifts in and out of light and shadows with utter ease, truly portraying the genius of the man who paved much of the way for modern electronic music generally. From start to finish, it's an ethereal mixture of sparse beats, effect manipulations and folklore, charismatically told by one of the only artists in the history of experimental music to really combine and successfully bind so many unexpected musical terrains. We are only mere mortals, so we won't describe the music to you...just get yourself a copy and see...

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.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged, but otherwise in excellent condition***



Well, we couldn't really be happier. In fact, there is almost nothing to say about this album apart from the fact that it is absolutely, downright essential. Originally released in 1986 on Rough Trade here in the UK, it has been reissued a few time over the years but has always vanished in the blink of an eye and reappeared on the EBay and Discogs circuits for big bucks. Finally, you can indulge in a beautifully remastered version on virgin vinyl. In what is seen by many cultic Russell fans as perhaps his biggest achievement, the LP drifts in and out of light and shadows with utter ease, truly portraying the genius of the man who paved much of the way for modern electronic music generally. From start to finish, it's an ethereal mixture of sparse beats, effect manipulations and folklore, charismatically told by one of the only artists in the history of experimental music to really combine and successfully bind so many unexpected musical terrains. We are only mere mortals, so we won't describe the music to you...just get yourself a copy and see...

Review: Well, we couldn't really be happier. In fact, there is almost nothing to say about this album apart from the fact that it is absolutely, downright essential. Originally released in 1986 on Rough Trade here in the UK, it has been reissued a few time over the years but has always vanished in the blink of an eye and reappeared on the EBay and Discogs circuits for big bucks. Finally, you can indulge in a beautifully remastered version on virgin vinyl. In what is seen by many cultic Russell fans as perhaps his biggest achievement, the LP drifts in and out of light and shadows with utter ease, truly portraying the genius of the man who paved much of the way for modern electronic music generally. From start to finish, it's an ethereal mixture of sparse beats, effect manipulations and folklore, charismatically told by one of the only artists in the history of experimental music to really combine and successfully bind so many unexpected musical terrains. We are only mere mortals, so we won't describe the music to you...just get yourself a copy and see...