SCRITTI POLITTI Vinyl & CDs

Review: Scritti Politti's Early is an originally 2005 compilation collecting singles and EPs recorded in the earliest years of the Leeds band, way before the polished dub pop that defined them and brought multi million selling status to them arrived. Bringing together a series of their most formative recordings from the late 70s and early 80s, for an America-only vinyl release, this is an incendiary expose as to their earliest political and philosophical underpinnings, which rested on Marxist and anarchist grounds. Exemplary as a post-punk milestone, but making use of unorthodox musical techniques even for that umbrella genre, the compilation serves as a shining light for the very front of the experimental squat-music vanguard at the time.

Review: Rough Trade reissue Green Gartside's landmark 2006 album 'White Bread Black Beer'- a deeply personal, sparse document of the Scritti Politti singer's time spent recording in his Dalston house, after the band's apparent split. Gartside's production on the record is sparse, allowing his breathy, tender vocals to take centre stage. Highlights include the tender synthscape of 'No Fine Lines' and the 80s-Scritti-throwback upstroke of 'Petrococadollar', which calls to mind the lugubrious later synth works of 80s japanese heroes like Yukihiro Takahashi and Brian Wilson's sunny, unsettling pop masterpieces in equal measure. Like the title suggests, the album is a wholesome and nourishing listen, which chronicles Gartside's triumphant return to the public sphere with a formula successfully alluding to both Scritti Politti's earlier Marxist din and latter silken synth pop with ease and conviction.

Review: Scritti Politti made three albums for Virgin and all of them are now being reissued by band leader Green Gartside's current record label, Rough Trade, this year. Cupid & Psyche 85 first came in 1985 and is now presented with new sleeve notes that reunite Gartside with keyboardist and co-producer David Gamson. These are the first reissues of any kind from Scritti Politti, and it coincides with a forthcoming tour that runs in autumn and celebrates 35 years of Cupid & Psyche 85. Politti's brand of alternative indie is close to as sweet as it gets on this record, with plenty of sensuality and sweet but never sickly pop tropes.

Review: If you've never been to Leeds then let's put it like this i Scritti Politti make a lot of sense if you know the city well enough. Long before 'the first Harvey Nichols outside London' and the refurbishment of the historic arcades there was dereliction and squats. If you look hard enough, you'll still find them, but it's out of that 1970s economic woe that Scritti Politti emerged, kicking, screaming and squatting while blending various spheres of influence into a punk framework.

Within a decade, though, they would leave that rough and ready remit behind, at least in part, and adopt a more mainstream pop approach. Anomie & Bonhomie, released in 1999 after no less than an 11 year hiatus, marries both chart friendliness with an alternative edge, in moments sounding like Let Loose, at other times the forgotten Kid Rock demos.