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


This official reissue of Bela Lugosi's Dead: The Bela Session comes on black and red splattered vinyl this time around and includes previously unreleased tracks that have been mastered from the original demo tapes of their first ever recording session together. The post-punk outfit's debut single was released initially in 1979. Bela Lugosi's Dead is not only their first single, but also often gets mentioned as the first goth record. It has since been covered by Nine Inch Nails, Massive Attack and Nouvelle Vague. The rest of the tunes from the demo session remain hugely innovative, reflecting their post-punk and dark-glam style with dub reggae influences that would further evolve in their output that followed and explain why the band went on to such cult status.

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


A highly collectible splatter 12" vinyl of this Martin Hannett-produced session groundbreaking gothic/post-punk band, Joy Division. Includes the band's best known composition 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and a superb non-album B-side in 'Leaders Of Men', plus an extended mix of the A-side. Most music fans and their mothers will have had the former track firmly implanted into their grey matter by now, but it's the B-side that really gets the true-heads going, channelling a massive, cortex-cracking sound that is closer to punk than post. Boy, did Joy Division have a toothy side.

Review: Three cuts of gauzy, cavernous dream pop from San Jose's premier fleeting shoegaze flagbearers Ozean. Opener 'scenic' is a much-loved anthem which has found a place alongside the more lauded proponents of the genre in the record bags of neu-ambient kingpins like CCL and the 3XL contingent. It's followed by 'Fall', a melancholic head bopper set to soundtrack the first strains of spring and the extra washy, ethereal 'Porcelain' which would've provided a perfect soundtrack to rolling credits in one of Gregg Araki's apocalyptic coming-of-age fantasies.

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


2022's stunning album Once Twice Melody was a fine example of Beach House doing what they do best - living bang up to that name, with intimate-but epic instrumentation falling somewhere between surf-y jangle and grand shoegaze. 'Become' is definitely on a similar tip, and as such feels much like an extension of the long form.
Dig a little deeper, though, and scratches begin to show. While the full-length record represented Beach House reaching for the stars, or at least the moon, and stepping into the role of festival headliners, here the sense of pure confidence and occasion is less pronounced. That may not be a bad thing, mind, because while Once came across like a finished article, refined and prepared, things here seem somehow rawer, as though we're sitting in on a session as oppose to getting the signed off product.