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Review: See-Saw records out of the Netherlands were a well-respected label very early in the rave era. Starting way back in 1991, the label was known for being one of the first rave labels in the area but also respected for their variety of styles like house, techno, hardcore and trance music. Their third record and one of their most desired The Jewel EP by Diamonds & Pearls aka Gijs Vroom, is getting a welcomed reissue on the Late Night Burners label. This reissue is a mirror to the original that features the heavy piano house monster 'What You Do To Me', the Euro house gem 'What You Do To Disco' and the Chicago influenced 'Rockin' Your World'. We can't say enough great things about the beautifully mellow ambient house track 'Perspective' which perfectly captures the amazing chill out sound of the time. A very worthy and welcomed reissue from beginnings of of rave post the New Beat era in the Netherlands.

Review: Chicago native Ed Nine brings plenty of his hometown's unique vibes to this fresh platter for Inner balance. He taps into rose tinted house feels on 'Nostalgia' which is a beautifully simple but effective deep cut with punchy drums and ever evolving synth work that lifts the spirits. 'Not On The Radio' is a more hard edge track with fizzing synth rushes and hints of hi-tek soul and then 'Time Will Tell' is another good-time soundtrack with its nimble chords dancing about the mix next to sustained pads. The sugary mix of rich synths and buoyant drum programming features once final time on the cosmically minded closer 'There's Always A Chance.'

Review: Vinyl Junkie catapults a brand new label into the universe and his intention is loud and clear - Badass authentic jungle craftsmanship for the ages. He's rolling neck deep with kindred soldiers; Radiokillaz and Fleck get wild on the breaks on 'Lakes On Saturn', Riffz dusts off the detuned rave stabs for that aggy hardcore flavour while VJ himself whips up some delightful breakbeat switchery that melts into a dubwise breakdown for momentary respite. Radiokillaz close down the EP with a touch of soul on 'Time Again', a poignant space jazz joint laced with mournful strings and a yearning vocal. Meltdown.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to outer sleeve & torn spine but otherwise in excellent condition***

Review: Kate Bush's debut album, The Kick Inside, showed right from the off that Bush was a prodigious talent with a uniquely ethereal sound. Released when she was just 19, the record which has now been remastered for this new reissue, showcases Bush's remarkable songwriting prowess and distinctive vocal style. From the haunting balladry of the classic 'Wuthering Heights' to the enchanting melodies of 'The Man with the Child in His Eyes,' each track is a testament to her boundless creativity. The lush arrangements and poetic lyrics continue throughout all the cuts to ensure this remains a timeless classic that continues to captivate listeners with its emotive storytelling and unparalleled musicality. A stunning debut.

Review: The iconic 1982 debut full-length from Boston hardcore punk pioneers SSD (known as SS Decontrol at the time of release) was initially only pressed to 1,000 copies with no official repress ever materialising until now, over four decades on from the fact. Originally a split-release between Dischord and X-Claim, this long-awaited repress comes courtesy of Revelation and recaptures the vicious 18-track, 21-minute project in all of its venomous, pissed off, almost thrashcore-leaning beauty. With half the cuts clocking in at under a solitary minute, The Kids Will Have Their Say is a timeless, visionary, uncompromising, pioneering, standard-setting classic that only grows more domineering and influential as the modern hardcore scene continues to expand in popularity. With no better optimum time for this reissue, mark our words that copies of this run will dry up fast before joining original pressings for criminal mark-ups on Discogs. You've been warned.

Review: Out of print for four decades, there really doesn't seem like a more poignant or vital time for a repress of the debut full-length from Boston straight-edge hardcore pioneers SS Decontrol (who would soon go on to shorten their moniker to SSD). This new batch marks the album's first distribution since the original run of 1,900 copies pressed back in 1982, and boasts a fully restored remaster from Dan Johnson at Audio Archiving Services. As the hardcore scene continues to balloon in popularity, The Kids Will Have Their Say still remains one of the most potent early works of the cause, and finally, fans can appreciate the project without having to break the bank or settle for lo-fi YouTube rips.

Notes: Michael Gira - The Knot: Complete Words for Music, Collected Stories and Journals

Hardcover 7 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches, 408 pages, includes 101 colour images printed on high quality photographic paper.

Journals, stories, and songs span the years 1981 to present. Includes visual archives and artwork dating back to 1974.

Hardcover Collector's edition of 3000 numbered copies, signed by M. Gira

"From the Preface to The Knot: This book contains the words to every song I've written worth collecting to date from all my musical projects throughout the years. I've left out various imbecilities and feckless half-starts. Also included in this book are several previously published short stories. They're taken from the collections The Consumer and The Egg, as well as a few other hand- made limited editions of stories. In a few cases I've included excerpts rather than the entire story. This was done for aesthetic purposes, with the overall feel of this current volume in mind. There are a great many journal entries in this book. For the most part they are also, emphatically fiction. They're from an ongoing journal, not a diary. My journals are where I often allow a disembodied, fictional 1st person narrator to take over and unspool imagined events, diatribes, impossible scenarios, psychic auto-cannibalisms, and corrosive or ecstatic dreams etc. Again, these are fiction. Certain things I've written about (in fiction and in song form) seem to exist beneath the surface (in myself and others) and I find them compelling to look at and to describe. I view this as a positive act. In acknowledgment of the constricting and microscopically judgmental and censorious times we live in, the usual authorial caveats apply here. Certainly there are many purely anecdotal journal entries included in this book as well, and my presumption is that an intelligent reader would be able to differentiate one from the other. Personally, I'm very suspicious of memory (especially my own), so I can't definitively vouch for the veracity of the recounting of the literal events herein either. I have also excised material that I felt too personal to include, out of respect for the people involved as well as for myself. There are several large gaps in the journal entries over the years. This is due to lost journals of the time, and in one case a lost laptop (which, painfully, contained a great deal of writing). There are also periods where I didn't keep a journal and didn't write fiction. In any event, I've tried to include fiction and journal entries that correspond roughly to the period before and after a musical album's release and the words that were written for that music. The end section of this book consists of recently unearthed visual documents and imagery and functions here as an incidental archive. The images span the years from 1974 to the present."

Michael Gira

Notes: Michael Gira - The Knot: Complete Words for Music, Collected Stories and Journals

Paperback; 7 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches, 408 pages, includes 101 colour images printed on high quality photographic paper.

Paperback has bookplate signed by M Gira.

Journals, stories, and songs span the years 1981 to present. Includes visual archives and artwork dating back to 1974.

"From the Preface to The Knot: This book contains the words to every song I've written worth collecting to date from all my musical projects throughout the years. I've left out various imbecilities and feckless half-starts. Also included in this book are several previously published short stories. They're taken from the collections The Consumer and The Egg, as well as a few other hand- made limited editions of stories. In a few cases I've included excerpts rather than the entire story. This was done for aesthetic purposes, with the overall feel of this current volume in mind. There are a great many journal entries in this book. For the most part they are also, emphatically fiction. They're from an ongoing journal, not a diary. My journals are where I often allow a disembodied, fictional 1st person narrator to take over and unspool imagined events, diatribes, impossible scenarios, psychic auto-cannibalisms, and corrosive or ecstatic dreams etc. Again, these are fiction. Certain things I've written about (in fiction and in song form) seem to exist beneath the surface (in myself and others) and I find them compelling to look at and to describe. I view this as a positive act. In acknowledgment of the constricting and microscopically judgmental and censorious times we live in, the usual authorial caveats apply here. Certainly there are many purely anecdotal journal entries included in this book as well, and my presumption is that an intelligent reader would be able to differentiate one from the other. Personally, I'm very suspicious of memory (especially my own), so I can't definitively vouch for the veracity of the recounting of the literal events herein either. I have also excised material that I felt too personal to include, out of respect for the people involved as well as for myself. There are several large gaps in the journal entries over the years. This is due to lost journals of the time, and in one case a lost laptop (which, painfully, contained a great deal of writing). There are also periods where I didn't keep a journal and didn't write fiction. In any event, I've tried to include fiction and journal entries that correspond roughly to the period before and after a musical album's release and the words that were written for that music. The end section of this book consists of recently unearthed visual documents and imagery and functions here as an incidental archive. The images span the years from 1974 to the present."

Michael Gira

Review: The last Genesis album to feature Peter Gabriel on vocals is their most ambitious and audacious too, seeing them escaping their peculiarly English viewpoint to tackle American culture across four sprawling sides of vinyl. It's also their only concept album, centered around the brief life of a New York teenager called Rael from Puerto Rico, who is plucked from his everyday existence to embark on a number of fantastic adventures. The musical palate is wide, from the bombast of the title track to the frothy eccentric pop of 'Counting Out Time' and the oozing, harpsichord-swaddled 'Carpet Crawlers', which remained in their live set for many years after Gabriel's departure. Released in 1974, it was recorded at Headley Grange in Hampshire immediately after Led Zeppelin recorded their 'IV' LP, and a quick listen to Phil Collins' pounding, Bonham-esque drumming on 'Broadway Melody of 1974' will tell you that the studio settings probably weren't changed very much at all.

Review: Mint Condition continues its run of strong reissues of house and techno music. Originally released on the cult label Robs records in 1995, Kilowatt's 'The Last EP' is finally getting the much deserved repress. Included is the wicked acid banger 'Loose End' which is a diamond of the mid-90s bleep house sound. 'The End' is another standout track on this release that gives us great memories of all the exciting IDM related going ons in the mid 90s - not least in the club of the same name - with echoes of 808 State from the late 80s too. Sometimes you aren't sure why a record's been reissued, but this one is definitely a worthy case. Expect these copies to go fast.

Review: Amongst the many legendary recordings of The Cramps live in action, the bootlegs of their 'The Last Supper' show in April 1980 in London ranks as one of the most desirable. It captures the band in their ascendance, already legends but equally with something to prove as they clawed their way out of the graveyard and into prominence. Previous editions were from ropey tapes which had sped the music up by some eight percent, but now the original master tapes have been found and the recording is presented in much better fidelity - all the better to hear the greatest psychobilly band that ever emerged from parts unknown.

Review: 1980s Italo disco don Alan Ross dropped his most well known jam 'The Last Wall' back in 1986. It has aged to perfection and still sounds like future music almost 40 years later, which is part of the reason it rams a classic that costs a few quid for an original. The ever reliable ZYX though has reissued it here on coloured vinyl 12" and includes the original as well as a pair of remixes. That OG version is all about the sugary sweet synth chords and skyward arps next to vocals that remind of Erasure. Flemming Dalum updates with a modern touch and a R-Mix version is the final piece of the puzzle.

Review: Ice-T's latest compilation album, coming to vinyl LP, homes in on an interesting cornerstone of the rapper's towering career; his "story rhymes", i.e. the ones that tell stories or build an especially compelling narrative. Beginning with some of T's earliest singles such as '6 N The Mornin'' to latter-day highlights like 'Midnight', all of these tracks serve to fluff the mythos of Ice-T, playing on the well-cited trope of rappers playing up to exaggerated hyperbole; in the words of Ice-T, "the reason it's titled The Legend of Ice-T is because a lot of things people believe about me are legend. Legend is part false... A lot of this stuff that people believe about me are lyrics that aren't necessarily true, but we'll let the legend continue.

Review: The Daily Flash originated in Seattle in 1965, and true to their name burned bright and fast for around three years before disbanding. Fronted by Steve Lalor and with Doug Hastings on guitar, it's also noticeable their drummer was Jon Keliehor, who has since had an accomplished career in ambient and experimental music. As a perfect embodiment of the original psychedelic wave when it was still relatively attached to 60s pop, The Daily Flash have been revisited in scattershot form over the years, but finally their outstanding archive of recordings has been gathered in one coherent compilation which covers their brief but brilliant tenure.

Review: It's fairly bold to call your album The Legendary Sessions but few could argue that this album certainly does capture some legendary sessions. They are previously unreleased recordings that stem from the iconic Jimi Hendrix and Traffic becoming friends in 1967. They were both innovates, both technical, and both progressive with what they did and that bares out across this fascinating album. It was captured between 1968 and 1970 and is full of freeform jams with atonal structures and shifting tempos as well as great complementary interplay between Jimi and Chris Wood.

Review: Smoove & Turrell return with a killer single, which opens with the gospel backing of label mate Izo FitzRoy before John's incredible voice and social lyricism and Smoove's unmistakeable production lift us up into 'The Light'. Legendary US Blue Note keyboard genius Ronnie Foster joins the party as only he can; one of the very few instrumental guests Smoove has ever wanted (or needed) beyond his own band. With frontman John Turrell repurposing the cynicism towards the powers-that-be - be it the media or parliament - to positive ends, this is a veritable paean and urgent call to "rise above it and let the light shine in", in his own words.