A smart combination of two 1961 albums, Hip Soul and Hip Twist, both of which featured Stanley Turrentine on sax. Hip Soul is the smokier and livelier of the pair, especially on "Stanley's Time" and the Turrentine-composed title track; the material is delivered with a taut intelligence. Hip Twist doesn't suffer much in comparison, though, and gives Scott a bit more presence, as she introduces several themes with impassioned swirls; unlike Hip Soul, it has a couple of tunes from her own pen.
Nestled amongst the Mogwai-run Rock Action roster, Glasgow art-school-dancefloor-types Errors are the latest group to fuse the aesthetics of post-rock, electronica and Ye Olde indie; with the resultant noise captured on their debut LP 'How Clean Is Your Acid House?'. Whilst the likes of 65daysofstatic and Cut Copy have already delivered a couple of sterling albums that mine this particular seam of sonic juxtaposition, Errors are approaching from a different compass point - shoving the electronica to front of house, whilst the rock stylings get busy out back…
"After Hours" has become a widespread calling card for the area between midnight and twilight, when all the city falls asleep except for a collective of nocturnal beings. A whole new range of attitudes - diverse styles, open perception. After Hours is when the machine turns off -and when the mind turns on. In musical terms, it is the region outside categorization, the music that slips beyond the average stream of beats. It's not based on any beat pattern. After Hours is not ambient; nor is it acid-jazz, it's the area that exists in the gray area between them. Too quirky to hold any cliches too tightly; too loose for any grand agendas. After Hours eases the mind, softens the palette and opens the door to a new day.
As is often the case in this CD reissue series, the music has little to do with acid jazz, but it does feature a few organists. Tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons is heard on music that formerly comprised two complete LPs from 1970-1971 (The Black Cat and As You Talk That Talk), plus a pair of titles from a 1962 date only previously out on a sampler. The Black Cat is an interesting if erratic set that finds Ammons (along with guitarist George Freeman, Harold Mabern on electric piano, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Idris Muhammad) playing everything from the pop tune "Long Long Time" and George Harrison's "Something" (both of those tunes have unimaginative strings) to "Jug Eyes" and the boppish blues "Hi Ruth." As You Talk That Talk is a reunion with fellow tenor Sonny Stitt…
Anyone who likes the B-3 Hammond organ soul-jazz style and doesn't mind a bit of pop-lounge spice occasionally stirred into the sauce should check out this compilation. It combines Pitts' first two LPs, Introducing the Fabulous Trudy Pitts and These Blues of Mine (both from 1967) on one CD. Introducing is a strong debut, divided between covers of pretty mainstream standards ("The Spanish Flea," "It Was a Very Good Year," "Matchmaker, Matchmaker") and gutsier straight soul-jazz, including four originals by Bill Carney, whose "Organology" is a highlight for its nervous, bopping edge. The languorous swells of the opening number "Steppin' in Minor" make you think you're in for a set of swank lounge-jazz, but the pace quickly picks up, and Pitts really catches fire on "Take Five," jamming a lot of notes into her improvisation without sounding self-indulgent…
Two-fer CD reissue combines two 1968 sessions, both featuring Stitt and Patterson, that were recorded on consecutive days (September 23-24, 1968), although one was issued under Patterson's name and the other under Stitt's. The first six songs were issued as the Patterson LP Funk You!, on which Patterson leads a date that also has Sonny Stitt and Charles McPherson on saxes and Pat Martino on guitar. The other players get about as much space as Patterson, and as 1960s jazz with organ goes, this is pretty straight-ahead and boppish, rather than soul-jazz (as so much organ jazz from that decade was).
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats' first album, Vol. 1, may not have cost much money to make, but the ideas behind it are solid gold. Working cheaply on clapped-out gear, guitarist/vocalist Kevin Starrs, bassist Kat, and drummer Red take all the dusty tropes of heavy metal, acid rock, biker rock, and doomy psych rock, knock them around mercilessly, then breath life back into them until they shine like new. It's defiantly lo-fi and unadorned by studio gloss, but it works. It doesn't matter that Starrs' grinding guitars sound ready to fizzle out half the time, the bass and drums are barely audible, and the vocals are murky when the songs are so hooky and the performances are so on point…
Finally the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid is a compilation album by The Flaming Lips, collecting their first three studio albums (Hear It Is, Oh My Gawd!!! and Telepathic Surgery) alongside their self-titled debut EP The Flaming Lips, and previously unreleased material and demo recordings. It is the first of two releases archiving the band's Restless Records releases, and is followed by The Day They Shot a Hole in the Jesus Egg.
Just as they did with their unexcitingly named 2010 debut, Vol. 1, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats dedicate their sophomore album, the following year's tellingly named Blood Lust, to celebrating the Summer of Love's soul-chilling autumn: a blasted landscape, post-flower power, resembling Altamont's killing fields, reeking of the Manson Family murders, and, naturally, sounding like a mish-mash of all of the apocalyptic musical forces that converged upon that era. We're talking a mixture of psychedelic rock's harrowing comedown, garage and punk rock's nihilistic ascent, and the earliest manifestations of heavy metal's occult-laced, nerve-damaging bludgeon (later reclassified as doom) - all poured into a deadly cocktail…