Invoke Arto Lindsay

With Mundo Civilizado, downtown denizen Arto Lindsay is probably the first person to successfully integrate the sounds of techno and drum'n'bass into an already established pop music style. Others, notably David Bowie, have tried to do something similar, but although Bowie's attempt in particular was more successful than most critics give him credit for, it never sounded as natural and seamless as Lindsay's. That the former king of skronk guitar was able to achieve such a fusion while singing in Portuguese is even more impressive. Highlights include the funky female worship of "Q Samba" and the scattered herky-jerk of "Complicity" (which features the deathless couplet "Complicity, unconscious wit/Borders without borders under eyebrows"). His taste in covers is a bit more suspect – he brings as little to Prince's material as you'd expect, but is surprisingly more adept with Al Green's "Simply Beautiful." Overall, this one's a solid winner, if not quite a classic.

Arto Lindsay returns to his no-wave roots with this 1995 collection of pithy portraits in noise. Having already forged the skronk template with DNA in the early '80s, Lindsay finds new vistas for his avant guitar musings in the company of bassist Melvin Gibbs (Defunkt, Sonny Sharrock, the Rollins Band) and drummer Dougie Bowne (Lounge Lizards, Marianne Faithfull)…

The ballet Miracle in the Gorbals (named after the working-class quarter of Glasgow), still rarely recorded, is a very somber and violent piece of music, one of the most intense among the works of Arthur Bliss. The suite recorded by Paavo Berglund finally makes its digital debut, coupled with a late cello concerto (of a quite different kind, cheerful and optimistic), premiered by Mstislav Rostropovich at Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival in 1970, and here performed by Berglund fellow countryman Arto Noras.