Scream 5 (2022)

Following in the wake of his popular and well received Punk and New Wave and Lost 80s compilation box sets, English broadcaster, TV presenter and DJ Gary Crowley is at it again. This time, he takes on the music of the Nineties via his Indie 90s Playback Classics, Curveballs and Bangers.

Deluxe six CD box, boasting the entire recorded output of Biff Bang Pow! With the bonus of everything issued by The Laughing Apple. Curated with the full support of Alan McGee and other band members, the clamshell set also adds a raft of previously unissued demos and live material. Plus tracks from an abandoned album, Sixteen Velvet Fridays and a handful of previously undocumented songs. And a Laughing Apple CD also adds some hitherto unheard demos by Alan with the band Newspeak (pre-Laughing Apple). This is the ultimate tribute to one of the unsung talents of the C86 generation of indie bands. Biff Bang Pow! Were formed by Alan McGee around the same time he founded Creation Records in 1983. Biff Bang Pow! Made seven albums and a handful of singles - many of which were indie hits - before they finally dissolved in 1992.

There's no overestimating the importance of Screamadelica, the record that brought acid house, techno, and rave culture crashing into the British mainstream – an impact that rivaled that of Nirvana's Nevermind, the other 1991 release that changed rock. Prior to Screamadelica, Primal Scream were Stonesy classic rock revivalists with a penchant for Detroit rock. They retained those fascinations on Screamadelica – one listen to the Jimmy Miller-produced, Stephen Stills-rip "Movin' on Up" proves that – but they burst everything wide open here, turning rock inside out by marrying it to a gleeful rainbow of modern dance textures. This is such a brilliant, gutsy innovative record, so unlike anything the Scream did before, that it's little wonder that there's been much debate behind who is actually responsible for its grooves, especially since Andrew Weatherall is credited with production with eight of the tracks, and it's clearly in line with his work. Even if Primal Scream took credit for Weatherall's endeavors, that doesn't erase the fact that they shepherded this album, providing the ideas and impetus for this dubtastic, elastic, psychedelic exercise in deep house and neo-psychedelic. Like any dance music, this is tied to its era to a certain extent, but it transcends it due to its fierce imagination and how it doubles back on rock history, making the past present and vice versa.

Pure Reason Revolution return with their fifth studio album, ‘Above Cirrus’, in May 2022, their second since reuniting in 2019. The band’s rebirth saw them going back to their earliest influences, and ‘Above Cirrus’ sees them reaching ever deeper into the atmospheric, cinematic psych-prog compositions that made ‘Eupnea’ such a rapturously received return. Based around the core trio of Jon Courtney, Chloe Alper & Greg Jong, the new album manages to expand the bands sound palette ever further.

STUNNING BROADCAST RECORDING FROM THE GLITTER AND DOOM TOUR. Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, the three CD set of Tom Waits’ rarities and previously unreleased archive tracks, was issued in November 2006, and was the great man’s first new album since 2004’s Real Gone. The record was released to highly positive reviews, scoring 92 out of 100 on aggregator Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim". It ranked second on Metacritic's Top 30 albums of 2006, and was nominated for the 2006 Shortlist Music Prize and the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Prior the release of Orphans…, Waits performed a short series of shows in the summer of 2006, across the South and Mid-West of the US, which he titled ‘Orphans’. Featuring numbers from the pending box set, Tom’s son Casey played with him in the band accompanying Tom. • In 2008, Waits embarked on his ‘Glitter and Doom Tour’, starting in the U.S. and then moving to Europe. Both of his sons played with him on the tour. At the June concert in El Paso, Texas, he was awarded the keys to the city. Among the finest concerts Tom and entourage played on this tour however, was their show at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta Georgia, on 5th July. Performing a quite extraordinary set covering cuts from numerous past records, plus a smattering of new material to boot, the event was dazzling. Previously unreleased, this new 2CD Set now contains the entire live broadcast, which was transmitted in the greater Georgia area at the time.