Archive Fever

A Certain Ratio - who celebrate their 40th anniversary this year - a lavish box set, ‘acr:box’, via Mute, with all material remastered by Martin Moscrop at Abbey Road studios and featuring over 20 unreleased tracks from the archive."Following on from 2018’s compilation, ‘acr:set’, the box showcases the diversity of the singles, B-sides and alternative versions of tracks that A Certain Ratio have released but without repeating tracks recently made available. ‘acr:box’ collates everything that fans had been missing from the recent reissue campaign and compliments that with a selection found after a deep delve into the archive to find all the hidden gems that had been talked about over the years but never heard - even a few releases the band had forgotten about.

Philadelphia guitarist and songwriter Mike Polizze first appeared under the name Purling Hiss in 2009 with a self-released, self-titled CD-R. He played all the instruments and recorded the six fuzzy, corrosive pop songs himself at home as a recording-only project. Formerly playing in the heavy psych group Birds of Maya, Polizze played in and around the Philly indie scene, sharing stages with contemporaries like Kurt Vile and the War on Drugs while working on Purling Hiss songs in his basement studio…

The 50th anniversary edition of the Band’s eponymous second album offers a host of extras, some of which are making their debut on this set. Chief among the unheard material here is a new stereo mix by Bob Clearmountain, available both on CD and vinyl, the latter presented as a two-LP 45rpm pressing; there is also a new 5.1 mix on the Blu-ray. The second CD contains the Band’s complete Woodstock set, originally released as part of the Rhino box Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive, along with the seven bonus tracks from the expanded 2000 CD reissue The Band.

Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music-influenced instrumentals, modern electronica (with chillout, and downtempo influences), while remaining thematically focused on its retro-space-age cultural elements.