Body Keeps The Record

For the past decade, Spirit of the beehive have honed an aesthetic like no other. They’ve chopped up samples, chewed them up, spit them back out again, baby birded it. Across four albums and a smattering of EPs, Zack Schwartz, Corey Wichlin, and Rivka Ravede have fully solidified their stance as some of rock’s weirdest and best deconstructionists. 2018’s Hypnic Jerks was a study in noise punk sampledelia. It was a breakthrough for the band. Frank Ocean became a fan, spinning “fell asleep with a vision,” on Blonded Radio. 2021’s Entertainment Death, was nasty dream pop by way of K-Mart realism and hitting the channel search setting on an old TV set.

For the past decade, Spirit of the beehive have honed an aesthetic like no other. They’ve chopped up samples, chewed them up, spit them back out again, baby birded it. Across four albums and a smattering of EPs, Zack Schwartz, Corey Wichlin, and Rivka Ravede have fully solidified their stance as some of rock’s weirdest and best deconstructionists. 2018’s Hypnic Jerks was a study in noise punk sampledelia. It was a breakthrough for the band. Frank Ocean became a fan, spinning “fell asleep with a vision,” on Blonded Radio. 2021’s Entertainment Death, was nasty dream pop by way of K-Mart realism and hitting the channel search setting on an old TV set.

A 2CD set from organ supremo Brian Auger that includes the 1969 album Streetnoise, produced by Giorgio Gomelsky and featuring Julie Driscoll and Trinity, plus sixties compilation The Mod Years.
The final collaboration between singer Julie Driscoll (by that time dubbed as "The Face" by the British music weeklies) and Brian Auger's Trinity was 1969's Streetnoise - it was an association that had begun in 1966 with Steampacket, a band that also featured Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry. As a parting of the ways, however, it was Trinity's finest moment. A double album featuring 16 tracks, more than half with vocals by Driscoll, the rest absolutely burning instrumentals by Trinity…

William "Bootsy" Collins cut his teeth playing bass with the James Brown band in 1970, but when he landed in George Clinton's Parliament/Funkadelic crew in the mid-70s, he quickly became a figurehead of Clinton's messier, trippier cartoon funk. Throughout the 1976-82 period condensed into this two-disc set, Bootsy and his Rubber Band were essentially P-Funk for kids. His records had all the stage-crowding chaos of the Mothership, with the politics and priapism replaced by goofy spiels about the excellence of, well, Bootsy, plus squelchy, googly sounds and his infamous star-shaped shades. The tone he got out of his star-shaped bass, like huge bubbles surfacing from the bottom of a lake, was heavy enough that he could slow things way, way down–"Jam Fan (Hot)" crawls like no other hard-funk record. That, in turn, let him be the half-serious love-man Clinton couldn't risk being (check out the wacky, spacey slow jam "Munchies for Your Love"). Glory B mostly collects unedited album tracks, though it also throws in 1980's lost demi-hit "Freak to Freak" (credited to Sweat Band) and the 1982 single "Body Slam!".

Bootsy Collins has rightfully received accolades as funk's second officer (after George Clinton – and it should be third after James Brown and Clinton). For decades he has been sampled by every rapper from Snoop Dogg to OutKast, and virtually created the bass sound that made the Red Hot Chili Peppers a household name and that created a career for Les Claypool. Yet, his most influential sound emanated not from his tenure with James Brown or P-Funk, but his own Rubber Band, and until now that wooly, wild, and surreal unit has never been properly anthologized. Rhino, in their usual thorough, crazy fashion, have directed the folks at the Warner archives and have created a massive, drop-the-bomb two-disc set that sets the record straight.