Darkside

As Darkside, electronic composer Nicolas Jaar and multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington unite their individual strengths, but also take their combined powers to new places neither could travel to on their own. The band's 2013 debut full-length Psychic was a sprawling exploration of contrasts, moving through winding paths of genre experiments and production twists that should have clashed but instead gelled into a massive, undulating entity somewhere between sci-fi soundtrack and a full-tilt experimental rock record. Second album Spiral was made after the duo took a lengthy break to pursue their solo outlets, much of it coming together during a week-long marathon writing session. It's every bit as shapeshifting and epic as Psychic was, but less reliant on moments of softer ambience or drawn-out atmospherics…

Contains the albums All That Noise (CD 1) plus alternate versions, mixes, instrumentals, demos, bonus unreleased live tracks, and an interview recorded in 1990 (CD 2), Melomania (CD 3), the Mayhem to Meditate EP & (dub) remixes (CD 4), the Lunar Surf EP & the Jukebox at Munsters 45, the previously unreleased lost third album & demos (CD 5).

The Bugs were a U.K. garage rock revival band who seemingly existed just long enough to make one album, 1987's Darkside, and then vanish. While this is something less than a tragedy, a listen to Darkside (which rather unexpectedly was reissued on CD in 2006) proves this band was significantly better than the average European garage-pysch merchants of the era. The disc's sleeve features no credits, and Ace/Big Beat play coy about the group's membership in their bio, which means this may or may not be some semi-supergroup of '60s-obsessed U.K. rockers, but whoever these folks were, they bring the fuzztone energy with plenty of style and an impressive reserve of energy. Darkside is full of guitars stalking a netherworld between fuzz and jangle while diving in and out of a deep sea of echo and reverb, with the singer matching the six-string chaos with glorious howling and full-bodied vocal mania…