Rock — LPs  

Quite different than the original US release of this classic soundtrack – as this UK lineup features a lot more songs – a side one's worth of gems from the film, and side two featuring additional new tracks from Lennon & McCartney! Movie tunes include "If I Fell", "Hard Day's Night", "Can't Buy Me Love", "Tell Me Why", "I Should Have Known Better", and "And I Love Her" – and other tracks include "You Can't Do That", "Any Time At All", "Things We Said Today", and "I'll Cry Instead".

A great little record that's waiting to be re-discovered! The album quickly tanked as the over-pressed soundtrack to an under-viewed film – but despite years in cutout bins, it's got a fresh quality that we really treasure! About half the album features cool instrumental tunes from Mike Leander – scored in that weird mix of touches that he was using in his "rock to easy" years – and these cuts are interspersed with vocal numbers by Paul Jones, sung in a dramatic style that's a bit Bowie, but with more blue eyed soul. Titles include "Free Me", "It's Overotherness Time", "I'm Alright Jackboot", "I've Been A Bad Bad Boy", and "Stephen".

A pretty darn psych/groovy soundtrack – to what looks like a very strange film! The music is by Ken Thorne – and the tracks are a mix of mod rhythms, instrumental groovers, and some very trippy numbers that use echoey percussion and some electrified instrumentation. A few cuts have vocals – such as "Respect" by The Ferris Wheel and "Touchables Theme", sung by Nirvana, in a style that's almost in the Bob Crewe mode – but the best cuts are the instrumentals, which are really really fantastic. A few cuts have organ by Wynder K Frog – and titles include "Samson's Theme", "The Dome", "Sadie's Theme", "Christian & Melanie", "Blues For A Frog", and "The Chase".

Wild sounds from the French scene of the early 70s – an album beyond categorization from Igor Wakhevitch, put together with sounds that were years ahead of their time! Igor's working with the rock group Triangle on the record, but most of the sounds here are heavily processed and very electronic – in ways that have the set sounding very much like more serious electro-acoustic music, but with the more personal charm of later efforts from 80s noisemakers – like Soviet France or Nocturnal Emissions. The piece is sub-titled as a "ritual sonore", and definitely has a trance-like feel overall – yet most of the sounds are so obtuse, it's also hard to imagine a direct earthy referent!

Wire's amazing second album – and a pretty astonishing creative leap for the band! Nowadays, Chairs Missing can be seen as a transitional point between the rawer art punk genius of the preceding Pink Flag and the icy synth flourishes of the 154 album to follow. That said, it's an almost unbelievably great album all on its own. Pink Flag's title track and another couple of songs hinted at the sparer, more brooding possibilities of their music, and they go deeper into that on Chairs Missing, without compromising the immediacy. Essential! Titles include "Heatbeat", "Practice Makes Perfect", "Being Sucked In Again", "I Am The Fly", "Outdoor Miner", "Sand In My Joints", "I Feel Mysterious Today", "Marooned", "French Film Blurred", "Mercy" and more.

Maybe our favorite Beatles album ever – a key set that bridges the catchiness of the early years and the sharper ideas of later albums – with a slightly sinister undercurrent that really keeps things fresh! The album's got some great early psych in spots, offset with wonderfully mature and sweet lyrics on the love songs – cross-cut with a bit of witty social commentary too! Tracks include "Taxman", "Eleanor Rigby", "Love You To", "Here There & Everywhere", "She Said She Said", "And Your Bird Can Sing", "Tomorrow Never Knows", and "For No One".

Way more than psychedelia, way more than electronica, and something completely different entirely – a really unique album from the legendary Igor Wakhevitch, and a mighty dark one at that! The album veers way off into the dark space beyond Aphrodite's Child, and explores a netherworld that's very sinister in nature – through the use of psychedelic instrumentation mixed with spare orchestrations, all processed with some great electric touches, and turned into a kind of soundtrack for a journey to Hades! The album drips with evil – far more so than other later efforts of this type – and although it was released in relative obscurity in the early 70s, it really outdoes the sounds of so many others from generations to come.

A landmark album from Musi O Tunya – a set billed as one of the first Zamrock albums, but a record that's also got a fair bit of funk and jazz as well! The rhythms really take off once things get going – complicating things more than usual for this sort of outing – and opening the door for a host of sweet guitar lines and great bits on soprano sax – which snake through the grooves and really give the record an exotic feel! There's definitely a bit of fuzz, but the guitar seems to take second place next to the rhythms – and the whole thing's held together by lead vocals from Rikki Ililonga. Titles include "Walk & Fight", "One Reply", "The Sun", "Dark Sunrise", "Wings Of Africa", and "Mpondolo".

One of greatest of all British punk era records – released in '77 and one that transcends mid-to-late 70s punk cultural baggage better than just about any other – an absolute benchmark! Wire kept it short and sweet on Pink Flag – with 21 tracks in about 35 minutes – and it's as artful as it is succinct. The band would soon prove to be as creatively ambitious as any of their peers and the incendiary blast of Pink Flag would make way for experimental flourishes on follow up records that are ultimately just as important and influential, but we'd hasten to claim they'd ever make a better album than this one. "Reuters", "Field Day For The Sundays", "Three Girl Rumba", "Ex Lion Tamer", "The Commercial", "Strange", "Different To Me", "12 X U", "Start To Move", "Lowdown", "Surgeon's Girl", "Pink Flag" and more.

The Beatles for sale, but never in a commercial way at all – early proof of the group's great balance between mainstream appeal and sounds that still stick to the frontiers of rock and roll! The tunes are short, and heavy on influences from American R&B – yet the Fab Four are already crafting their new sound strongly, and have a melodic brilliance that's hard to deny! Titles include "Eight Days A Week", "Words Of Love", "Honey Don't", "Every Little Thing", "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party", "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby", "I'm A Loser", "Rock & Roll Music", "I'll Follow The Sun", "Mr Moonlight", and "No Reply".

The legendary 1970 recordings Alex Chilton made at Ardent Studios – recorded in a brief moment after the bust up of the Box Tops and before the debut of Big Star – and a truly powerful precursor to that most iconic of soulful Memphis rock acts! For the longest time, the 1970 sessions were something of a rock & roll holy grail – having been oft-discussed, if rarely heard, by Chilton and Big Star diehards. In the mid 90s, Ardent Records finally released the heart of this collection as 1970 – and here it's done up with even more love and respect by Omnivore, which over the course of just a handful of releases has become one of the very best deep digging reissuers of great, should-be classic soul & rock treasures. The vibe swings from stripped down, soulful rock that sometimes flirts with country rock – those songs featuring gruff, bluesy vocals from Chilton that belie his actual youth, just as greatly as his vox for The Box Tops – to gentler soul pop numbers that truly prefigure the Big Star sound to come. 12 tracks on the vinyl version – plus great liner notes by Bob Mehr, a living encyclopedia of Memphis musical knowledge. Includes "Free Again (Original Mono Mix)", "Come On Honey", "Something Deep Inside", "I Can Dig It", "The EMI Song (Smile For Me)", "Every Day As We Grow Closer/Funky National", "I Wish I Could Meet Elvis", "All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain", "All I Really Want Is Money", "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and more.

Titles include "Cirrus Minor", "The Nile Song", "Ibiza Bar", "A Spanish Piece", and "Up The Kyber".