One of our favorite mixing of modes from the old school – a tremendous second album from the legendary Aksak Maboul! The record mixes arty playfulness with some rootsier elements – bits of Eastern instrumentation, jazz, improvisation, and even some post-punk elements – all in a way that makes for one of the most creative recordings of its time – a set that easily provides key inspiration for more recent genre-crossing acts like this! There's a bit of Y or Ze Records whimsy at times – but the end result is much deeper, and much more compelling– as you'd expect from a group that features Fred Frith on guitar, Chris Cutler on drums, Marc Hollander and Michel Berkmans on reeds, and Denis Van Hecke on a range of cool cellos! Each tune has a slightly different flavor, but there's still a really unified feel to the record too – one of those European projects that comes together like nothing you'd hear from the US. Titles include "Geistige Nacht", "A Modern Lesson", "Palmiers En Pots" and "Cinema". LP, Vinyl record album

A dark set of post-punk work from Minimal Compact – a Middle Eastern group who found a home in the increasingly creative roster of Crammed Discs at the time – and who are working here with a fair bit of Tuxedomoon touches! The group's sound has some slight ethnic undercurrents, twisted around a much more prominent Factory Records-like guitar-based style. Vocalist Samy Birnbach's got a flat, hollow tone that clearly carries the torch that Ian Curtis left behind – and the set features the group's mini "hit" "Next One Is Real", plus the tracks "The Well", "There's Always Now", "Nada", "Not Knowing", and "Deadly Weapons". CD also features 6 bonus tracks – including "Introspection", plus remixes of other tracks from the album! LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

Moontribe is a mysterious figure who hides behind a mask on the cover, and doesn't give us any real information or notes on the record – but that's more than fine with us, as his music speaks volumes on its own! The album is heavily percussive, but in different modes throughout – sometimes with almost a raw, ethnographic vibe – other times mixed with a bit of keyboard or electronics, and abstracted through the production in dubby, echoey styles – but never at a level that gets away from the sound at the core – or which sounds gimmicky at all. There's a quality that reminds us here of the best cross-cultural experiments in the years before the world music explosion in the 80s – maybe the best spirit of early Crammed Discs – and titles include "Osmium", "Mesmerized", "Moon's Moon", "Moontribe", "Moontone", and "Bottles". LP, Vinyl record album