A big package of work – all the albums recorded by The Weather Girls, plus solo material and bonus tracks too! First up is Success – maybe the greatest moment ever from The Weather Girls – a long-running duo who started out as backing singers for Sylvester in the 70s, then recorded as Two Tons O Fun, and finally got the chance to cut this classic for a major label in the early 80s! Both Martha Wash and Izora Armstead are great singers – and work here with previous disco maestro Paul Jabara, who has a great way of shifting the groove to 80s club, while still allowing all the playful elements of the decade before! In a way, this was definitely one of those records that showed the world that in the right corners, disco wasn't dead – heard to best effect on the classic "It's Raining Men" – alongside other cuts that include "Success", "Hungry For Love", "Dear Santa", "Hope", and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair". Next is Big Girls Don't Cry – soaring vocals from The Weather Girls, set to bouncy grooves that are equal parts soul and pop! Martha Wash and Izora Armstead have mighty vocal chops throughout – that bold duo approach they first crafted as Two Tons O Fun, and pushed even more strongly as The Weather Girls – set here to keyboard-heavy backings from Leon Pendarvis, who knows just where to put the best hooks in the grooves! Titles include "Well A Wiggy", "Lock Me Up", "No One Can Love You More Than Me", "Big Girls Don't Cry", "You Can Do It", "Laughter In The Rain", and "March". Next is the self-titled Weather Girls album – the last album in the original run of The Weather Girls – and a set that's full of well-produced tracks from Reggie Lucas and Full Force, balanced out nicely as a way of pushing the duo's sound strongly past the disco years from which they emerged! Sylvester makes a guest appearance on the cut "Love's On The Way" – and other titles include "Why Can't We Show Our Love", "Burn Me", "Love You Like A Train", "Opposite Directions", "Something For Nothing", and "Land Of The Believer". Last up is a super-huge solo set from Martha Wash – made a number of years after her fame in The Weather Girls, and at a time when she had really emerged as an important voice in dance music after a big cut with C&C! By this point, Wash had plenty of recording experience under her belt – and she knocks it out of the park with vocals that are disco-trained, but much richer in soul content overall – certainly more so than some of her other contemporaries on the early 90s club scene. The album features help from a huge amount of studio talent, but it's clear that Wash is the shining star in the lead – really blowing away so much of the work from the "sound system with singer" generation of club – on cuts that include "Leave A Light On", "Give it To You", "Runaround", "Things We Do For Love", "So Whatcha Gonna Do", "Someone Who Believes In You", "Just Us", "Hold On", "When It's My Heart", and "Carry On". 4CD set features bonus tracks on every CD – 22 more bonus mixes and more! CD

One of our favorite albums of all times – and a legendary testament to the greatness of the Chicago music scene in the late 60s! Melvin Jackson was the bassist in Eddie Harris' very successful group of the time – and his playing on Eddie's trippy and funky records for Atlantic is one of the factors that made them so great. Here, he's working with an acoustic bass, amplified with electronics like a Varitone sax – and this strange-sounding instrument is set up in a hip group that mixes Cadet funky studio players (Phil Upchurch, Morris Jennings, Jody Christian) with some of the brighter young players of the AACM (Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, and Leo Smith.) Jackson's bass is looped through all sorts of crazy effects, and the result is this amazing blend of avant garde playing and groovy rhythms that is beyond compare! The album includes great reworkings of two Eddie Harris funk tracks – "Bold and Black" and "Cold Duck Time" – plus monster originals like "Funky Doo", "Say What", "Dance Of The Dervish", and "Funky Skull (parts 1 & 2)". CD

One of our favorite albums of all time – and a legendary testament to the greatness of the Chicago music scene in the late 60s! Melvin Jackson was the bassist in Eddie Harris' very successful group of the time – and his playing on Eddie's trippy and funky records for Atlantic is one of the factors that made them so great. Here, he's working with an acoustic bass, amplified with electronics like a Varitone sax – and this strange-sounding instrument is set up in a hip group that mixes Cadet funky studio players (Phil Upchurch, Morris Jennings, Jody Christian) with some of the brighter young players of the AACM (Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, and Leo Smith.) Jackson's bass is looped through all sorts of crazy effects, and the result is this amazing blend of avant garde playing and groovy rhythms that is beyond compare! The album includes great reworkings of two Eddie Harris funk tracks – "Bold and Black" and "Cold Duck Time" – plus monster originals like "Funky Doo", "Say What", "Dance Of The Dervish", and "Funky Skull (parts 1 & 2)". LP, Vinyl record album

One of our favorite albums of all times – and a legendary testament to the greatness of the Chicago music scene in the late 60s! Melvin Jackson was the bassist in Eddie Harris' very successful group of the time – and his playing on Eddie's trippy and funky records for Atlantic is one of the factors that made them so great. Here, he's working with an acoustic bass, amplified with electronics like a Varitone sax – and this strange-sounding instrument is set up in a hip group that mixes Cadet funky studio players (Phil Upchurch, Morris Jennings, Jody Christian) with some of the brighter young players of the AACM (Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, and Leo Smith.) Jackson's bass is looped through all sorts of crazy effects, and the result is this amazing blend of avant garde playing and groovy rhythms that is beyond compare! The album includes great reworkings of two Eddie Harris funk tracks – "Bold and Black" and "Cold Duck Time" – plus monster originals like "Funky Doo", "Say What", "Dance Of The Dervish", and "Funky Skull (parts 1 & 2)". LP, Vinyl record album

A pair of classics from Strawberry Alarm Clock – back to back on a single CD! First up is their classic Incense & Peppermints – dreamy pop psych from Strawberry Alarm Clock – a great late 60s group who skirted the worlds of Sunshine Pop and more jamming garage rock! This album's got a lot more to offer than you might guess from just the title hit – as the instrumentation sometimes gets nicely tripped out – with cool use of organ, harpsichord, and guitar – plus plenty of special effects in production – and even some of the song styles and lengths are unusual too, making the album way more than just a batch of cute little tunes. Titles include the classic "Incense & Peppermints", the eight minute jammer "The World's On Fire", the instrumental "Pass Time With SAC", and the cuts "Paxton's Back Street Carnival", "Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow", "Strawberries Mean Love", and "Unwind the Clock". Next is Wake Up It's Tomorrow – a great little second set from Strawberry Alarm Clock – much headier and tripped-out than their first! For the record, the group's not just working off the success of a previous single – and instead is really taking time in the studio to try out new ideas, musically, lyrically, and (most importantly) in the range of cool production techniques used on the set! There's still a warm harmony vocal approach on some of the album's best tunes, but they're also matched here with some more progressive guitar parts and fuzzier instrumental touches – in a way that brings a bit of darkness into the sunshine, and creates the wonderful sense of counterpoint that was always the group's strongest suit. Most tunes are nicely unfamiliar, and titles include "Curse Of The Witches", "Black Butter – Past, Present, & Future", "Soft Skies No Lies", "They Saw The Fat One Coming", "Nightmare of Percussion", "Tomorrow", "Sit With the Guru", and "Pretty Song From Psych-Out". CD also features single mixes of "Tomorrow" and "Sit With The Guru". CD

A great late-life effort from Bobby Womack – hardly the kind of record he would have recorded back in the day, and a tremendous testament to his undeniably soulful talents! The album was done with production help from Damon Albarn and Richard Russell – and definitely has a contemporary bent in some of the backings – nothing too overly-modern, nor commercial at all – but a freshness that seems to really set Womack's vocals free – in a format that has Bobby sounding better than we've heard in a long, long time! Russell contributes some beats and effects to the set – but these almost always have a nice earthy sort of crispness – one that makes for music that's quite warm overall, and really fits the rootsy feel of Bobby's vocals – an approach that's not unlike some of the final Gil Scott-Heron recordings, with equally successful results. Titles include "Deep River", "Dayglo Reflection", "Stupid", "If There Wasn't Something There", "Love Is Gonna Lift You Up", "Jubilee", and "Please Forgive My Heart". CD

One of Radiohead's greatest albums, and probably our favorite – where they boldly dove into stranger, more deeply atmosheric moodcraft than anything they'd released to date! Their follow-up to OK Computer, which was an instant classic for the band, graced with lofty songwriting and impactful lyrics, Kid A is a stunning departure – embracing electronic textures and murky effects over anthemic guitar rock. Any record that achieves the kind of popular success as this one without compromising on the creativity is to be cherished – it's a rare achievement! Includes "Everything In Its Right Place", "How To Disappear Completely", "In Limbo", "Idioteque", "Morning Bell", "Motion Picture Soundtrack", "The National Anthem" and more. CD