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Favorite archival/reissue releases: 2021

There's so much new music that it can be life-affirming and exhausting all at once. Who has time for the unearthing of records from years past? Plenty of labels, apparently, and while I miss 99% of it by design, a couple reissues and archival compilations trickled in and perked my ears this year. More to come, but for now: a shallow dive into the lucrative reissue market.

Marion Brown, Le Temps Fou (Le Très Jazz Club)

I know enough about jazz to drop a few names now, but that's about as far as I'm interested in going. (Don a flat cap and sign into the Steve Hoffman forums for more information.) Marion Brown, an alto saxophonist, is one of the smattering of names I recognize, having played with the likes of Archie Shepp and John Coltrane, and that association is enough for me to know that he's not playing anything straight. This reissue of Le Temps Fou, which was initially commissioned as a soundtrack to a film by Marcel Camus and promptly faded into obscurity, comes after a botched (all copies had a pressing error) and likely unofficial reissue in 2019. The album opens with the title track, which takes about 30 seconds to abandon a bright motif and fall into a clattering, formless void, much to my delight. I've never seen the film, though I'd be curious as to what images these sounds accompany; while there is a mournful cinematic quality to tracks like "Cascatelles" and "Ye Ye," it's often subverted by Brown's free playing and interjections of dissonance. There are plenty of bells, whistles and hand percussion on Le Temps Fou, most notably on the anxious, shapeshifting closing track "En Arrière," which keeps everything off-balance and makes it feel as if the ground's shifting beneath your feet when it's on. The atonal squeals layered atop the groove of "Boat Rock" are pure joy, Brown tussling with the clarinet and trumpet to launch the whole track into the stratosphere, and it's almost worth the price of admission alone here. "Almost" because, like lots of reissues, the cost is unfortunately hovering around $40 in the States, but it does beat the $1,000+ originals go for. Le Très Jazz Club did a nice job keeping this official reissue as close to the original as possible (as far as I can tell), and the sound is rich and warm. Three for Shepp is still the best entry point to Marion Brown's work, but the eye-popping cover art and wildly inventive playing on Le Temps Fou make for one of this year's finest reissues.

Dorothy, "I Confess" b/w "Softness" (Sealed)

A pure pop single, originally issued by Industrial Records and accompanied by a backstory about 19-year-old Dorothy dropping off a tape at Industrial HQ. "Dorothy" was Rema-Rema's drummer, Dorothy (better known as) Max Prior, with arrangements by Alex Fergusson, and while that makes the Industrial Records association a little more clear, the music certainly does not. The label's description of "I Confess" as a "super cute pop ditty with lyrics that sound like a catholic confession" is pretty spot-on, and any searching for the angst or malice of Throbbing Gristle hidden in the grooves turns up pocket lint. The flip is "Softness," a three-minute tour of what Giorgio Moroder did best, a sticky synth line topped with Max's breathy spoken vocals. It's the kind of track artists spend years trying to capture, and Max and Alex seemed to have effortlessly located it. "Do you understand?" Not really, but I do know I'll be bumping "Softness" for a long time.

Frigate, Dreams of the Deep (D.Q. Records T.U.)

Tom Lax has been busy bringing in reissues of unknown records from even less known labels, sold primarily through the Siltbreeze Bandcamp page. I'd say this Frigate record is the one to track down, originally issued in 1977, thoroughly out-polished by its peers and lost to the smelly record stacks of time. There's a pleasantly heavy narcotized haze hanging over the proceedings here: guitar solos are smudged and smeared, and are better for it, and the vocals are stained deep red with merlot and delivered with a sort of lascivious charm. "Let's go out an' lookit the moon," the vocalist beckons on the opening track, and the proceedings stay that intimate and low key throughout, even as things gain a little steam on the title track. I can't imagine a track played as slow as "Landlubber" being performed anywhere else but a smoky dank studio with a handful of people sprawled out on cushions, vocalist included. There are parts where the band approaches something like the Stones or Blue Cheer or whatever classic rock band you hold dear, largely due to the sturdy, less inebriated rhythm section, but it takes mere seconds for those holograms to fall to dust. Frigate seemed more interested in sifting through the detritus of classic rock for perfectly compacted granules of outsized feelings anyway, strung up and used as beaded curtains for their studio. Can't recommend Dreams of the Deep enough.

Getting the Fear, Death Is Bigger 1984-85 (Dais)

This was a blind buy at a record store, the hype sticker apparently intriguing enough for me to take the leap, though re-reading it now I'm not sure why that was. Southern Death Cult, whose dissolution provided 3/4 of Getting the Fear, is not a known name to me. Apparently Getting the Fear was a different beast than Southern Death Cult due to the inclusion of "enigmatic" vocalist Paul "Bee" Hampshire, who was associated with Psychic TV, Death In June and Current 93. Those last three groups are decent reference points for the hazy mysticism of "Dune Buggy Attack" or the martial drums of "Getting the Fear," but this collection of unreleased tracks is way more fun and engaging than most anything I can remember coming out of the Temple ov Psychic Youth. I detect more Echo & the Bunnymen, New Order and even Tears for Fears in Getting the Fear's DNA, bands that rarely cross my mind at all these days, especially in reference to "post-punk," but there they are, in songs like "Against the Wind," "Sometimes," and "Swell." An early chorus on "Sometimes," which includes the lines "I'll break your ass in two/break your neck in two," particularly soars in spite of the bizarre lyrics, and remains my favorite track here. The first spin left me with a bit of buyer's regret, not expecting something as soft and vulnerable as "We Struggle" to be associated with the stern, oppressively gray post-punk I generally enjoy, but the vocal melodies, strong production (big booming drums, every player given space) and the general inability to pin down exactly where Getting the Fear were coming from or what they were doing kept rewarding repeat spins. A great surprise from this year, too left-of-center to be comfort food but familiar enough to gain a renewed appreciation for the more polished side of post-punk.

Maimed, Demo #1 '91 (Dark Descent)

Maimed, from Illinois, existed for a blip of time in the '90s, emerging from a thrash metal band known as Doomsday to a fully-formed grimy death metal outfit. Their lone recorded output was this five-song demo, and it's fairly obvious why they stopped there. Each song hovers around three minutes, packed with crushing riffs and painfully slow breakdowns - see the way "Engulfed in Cysts" crashes into a doomed landscape after the thrashing death intro, or the downtuned mid-section of "Burned," which brings to mind vintage Eyehategod. The insert, which includes the press release for the demo, lists Autopsy and Carcass as influences, but anyone into modern day death metal or death-doom like Mortiferum, Phrenelith or Cerebral Rot oughta be scoping this out. The remastering makes it sound like it was recorded yesterday, and the single-sided 12" was an inspired format choice. Plus they've got a siiick logo, which is the sole reason I even checked this out in the first place. Yeah, not every demo needs a vinyl re-release, but once in a while the demo recording usurps its designation. Maimed's '91 demo is one of 'em, and Dark Descent brought an art restorer's eye into bringing this 30-year-old artifact back to life.