VIA PRESS RELEASE | Varèse Sarabande and Craft Recordings announce the first-ever vinyl release of Basil Poledouris’ thrilling score for the 1997 cult classic, Starship Troopers. This 2-LP Extended Edition includes 29 cues from the film, remastered by Chas Ferry and Melinda Hurley.

The album is housed in a gatefold jacket, featuring new artwork by illustrator and graphic novelist, Malachi Ward. Rounding out the packaging is a fold-out poster of Ward’s design, plus new liner notes by the film’s director, Paul Verhoeven, and musician Zoë Poledouris, who reflects on her late father’s work. Starship Troopers Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is set for release on August 4 and available for pre-order now. Fans can also find a Varèse Sarabande Vinyl Club edition of the album (pressed on Blood & Bug Juice Marble vinyl and limited to 500 copies) exclusively at VareseSarabande.com.

Based on the 1959 novel by Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers is set in the 23rd century, when Earth is governed by the militarized United Citizen Federation. Equal parts science fiction and satire, the 1997 film lampoons right-wing nationalism—but cleverly packages it in an action-packed teen drama. The plot centers around teenager Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and his friends, who join Earth’s military to fight an interstellar war against an alien species known as the Arachnids. Directed by Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct), Starship Troopers also stars Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris, Jake Busey, Dina Meyer, Michael Ironside, and Patrick Muldoon. Elevating the film’s action-packed scenes is a propulsive score by the Emmy®️ Award-winning composer and conductor, Basil Poledouris (Lonesome Dove, RoboCop, The Hunt for Red October).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Originally released in 1973, this year marks fifty years since the release of Tom Waits’ highly influential debut album Closing Time. To commemorate the occasion, new 50th anniversary vinyl is out now. Available in black and clear versions as a double 180g LP cut at 45 RPM with half speed mastering by London’s Abbey Road Studios, the gatefold jacket was also specially created with thicker board and black poly-lined inner sleeves.

Included in Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Song Writers of All Time and a 2011 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Waits’s Closing Time began the career of this legendary artist and his foray into the exploration of sound and the canon of American and European songwriting—from folk to jazz to blues and gospel to cabaret and spoken word—all in service of his experience of the human condition from every rung of the ladder. This is the launch of a voice and eye so singular that “Waitsian” has become an adjective used by critics and dictionaries to describe his aesthetic and style.

Called “a minor key masterpiece filled with songs of late-night loneliness” by All Music Guide, Closing Time features the distinctly lyrical storytelling and a seminal blending of jazz, blues, and folk styles that would come to be associated first with Waits.

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Celebrating Laurie Anderson on her 76th birthday. —Ed.

Eastern spirituality has inspired a lot of music, with only a small percentage aptly assessed as substantial. An even tinier amount rises to the level of artistry found on Songs from the Bardo, the release from NYC avant-garde cornerstone Laurie Anderson, multi-instrumentalist, composer and musical director Tenzin Choegyal, and multi-instrumentalist, composer, and climate activist Jesse Paris Smith. Described as a collaborative composition featuring Anderson’s readings from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the results are contemplative and exploratory without ever meandering into facile formlessness.

It might read as if I’m being unnecessarily hard on music that’s infused with Eastern spiritual-philosophical qualities. Twenty years ago, that would’ve been true, and I’d probably have expressed matters much more harshly (and with less maturity), but in the ever-loving now I’m merely riffing on Sturgeon’s Law (and that’s not to suggest Ted’s maxim is the gospel truth).

I’ll add here that the term Eastern spirituality is a rather severe generalization, so let me highlight the specific; Songs from the Bardo is described by the label as a “guided journey through the visionary text of the Tibetan Book of the Dead,” the enduring masterwork of Nyingma Buddhism, with the intention to open up the philosophy’s traditions to current and future generations as both pure listening and a store of insightfulness.

Accompanying downloads are certainly useful, but for those buyers with working turntables, they are generally inessential. In the case of Songs from the Bardo, which does offer the card with the code, this observation is somewhat arguable, as listening to the music in one uninterrupted stream, having done so now numerous times, feels optimal.

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Artists need to be inspired to create their best works, and it’s not always easy to have the wherewithal to clearly see the inspiration around us. In fact, for a musician, the insight to this inspiration is often more important than musical or production ability. Listeners love sounds that touch them on an emotional level, but how do you search out that spark? How does the musician find the muse?

This is the journey that Charlie Bruber finds himself traversing on his latest album Finding the Muse, and as you’ll learn, Charlie is open to the idea that there are many sources of inspiration to explore. It may be a famous musician, a vintage keyboard, or something else. In any case, Charlie has created a far-reaching album that delves into all facets of his talents and skills as a multi-instrumentalist and composer. While you’re listening, you may wonder if you’re hearing the same performer, but you’re just seeing all the many different sides of Charlie Bruber.

Charlie joins us directly from his recording studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota and we end up digging through our respective record collections in real-time for a fun back-and-forth about albums we both appreciate. We also discuss Charlie’s other important musical projects, specifically, Black Market Brass on Colemine Records. It’s entirely possible, by joining in on our search for Charlie’s muse, you might be given some direction in finding your own.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

“To a man with a hammer,” goes the old saying, “everything is a nail.” Such is the case with Australian avant garde drummer Oren Ambarchi, who in a moment of serendipity laid eyes on an electric guitar and, well let him tell it: “There happened to be one laying around in our rehearsal room. I picked it up and starting hitting it with drumsticks and using it in whatever way I wanted to use it in, and one thing led to another. I’m glad I wasn’t trained… I never wanted to learn to play it properly, it was an object as much as an instrument.”

Ambarchi is a musical gadfly with a preference for a good, steady metronomic groove who’s played with just about everybody who’s anybody in the avant/noise rock world, including Sunn O)))—he’s appeared on several albums and played with them live. He’s engaged in projects with its individual members as well, in the bands Burial Chamber and Gravetemple. He’s also collaborated with the equally eclectic Jim O’Rourke, who was a member of Sonic Youth between 1999 and 2005, composer/musician Chris Townend, Warm Ghost’s Paul Duncan, composer Alvin Lucier, and enough other musical pioneers to populate New York City’s Lower East Side. Just take a gander at his discography and start counting. Ambarchi is one busy guy.

Ordinarily such rarified bona fides would mean as little to me as his highfalutin’ goal of “re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it’s no longer easily identifiable as itself. Instead, it’s a laboratory for extended sonic investigation.” Believe me, I’d be much more impressed if he were to collaborate with Black Oak Arkansas’ Jim Dandy Mangrum. And I’d have never even heard of him had I not been sitting in my brother’s minivan when he turned on Ambarchi’s 2012 LP Sagittarian Domain.

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Remembering Charlie Watts, born on this day in 1941. —Ed.

Step back in time with me, won’t you, to the year 1965, when Dylan went electric, The Beatles went “Nowhere Man,” and a scruffy English R&B band called the The Rolling Stones released The Rolling Stones No. 2, which included a few tentative attempts at writing their own material.

In hindsight, the last named might be the most important musical occurrence of 1965, but Rolling Stones No. 2 isn’t a great album because it includes a trio of songs by what would become one of rock ’n’ roll’s most formidable songwriting teams. It’s a great album because The Rolling Stones had their R&R and R&B chops down, and were producing a cocksure product that belied their tender years.

So named because it was the second Rolling Stones LP released in England (if not in America), Rolling Stones No. 2 is a jaunty, swaggering romp through the archives of American popular music by a quintet of wide-eyed English lads who knew what they loved and were dead set on living up to the high standards of the artists who inspired them.

They kick first-generation rock ’n’ roll’s keister with their motorvatin’ version of Don “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” Raye’s “Down the Road Apiece,” which tools down the road just fine; prove they can’t be caught on their souped-up cover of Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me,” on which they say goodbye to New Jersey forever; and go swamp rockabilly with a vengeance on their hand-clap heavy and reverberating take on Dale Hawkins’ immortal “Suzie Q,” which boasts lots of berserker drumming and some of the most frenzied guitar playing you’ll ever hear.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Trojan Records release the final set of releases from their new The Essential Artist Collection—a brand new series of artist-focused compilation albums showcasing some of the very best talent from the label’s esteemed roster, in Desmond Dekker and Marcia Griffiths. Championing their stellar catalogues, the series highlights the most important ska and reggae tracks from the most influential artists and vocal/instrumental groups with each title available in double colour vinyl, double CD, and digital formats.

Before Bob Marley’s rise to pre-eminence, the title of the world’s leading reggae performer rested firmly with another young singer from Kingston: Jamaica’s Desmond Dekker. Between 1967 and 1970, Desmond enjoyed a succession of international hit singles, breaking new ground with singles such as “007,” the first Jamaican-produced single to break into the UK top twenty, and “Israelites,” the first reggae single to reach the Number One spot in Britain and to breach the US chart.

Further triumphs followed thereafter, with major chart hits including “It Mek,” “Pickney Gal,” “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” and “Sing A Little Song,” all of which cemented his place in history as Jamaica’s first global superstar. This Essential Artist Collection set pays due respect to the original King of Reggae and superbly demonstrates the immense talent that set Desmond Dekker apart from his peers during the Golden Age of Jamaican music.

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Like David Byrne and Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel fell hard for world music. Unlike his fellow aesthetes, Gabriel is afflicted with terminal cases of both gravitas and bombast. The former Genesis front man may have injected that band’s music with a degree of absurdist levity (at least live) uncommon in a genre, progressive rock, not known for its sense of humor, but the same can’t be said for his solo material. He’s one serious individual, our Peter, and his music is suitably ponderous. It’s not light on its feet and rarely makes you want to dance. It can’t. Peter Gabriel’s oeuvre has a serious weight problem. In his case that “art” in “art rock” weighs a ton.

Oh, he’s had his moments. Songs like “Solsbury Hill” and “Games Without Frontiers” were light of foot. But he’s English and he’s earnest (he put away childish things with Genesis) and he’s very much a product of progressive rock, a genre afflicted with a fatal case of pomposity. Further, his take on world music has always had a calculated feel to it–as The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau noted bluntly of his 1982 LP Security, “Self-conscious primitivism hasn’t cured his grandiosity,” although I for one don’t detect the primitivism. The percussion trimmings, sure, but the man’s a classic rarified product of advanced Western Civilization, and definitely of that breed of musical explorers who wouldn’t venture into the jungles of sound without porters and a thunderbox.

And to make matters worse Gabriel has a social conscience—which is laudable, of course, but hardly gives his music bounce or, God help us, lends it a sense of humor. Caring deeply about the state of the world is a burden, added gravity as it were, and gravity is a heavy proposition—it keeps things down, not up. All of which means the joys of world music are beyond him, and the last thing I would call his music (and this isn’t the case with the best of Byrne and Simon) is joyous.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Today, internationally renowned singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette celebrates her birthday. Nearly two decades ago, she released her jampacked greatest hits CD, The Collection, which will see its vinyl debut this summer.

The Collection will be available on August 25 as a 2-LP ($34.98) on black vinyl. Pre-order HERE. A transparent grape-vinyl version ($34.98) will be available the same day exclusively from Target, as well as a crystal-clear version at your local indie retailer.

The Collection covers the seven-time Grammy® Award-winner’s career between 1995 and 2005, when the Canadian popstar first broke out in the States. It includes a handful of Morissette’s well-known singles, several soundtrack selections, and her performance of Seal’s hit “Crazy,” which debuted on The Collection in 2005.

Five songs from her #1 album, Jagged Little Pill (1995), appear on the set, including the smash singles “You Oughta Know,” “Ironic,” and “You Learn.” The album catapulted Morissette to global stardom, earning her five Grammy® awards, including Album of the Year. The record was certified 16x platinum, selling over 33 million copies worldwide. It is the 16th best-selling album of all time in the U.S. and the third best-selling album by a female artist.

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