VIA PRESS RELEASE | Black Sabbath forged the dark sound of heavy metal in 1970 across two monumental albums—their self-titled debut and its multi-platinum follow-up, Paranoid. Today, new audiophile editions of both are available on reel-to-reel from Rhino High Fidelity.

Black Sabbath and Paranoid (Rhino High Fidelity R2R) were duplicated in real time from 1:1 copies of the US analog master tapes. The result is a master-quality listening experience that captures the full dynamics of these recordings. The 15 i.p.s. half-track 1/4″ tape is produced to the IEC equalization standard on premium RTM LPR90 tape stock and stored on a 10.5″ metal reel. Each Reel-to-Reel edition is limited to 500 copies worldwide and available exclusively at Rhino.com.

Released on Friday the 13th in February 1970, the self-titled debut from the Birmingham, England quartet conjured a sinister, visceral sound that reshaped rock music. Powered by Tony Iommi’s crushing guitar riffs, Ozzy Osbourne’s primal vocals, Geezer Butler’s seismic bass lines, and Bill Ward’s powerhouse drumming, tracks like “Black Sabbath” and “N.I.B.” set a high bar for heavy music. The album peaked at #8 on the U.K. chart and #23 on the Billboard 200, eventually earning platinum certification in the U.S.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mute—in conjunction with Threshold House—have shared a track from 1987’s Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders), the first in a series of releases in a new partnership between the labels that will see four early, often overlooked, works by Coil—remastered and released with restored artwork, previously unseen imagery and new sleeve notes.

Originally conceived by John Balance, Coil swiftly became a duo with Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle) and after their 1984 debut release, the one-sided 12” single “How to Destroy Angels,” they were joined by a young Stephen Thrower. On the recordings in the series, Coil are John Balance (1962–2004), Peter Christopherson (1955–2010) and Stephen Thrower. The series launches with Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders), the third in a trilogy that began with Scatology and Horse Rotorvator.

Where Scatology and Horse Rotorvator are revered, the period immediately after is sometimes skipped over, but these years were enormously potent moments in their history, ones where sex and sexuality, as core engines of their work, were cast under increasing shadow by homophobia and the fear of AIDS, both of which were deliberately fanned and propagated by the mainstream media.

Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) draws on work that had been sidelined during Horse Rotovator’s sequencing. It takes textural and instrumental pieces and shapes them into a fully-formed album.

Read More »

As Neil Young passes 80, time doesn’t stand still. For Young, time is a shifting, changing, moving force that encompasses the past, the present, and the future, and not always in that order. While his contemporary Bob Dylan has said “don’t look back,” Young often does, using memory as a jumping-off point for yet another new song and another new album.

Young also subscribes to Dylan’s assertion not to look back but to move ahead. He does it by creating new sounds, working with new people, and confounding those who would like him to remain the blue-jeaned ’60s icon of Sugar Mountain, forever mining for gold and living the hippie dream.

While he does release a cascade of archival music, it’s the new albums and new groups he plays live with on the road that keep him as relevant as ever. Time is very much on his mind with his new live album, appropriately titled As Time Explodes. The name of the album follows other similarly titled releases: Time Fades Away and Comes A Time, as well as albums where some reference to time exists: Tonight’s The Night, Long May You Run, Old Ways, Early Daze, Decade, Journey Through the Past, and Before and After, to name a few.

In 2010 and 2011, when Young reformed the Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay for benefit shows and a short tour, at the Bonnaroo Festival, in Manchester, Tennessee, on June 11, 2011, he walked on stage and introduced the performance by saying, “We’re Buffalo Springfield; we’re from the past.”

Read More »

I recently spoke with Jez Kerr and Martin Moscrop of A Certain Ratio.

Jez and Martin talked about the new recordings, becoming A Certain Ratio and the early Hacienda days along with Joy Division, plus future plans. And while they came up through Factory Records alongside all the classic acts that emerged in the late ’70s they built a sound out of funk bass, Afrobeat drums, brass, dub, and Latin percussion along with the angular edges of post-punk. This year marks two anniversaries: 45 years since they recorded Sextet, their 1982 third album that hit number one on the UK Independent Chart, and 40 years since Force, their 1986 fifth album and last for Factory.

They’re celebrating the anniversary with two companion releases, both just out via Mute. The Joy of Sextet is a new mix by Andy Meecham (The Emperor Machine), pulled from the original 1981 two-inch multitracks. Force Majeure is a nine-track set built around four-track recordings made by the late Stuart James, including an unreleased version of the title track. In October they tour the UK playing both albums in full.

You can find ACR across all social and at www.acrmcr.com. Follow along for tour dates and all A Certain Ratio happenings.

Radar features discussions with artists and industry leaders who are creators and devotees of music and is produced by Dylan Hundley and The Vinyl District. Dylan Hundley is an artist and performer, and the co-creator and lead singer of Lulu Lewis and all things at Darling Black. She co-curates and hosts Salon Lulu which is a New York based multidisciplinary performance series. She is also a cast member of the iconic New York film Metropolitan.

Thorn Wych builds her own instruments from the branches of trees. On her debut album, Aesthesis, she delves deep into an organic experimentation with a folkloric edge. Utilizing grooves, drones, chants, and hazy clouds of abstraction, her sound is connected to long-established traditions while standing apart through pure distinctiveness. Recorded and edited at home, Aesthesis has been available for a couple of years but is getting a welcome North American LP release on September 4 through Tompkins Square.

Living in the UK town of Bacup in Lancashire (near Manchester), Thorn Wych makes deeply spiritual music that leans toward swirling strangeness rather than slipping into blissful placidity. Starting with tree branches, Wych crafts flutes, strings for bowing, and percussion, and then further enhances the sounds she produces with delay pedals, looping, and pitch-shifting devices.

The results, as heard on Aesthesis, strive not to produce sharp contrasts of her rustic baselines against boldly applied technological strategies. Instead, Wych is just attempting to conjure beautifully weird blends. These final results, twisted but natural, are achieved through studiously applied repetitions, edits, distortions, and sound stretching.

The initial release of Aesthesis emerged on cassette (50 copies) and vinyl in late 2024 on the Hood Faire label. Early the following year, a 6-copy run of cassettes in a very attractive wooden case added a bonus track. And at the beginning of 2026, Hood Faire brought out a vinyl repress in a 150-copy edition. Now here comes Tompkins Square with the Stateside availability. There is digital, but only through Bandcamp.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Capitol Records/UMe and Frank Sinatra Enterprises announce a special new suite of physical and digital releases to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s first-ever live album: Sinatra at the Sands with Count Basie & The Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones.

On October 23, 2026, Sinatra at the Sands will be reissued on 2LP 180gm black vinyl as the next release from UMe’s acclaimed Vinylphyle series. It’s available exclusively via uDiscoverMusic HERE. Arriving in tandem, fans can experience five complete shows from the original sold-out 1966 Sands’ Copa Room residency for the first time on the brand new 5CD set—Sinatra at the Sands 60th Anniversary. Dolby Atmos versions of both Sinatra at the Sands releases will be available the same day on streaming platforms. All versions are available for pre-order/pre-save HERE.

The new Vinylphyle Edition of Sinatra at the Sands boasts 2026 mixes from Sinatra’s longstanding trusted engineer Larry Walsh and best-in-class mastering courtesy of Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound. The 2LP Vinylphyle Edition is housed in the original gatefold packaging, which features GRAMMY®-winning liner notes by Stan Cornyn and now includes an insert of never-before-seen photos shot during the residency and new liner notes by New York Times best-selling author Charles Pignone.

While the original Sinatra at the Sands 2LP set was curated from several shows, Sinatra at the Sands 60th Anniversary showcases five complete, previously unreleased performances from the iconic residency, which ran from January 26, 1966–February 1, 1966.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Fire Records will release the definitive version of The Evil One by Roky Erickson And The Aliens on October 30th, 45 years after its original release. For the first time since 1981, the release restores the original front cover from San Francisco’s 415 Records edition. The 15-track 2xLP is cut at 45 rpm, for maximum sonic depth and clarity.

The origin story behind The Evil One is a dark one. The 13th Floor Elevators were gaining attention in Texas and beyond with their compelling single “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” but their open association with psychedelic drugs also brought unwanted attention from the authorities. After Erickson was found with marijuana, he pleaded “not guilty by reason of insanity” to avoid prison and was sent to Rusk State Hospital for the criminally insane. There, he was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy and Thorazine treatment. During his three and a half years at Rusk, he formed a band, shaping early versions of songs that would later appear on The Evil One.

When Erickson was released in 1974, his reputation had grown thanks to the inclusion of “You’re Gonna Miss Me” on the landmark 1972 Nuggets compilation and top 40 radio support across multiple US states. His time in the hospital became a powerful source of inspiration. He formed Roky Erickson And The Aliens and began writing about zombies, demons, vampires, and other such subjects. Moving away from the Elevators’ psychedelic garage blues, Erickson And The Aliens created a harder-edged rock sound.

The Evil One was recorded in 1978 and 1979 with producer Stu Cook, best known as Creedence Clearwater Revival’s bassist. The sessions yielded 15 songs, now presented together in this definitive version on Fire Records. Earlier UK and US editions, released in 1980 and 1981 respectively, each featured different 10-track listings.

Read More »

Celebrating Barry Gibb on his 80th birthday. —Ed.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most twee of them all? Belle and Sebastian? The Shop Assistants? The Pastels? Well, sure, if you adhere to a literalist definition of twee as a post-indie phenomenon. But I take the sniper’s long-range view of music history, and like to think there’s nothing new—including twee—under the sun. For these reasons, I would argue that the sixties’ Bee Gees—those pre-Three Disco Kings with their chipmunk voices, vice-grip-tight three-part harmonies, and whimsical takes on Summer of Love psychedelia, baroque pop, and blue-eyed soul—were the tweest bunch to ever tiptoe through the pop tulips.

I was too young for the late-sixties iteration of the Bee Gees; the first I heard of The Bros. Gibb were their mid- to late-seventies megahits as Overlords of the Hustle and the Electric Slide. I didn’t much care for the Disco Bee Gees—although I’ve warmed to them since—and hence had no desire to check out the music they made before becoming the Typhoid Marys of Saturday Night Fever. Then I heard Alice Donut’s transcendent cover of “Every Christian Lion-Hearted Man Will Show You,” and I was enthralled. This was one of the gr-gr-grooviest slices of psychedelia I’d ever heard, and it was by… the Bee Gees? I ran, didn’t walk, to Spotify. I had to skip the light fandango with the Brothers Gibb—and post haste!

Now what I’m about to say will shock you—perhaps even see me drummed in disgrace out of the critical corps, my quill snapped over the knee of TVD’s own General Patton, Jon Meyers. But I’ll say it anyway: having listened to it some 300 times, I can honestly say I enjoy Bee Gees 1st more than any Beatles album except that white one of theirs. And I exclude that one solely for sentimental reasons related to its inspirational effect on the Manson Family.

Read More »

Unearthed vault recordings of The Cramps are a cause for gleeful galivanting, particularly when the sounds are of the vintage captured on Gravest Gravy, which is out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Vengeance Records. The album delivers a dozen buzzy, fuzzy, thumping belters guided by the mighty hand of Alex Chilton in Memphis, Tennessee. Anybody interested in hearing uncut American greatness at its most frenzied should step right the fuck up.

In part through sheer commitment to an ideal of crazed trash-worshipping flamboyance, The Cramps have endured as one of the most beloved of all punk bands. Punk? Yes, it’s easy (and for some, preferable) to come up with a hyphen-laden genre descriptor to differentiate from standard, straightforward punk rock what singer Lux Interior, guitarist Poison Ivy Rorschach, and whoever spun through the revolving door to occupy the roles of third and occasionally fourth member, were up to.

The reality is that The Cramps date back to the days before punk became a largely codified stylistic experience. All a band needed during this initial burst of punkish activity was a loose handle on either inspired mayhem or savvy simplicity. Across the decades since then, a handful of the more unorthodox early punk bands have been awarded foundational post-punk status, but that doesn’t work for the scuzzy and sweaty roots junk of The Cramps.

Instead, Lux and Ivy and crew luxuriate in the same neighborhood as X, The Gun Club, The Blasters, The Flesh Eaters, Girl Trouble, Flat Duo Jets, Jon Spencer and the assorted bands of Ohioans Don Howland and Jeffrey Evans. It’s difficult to imagine labels like Norton, Crypt, and Estrus existing without The Cramps pointing backward with one hand and forward with the other.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Following its limited release as a Record Store Day Exclusive earlier this year, Marshall Crenshaw’s The Bootleg Sounds of Marshall Crenshaw: 1984–87 will receive a wide release on October 23 via Yep Roc Records, and is now available for pre-order.

Personally curated by Crenshaw from his archives, the collection brings together previously unreleased home demos, live performances, and studio recordings, capturing a particularly fertile period in the career of the acclaimed singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The Bootleg Sounds of Marshall Crenshaw: 1984-87 offers a revealing look behind the scenes, through the songwriting process, and the home recordings of songs that shaped his third and fourth albums, Downtown (1985) and Mary Jean & 9 Others (1987). The early demos sit alongside live tracks from 1986 and 1987, as well as other long-lost material from the archives.

Among the collection’s highlights is a previously unreleased rendition of Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day,” featuring Gary Tallent and Max Weinberg of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. The track is a nice homage for Crenshaw, whose deep connection to Holly’s music famously includes portraying the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer in the 1987 La Bamba.

One of the collection’s most intriguing stories comes from “(We’re Gonna) Shake Up Their Minds.” After hitting a songwriting block, Crenshaw sent the backing track to acclaimed British singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl to see where she might take it. “Kirsty wrote a song to the track called “All I Ever Wanted,” but by the time I got it back from her in the mail, I’d figured out the storyline to “Shake Up Their Minds,” and finished that song.”

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | More than a half century after Buck Owens and the Buckaroos took the stage at Las Vegas’ legendary Mint Hotel and Casino, a remarkable document of the band at the height of its powers is finally seeing the light of day. At The Mint, Las Vegas, 1968, a previously unreleased, professionally recorded live album sourced from the long-lost original Capitol Records reels will be released on October 23 via Sundazed Music. The album is now available for pre-order.

At The Mint, Las Vegas 1968 is a revelation, considering Owens was a man who rarely left worthwhile recordings sitting in a vault. Famously prolific throughout the 1960s, he put his recordings from the era to good use.

Yet somehow, an entire professionally recorded performance by Owens and one of the greatest lineups of the Buckaroos remained unreleased and largely unknown for nearly six decades.

The set finds Owens joined by Don Rich, Doyle Holly, Tom Brumley, and Jerry Wiggins, tearing through hits and deeper cuts with the precision, energy and unmistakable Bakersfield sound that made the Buckaroos one of the most formidable country bands of their generation. At The Mint is more than a newly discovered Buck Owens concert. The tapes preserve the evening virtually as it happened, offering a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of a live album in 1968.

Beginning with legendary country broadcaster Ralph Emery warming up the audience and continuing through his closing thanks, the recording captures stage banter, between-song exchanges, and candid moments that almost certainly would have disappeared had Capitol prepared the tapes for release at the time. The unfiltered quality gives the album an intimate look into an unreleased concert from one of country music’s most iconic artists.

Celebrating Van Morrison on his 81st birthday. —Ed.

Four years before Ronnie Van Zant uttered the immortal words “Turn it up” to open “Sweet Home Alabama,” Van Morrison was uttering the same injunction—but in his case, he was talking about your radio, not the world’s greatest Southern Rock band. The Gaelic soul singer with the mystical streak turned the phrase into a mantra on “Caravan” from the 1970s Moondance, and by so doing, transformed your cheap hand-held FM transistor radio into a means of tuning into the cosmos. That little radio is, quite literally, our ticket to Heaven.

From “Gloria” and “Here Comes the Night” with his days with Belfast, Ireland’s Them to the brilliant string of solo efforts that extended from 1968’s Astral Weeks, 1970’s Moondance and that same year’s His Band and the Street Choir, 1971’s Tupelo Honey to 1972’s St. Dominic’s Preview, Morrison veered from the simple romantic lyricism of songs like “Tupelo Honey” and “Moondance” to deeply spiritual and more ambitious songs like “Listen to the Lion,” “Cypress Avenue,” and “Madame George.” Call them his Songs of Innocence and Experience.

On 1970’s Moondance—which is horn-heavy and replete with female backing vocalists—Morrison works the innocence vein, while imbuing many of its songs with a deep strain of Irish mysticism that charges even the simplest of subjects with a sense of awe. On “And It Stoned Me,” he gets drunk on a jar of water from a mountain stream. On “Into the Mystic,” he takes us spiritually seaward—just as he does on “Tupelo Honey” and “Listen to the Lion.” He implores us to let our spirits fly; tells us he wants to rock our gypsy souls, and lets us know “it’s too late to stop now.”

Read More »