VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rough Trade Records are excited to announce a remastered reissue of Scritti Politti’s classic debut album Songs To Remember, will be released on 10th April.

The debut album of one of Britain’s most acclaimed and influential bands, Songs to Remember takes us back to the beginnings of Scritti Politti. Having emerged out of the DIY Camden bedsit scene of the late ’70s, with a musical vision to match the likes of Miles Davis (who they later worked with), the Green Gartside-led group established themselves as one of the early ’80s’ true musical innovators with Songs To Remember uniquely melding philiosophical thinking with a burgeoning pop sensibility.

Described as “witty and ingenious” by NME on its release in 1982, the album has since been established as a truly groundbreaking album of its era. The audio has been fully remastered for this reissue and long overdue vinyl repress by Alex Wharton at Abbey Road Studios, overseen by Gartside himself.

Originally released as cat.no. ROUGH20 in September 1982, the album reached number 12 in the UK Album Charts and featured three classic singles, “The Sweetest Girl,” “Faithless,” and “Jacques Derrida,” The album will released on digital and CD formats and will finally be available again on vinyl format featuring an embossed sleeve, including a pictogram of a bee in the front corner of the cover, in line with the original 1982 pressing.

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Celebrating Robbie Williams, born on this day in 1974. —Ed.

What do you do when you’ve spent your lonely teen years idolizing Elton John, loving Elton John, ADORING Elton John, only to wake up one day to realize you’re 56 years old and need a substitute, a new Elton John in your life, to help see you through the long banal days and long lonely nights? Why you turn to Robbie Williams, of course. Williams is England’s best stab at providing us with a latter-day Captain Fantastic—to wit, a prolific hit machine who writes catchy songs and gets no respect from the right people, but is beloved by millions.

I fell in love with Williams the first time I heard “Angels.” It’s as close as any human has ever come to writing a new “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” and I swooned and don’t care who knows it. Bigger than life and anthemic as all fuck, “Angels” is all swirling strings and crescendos over which Williams pours, depending on your point of view, saccharine or his very heart blood.

Williams has come a long way since the acrimonious end of his first (1990-95) tenure in the boy band Take That—indeed, he’s one of the best-selling artists of all time, topping the likes of Beyoncé, The Black Eyed Peas, and Joseph Stalin, another Take That alumnus. He’s partied with Oasis and lived, released 11 solo albums, and bared his bum for the cover of 2014’s Under the Radar Volume 1, unless that’s a stunt bum I’m looking at as I write this. And he seems like a nice bloke, which is quaint, although for all I know he’s no friendlier than Heinrich Himmler, yet another Take That alum.

If there’s one thing you have to hand Williams, it’s he knows how to make an entrance. Take 2005’s Intensive Care. He opens the catchy “Ghosts,” its inaugural track, with the lines, “Here I stand victorious/The only man who made you cum.” Top that, friend. It’s your standard lovelorn affair with a great chorus, over which Williams says things like “me and you” and “we could have made it.” The backing vocals are wonderful, the strings transcendental, and while Elton John is no ghost I can feel his aura hovering over this one.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Latino proudly announces a reissue of Comedia, the 1978 masterpiece from legendary salsa singer Héctor Lavoe. Produced by his longtime collaborator Willie Colón, Lavoe’s third solo album features his signature hit—the Rubén Blades-penned “El Cantante”—alongside such favorites as “Songoro Cosongo,” “Porque te conocí?,” and “Comedia.”

Arriving April 10th, and available for pre-order, the album features all-analog (AAA) lacquers cut from the original master tapes and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl. A tip-on jacket replicates Yoshi Ohara’s iconic photograph of Lavoe, who masquerades as one of the greatest comedic actors of all time, Charlie Chaplin. Music collectors can also find a limited-edition Clear Smoke color pressing (only 300 copies), as a stand-alone or bundled with collectible T-shirts, including a “Comedia” T-shirt featuring the cover art and the classic “El Cantante” black tee, available at Fania.com. Fans can also enjoy the remastered album in both standard and HD digital audio available now on digital music platforms.

Known for his impeccably bright vocals, seamless phrasing, and ad-libbed anecdotes, singer Héctor Lavoe (1946–1993) was one of the greatest voices in salsa music and an influential force in popularizing the genre.

Born Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the artist relocated to New York City at 17, where he adopted his stage name and began performing in bands led by Roberto García, Kako, and Fania Records founder Johnny Pacheco. It was through Pacheco that Lavoe met 16-year-old Willie Colón, with whom he would form one of Latin music’s most celebrated partnerships.

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Krishnacore: It was a non-accident waiting to happen. It was inevitable that sooner or later the straightedge kids dedicated to purifying their bodies and minds would come around to the notion of purifying their souls as well.

Take Ray Cappo (aka Raghunath Das), the lead singer of New York City straightedge band Youth of Today: “Although we were straightedge, I felt a calling to improve my life even more,” Raghunath said in an interview. “Because to really advance in spiritual life, you have to go deeper than just being good—you have to become a transcendentalist.”

I’m not convinced that being straightedge makes you good, but I am prepared to say that Krishnacore could probably only have been born in New York City, Ground Zero of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s introduction of Krishna Consciousness to the West in the 1960s.

Not surprisingly, Prabhupada found his first converts amongst the youth counterculture. He liked to say he was “turning hippies into happies.” Hardcore kids would seem to have been a harder sell, but straightedge fans of bands like Minor Threat and 7 Seconds were ripe for conversion to the Bhakti movement.

The difference between the hippies and the hardcore kids was this: most of Prabhupada’s hippie devotees renounced rock music as a materialistic and decadent symptom of spiritual sickness in our present Age of Kali Yuga, the Hindu Age of conflict and sin, which, if you’re keeping score (and I know I am), should end in exactly 428,000 years. I have a big Post-Kali Yuga party planned. You’re welcome to come.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Live ’81-’85 captures that sweet spot after the record is made where you tour until the songs come out of you like a gorgeous martial arts drill and you wish you could go back and record them all over again. Debora Iyall’s vocals are so confident and commanding. She is one of those singers who make me wonder how much less myself I would be if they hadn’t been there.”
—Neko Case

In 2023, Liberation Hall released Live from Mabuhay Gardens, the first official concert recording from Romeo Void. Billboard magazine’s Ron Hart greeted the album with appropriate fanfare, writing “If you were lucky enough to catch Romeo Void in concert during their heyday, you saw one of the most inventive bands of the new wave/post-punk era.”

That first RSD exclusive is now set to be followed by another limited-edition release. Live ’81-’85 captures Romeo Void performing in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Albany, New York, as well as farther afield in London and Berlin.

The 17-track set brings together songs from all three of the band’s studio albums—It’s a Condition (1981), Benefactor (1982), and Instincts (1984)—and features band members Debora Iyall (vocals), Frank Zincavage (bass), Peter Woods (guitar), Benjamin Bossi (saxophone), Larry Carter (drums), and Aaron Smith (drums). The deluxe double-LP package will be pressed on black vinyl and available in a gatefold sleeve designed by Zincavage and Skott Reader.

The cover art is an homage to the band’s breakout record, 1981’s “Never Say Never” EP. The record’s inner bag will feature lyrics, rare photos, and memorabilia. Live ’81-’85 will also be available on CD and digital. Digital single “Never Say Never” is available now.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Indie pop cratediggers, behold the miracle: this Record Store Day, April 18, 2026, Merge Records is reissuing Words of Wisdom and Hope, the 2002 album by Teenage Fanclub and Jad Fair.

Available on vinyl for the first time since its original 2002 release, Words of Wisdom and Hope is accompanied by bonus 7-inch, “Always In My Heart” b/w “Rock Me Tonight,” with the B-side’s North American debut making this the definitive edition of the album. This limited edition pressing is available through participating indie record stores—visit recordstoreday.com for more information! Words of Wisdom and Hope is both a curio within Jad Fair’s sprawling catalog and a left turn for Teenage Fanclub after the harmony-drenched jangle-pop of Howdy!

Its charms—which are unrelenting from the moment Fair breaks in over the Fanclub’s groove on “Behold the Miracle” to document the sparkle in the eye of a girl—are as obvious as they are mysterious: Is it Fair’s spur-of-the-moment earnestness bringing out the rawer edges of Teenage Fanclub? Is it the polish of a band at one of several career peaks revealing new facets of the legendary Half Japanese frontman’s songwriting?

Whatever it is, their sensibilities mesh together perfectly. Words of Wisdom and Hope finds the sweet spot between Teenage Fanclub’s gorgeous Glaswegian pop soundscapes and Jad Fair’s twitchy takes on love and monsters, like if Jonathan Richman were at the helm of Loaded-era Velvet Underground, somehow wide-eyed in its innocence and winkingly sly all at once. An album aimed directly at the biggest, tingliest part of the heart—play it loud for young crushes, and louder for something to remember young love by.

Celebrating Steve Hackett on his 76th birthday. —Ed.

Well, there goes another theory shot to shit. I always thought Genesis hit the aesthetic skids the moment Peter Gabriel split and drummer Phil “The Anti-Christ” Collins took over on lead vocals, but I’ve been listening to 1976’s Trick of the Tail, the first post-Gabriel LP, and I’m afraid I was sadly mistaken. Trick of the Tail is not a great album but it’s a very good one, packed with well-constructed tunes with lovely melodies that occasionally, but not too often, stray into the prog trap of technical virtuosity purely for virtuosity’s sake.

Peter Gabriel’s departure threw Genesis’ future into question. A Melody Maker writer went so far as to declare Genesis officially dead. But the band committed itself to proving it could make good music without Gabriel, and after a fruitless search for a new lead vocalist Collins, who wanted to turn Genesis into an instrumental act, reluctantly agreed to take on the vocal duties himself. Which in hindsight seems like a no-brainer, as Collins is a virtual vocal doppelganger for Gabriel and the obvious candidate as a replacement.

Album opener “Dance on a Volcano” has muscle and a fetching melody, to say nothing of some powerhouse drumming by Collins, whose exhortations (“Better start doing it right!”) sound convincing. There is some technical showing off for its own sake, especially at the end, but this one is more hard rock than prog, thanks to Steve Hackett’s guitar work and Tony Banks’ synthesizer.

“Entangled” is a bit fey for my tastes, a quiet little pretty ditty, but it wins me over with its melody, which is simply lovely. There’s a beautiful synthesizer solo, which doesn’t attempt to mime classical tropes the way your more virulent and dangerous progmeisters would, and I like it for that.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Wewantsounds is delighted to release Ayam El Disco, a new selection of Egyptian 1980s disco and boogie cassette tracks curated by Egyptian DJ Disco Arabesquo, following his highly acclaimed Sharayet El Disco. Most tracks make their vinyl debut in this set.

A journey through the funky sounds of 1980s Egypt, Ayam El Disco (“Disco Days”) features Ammar El Sherei, Al Massrieen, and other underground artists from Cairo’s vibrant cassette culture. The audio has been remastered for vinyl by David Hachour at Colorsound Studio in Paris, and the LP features artwork by Egyptian graphic designer Heba Tarek, along with a 2-page insert showcasing the original cassette artwork and insightful liner notes by Moataz Rageb.

Ayam El Disco is the latest archival release from Moataz Rageb, aka Disco Arabesquo, who returns with this new set following his highly acclaimed Sharayet El Disco a few years ago. Based in Amsterdam, the Egyptian DJ has spent years collecting rare tapes from the 1980s and early 1990s—a period that transformed Egypt’s musical landscape and shaped his own listening experience.

By the 1980s, the cassette format had become a revolutionary medium in Egypt. As Rageb notes, “In the 1980s and ’90s Egypt had a thriving cassette culture. With over 400 different companies producing music on tapes, Cairo was a hub of musical creativity.” Affordable and easily duplicated, tapes allowed artists to work independently while absorbing global influences such as disco, funk, and synth-pop through imported and bootleg recordings.

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35 years ago, The Cranberries released their debut EP, the 4-song set “Uncertain,” on Xeric Records, a label connected to the much larger Island conglomerate. The hubbub was yet to come, but the EP does have its charms, and of course, there is a backstory. An anniversary reissue makes total sense, and that’s exactly what Island and UMG Recordings have done with a limited remastered edition that’s available now.

It’s no secret that before they were The Cranberries, the band’s name was The Cranberry Saw Us, and they released three cassette EPs under that moniker. The first two, “Anything” and “Water Circle,” were demos (the second has the original version of “Linger” as track two). The third, “Nothing Left at All,” was a commercial release. Its title track and “Pathetic Senses” are reprised for “Uncertain.” All three EPs were released in 1990.

It’s been said that the worst thing that happened to Big Brother and the Holding Company was that Janis Joplin joined the band. It’s a statement that’s largely a joke, but with a truth attached. Specifically, Joplin’s participation changed everything, and then she bailed for the greener pastures of a solo career, leaving Big Bro to reestablish their direction.

The above is definitely not the case with The Cranberries and Dolores O’Riordan, who joined after the “Anything” EP was released and is first heard on “Water Circle,” replacing vocalist-guitarist Niall Quinn. O’Riordan didn’t take baby steps in solidifying her role in the Cranberry Saw Us, cowriting all the tracks on “Water Circle” and “Nothing Left at All,” and also on this first proper release as The Cranberries.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | GRAMMY® Award-winning iconic rock band The Smashing Pumpkins will celebrate the 35th anniversary of their seminal debut, Gish, with multiple new 35th Anniversary vinyl variants available on May 29, 2026, the same week as the anniversary.

Frontman Billy Corgan’s Madame ZuZu’s & other independent record stores will be carrying a color vinyl housed in the original 1991 packaging, a limited-edition colorway evokes the classic cover pressed on striking 180-gram gray vinyl, accented with pink and purple splatter. A standard Black 180-gram vinyl in the original 1991 packaging will also be available, honoring the legacy that helped shape an era. Pre-order Gish, HERE.

The Smashing Pumpkins notably recorded Gish with producer Butch Vig at Smart Studios in Madison, WI. The album channeled spirits of rock, metal, psychedelia, pop, and shoegaze into an alternative conjuration unlike anything before it—or after, for that matter. Released on May 28, 1991, it went on to make history, becoming one of the most successful independently released albums of its era. The 10-track body of work eventually reached Platinum status, anchored by staples such as “I Am One,” “Siva,” “Rhinoceros,” and more.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Robin Trower’s journey as one of rock’s most expressive and soulful guitarists began during his time with ‘60s beatmakers The Paramounts and then Procol Harum, but it was when he stepped out on his own that his distinctive brand of funky blues rock truly took flight. After leaving Procol, Trower formed the Robin Trower Band, releasing Twice Removed From Yesterday in 1973—a confident debut long player that hinted at what was to come.

A year later, Trower’s power trio hit full stride with the release of Bridge of Sighs, an album that not only cemented Trower’s reputation as a guitar great but also brought international success, reaching Number 7 in the US Billboard Charts. Over the following years, the band achieved four consecutive gold albums and delivered a run of performances that have since become the stuff of legend.

Now, Robin Trower celebrates the 50th Anniversary of another landmark moment—the release of Live! on April 3, via Chrysalis Records. Originally issued in 1976, this powerful set recorded at the Stockholm Concert Hall on February 3, 1975, captured the Robin Trower Band (Robin Trower, James Dewar (bass/vocals), and drummer Bill Lordan) at full throttle with Trower at the peak of his solo powers.

Due to the limitations of vinyl at the time, only seven tracks from the show made it onto the original LP. This new anniversary edition finally makes available the full concert for the very first time—newly remixed and restored from the original multi-track tapes for this definitive Deluxe Extended Edition.

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Jethro Tull holds a unique place in rock history. Led by flute-playing, musical minstrel, and Dickensian vagabond Ian Anderson, the quintessential British group has been lumped into various trends, most notably prog, but it is so much more. Their melding of folk, jazz, rock, classical, and pop began with their bluesy debut, This Was, in 1968, and successfully evolved through nearly the end of the 1970s before their sound became heavier and more straightforward.

Arguably, their first 10 studio albums are exceptional, and much of their music still stands up today. Along with Anderson, the key members of Tull who contributed to this rich period are Glenn Cornick, Clive Bunker, Martin Barre, Jeffrey Hammond, John Evan, Barriemore Barlow, John Glascock, and Dee Palmer, in an ever-shifting lineup that found guitarist Barre as Anderson’s most important and consistent collaborator.

The 1972 double-album release Living in the Past came at perhaps the group’s peak and is an odd, yet excellent album in the Tull discography. Their sixth overall album was also their first on Chrysalis in the States. It has recently been reissued in both vinyl and a deluxe CD/Blu-ray box set, billed as Still Living in the Past, further enhancing the album’s stature.

What made the initial double-album release so successful was that rather than being the standard compilation album or just a simple collection of bits and bobs (or odds and sods), it offered a rich variety of music, much of it B-sides, different single mixes, live material, EP tracks, and previously unreleased music from various album configurations or territories. It was a beautiful presentation in an era when the rock album package was truly a thing of beauty.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | CLOCK DVA announces the remastered reissue of Thirst, due to be released on double thirst-red vinyl, CD, and digitally on June 5, 2026. The album, which follows the remastered release of their debut, White Souls in Black Suits, features single mixes of “4 Hours” and “Sensorium” alongside new remixes by the current iteration of Clock DVA. “4 Hours” was the sole single at the time of the original release. One of The Face and Rockerilla’s Singles of the Year 1981, it went on to be one of NME’s Best Indie Singles Ever and Blow Up’s 100 Songs to Remember.

Thirst—originally released in 1981—is a stone-cold post-punk classic. While still retaining the sharp experimental edge of their debut, White Souls in Black Suits, Thirst stretches out and offers up some cleaner and more hooky moments as it moves away from pure improvisation. “Between White Souls and Thirst, the guitarist changed from David Hammond to Paul Widger,” explains Newton. “David introduced the perfect guitar sound for DVA, whereas Paul brought in a more rhythmic style, more towards early Ry Cooder. The material we were developing was a more defined series of pieces, more structured and exact than the improvised works on White Souls.”

45 years on from its original release (on Fetish), it’s a record from the era that sounds like no other. There’s jazz-inflected post-punk, helped by Charlie Collins’ wonderfully inventive sax playing, but also nods to more Beefheart-esque wonky grooves—aided by Newton’s raspy growls—while tracks like “4 Hours” also hit home the group’s real knack for incorporating catchy songcraft with the infectious song containing an almost new wave shimmer.

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