Manslaughter 777 is the duo of Lee Buford (The Body, Sightless Pit, Dead Times, Everyone Asked About You) and Zac Jones (Braveyoung, Nothing, MSC). Both are drummers and programmers, and with their second album God’s World, which comes out on vinyl (orange or black) and digital June 25 through Thrill Jockey, they continue to hone a sound that’s wild, raw, and groove-laden. The ten tracks hit the sweet spot between infectious and pummeling as Buford and Jones blend live playing and samples and draw upon elements from over a half dozen complementary genres.

The first record by Manslaughter 777, World Vision Perfect Harmony, came out in March 2021, also on Thrill Jockey. Befitting what’s essentially a side project, there have been no EPs or singles or stray compilation tracks, just a solitary album until the arrival of God’s World, which picks up where its predecessor left off, but with aspects of refinement in the scheme.

In the promotional text for God’s World, Zac Jones states that he wanted the new album to include cuts that could function as the musical backdrop at parties, and the results pass that test without a hitch. But really, ‘twas not much different with the debut LP; it’s just that the party in World Vision Perfect Harmony’s case is being held in a concrete bunker, with the music handed off to the evening’s DJ on an unlabeled cassette. Whenever somebody asks about the makers of the music, the reply is very short: “Oh, just some people I know.”

In short, the first album has a decidedly underground feel to it, registering as appropriately fucked up for the year of its making without straining for rawness, getting too damaged, or adopting any edgelord qualities. The debut is raw but not especially abrasive, and it flows rather than flails, but it’s still a beautifully unpolished thing. The new record doesn’t locate that polish but instead leans even deeper into the groove imperative so that it becomes irresistible, even as its true commercial prospects (and intent) are basically nil.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | For its 30th anniversary, Alanis Morissette’s blockbuster, multi-Grammy-winning, 1995 album, Jagged Little Pill has been given the audiophile treatment courtesy of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MoFi), a leader in high-fidelity audio reissues. Beginning today, the album is available for order as a UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM SuperVinyl 2LP Box Set at mofi.com. A hybrid SACD will be released at a later date.

Ranked the 69th “Greatest Album of All Time” by Rolling Stone, included on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of 200 Definitive Albums, and featured in several books about essential albums, Jagged Little Pill remains more than a blockbuster that has sold more than 17 million copies in the US and 33 million units worldwide. It’s a statement, an attitude, a soundtrack for anyone seeking inspiration, an outlet, or permission to be themselves.

Sourced from the original master tapes (1/2″ / 30 IPS analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe), pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing on MoFi SuperVinyl, and strictly limited to 4,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set of Jagged Little Pill presents the landmark effort in audiophile-grade sound for the first time.

A key part of the record’s appeal and accessibility—Glen Ballard’s smooth production, touches that help Morissette’s exposed-nerve fare seem more accessible and melodic—comes through on this special 30th anniversary edition with an openness, presence, and dynamic explosiveness that make the vocalist’s songs that much more real and visceral.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | In celebration of the 30th anniversary of Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings, a deluxe edition of John Prine’s beloved and GRAMMY-nominated album will be released via Oh Boy Records on September 12. Available for pre-order and pre-save now, the digital deluxe edition features five previously unreleased demos and alternate takes, along with the never-before-heard track “Hey Ah Nothin’,” out today with an accompanying music video.

A long-lost gem sure to delight both longtime fans and newcomers alike, this addition offers an intimate glimpse into the album’s creation and the spontaneous spirit that defined the sessions. The album will also be released on vinyl for the first time ever, newly remastered from the original tapes. Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings is widely cherished for its warmth, wit, and depth, and this new edition provides an even closer look at one of the most joyful and creatively fertile periods in Prine’s storied career.

A special edition of the LP, exclusive to the John Prine online shop, will be pressed on blue and green split-colored vinyl to match the iconic album cover. It will come in a jacket featuring pop-up artwork of the original album that includes a custom-designed checkerboard set, complete with Lost Dog-themed pieces that can be used for both checkers and chess. Fans can also find exclusive colored vinyl editions in standard jackets at indie record stores and vinyl clubs. Additional exclusive merch items will be offered online as part of the release.

Originally released in 1995, Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings followed Prine’s Grammy-winning album The Missing Years and further cemented his legacy as one of America’s greatest songwriters. Produced by Howie Epstein of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the album captured Prine at a personal and artistic high, filled with the joy of new love, fatherhood, and unshakable creative chemistry.

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Celebrating Cat Stevens on his 77th birthday. —Ed.

The singer-songwriter movement that began in the late ‘60s and blossomed in the ‘70s became one of the most dominant musical movements of that very rich era. It’s influence only seems to continue to grow and the key music of the genre holds up remarkably well.

While many think of American or Canadian artists as the dominant artists of the genre—Joni Mitchell, Carole King, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Gordon Lightfoot, Carly Simon and others—some British artists were also key to the sound, particularly Cat Stevens. His album Tea for the Tillerman in 1970 became one of the most important and commercially successful albums of the era. A Super Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition of the album was released in 2020, along with Mona Bone Jakon, his previous album, which was also released in 1970.

Mona Bone Jakon signaled a sea-change in Stevens’s music. He had previously written and recorded very pop-oriented music for the Deram label, that was often lumped in with the then waning British Invasion sound. Mona Bone Jakon also began his relationship with Chris Blackwell and Island Records. Equally influential and as timeless as Tea for the Tillerman, his next album, Teaser and the Firecat, released in 1971, is now also available in a Super Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition.

This set is as fulsome as the Tea set including for starters four CDs. CD one is a 50th anniversary remaster of the original 10-track album. CD two includes 17 demos, alternate versions, rehearsals, bonus tracks, and new recordings of “The Wind” and “Bitterblue.” CD three, entitled Live On Air, UK 1970/71, includes 20 live radio and television performances, mostly from the BBC. CD four is a 12-song live performance from Montreux, Switzerland on May 2nd, 1971.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings commemorates the 60th anniversary of Joan Baez’s bestselling sixth studio album, Farewell, Angelina, with its first wide vinyl reissue in nearly four decades.

A pivotal release in Baez’s catalog, the album blends traditional folk standards with contemporary covers, marking a notable stylistic evolution, including the singer-songwriter’s first use of electric guitar. Set for release on October 3, Farewell, Angelina returns with all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl (via Fidelity Record Pressing). An old-school style tip-on jacket, meanwhile, replicates the LP’s original cover. The remastered album will also be available across standard and hi-res digital platforms on October 3.

Singer, songwriter, and activist Joan Baez (b.1941) is one of modern music’s most influential and enduring voices, with a career that spans nearly seven decades and includes over 30 albums. A gifted interpreter of song and a tireless voice for human rights, Baez first caught the public’s attention at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, where her performance not only impressed her peers but also led to a contract with Vanguard Records.

The artist quickly became a critical and commercial sensation, thanks to such best-selling titles as Joan Baez (1960) and the live Joan Baez in Concert (1962). While these early works focused on traditional folk material, Baez began to integrate contemporary songs into her albums, starting with 1964’s Joan Baez/5.

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A whole slew of reasons to love The Prefects, Birmingham, England’s very first punk band:

1. Civic Pride: At their first “real” gig on their home turf, a storm of beer bottles drove them off stage after they debuted their new song, “Birmingham’s a Shithole.” Unfortunately, no recorded versions of the incident exist, nor did they ever record the song. I find this tragic.

2. Brevity (Is the Soul of Wit): The Prefects’ “I’ve Got VD” lasts all of seven seconds. It’s not as short as Napalm Death’s “You Suffer,” which clocks in at 1.3 seconds, but it’s a much better song. Has words and everything.

3. Fuck Product: The Prefects released exactly zero material while they were together. This is, I think, the perfect punk statement. A posthumous single was released in 1979, but only Prefects’ front man Robert Lloyd made it a condition of Rough Trade’s signing his new band, the Nightingales. And it wasn’t until 2004 that a New York City label released a Prefects album, The Prefects Are Amateur Wankers.

4. Madness Prevails: On the live song “White Riot Tour,” which was recorded while The Prefects were on The Clash’s tour of the same name, they do a lot of incoherent screaming before breaking into a very ramshackle cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray.” It’s great. It’s not on The Prefects Are Amateur Wankers, but you owe it to yourself to find it and check it out. It’s pure dead unlistenable genius.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rhino’s Quadio spins the dial straight to the heart of 1970s radio and continues the Elektra 75th anniversary with four hits collections: Judy Collins’ Colors of the Day (1972), the New Seekers’ The Best of the New Seekers (1973), Bread’s The Best of Bread (1973), and Carly Simon’s The Best of Carly Simon (1975). All four arrive today on Blu-ray.

Each disc pairs the original quadraphonic mix with a hi-res 192 kHz/24-bit stereo transfer, both sourced from the original analog four-track quad master tapes. Available exclusively through Rhino.com and select Warner Music Group stores worldwide, each title lists for $24.98, or $79.98 as a four-disc bundle. Order HERE.

On Colors of the Day: The Best of Judy Collins, the Platinum-selling anthology drifts from crystalline interpretations—Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”—to her own “My Father,” a tender nod to the man who first encouraged her to sing. The album closes with “Amazing Grace,” whose a cappella power sent the single onto three Billboard charts, helping make Collins one of folk’s most recognizable voices.

The Best of the New Seekers finds the British harmony group surfing the global buzz of “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing,” born in Coca-Cola’s 1971 “Hilltop” ad before shooting to #1 in the UK and #7 in the US. Paired with upbeat folk-pop staples like “Never Ending Song Of Love” and Eurovision entry “Beg, Steal Or Borrow,” the sing-along anthem helped the collection sell more than a million copies worldwide.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Kevin Smith called her an American Pop Icon. John Waters called her a Sexual Terrorist.

Hot off her mainstream feature turn in Waters’ Cry-Baby, Traci Lords entered the music scene when she was featured in the Manic Street Preachers’ track “Little Baby Nothing.” Gary Kurfirst saw the magic and signed her to his Radioactive label. The result was 1000 Fires, released in 1994, a bold and forward-thinking debut that helped pioneer the electronica/trance sound powerful lyrics that would soon sweep ‘90s dance floors. Traci joined the Lollapalooza Tour, appearing with Moby and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult in support of the record.

The club scene took notice: lead single “Control” soared to #2 on Billboard’s dance chart, and follow-up “Fallen Angel” hit #11. Her music was featured on soundtracks for the films Mortal Combat, Virtuosity, and Pet Sematary Two.

The fierce honesty and personal intensity displayed in her music have defined her entire career. She tackles themes like trauma and survival with raw emotion and clarity. 1000 Fires was ahead of its time, blending vulnerability, sexuality, and industrial-edged dance production in a way that paved the way for a new generation of pop disruptors.

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Celebrating Dion on his 86th birthday. —Ed.

Poor Dion DiMucci. In 1975 the singer-songwriter from the Bronx—still seeking to recapture the fame he achieved in the late 1950s and early ’60s with vocal group The Belmonts and as the solo artist who gave us “The Wanderer” and “Runaround Sue”—made the same mistake so many musicians seem to make: he decided to hire fellow Bronxite Phil Spector to produce his album. Fortunately Spector—a stick of unstable human dynamite on a good day—didn’t shoot Dion, or so much as brandish a gun at him or even give him a wedgie, as he did the Ronettes. But Spector was his normal—which is to say volatilely abnormal—self, and the sessions were chaotic, to say the least.

And what did Dion get for his trouble? A flop. The critics panned Born to Be With You and record buyers shunned it. Even Spector and Dion hated it, the latter going so far as to disown it as “funeral music.” But the winds of fortune are nothing if not mercurial, and in subsequent years the album has become a cult fave, with critics reversing their opinions and many prominent rockers citing it as an influence on their own music.

Dion’s career trajectory is complex, zig-zagging improbably all over the place like the Kennedy Assassination’s Magic Bullet. He began with The Belmonts, which made him famous and almost killed him on the frigid evening of February 3, 1959, when Dion—travelling with the Belmonts as part of the Winter Dance Party tour—declined for financial reasons to board the infamous Beechcraft Bonanza that crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing fellow tour members Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper. In 1960 Dion went solo, and more hits followed. Then he fell prey to heroin addiction, and his style of music became instantly antiquated the moment the British invaded.

DiMucci spent several years in the pop wilderness, experimenting without much pop success with rock and classic blues. But—and here we are, back at the Kennedy Assassination and the Magic Bullet again—in 1968 Dion covered Dick Holler’s “Abraham, Martin & John,” not long after having a profound spiritual experience and giving up heroin. The song became a hit and put him back on the musical map. It also helped establish him as a mature artist, rather than a teen idol. Over the next several years Dion recorded a series of excellent LPs, including Born to Be With You.

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I recently sat down with my partner in music and life, Pablo Martin. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Pablo is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, engineer, and master mixer. He’s been making music since he was sixteen years old, starting with Argentinian goth heroes El Corte.

We spoke about his early musical life and journey to New York. First working with R&B icons like Mary J. Blige as an engineer, to joining the Tom Tom Club as lead guitar, to forming The Du-Rites and Lulu Lewis, and making ten full-length albums between both of these last two acts over the last decade.

He has worked with an array of artists as a producer, mixer, and engineer. J-Zone, Atmosphere, Sun Ra Arkestra, Sergio Rotman, Kid Cudi, and Ghost Face Killah are some to note. I’m amazed at Pablo’s abilities, which I have watched up close for a decade.

Coming up next for him will be yet another Du-Rites EP entitled “Tenement.” Lulu Lewis just released our first single in a bit, which we slaved over for some time, as we always do. It came out last week. It’s called “Sinner.” Proper ’70s disco with a twist. Upcoming is a live album which we recorded in May 2025 at The Bridge Studio in Brooklyn.

Catch Pablo on Instagram to follow along.

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.