The 1994 return of pioneering electronic guru Richard ‘Heldon’ Pinhas to the forefront of the French underground scene. The fruits of a two-year collaboration with John Livengood from Red Noise and Spacecraft, inspired by Norman Spinrad’s novel Rock Machine. First vinyl issue.

Keyboardist with Heldon, Magma and co, joined on his debut LP by the likes of Richard Pinhas and Christian Vander — no less — together with Bernard Paganotti, François Auger, Didier Batard… An outstanding mixture of synthy electronics and jazz-rock. First vinyl issue.

No-one else makes music like this: devilishly complex but warm and intuitive, stirring together a dizzying assembly of outernational and outerspace influences, whilst retaining the subby funk-and-hot-breath pressure of Shackleton’s soundboy, club roots.
The result is an evolutionary, truly alchemical music — great shifting tides of dub, minimalist composition and choral song (Five Demiurgic Options); ritual spells to ward off the darkness (Before The Dam Broke, The Prophet Sequence); radiophonia and zoned-out guitar improv (Seven Virgins); even the febrile, freeform psychedelia of eighties noise rock (Sferic Ghost Transmits / Fear The Crown).
Over the five years since Music For The Quiet Hour, Vengeance’s vocal and lyrical range has rolled out across this new terrain. Throughout these six transmissions he’s hoarse preacher, sage scholar and ravaged bluesman; blind man marching off to war, and exhausted time-traveller warning of impending socio-ecological catastrophe.
Six dialogic accounts of our conflicted times, then, expanding beyond the treacly unease of the duo’s early collaborative work into something subtler and more emotionally shattering — its shades of brightness more dazzling, and its darkness even murkier.
“We almost didn’t hear it when the foundations went.”

Lovely, hypnotic, rocking peulh music from Dilly commune, Mali, near the border with Mauritania (and the same family grouping as the celebrated singer Inna Baba Coulibaly). Duelling ngonis, calabash, flute, dashes of electric guitar; newly recorded.

His terrific Positive-Negative LP from 1976, plus singles for Golden Voice, Mercury and Tosted (including the original Now That I Have You), and the sixties sides of his organ-funk combo the TMGs.
Lovely, characterful, poignant soul music which irresistibly radiates the singer’s worship of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye.
Al Green, Philly Soul and also-ran frustration are in the wings: What Can I Do came out of Grand Rapids on the coat-tails of Back Up Train; I’m A Stranger was recorded at Sigma, in the slipstream of Be Thankful For What You Got.

“I’m out here all alone… trying to find my way… I don’t know where to roam… I just don’t know what to say about all this… I’m a stranger.”

Ecstatic, cosmic soul from 1981, swirling into space on flurries of brass, two-step bass, and TM’s overdosed-with-joy falsetto.

Outsider, casio versions of the Electric Prunes, Ramones and co, al fresco in early-eighties San Francisco.

A cosmic, percussive jam and bitter-sweet electroid house — both veering sharply into dark, steely, dubwise self-harm. Allegedly the fiftieth utterance of our favourite dance music label in the world. Hats off! More worries!

Terrific soulful Northern banger — a Wigan anthem — and classic Motor City fire from Jack Ashford’s Pied Piper Productions. Performed, written and produced by LC.

The sublime 2001 swansong of James Stinson, of Drexciya. ‘By turns luminous and melancholic, low-key and sensuous, wry and soulful’ (Pitchfork).

Rare 45s by these standard-bearers of the funky, counter-cultural heavy rock-scene in mid-seventies Rhodesia. Watch Out was its anthem.

Murderous southern funk from the dawn of the seventies, featuring brilliant fatback drumming by Freeman Brown and cooking organ by Clayton Ivey. Fittingly, producer Mickey Buckins lets off a siren on the flip.