Favorite Reissues, Remixes, and Compilations
Disco Mystic: Select Remixes Volume 1
Asha Puthli is one of those artists whose name you might not immediately recognize but whose artistry has likely impacted you. From helping pioneer the cosmic disco sound of the 1970s to being sampled on some of the most popular hip-hop songs ever released, you know Indian jazz-pop star Asha Puthli. And this year’s Disco Mystic: Select Remixes Volume 1 makes sure of that for a new generation.
There’s an Indian proverb that says, “Where the needle goes, the thread follows.” Such is the case with Disco Mystic, the first of two compilation albums centering Puthli’s work. Naya Beat, the label behind the release, tasked a handful of producers to reimagine select songs from Puthli’s catalog for the modern-day dancefloor. The result is a heroic, six-song undertaking, tied together by Puthli’s signature vocal style. Her artistic prowess serves as the project’s guiding force, leaving listeners, both new and old, eager for more. — Francesca Harding, KCRW DJ
More: FREAKS ONLY Guest Mix: Naya Beat explores the indie side of India
Random Access Memories (Drumless Edition)
It’s crazy to think that it’s been ten years since Daft Punk released Random Access Memories, their last act in a final frontier of music making. Fast forward to the end of 2023 and behold: Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have managed to bloom the drumless edition of “Random Access Memories”. Full of rapturous melancholy and chords that fill us with those singular moments of nostalgia that Daft Punk perfected, the reissue is full of tender flashes of euphoria that listeners love to connect with. Songs like “Doin’ It Right” (Feat. Panda Bear) lead us up with emotional tension and send us off into a dreamy release. The drumless edition of this album seems like a simple concept, but the end product is dynamic and incomparable. — SiLVA, KCRW DJ
More: Daft Punk pals Braxe + Falcon on ‘Step By Step’ and loving Dinosaur Jr.
3 Feet High And Rising
The Berlin Wall comes down, Seinfeld premieres, Woodstock ‘89 marks the 20th anniversary of the festival on the original site, and student protests over human rights lead to the Tiananmen Square uprising/massacre. A world in chaos needs an outlet, and De La Soul’s debut album 3 Feet High And Rising shows up to blow our collective minds. And so the trio of Long Island high school pals Long Kelvin "Posdnuos" Mercer, David "Trugoy the Dove" Jolicoeur, and Vincent "Maseo" Mason began to transform the sonic landscape.
Their innovative sampling and absurdist whimsical lyrics enticed us into realms of pure joy and fun. But if you weren’t around at the time to buy the album on cassette or vinyl, you were spinning your wheels to get your hands on an artifact. While the label tried clearing the mind-boggling amount of samples, they couldn’t predict the rise of the internet, and the album remained in limbo because wording on their contract wasn’t vague enough to lend itself to new music technology, ultimately leaving 3 Feet High absent from digital media (and new audiences) for a couple of decades. But greatness cannot be forgotten, and in 2021, De La Soul’s catalog was acquired and legal got to clearing. Two years later, the album has returned in reissued glory for us to enjoy on all platforms and mediums.
It’s hard to impart how deeply you can be affected by artistry, by something new in a world that regurgitates the past, but 3 Feet and Rising has moved me deeply for over 30 years and has brought me tremendous happiness and saved me from many a funk. RIP Trugoy the Dove and thank you. — Ariana Morgenstern, Executive Producer and Today’s Top Tune Curator
Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground
The What’s arguably the most innovative dance music of 2023 came from a relatively unknown artist living in a remote Sudanese town, tucked away from the sprawling urban centers that we’ve come to associate with electronic music. Luckily, the folks behind New York label Ostinato captured Jantra’s wizardry on the epic Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground. Jantra is the trailblazing producer behind “Jaglara,” a genre blending traditional Sudanese rhythms with ethereal synths and hypnotic beats. Jantra isn’t your typical artist. In fact, prior to the release of Synthesized Sudan, he technically didn’t even have “songs.” Rather, Jantra’s an improviser, using a Yamaha keyboard modified to better accommodate the tonality of Sudanese melodies and freestyle hours-long sets for frenzied, adoring crowds. It’s these improvisations, combined with excerpts from some of his older recordings, that have been reworked into individual dance tracks, bringing his Afro-futurist musings to worldwide dancefloors. The album is part reissue, part contemporary, and 100% some of the most textured, cutting-edge music of the year. — Francesca Harding, KCRW DJ
Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)
The Replacement’s Tim is a 1985 cult classic featuring the band’s signature cocktail of heartfelt, gritty, lo-fi rock and roll. On the reissue Tim (Let It Bleed Edition), there’s a perceivable depth to the revised mix from sound engineer Ed Stasium (Talking Heads, Ramones). Instead of the instruments blending together, Stasium’s rework creates new dimension, with room for each instrument to breathe. There’s an elevated warmth to Paul Westerburg’s vocals. The acoustic guitar on “Here Comes a Regular” sounds intimate instead of distant. There’s an unearthed Bob Stinson solo in the outro of “Little Mascara.” Both interpretations offer different reflections: The original reflects the chaos of those ‘85 studio sessions, while the reissue offers a polished reframe that only time and wisdom could provide. — Tyler Boudreaux KCRW DJ
More: Paul Westerberg’s 1986 interview with Dierdre O’donoghue (Bent by Nature archives)
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World According To
This album easily would’ve topped my personal list if its recordings had actually been released in 2023. They sure sound like they could have been: Lap steel guitar, analog synths, dubby bass, and goth siren vocals combine for a foray into the unexplored seams between dance music and anarcho-punk, bold and entirely devoid of nostalgia. But, plot twist, World According To is a compilation of tracks from a short-lived Dutch New Wave band that released two mini-albums and one LP between 1983 and 1985 and then called it quits. Thankfully, the discerning tastes over at Belgian label Stroom gathered selects from across W.A.T.’s catalog to create a helluvan album that never was. It’s the sound of a band, as their bio puts it, “figuring out a style that didn’t quite exist at the time,” and that still holds true today. — Andrea Domanick, Digital Editorial Manager
Meditation/Resurrection
When listening to William Parker, there is purpose. Your heart syncopates beats with the thunderous, rhythming pluck of the strings, allowing life to become one with the music. The album Meditation/Resurrection is a two-disc set of textures establishing, as the title suggests, a sense of peace and a rise above. There is always a journey, especially with the times that we are living in, and the low resonation sets the tone for adventures into purpose — a positive anomaly unscathed and free to explore new possibilities and outcomes.
Hamid Drake, brilliant human being, long-time percussionist, and collaborator plays with such mystique on “Horace Silver Part 2.” The set features two of Parker's great quartets. The first includes Parker and Drake along with Rob Brown on alto and Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson on trumpet. Brown and Nelson call out to each other and communicate like dancers in a ballet of silent winds, the timbre of each instrument forming a helix, caressing the space as gently as a Sistine Chapel touch.
“Handsome Lake” is like a soul walk with the sun beaming bright on its subject, strong and confident down a New York city street. Eminent blessings to the great Oliver Lake! These infectious rhythms have your eyes closed, feet tapping, body swaying, but cerebrally locked into cinematic stories that travel with this ease of movement and sense of positive spirit and forward direction. There is levity and an emoting sense of joy, likely stemming from this bond of collaborations over the decades.
The second quartet, “In Order to Survive,” features Cooper Moore on piano, and immediately the sound is seeped in a lush tonal richness that only a melody can swing. On “Sunrise in East Harlem,” Parker speaks the native language of arco to perfection. Brown is still present on alto as Nelson has left the building. This session was literally recorded in one day and the search for new dimensions prevails as the tonal focus now centers around the resounding melody.
Cascading sheets of melodic structures meeting wayward atonal elements on top of Drake’s beat and Parker’s familiar low, resonating prowess is an equation that is sheer science, resulting only in the answer of “YES!” Originally recorded in 2016 but re-released in May of 2023, the album’s sentiments hold the test of time and allow us all to be blessed once again! — LeRoy Downs KCRW DJ
Big Crown Records presents Crown Jewels Vol. 3
Compilations are reminders, a full hug in sonic form, a holiday platter of sound, an exploratory road. This year I found myself constantly making my way back into the arms of Big Crown Records’ releases, and this comp conjured the feelings of watching a show live and getting to hear all your favorite tunes on one stage. From “Grateful” by El Michels Affair & Black Thought, to Bobby Oroza, to Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, to a fantastic Pete Rock remix of Lady Wray’s “Joy & Pain,” it’s a fantastic, skip-free collection packaged in emerald green, representing each of the sonic gems that the Brooklyn indie label released this year. Make sure you add the vinyl to your collection, it's beautifully done. — Ro “Wyldeflower” Contreras, KCRW DJ
More: Leon Michels: KCRW Guest DJ set
Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos
If you really want to know a song, to get to its essence and heart, work backward from the finished piece. Most of us never have the opportunity to hear the seed of a song, a demo that the songwriter either carefully crafted or whipped out quickly in an inspired moment. All of that changed this year when Stax and Craft Recordings dropped the now-Grammy nominated Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos. Out of the 146 tracks collected on seven CDs, 140 have never been heard before. Some were never completed past the initial demo recording and others grew into their final form. You know the 1974 Shirley Brown hit, “Woman To Woman?” It was written by songwriter Henderson Thigpen, who demoed it himself. Hearing the song, written from a woman’s perspective and demoed in Thigpen’s own voice, is a gem I would have otherwise never unearthed. — Anne Litt, KCRW DJ and Program Director of Music
More: Music producer Cheryl Pawelski on the ‘musical treasure hunt’ of new Stax demo compilation
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