tQ’s Reissues Etc. of the Year 2025 (In Association with Norman Records)

Tehrangeles Vice (Iranian Diaspora Pop 1983-1993) captures the paradoxical nature of Los Ānjelesi music (as it is called by Iranians): a light-hearted dance music, often associated with vulgarity and low taste (though only recently beginning to be taken seriously), yet with roots in a more refined past. Take the lesser-known first song on this compilation, ‘Man Va Tou’ (“Me and You”) by Shahrokh, as an example of a re-emergence of the 1970s ghost: synthesisers, a dynamic bassline, active strings and electric guitar, a fashionable arrangement, lyrics reminiscent of pre-revolution songs, and a singer entering unexpectedly with syncopation. The opposite example would be the eighth track, ‘Nazanin’ (“Sweetheart”) by Susan Roshan, a singer known for her seductive, trendy style, whose song combines older urban-folk-influenced popular genres with more playful, less ‘artistic’ sensibilities.

Amy Sheffer plays piano, sings and paints. She has in the past called herself a “very untrained musician”, but “very trained artist”, who had LSD therapy with Mortimer Hartman (who dosed Cary Grant), became part of the 70s loft jazz scene in New York, and developed a whole-life practice that involved painting, singing all day, and playing piano. She self-released a handful of albums on which Billy Bang and William Parker played, among others, and played with Marzette Watts’ ensemble alongside Patty Waters, which is notable as there’s a brief Waters-ish moment six minutes into I Am Shee‘s ‘Where’s Your Home?’ just before the blood-curdling scream. ‘Sanctuary Mine’ also finds that sumptuous jazz zone Waters can get into, whereas ‘Quiet Land’ is deserving of a RIYL nod to Jeanne Lee. Sheffer’s voice might be difficult for some (a tenner says she was denigrated as a hysterical woman at some point) as her high vibrato can access fantastically wild and frenzied states, punching through into the immediate present in the way all the best free jazz does.

You know the drill here: romantic indie-ish male vocals; sounds from obscured sources through much delay; guitar strummed by someone who only knows a few chords, and the whole recording sounding as if it was made on a four-track dredged from a canal. That’s right: it’s more reissued gunk from the endless sea of the 80s tape underground. The shelves are full of it, and yet, I lap it up. Write-ups elsewhere admit the same, but actually I believe I have snagged on this one for good reason. Perhaps it’s the vocals, which lean a little Graham Lewis, or whatever that tin foil drum machine is that my ears favour so much. I like the industrial grok interludes, and that successfully straddled formlessness meaning tracks come off with an ideal song-ishness. Whatever: I’m in for this German duo from Leer. This album compiles tracks from three early self-released split-release tapes, all originally out on their own label, One Last Dream. 

The chemistry between the musicians is palpable throughout Stereo Instrumental Music, which Ibex Band recorded at the Ras Hotel ballroom in Addis Ababa in 1976. Whether it’s Tesfaye Mekonen on drums, Girma Chipsa on conga, or Dereje Mekonen on keys, the band move with instinctive synchronicity. They only had about fifteen minutes to set up the microphones stealthily, without alerting the Ras Hotel management or the authorities and had to finish the recording before curfew hit at midnight. A kind of sonic Cinderella moment.

Recorded in 1973, this long out-of-print gem from Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor receives a blessed re-release from ever-reliable label Freedom to Spend. O’Connor’s original spirituals meld folk songwriting with lo-fi pop sounds, courtesy of fellow nun and producer Sister Marimil Lobregat. The means are minimal but the spoils are many: from spooky organ laments (‘Mass – ‘Emmanuel’’) to psychedelic eco-folk (‘Nature Is A Song’). 

There’s something quietly compelling about Veronica Electronica, even if it’s far from a flawless rediscovery. As a document of Madonna’s most openly experimental phase, it works best as a sketchbook rather than a standalone statement. The remixers, Sasha, BT, Calderone, Rauhofer, tease out the spaciousness and spiritual undercurrents of Ray Of Light, but not every track justifies its reinvention; a few fall into the kind of period-specific gloss that hasn’t aged as gracefully. Still, the emotional core of the material survives. The “Drowned World/Substitute For Love” rework remains luminously fragile, “The Power Of Good-Bye” drifts with a bittersweet ease, and “Gone Gone Gone” feels like a relic from a version of the album that never materialised. As a reissue, it’s modest, slightly uneven, but valuable for how it rounds out the story of a genuinely transformative era in Madonna’s catalogue.

Despite splitting up in 2013, doom metal titans Cathedral briefly crawled back out of the crypt this year to finally release this hulking half-hour epic that has been long festering in the vault. Recorded during the sessions for their final album The Last Spire, it’s not hard to see why this lengthy, experimental piece didn’t fit that record’s stripped back ‘return to roots’ ethos. As a standalone release, however, it’s something of a revelation, marrying the brute force riffing of the band’s doom beginnings with the more whimsical, progressive songwriting explored on records like 2010’s The Guessing Game, as a sparse, organ-backed intro gives way to an absolute riff feast courtesy of longstanding guitarist Gaz Jennings. Cathedral were never strangers to these kinds of long-form compositions (anyone remember 1994’s ‘The Voyage Of The Homeless Sapien’?), but there’s an additional weight and menace behind Society’s Pact With Satan that, tragically, suggests the band still had plenty of fresh ideas to explore even as they ultimately decided to go their separate ways. 

Passivité, from 1997 and the first album by You Ishihara under his own name, came after a succession of releases by his group White Heaven, Tokyo psych-rockers who already enjoyed an exalted rep among consumers of Japanese freak sounds. For slightly unclear reasons, possibly dud distribution, it made very little impact at the time, but swanky reissue label Black Editions has rescued it from obscurity. It zigzags between gnarly fuzz-rock guitar, no wave-like clang and croony jazz/blues/R&B numbers which show a hitherto unheard – sweet and affecting – side of Ishihara.

A little slicker and darker than Au Pairs’ debut, Playing With A Different Sex, with some more overtly jazz influences peppered throughout and a more dub-like use of space, Sense And Sensuality didn’t do particularly well when first released but is absolutely worth revisiting with this reissue. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard to see what was so disappointing to many at the time, particularly with the improved sound on this remastered release. One could argue that the experimentation indulged in here results in a less focused record than its predecessor, but equally the band surely deserve credit for moving away from a more rock-oriented sound that still retains their dry wit and euphoric danceable energy. 

With a set drawn entirely from their debut album, CBGB 12.13.88 is a different beast to the group’s posthumously released live album Copenhagen altogether, showcasing a band enjoying their first flush of success and playing their most important NYC gig thus far (supporting Sonic Youth; Thurston Moore would call their LP Today his guitar album of the year). If Copenhagen is all sonic cathedrals and sky-scraping soundscapes, CBGB is a leaner, rawer beast. Where Copenhagen’s tidal wave of sound simply demolishes all that comes before it, in the scuzzy confines of the legendary New York club, Galaxie 500 sound hungrier; less magisterial, but more human here.

Richard Norris – of The Grid, Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, and myriad other projects that have seen his career pinned down only by its tendency to constantly shapeshift – has curated many an ace compilation LP. Here, however, he’s been pushed further than ever by Eskimo Records, who set him a brief of compiling psychedelic music you can dance to from across the globe, with a focus on obscurity (initially they that none of it were already available on streaming, although Norris says he’s managed to get them to budge on a handful of selections he views as essential). The resulting 42-track epic is, naturally, a gargantuan sprawl of fuzz and riffs from every point on the psych spectrum. What elevates it beyond pastel-coloured aural scenery, however, is Norris’ keen ear for a groove. Though sourced from different countries, eras and styles, everything here feels unified by that air of irresistible danceability.

Skintone Volume 1 collects the first seven albums Susumu Yokota released on his Skintone imprint, beginning with 1998’s Magic Thread and ending with 2003’s Laputa (a second volume collecting his Skintone releases from 2004 to 2012 is set for release next year). Following last year’s reissue of Acid Mt. Fuji, Skintone Vol. 1 fleshes out the story of his music as he moved further away from the club (without ever fully leaving it), tracking the curious threading together of soft propulsion and rich ambience that Yokota made his own as the twentieth century melded into the twenty-first. Magic Thread sounds like house music slowed down and blurred into environmental sound. Image 1983 – 1998 is a set of lushly wobbly lo-fi jams on guitar and organ. Sakura, the middle album on the boxset, is probably the most widely-known, and its delicate thread of glassy gossamer textures and unexpected segues into pounding kicks remains an utterly arresting, mind-fixing experience. Skintone Vol.1’s greatest gift perhaps, is tracking the different strands that led to this gentle masterpiece and what sprouted from it, offering a long exposure shot of Yokota’s mastery of producing deep, ethereal music that completely holds the present.

Trésor Magnétique’s title translates to ‘Magnetic Treasure’, referencing the fact this compilation by Cameroonian electronic music pioneer Francis Bebey was pulled from tapes found in the home of his son, Patrick. The collection tracks the cosmopolitan intent of Bebey’s music, boundaries of geography, chronology and genre stepped over with inquisitive abandon. The undulating polyrhythms and curious spatialisations of opener ‘Forest Nativity’ immediately drive home his knack for making radical, future facing pop music merging multiple traditions at once. ‘Le Grand Soleil De Dieu’ and ‘Quand Le Soleil Est La’ present pretty fully formed blueprints for Bebey’s more well-known ‘The Coffee Cola Song’. The lush disco funk of ‘Immigration Amoureuse’ and ‘Dash, Baksheesh & Matabish’s proto-techno pop meanwhile, gesture directly to the boundary and border free world Bebey’s music seemed to imagine.

Though overlooked within her lifetime, the legacy of the pioneering electronic musician Daphne Oram has been receiving overdue reappraisal in recent years. This compilation marks Oram’s centenary, and sees a group of minority-gender artists invited into her archives to present 10 individual new pieces. It’s testament to how many doorways Oram opened up that all of these tracks take such different approaches, from Cosey Fanni Tutti’s eerie industrial soundscape to TAAHLIAH’s fractured and pumping glitches, Nwando Ebizie’s grand ambience to Lola De La Mata’s unsettling choral vocal collage, Arushi Jain’s minimalist high tempo skitter to Afromerm & Abi Asisa’s crystalline atmospherics.

Recorded in late August of 2001, these 16 tracks (which pelt along in 13 or so minutes, for all you mathematicians out there) didn’t hit airwaves until September 25, by which time the world looked entirely different from when the tapes had rolled. It’s hard to imagine how the uninitiated would have received this untrammelled vomit of noise that evening, though obviously dedicated Peel listeners would have been prepped somewhat by the DJ’s love for the likes of Atari Teenage Riot and all points further out. Perhaps the shock and awe of its rampaging from one sonic upset to the next made sense in that post-9/11, pre-Iraq War mess of uncertainty and simmering violence. The onslaught hit like an involuntary emission, with undigested slabs of reference surfacing every now and again – the paranoid pulse of The Doors’ ‘Not To Touch The Earth’ beneath ‘Stucco Obelisks Labeled As Trees’; ‘Wet Nurse Syndrome (Hand Me Down Display Case)’ echoing the helter skelter of Hüsker Dü’s ‘Reoccurring Dreams’; ‘Perils Of Believing In Round Squares’ slipping in and out of the existential slog of Black Flag’s ‘Damaged I’ – for listeners to grab hold of, before slipping away and stranding them amid a hailstorm of damaged electro-noise, last-gasp screaming and that kind of abrupt head-snap tempo-change that makes thrash-pits so much fun.

This self-titled compilation of recordings by Bag People, a Chicago band who moved to New York and dissolved there after about 18 months, will be the first time their music has been meaningfully distributed: a two-song 7-inch from 1985 exists, but supposedly the easiest way of hearing it was by going to their local in Brooklyn and selecting it on the jukebox. Drag City have done the honours here, bundling that single with a demo tape, a CBGBs live number and some entirely unheard stuff, and it reveals a band who approached no wave’s challenging jitter with the frantic energy of hardcore and the severe wallop of what would come to be called noise rock or, briefly and ribaldly, pigfuck.

Ten years on, Carly Rae Jepsen’s third album remains a masterpiece of yearning, desire and pop music itself – like the rush of a crush somehow sustained over a decade. The handful of extra tracks here are OK – see the far superior E•MO•TION Side B for the best offcuts from this era – but taken as an excuse to revisit the likes of ‘Warm Blood’, ‘Run Away With Me’ and ‘Making The Most Of The Night’, it hits as hard as the first time.

There’s tenderness buried throughout Animal Collective’s restless experimentation, but there’s never been a record of theirs as grounded and emotionally naked as their sixth. The atmosphere hums with a swooning warmth that melts into a Dalí-esque desert, a ramshackle buzz dripping from guitars amid cavernous drums, twinkly-eyed piano, and enveloping harmonies of unabashed sensation. That overflowing earnestness extends to this reissue’s collected B-sides and demos, where the brimming ideas of the group’s early days calcified into sharper songwriting than before. Their proximity only heightens the record proper, illustrating how potent it could be when feelings of this magnitude find a sound just as immense and immediate.