Music Reissues Weekly: Celebrate Yourself! The Sonic Cathedral Story 2004-2024

With the help of a sympathetic label, shoegazing once again confirms its resonance

Yeti Lane’s second album The Echo Show was released in March 2012. The Paris-based duo’s LP was stunning: holding together overall, as well as on a track-by-track basis. There were obvious influences: Kraftwerk, late-period Spacemen 3, motorik, My Bloody Valentine. But it didn’t sound like anyone else. Charlie Boyer and Ben Pleng had created a wonder.

Music Reissues Weekly: American Baroque - Chamber Pop and Beyond 1967-1971

AMERICAN BAROQUE - CHAMBER POP AND BEYOND 1967-1971 Harpsichords, string quartets, woodwind and a summer-into-autumn melancholy

Harpsichords, string quartets, woodwind and a summer-into-autumn melancholy

The descending refrain opening the song isn’t unusual but attention is instantly attracted as it’s played on a harpsichord. Equally instantly, an elegiac atmosphere is set. The voice, coming in just-short of the 10-second mark, is similarly yearning in tone. The song’s opening lyrics convey dislocation: “You and I travel to the beat of a different drum.”

Music Reissues Weekly: Hawkwind - X In Search Of Space, Doremi Fasol Latido

Must-have box-set editions of two of British rock’s most important albums

One of last year’s major joys was the box set version of Hawkwind's Space Ritual, an 11-disc extravaganza which made the great live album, originally issued in May 1973, even more great. Now the two studio albums which preceded it – X In Search Of Space and Doremi Fasol Latido – have become similarly packaged, though less colossal, box sets.

Music Reissues Weekly: Vanilla Fudge - Where Is My Mind The ATCO Recordings 1967-1969

A wild ride with the ‘You Keep me Hanging on’ hitmakers

Vanilla Fudge could provoke a strong reaction. Writing about them in 1982, Tom Hibbert – then best-known for his contributions to Smash Hits – said of their February 1968 second album, The Beat Goes On, that “on one side of the bombastic concept LP, Vanilla Fudge summed up the history of music from Mozart, through Cole Porter and Elvis, to The Beatles concluding that it was all worthless.”

Music Reissues Weekly: John Leyton - Lone Rider The Holloway Road Sessions 1960-1962

JOHN LEYTON ‘Johnny Remember Me’, Joe Meek and the evolution of British pop

‘Johnny Remember Me’, Joe Meek and the evolution of British pop

For John Leyton, it was third time lucky as far as his singles were concerned. The actor’s manager Robert Stigwood teamed him with producer Joe Meek, but Leyton's first two 45s – August 1960’s “Tell Laura I Love Her” and October 1960's “The Girl on the Floor Above” – didn’t made waves. The next one – July 1961’s “Johnny Remember Me” – was it, the hit, the chart topper.

Music Reissues Weekly: John Cale - The Academy in Peril, Paris 1919, Fear, Slow Dazzle, Helen of Troy

A bumper bundle of the man dubbed a ‘master of many styles’

The return to shops of a consecutive sequence of five of John Cale's Seventies albums through different labels is undoubtedly coincidental. All have been previously reissued multiple times and none are scarce in any form. Anyone wanting any of these albums presumably already has a copy. Nonetheless, it’s good that these makeovers sustain the profile of Cale’s idiosyncratic take on art-rock.

Music Reissues Weekly: Stefan Gnyś - Horizoning

Folk-inclined Canadian’s brooding album emerges 55 years after it was recorded

For most of Canada’s listening public, their country-man Stefan Gnyś – pronounced G'neesh – wasn’t a concern. The 300 copies of his 1969 single didn’t make it to shops. There was little promotion and limited radio play. Gnyś had paid RCA Limited Recording Services to press the seven-incher. Beyond this transaction, there was no record company involvement.

Music Reissues Weekly: Magazine - Real Life, Secondhand Daylight, The Correct Use of Soap

MAGAZINE The first three albums from Howard Devoto’s post-punk marvels hit the shops again

The first three albums from Howard Devoto’s post-punk marvels hit the shops again

“Let's walk down memory lane the Magazine way. Let's regurgitate fifth-rate Low [the David Bowie album] period pieces. Let's plonk plonk plonk with ponderous sub-Pink Floydery. Let's do the wallpaper waltz. This is not pushing back the barriers. It's frighteningly bland conservatism.”

Music Reissues Weekly: The Yardbirds - The Ultimate Live at the BBC

THE YARDBIRDS - THE ULTIMATE LIVE AT THE BBC New ways to see British band

New ways to see this most significant of British bands

“The last we had was a bit of a flop. I own up about it, it was quite bad.” Speaking to the BBC’s Brian Matthew on 4 April 1967, Yardbirds’ frontman Keith Relf is candid about the chart fate of his band’s last single, October 1966’s “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”