Edgar Froese's Berlin electronica franchise got into gear with this 1972 double, Tangerine Dream's third album, the reissue of which highlights their decisive move away from Baader-Meinhof guitars and into gothic liturgies of mellotron and synthesized abstraction. Not that this neuters the band's still-extant freakout tendency, which grumbles up tectonically to shake the cloud-hung soundscape of cosmic foreboding. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, listen to "Birth Of Liquid Plejades"... This is how you do it, okay?
The Blades Of Grass
ARE NOT FOR SMOKING
REV-OLA
West Coast ex-folksters The Sunshine Company just missed stardom when their version of newcomer Jimmy Webb's "Up, Up And Away" was beaten into the charts by the Fifth Dimension's in 1967.
The rap trio who defined cool in the '90s for want-not-to-be-middle-class white boys have probably released this two-disc video compilation just in time, before they become horribly passé. Fair play to them, though, these are 18 of the best pop promos ever filmed, from Spike Jonze's cop show pastiche for "Sabotage" through to the robot-battling epic "Intergalactic" and the '60s action spoof for "Body Movin'" (featuring a great chicken-in-the-face scene). Camp as hell. Are we sure they're not gay?
WAX CO SINGLES VOLUME 2 (1975-8)
BOTH EDSEL
If you hit puberty back in the '70s, your first vaguely sexual experience was, perhaps, handing over your 50p to purchase the latest must-have T. Rex single, seven inches of raucous beauty bedecked in a blue-and-red paper sleeve. Someone's had the very fine idea of re-fashioning these period gems on individual CDs and collating them into two box sets, 11 on each.