March 26th, 2024
“Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album” - A Step Forward or Backward? Leeds’ pop rockers get funkyBy: Dylan Peggin
In the mid-2000s, Kaiser Chiefs finally exploded onto the post-punk revival scene. After a failed attempt in the music business as Parva, they scrapped everything to forge ahead with a new musical voyage. In a musical climate dominated by American groups like The Strokes and The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs provided a strong British influence, borrowing elements from Britpop and 70s punk rock. The group’s ability to craft stadium anthems, such as “I Predict A Riot” and the... Read More
March 13th, 2024
Reissue of Eramus Hall's "Your Love is My Desire" Finds the Band Making Their Moment Count Lovers of the Late 70s and 80s Will Find Something to Enjoy In This Short-Lived Funk, Soul, and R&B OutfitBy: Evan Toth
ORG Music continues their rollout of selections from the Westbound Records catalog that have been remastered and reissued on vinyl for the first time in several decades with a rare release from later in the label’s history, Eramus Hall’s, Your Love is My Desire (1980). Armen Boladian founded Detroit’s Westbound Records 1968 and it became a soul and funk dynamo, especially during the years following Motown’s exodus from Motor City. ORG’s series recently included the... Read More
July 29th, 2023
Sly & The Family Stone’s ‘There’s A Riot Goin’ On’ Receives Essential All-Analog VMP Reissue Sly’s dark and cryptic opus gets the reissue it deservesBy: Malachi Lui
Many classic albums are lauded as “singular” and “groundbreaking,” but after a while don’t really sound like it, because everyone afterwards did it, or we realize that someone lesser-known did it six months earlier. Yet 52 years later, Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On remains as singular and confounding as ever; nothing remotely like it existed before, and nothing since has done exactly what it does. It remains impenetrable and unique: while its elements have scattered throughout popular and underground music since, Sly Stone's early 1970s work operates in a manner that’s impossible to plagiarize because exactly what makes it work is much harder to pinpoint.
Read MoreJanuary 27th, 2023
Inept Remix and Dynamic Smashing Takes "Soul On Top" to the Bottom of the Reissue Heap take the remixers to squash courtBy: Michael Fremer
What's unusual here is not the big band. James Brown toured and recorded with one throughout his career. "Soul On Top" is an outlier in the Brown catalog because he's backed by a jazz band— Louie Bellson's 18 piece orchestra—with arrangements by Oliver Nelson, who tried to conduct. Only saxophonist Maceo Parker, Jr. from Brown's band The J.B.s came along for the ride.Brown's 28th album, released in 1970 on King Records (KS1100) was... Read More