Best New Reissues

• More from this artist :

  Various Artists

  Various Artists

  Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound

  By Nate Patrin; November 25, 2013

  8.4

  Numero Group's Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound gets to the foundation of one of the most vital scenes in funk lore. Here are the roots of the chart-topping, synth-heavy pulse pioneered by Prince and the songwriting/production juggernaut of Jimmy Jam Harris and Terry Lewis. 

• More from this artist :

  Various Artists

  Various Artists

  The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records, Volume One (1917-1932)

  By Grayson Currin; November 22, 2013

  9.2

  The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records: Vol. 1 (1917–1932), released on Jack White's Third Man imprint and Revenant, is a 22-pound set that comes in a thick cardboard box. At the center of the collection, which also includes six marbled brown LPs and a phone-book sized catalogue, is a drive containing 800 songs from Paramount’s first decade, a period that shaped the landscape for the rise of a recording industry anchored on jazz, rock'n'roll, and country music. Taken together, these recordings are no less than one blueprint of what has become American music. Through scrupulous research, audacious design, and ostentatious packaging, this two-volume collection’s first installment does precisely what the best box sets intend to do—add proper deference and context to music that remains vital and significant.

• More from this artist :

  Various Artists

  Various Artists

  I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America 1950-1990

  By Mike Powell; November 14, 2013

  8.3

  Light in the Attic’s new age compilation I Am the Center doesn’t try and pretend new age music was something it’s not. Focusing on private presses, it starts in 1950, about 25 years before the term “new age” existed in any kind of widespread way, and leads up to 1990, when the genre had devolved into factory-like repetitions of itself.

• More from this artist :

  Songs: Ohia

  Songs: Ohia

  The Magnolia Electric Co.

  By Jason Heller; November 12, 2013

  9.0

  Songs: Ohia's best and most pivotal album, 2003's The Magnolia Electric Co., showcased the late Jason Molina's strong shift toward rock populism. Imbued with a dust-under-the-fingernails weariness, the album is so representative of Molina’s sound and spirit, he subsequently took Magnolia Electric Co. as his new band’s name. What once was jittery and hesitant in his delivery is now howlingly powerful; gone is Songs: Ohia’s push-and-pull between intimacy and stridency. In its place is red-blood, full-throated, post-hippie country rock. This deluxe 10th Anniversary edition comes with a complete set of guitar-plus-vocals demos and a pair of newly restored outtakes, “The Big Game Is Every Night” and “Whip Poor Will”.

• More from this artist :

  William Onyeabor

  William Onyeabor

  Who Is William Onyeabor?

  By Andy Beta; November 8, 2013

  8.6

  Luaka Bop’s Who is William Onyeabor? posits mysterious late 70s/early 80s Nigerian funk musician William Onyeabor for a 21st century audience. While African icons like King Sunny Ade, Ali Farka Touré, Youssou N’Dour, Salif Keita, and Fela Kuti gained renown on the world music circuit for their guitar work, their distinct voices, their rhythmic innovations, Onyeabor favored the analog synthesizer. Listening to this nine-song compilation, it makes sense that the likes of Four Tet, James Holden, and Caribou have already been buzzing with their accolades for him.