Best of 2007: Reissues

Dunlap brings us a fine take on the state of old-timey reissues. The man has done his job. He makes me want to go out and buy this right now.

This year, I confess I kind of dropped the ball on old-timey reissues. I spent a lot of dough on a lot of African jazz stuff, like this and this.

But mainly I held steady with my years-long obsession with South American psych. I returned over and over again to the El Kinto reissue and this Eduardo Mateo epic.

The big surprise reissue pleasure: Caetano Veloso’s 1972 album Araca Azul. First you have to get over the cover art: it shows the singer in a tight red Speedo, his tan belly hanging out, and his face buried in ’70s hair. The album itself is a reckless cut and paste of traditional drumming, chanting, found sound, and classic Veloso sweetness. And it all works. Especially if you’ve run out of Tom Ze records to buy.

Of course, the end of this year and next should produce some cool reissues. Dischord just announced it has reissued Rites of Spring and Scream records on vinyl. And Dust-to-Digital has a box of John Fahey unreleased stuff coming out (hopefully) soon.

I’m sure I’m missing some great reissues from this year. Tell the Bag what we’ve missed!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Best of 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.