This is good, better than good. Thank you to the people who sent it to me, and apologies for the lack of review in August’s Plan B. I lost it in a pile of other CDs. I’m guessing it’ll still be relevant in September.

For all that I’m bored of hearing that the energy, inventiveness and fire of the experimental scene of the early 80s has never really been surpassed, that this stuff still sounds more than fresh today, compilations like this make a pretty good case for both those claims. It’s all so joyfully serious and so kind of menacing; this overriding antagonistic intelligence that glowers out of the faces of the musicians on the cover as well as from the sawing notes of Swans’ ‘Weakling’ and Sonic Youth’s ‘Shaking Hell’. Oh and there is an eight-minute Arthur Russell track too, one of his really barely-there World Of Echo-style ones that sounds like clouds and light. And Rhys Chatham. All good.

From here:www.orangemountainmusic.com