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Perhaps this 1963 session isn’t peak Mingus, but it’s still unpredictable, volatile Mingus, leading two different 10 piece ensembles recorded in January and September of 1963. Side one’s group includes Eric Dolphy, Booker Ervin and Jaki Bayard, among others, and Mingus’s arrangements let them take flight beginning with a rumbling “II B.S.” (two bullshit), which probably became the template for every second rate jazz composer scoring for 1960’s television crime shows. The track absolutely smokes, fueled by Britt Woodman’s angry trombone blats and Jaki Bayard’s controlled keyboard pounding. Try not to get charged up when this track is playing.

There was a great deal of excitement a few months ago when Toshiba-EMI announced a new series of Beatles albums. The 1970’s EAS series from the label are considered by most collectors to be among the best sounding Beatles albums issued anywhere, but a ‘90’s series issued by the label, and cut from digital masters was expensive and sounded brittle and uninviting, though as usual, the packaging was sumptuous and the pressing quality was pristine.

They’ve been out of commission for 22 years, but you’d never know it listening to Mission of Burma’s powerful, bracingly-fresh, time-warp of a post-punk/art-rocking noise assault, recorded last year. It sounds more like someone lowered the stylus on a record that’s been spinning silently for decades than the premier effort of a re-formed trio of middle- aged geezers who sound as youthfully exuberant as they did in 1979.

At a time when glam “hair bands” reigned, and “synth bands” waned, two guys named David and a producer named Davitt decided to make a grittier sound—a rock-roots kind of album—yet one that didn’t stray completely from the synth strains still permeating pop music.