With any slate of back catalogue reissues, you’re already running the risk of the consumer saying “been there, done that.” But it takes talent to achieve the same effect when it comes to the added-value bonus material. Maybe that’s a little unfair; as with the other ELO remasters to date, 1973’s On The Third Day has never sounded better. The apocalyptic-sounding fusion of strings and the closest ELO ever came to heavy metal positively sparkles, and the liner notes finally give a little bit of insight into the making of the album; with its bizarre, quasi-Biblical themes, Third Day has never ceased to fascinate me. It’s territory ELO hadn’t ventured into before, and never ventured into again.

Now here’s the problem: like a great many other things covered on this site, ELO has a strong cult following. Its fans snatch up any release that holds the promise of previously unheard material from any era of the group’s classic repertoire. This isn’t really a problem until you realize that almost all of the “bonus tracks” attached to this re-release have been heard before. The various early takes and mixes of “Ma-Ma-Ma Belle” and “Dreaming Of 4000″ were included on the 2-disc UK reissue of Electric Light Orchestra II (and, before that, on an early 90s compilation called Early ELO), and so too was the previously unreleased (and still very Dylanesque) song “Everyone’s Born To Die”. The em>only really “new” track here is a wild track of various orchestral interludes which were eventually mixed in between songs on the original album – so it’s not that you haven’t heard them before, you just haven’t heard them on their own.

It’s not a total disappointment, since not everyone will have gotten that UK import (and since those bonus tracks didn’t show up on the North American version of the ELO II remaster), but aside from some nice liner notes and a sharper sound, hardcore ELO fans won’t find much new here that they haven’t heard already.

1. Ocean Breakup / King Of The Universe (4:07)
2. Bluebird Is Dead (4:42)
3. Oh No, Not Susan (3:07)
4. New World Rising / Ocean Breakup Reprise (4:05)
5. Showdown (4:09)
6. Daybreaker (3:51)
7. Ma-Ma-Ma Belle (3:56)
8. Dreaming Of 4000 (5:04)
9. In The Hall Of The Mountain King (6:37)
10. Auntie (Ma-Ma-Ma Belle Take 1) (1:19)
11. Auntie (Ma-Ma-Ma Belle Take 2) (4:05)
12. Mambo (Dreaming Of 4000 alternate mix) (5:05)
13. Everyone’s Born To Die (3:43)
14. Interludes (3:40)

Released by: Epic / Legacy
Release date: 2006 (originally released in 1973)
Total running time: 57:30

Picking up work on a late ’90s solo album where he left off – originally, the album was called A Gift Of Screws and would’ve been a follow-up released only a few years after Out Of The Cradle – Lindsey Buckingham goes into territory that quite a few of his loyal fans will find unfamiliar: the music is stripped down to its bare essentials, sometimes almost all-acoustic, without the trademark elaborate studio production which became the trademark of his early work and his heyday with Fleetwood Mac. But there’s something just as elaborate about Under The Skin, though instead of studio trickery, what’s elaborate here is Buckingham’s sheer staggering musicianship.

The instrumentation is sparse, often consisting of layers of guitar (usually acoustic, though some electric work does sneak in here and there), simple percussion, and half-whispered, half-sung vocals. Vocals are often layered in and overdubbed, but the overall effect is deceptive – you think it’s a bit quieter than the fall-on rock songs Buckingham has given us in the past, but instead he’s almost forcing you to concentrate on the songs.

The songs are great this time around. When Out Of The Cradle was first released, I complained that Buckingham had charged us full “new album” price for an album that contained an awful lot of material that seemed like reheated Fleetwood Mac. This time around, he’s lived up to the songwriting chops that brought us rock classics like “Trouble” and “Go Your Own Way,” though where some of his past work sounded like songs that didn’t make it onto a Mac album, here they’re presented in a context where it’s hard to imagine a full-band sound on them. (Ironically, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood do actually play on “Down On Rodeo,” the Fleetwoodiest song of the bunch here; some of the Gift Of Screws songs were lifted from that project and handed over to Fleetwood Mac’s Say You Will, in some cases with minimal contributions from the other band members, and the tracks in question here may have been contenders for that album.)

The highlights include the Rolling Stones cover “I Am Waiting,” and the Buckingham originals “It Was You,” “Under The Skin” and “Cast Away Dreams” (let’s back up a little bit – for a renowned songwriter like Lindsey Buckingham, it really is unusual to hear a cover of someome else’s material). There’s another cover, Donovan’s “To Try For The Sun,” but it just doesn’t grab me despite being a nice enough song.

For those who aren’t grabbed by any of this material, and for some it may represent one stylistic shift too far away from Buckingham’s full-blast rock sound, an album leaning more in that direction is promised for sometime in 2007 – that is, unless one remembers that every other solo project that Buckingham announces winds up becoming a Fleetwood Mac album. Only time, and the apparently irresistible lure of Stevie Nicks, will tell.

1. Not Too Late (4:42)
2. Show You How (4:22)
3. Under The Skin (3:57)
4. I Am Waiting (3:34)
5. It Was You (2:49)
6. To Try For The Sun (3:14)
7. Cast Away Dreams (4:28)
8. Shut Us Down (3:57)
9. Down On Rodeo (4:27)
10. Something’s Gotta Change Your Mind (4:48)
11. Flying Down Juniper (4:43)

Released by: Reprise
Release date: 2006
Total running time: 45:01

Even though we now live in an age where ringtones outstrip them with actual sampled sounds, I’ve always thought the bite-sized video game music cues of yesteryear were really catchy in their own hypnotic way. Granted, they weren’t exactly great music in cases, and some of them weren’t even particularly complex – but with repeat exposure, they had a way of lodging themsselves in my brain all the same.

Namco Video Game Music is a CD that gives you a chance to hear those sounds away from the games that inspired them. In come cases, that’s brilliant, while in others, it comes across as little more than a sound effects disc for serious retrogaming enthusiasts. It’s hard to take it to task too much, however, for this is a CD pressing of one of the very earliest releases of video game music in the world, having originally appeared on vinyl in Japan around 1986.

There’s a decent balance struck here between popular games whose sounds everybody will recognize, and obscure, less obvious titles. Phozon and Libble Rabble never even made it to North American arcades, but they each boast some outstanding pieces of intricate music. On the other hand, as familiar and popular as Pac-Man is, it really only has a couple of pieces of music; much of its track is taken up by the sound of the game being played. You could hook up any machine running Namco Museum to your stereo and get much the same effect.

Other games have great music that are a little bit buried behind sound effects. When the Pole Position track finally got to the end of its “sound effects” section and started playing the game’s numerous post-game ditties in a row, I found that I remembered each one of them well (and while I’m sure some would say “well, that’s because you’ve been playing it nonstop for 24 years!”, I don’t really go reaching for a Pole Position fix that often – the music is, in fact, that catchy).

The first and final tracks, however, are the real bonus fruit at the end of the round. The track devoted to Xevious kicks off with a wonderfully authentic arcade soundscape, with the sound of that game front and center in the mix. Gradually, though, it segues into something else: the repetitive Xevious background tune becomes the backdrop for an Art Of Noise-esque collage of samples from the game, carefully arranged to provide their own beat. Given the original release date of this album, and the fact that Art Of Noise was only just catching on at the time in its original form, this means Namco Video Game Music was way ahead of its time.

The final track kicks off with what sounds like a Galaga audio chip test, cycling through all of the possible sounds and musical interludes that the game contains, until it settles upon the almost hypnotic post-game tune that accompanies your final score and hit ratio statistics. Again, new instrumentation is gradually added to the mix, with not-quite-lounge-style organs expanding on and developing that tune until it’s actually upbeat and relaxing. Given the way that the sparse music from these two games is developed into music that stands on its own, it’s really a shame that the rest of the album wasn’t along the same lines.

1. Xevious (6:15)
2. Bosconian (0:15)
3. Pac-Man (2:57)
4. Phozon (2:12)
5. Mappy (3:36)
6. Libble Rabble (3:35)
7. Pole Position (2:43)
8. New Rally-X (3:11)
9. Dig Dug (1:30)
10. Galaga (4:23)

Released by: Scitron Digital
Release date: 2003 (originally released in 1986)
Total running time: 30:37

A novelty for the early 1970s, Hot Butter helped to drag electronically generated music into the American mainstream. Actually the brainchild of session keyboard player Stan Free, who had played on albums and on stage for numerous other artists, Hot Butter had to ease its listeners into the concept of music generated by machine by doing covers of familiar tunes, including the one that actually made it onto the charts, a cover of an obscure instrumental called “Popcorn”.

The novelty of it all is that, where the British and European listening public had been getting a steady indoctrination of electronic music via the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and other sources for years, often with a psychedelic connotation, the American public wasn’t yet on that same IV drip of music made with machines. There are wavering bass and melody lines in Hot Butter’s songs that simply couldn’t be performed, with the degree of consistency and accuracy heard here, by a human being. To smooth the shock of the new, there are some “real” instruments in the mix, usually drums.

Some of the best pieces here were echoplexed ’60s instrumentals – “Telstar” and “Apache” – that lent themselves well to the Hot Butter treatment. Other fairly well known songs also adapt easily to Hot Butter’s style, though nothing is as surprising as “Amazing Grace”, played bagpipes-style by synthesizers. That synths were at the core of the music was amazing enough at the time; that they were taking the place of an easily recognizable instrument in an almost universally-well-known arrangement was just another shock treatment, and it works wonderfully.

Though always intended to be a novelty act, Hot Butter may have had some life in it yet, and it’s a bit sad, after hearing Free’s virtuosity here, that the Butter didn’t keep simmering, leaving this act a bona fide one-hit wonder.

1. Popcorn (2:34)
2. Day By Day (3:49)
3. Apache (2:53)
4. At The Movies (2:34)
5. Tristana (3:29)
6. Song Sung Blue (3:36)
7. Telstar (2:26)
8. Tomatoes (2:21)
9. Amazing Grace (2:58)
10. Love At First Sight (2:58)
11. Song Of The Nairobi Trio (2:16)
12. The Silent Screen (2:12)
13. Mah-Na-Mah-Na (1:51)
14. Masterpiece (2:18)
15. Percolator (1:59)
16. Skokiaan (2:12)
17. Slag Solution (2:28)
18. Sounds (3:13)
19. Space Walk (2:52)
20. Syncopated Clock (2:16)
21. Tequila (1:49)
22. Wheels (1:54)

Released by: Castle
Release date: 2000
Total running time: 56:58

I’m generally not a huge fan of live albums – why bother, when studio albums deliver the meat and potatoes minus the screaming? – but every once in a while I’m either enthusiastic or curious enough about a specific act to go ahead and check out a concert recording. I was a little bit skeptical going into Royksopp’s Night Out, simply because Royksopp relies so heavily on technology, sampling and other studio techniques to create their sound – could they deliver the goods without that at their disposal?

The answer turns out to be a resounding yes. Things are energized considerably by getting a touring group together to bring the previously sampled drums, guitars and other instruments to life. There’s still plenty of technology on display, but in some cases the live performance actually obscures things less than the studio recordings: “What More Is There?”, to name just one example, finally reveals its somewhat bizarre lyrics clearly. (The flipside of that is that it seems like only half of the lyrics of “Sparks”, the lovely torchy number from Royksopp’s first album, are ever sung on stage.)

With its short running time, Royksopp’s Night Out hangs somewhere in the balance between EP and full album, and yet depending on where you look, it commands a full album price tag; that probably makes this collection something for the diehards only. But even if you think you’ve heard Royksopp before, this intriguing live recording reveals new layers and new energy by getting everyone out of the studio – in short, it’s exactly what a concert recording should be.

1. What Else Is There? (3:19)
2. Only This Moment (4:04)
3. Remind Me (3:47)
4. Sparks (5:09)
5. Poor Leno (Istanbul Forever Take) (5:24)
6. Go Away (5:35)
7. Alpha Male (8:03)
8. Go With The Flow (3:13)
9. Teppefall (0:58)

Released by: Astralwerks
Release date: 2006
Total running time: 39:32