Back catalogue: Pop

Review: Until he quit the music industry in the mid-1990s, Shep Pettibone was the most in-demand remixer on the planet - a position he'd held since the late 1970s. This four-disc compilation does a great job of showcasing some of his greatest remixes, all of which are presented in full-length form. There's naturally plenty of versions of big pop singles of the '80s - see the epic 'Mastermix' of Pet Shop Boys' 'West End Girls', as well as rubs of Duran Duran, New Order, Whitney Houston and Belinda Carlisle - as well as a sprint through his celebrated disco and boogie reworks (see disc four). In addition, you'll find versions of some lesser-celebrated gems from the freestyle-era, including heavyweight revisions of Sinammon, Alisha, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam and The Flirts.

Review: Arthur Baker is the perfect host for this new series from Demon Music which focuses on the famous extended remixes of the 80s. Each series will be a multi-disc, various artist collection that is united by one remixer, and there can be few better to kick it off than the legend that is Shep Pettibone. He was a hugely in demand studio hand who reworked multiple genres and everyone from Pet Shop Boys to Duran Duran, New Order to Level 42, George Michael to Erasure. This ambitious, widescreen collection takes in all manner of golden remixes from the world of soul, pop, synth and more.

Review: Arthur Baker is an American producer and DJ known for his work with monumental dance acts such as New Order, Afrika Bambaataa and the Pet Shop Boys. While coming up as a DJ and studio producer, he also made a name for himself as a remixer over the years, and this box set, released by reissuing specialists Demon Music, goes the extra mile to do solid justice to his reinterpetive efforts. They're not the choices you'd expect, either, with the comp proving that Baker opted to remix the likes of Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner, in among choices you might also expect like Huey Lewis, The Psychedelic Furs and The B-52's.

Review: Few electronic music producers can claim to have made quite as big an impact as Arthur Baker. During the 1980s the New Yorker was involved in creating (or mixing) a string of ground-breaking electro, freestyle and proto-house records, before becoming one of the most in-demand remixers on the planet. This vast box set, which includes six weighty slabs of vinyl and an informative insert, celebrates his legacy, offering up a mixture of pioneering productions (Afrika Bambaata and Soulsonic Force's 'Planet Rock', 'Walking On Sunshine' by Rockers Revenge, 'Confusion' by New Order), dancefloor anthems (Freez's 'I.O.U', his enormous rework of Fleetwood Mac's 'Big Love') and a string of essential but lesser-celebrated revisions - all presented in full-length, DJ-friendly form. In a word: essential.

Review: After launching the Dance Masters series with a much-needed trawl through the remixography of the great Shep Pettibone, Arthur Baker has now turned his attention to his own sprawling catalogue of productions and remixes. Stretched over four discs in order to present full-length, DJ-friendly mixes, the collection does a great job in showcasing Baker's immense achievements in the 1980s and 90s. Naturally, his most celebrated productions and remixes are present - see his versions of Fleetwood Mac's 'Big Love', which became Balearic anthems, Afrika Bambaata and Soulsonic Force's genuinely game-changing 'Planet Rock', Freez's 'I.O.U', Rockers Revenge's 'Walking on Sunshine' and New Order's 'Confusion' - alongside a swathe of forgotten, overlooked and harder to find revisions.

Review: The distinctive vocal sound of Shirley Giha aka. Ghia is both naive and infectious. Her only album Here I Am gets a reissue via Thank You, recalling the short-lived period in the spotlight enjoyed by the musician between 1987-88. Heavyweight city pop, new jack swing and slow-jam dreamers all combine in an almost oppressively 80s sound, while Ghia's vocals glide over each track elegantly and unprocessedly.

Review: After a potential demo deal with Island Records went south, Belgian electro-samba outfit Antena parted ways in the mid-'80s. Singer Isabelle Antena quickly moved onto new projects, forgoing her cold wave aesthetic for an excitingly new sophisticated pop sound. On 1986's En Cavale, there's the undeniable influence of Madonna and city pop sounds with the inevitable bleeding through of late-'80s Euro dance and even a bit of bossa nova would you believe - and it works well!. The elegant second chapter of a French pop treasure. In the '90s, Antena led another group, the Powaga Sisters, and was with them for three albums between 1993-2004.

Review: 'Electro-samba' didn't used to be a genre name one came across every day, but that all changed with French pop icon Isabelle Antena, whose daring solo ventures in the 1980s saw to many a creative explosion. First coming to prominence as part of the self-styled French-Belgian trio Antena, who were more coldwave than city pop, Isabella's solo defection proved a thorough change in tack, as her debut En Cavale dealt in all the sexiest styles from bossa nova, to electro, to synth-pop, to cafe-ready easy listening. From 'Magic Words' to 'Sea Side Week End', this is dreamy, electrified musical sophistry for the Sylvester era.

Review: Bay Area DIY pop duo Loveshadow join up with Dark Entries to release II, their sophomore LP. Anya Prisk and Izaak Schlossman met in Oakland in 2016, bonded over their love of '80s sounds and immediately began building their musical world with lush synths, funky basslines, and irresistible hooks. The past is always in their palette, but Loveshadow's nostalgia doesn't trace to any single locus; it's more like a cloud, and it's through this haze that they breathe new life into the music they love. Their debut album was released in 2021 on Music from Memory to acclaim. II presents a more subtle and refined statement from the band - laser-focused on the vaporous expanse. Album opener 'Last Room' saunters with the confidence of Sade, while 'Earthen Track' feels like Kate Bush covering a forgotten city pop anthem. The album is largely focused on club-friendly material, but mellower pieces like 'Winter's Door' and 'Mirage' are sophisticated standouts that would make Ryuchi Sakamoto proud. Italo-funk groover 'Power Melts Away' closes out the album by upping the energy into fist-pumping territory. Anya's lyrics on II use the unreality of dreams as a lens to examine the realities of change and personal growth; illusions made material. Loveshadow elegantly smear the lines between past and present, pop and avant, immanent and transcendent.

Review: In most cases, a World Of Hassle is certainly not something you want, but we're sure you'll make an exception for this debut solo album by Alan Palomo, best known as the leader of the synth-pop band Neon Indian. Thoroughly on-brand for Palomo, this surprise LP flaunts just ten swanky, funky vocal disco cuts, tinged with the legacy of glam and jazz, and glimmering with the overzealous egoism of history's most volcaninc rockstars. Alan's versatile voice and neon-strobed production skills remaining present as ever, though despite the throughlines, the album marks a departure from his previous work with Neon Indian, which was more experimental and lo-fi.

Review: Neon Indian main brain Alan Palomo returns under his own name for World Of Hassle, the latest full-length project and exploration of a completely different sound altogether. His first album under his own name, it's something of a departure from his previous synthpop/chillwave oeuvre, homing in on a brighter, kookier disco, funk, and house verve. Thematically, the album is adventurous and playful, having been inspired by Palomo's travels around the world, ups-and-downs in the music industry, and personal relationships.

Review: U.S label Light In The Attic has hit gold with this hugely popular series. It has done three volumes by now but here comes a welcome reissue of the first from a few years ago. After compilations exploring various Japanese takes on Western music, most notably folk, rock, ambient and new age they switched tack, curating a brilliant double-album set that showcases the best Japanese synth-pop, AOR and boogie recorded between 1976 and '86. The quality threshold remains impressively high throughout, from the blue-eyed-soul breeze of Taeko Ohnuki's 'Kusuri Wo Takusan' and the Chaz Jankel-meets-Thompson Twins style throb of Haruomi Hosono's 'Sports Men', to the talkbox-sporting late night AOR-pop flex's Hiroshi Satoh's 'Say Goodbye' and the glistening, Latin-influenced jazz-funk brilliance of Masayoshi Takanaka.

Review: As the third installment brings attention back on this crucial series, Light In The Attic are running a repress of their second voyage into the plentiful realm of Japanese city pop - another extended cruise through impossibly slick '70s and '80s groovers with that golden studio sound. There's sultry slinkers like Eiichi Ohtaki and sensual funk from Kimiko Kasai on "Vibration (Love Celebration)". Watch out for the heavy bass and subtle synth inflections of Yu Imai's incredible "Kindaichi Kosuke Nishi E Iku" and the impossibly catchy whistlealong 'Hot Sand' by Piper. It's not a competition, but if you crave that US AOR sound, it might just be that the Japanese did it better.