Back catalogue: Rock

Review: Frank Zappa left a lot of complex musical mysteries for the intrepid explorer to discover, but there's unanimous appreciation for Hot Rats which makes it a great entry point into the maverick's career after his initial rock outfit The Mothers Of Invention disbanded. Released in 1969, it was a more jazz-oriented affair with mostly instrumental pieces that sometimes rocked, sometimes wigged out and sometimes did both in a manner akin to the free jazz pioneers of the era. Sonically, it's out of this world too and now it's repressed on heavyweight wax with a bonus insert to take you into the story behind one of the finest albums in the Zappa canon.

Review: Over-Nite Sensation has been long-hailed as the gateway drug into Frank Zappa’s extensive musical universe, after which there really is no going back. Now reissued and expanded by the Zappa estate, the album returns to the foreground again, in several formats, including one CD with over 57 unreleased and rare studio and live tracks piled on top of the original seven magnum opi. This edition, however, is an audiophile standard 2xLP edition, just as Uncle Meat intended from the jump. From the opening princely funk of ‘Dirty Love’ to the midway scattings of ‘Dinah-Moe Humm’ and the closing yippee-ki-yays of ‘Montana’, this album should be best remembered not only as FZ's sexiest, but coincidingly as the one on which music’s most notorious Bonnie & Clyde, Ike and Tina Turner, were enlisted to aid Zappa for the closing track, but were ultimately not credited due to a poor performance, by Zappa’s assessment.