If you've followed the beats of his half-century career, you'll know Vernon Reid as an artist who paints in every colour. Depending on the era you dive into and the album on your turntable, you'll find the New York polymath pinballing between jazz, metal, punk, funk, electronica and hip-hop, cutting heads with collaborators as eclectic as Mick Jagger and Public Enemy, endlessly shedding his skin yet always speaking his truth.

This is an important record because it vividly and effectively captures a specific moment in the history of jazz. We are at the beginning of the 80s; jazz is experiencing new transformations; a fluid period in which not only its expressive intentions but also its audience are changing. The rhythmic intensity that pervades the entire album certainly evokes the spasmodic struggle for life of bebop, but also of a much more contemporary world. And then, most important, there is the embrace with the European musical spirit. “Perpetual Groove” remains unique in its surprising freshness. Something that is good to know exists and smacks of resistant revolutionarity.

Produced when pianist-composer Armen Donelian was not yet 30 years old, Stargazer—his debut recording as a leader—was released in 1981 on a small Japanese record label and only available elsewhere as a hard-to-find import. Until now, that is. On October 3, Donelian’s longtime label Sunnyside Records will reissue Stargazer, a stunning and remarkably assured trio date with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Billy Hart, for the first time in nearly 45 years.

The Doors: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition includes a remastered version of the album’s original stereo mix, available on CD for the first time in a decade and remastered for the first time in nearly 30 years. The album’s original mono mix was also remastered for this set and is making its CD debut here. The third disc features live performance from The Matrix in San Francisco recorded just weeks after The Doors was released. Music journalist David Fricke provides detailed liner notes for the set, which includes a selection of rare and previously unseen photographs.
A tremendous debut album, and indeed one of the best first-time outings in rock history, introducing the band's fusion of rock, blues, classical, jazz, and poetry with a knock-out punch. The lean, spidery guitar and organ riffs interweave with a hypnotic menace, providing a seductive backdrop for Jim Morrison's captivating vocals and probing prose…

Another quality L&R Records production that has been saved by a reissue on Evidence Music. Originally recorded in 1982, Chicago's Young Blues Generation features the raw, frantic work of guitarist Lurrie Bell and harp blower Billy Branch, who remain the closest the blues scene has to a modern-day Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. Back in 1982, Bell and Branch were still carving out a sound of their own - an amalgam of Rice Miller, the West Side guitar slingers (namely Guy and Magic Sam), and the funkier Stax and Hi Records hitmakers. This album consists entirely of reworked blues and R&B covers, each one drawn out by lengthy, tag-team soloing - sometimes derivative, but more often wildly inspired and unpredictable. Bell, in particular, goes for broke on almost every note, from his manic vocal inflections to the smallest guitar fill…