Suba Sao Paulo Confessions (6 Degrees/Outside)
Snapcase Designs for Automation (Victory)
Scritti Politti Anomie & Bonhomie (Virgin/EMI) Without Scritti Politti there couldn't have been Milli Vanilli. Okay, so that's a frivolous rhyme that misrepresents the obscure history of this most respected of '80s Brit-synth bands. But as were Rob and Fab, Scritti Politti mainman Green Gartside is a Euro guy desperate to tap African-American idioms--something he used to do more ostensibly than substantially in an ol' song like "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)." Eleven years after his last album, Gartside is more overt, dropping some lite funk (with Me'Shell Ndegeocello) and even a few standout rap pieces with dope guest Mos Def (!). The base, though, is soft-pop numbers that sound just a tad too close to Gartside's '80s roots. 7/10 (Chris Yurkiw)
Funeral Oration Phat Global #1 Discography 1983-1998 (Hopeless)
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Born Novi Sad in Yugoslavia, Suba spent the last 10 years (preceding his untimely death last November) as a fixture on the music scene of Sao Paulo, Brazil. On this gorgeous, if unintentional, swan song, we hear what it was that kept him there, and what made him a producer of choice there as well. Mining the native mood and rhythm for lazy sexual drama (kicked up a notch by guest singer Cibelle), Suba boobytrapped his bossa futuro with bursts of edgy tension--intended as a reflection of the half-baked, overheated metropolis he had come to call home. While this disc earns Suba a respectable spot in Brazil's exciting late-'90s musical surge, it also leaves us wondering what could have been. 9/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
In 1997, when Snapcase released the stellar "Progression Through Unlearning," they really turned hardcore on its ear. Unfortunately, as great as this new disc is, it never really reaches the level of intensity that Progression achieved. The problem sounds like Snapcase have their eyes a little too focused on the prize. A band truly poised for breaking big, they seem to have lost a little bit of personality somewhere along the way. Having said that, Snapcase have an album here that they can truly be proud of, but achieving greatness is probably another album away and greatness is what we expect from such a genius band. 8.5/10 (Johnson Cummins)
This two-CD set covers one of punk's most anonymous bands. With an exhausting 32 songs and a 16-song live concert, it can be a pretty longwinded introduction, but this Dutch band does manage to deliver melodic punk in the Moving Targets/Buzzcocks/Dag Nasty vein. The only problem is that throughout all 48 tracks, F.O. rarely deviate from the melodic punk feel and hence, everything tends to blur together. However, the tracks culled from their 1983 debut cassette do prove them to be the oldest new-school band of all time. 7/10 (Johnson Cummins)