At times 2010 seemed like the year of the reissue. Almost every week there was a mouth-watering release waiting to fill a massive hole in many collections that hit the virtual shelves. At times the flow of classic house and techno was overwhelming, and as the year progressed it only accelerated. Alleviated made a glorious return and Prescription continued it’s Classic re-ups. Elsewhere more obscure Chicago releases (Terrance McDonald, Harmony Funk and Virgo) saw the light of day again while New York (Pal Joey, Kerri Chandler, Mood II Swing, et al.) and Detroit (Moodymann, Esseray, Recloose, et al.) had some defining statements served up on fresh platters. Two seminal albums from Chris & Cosey, Chris Carter’s cassette album, The Spaces Between, remastered for vinyl, and Charanjit Singh’s Synthesizing — Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat shed light on dance music’s antecedents. This year fully awakened me to the rich history electronic music has, with more material still waiting to be discovered. For anyone too young to experience these first hand or too broke in this economy to afford the steep prices for used copies, this was your chance to make up some lost ground. Sure the pressings ranged in sound quality from loud and clean legitimacy to poor, straight from vinyl recordings, but in some respects just having a chance to hear the music on record for the first time was a satisfying experience fulfilled. Although this list is sure to overlook some crucial reissues, here are five essentials from 2010.

05. G Strings, The Land Of Dreams
[Seventh Sign Recordings/G Strings]
This mysterious Chicago release was one of only two on the short lived G Strings label back in 1990. As Gridface’s Jacob Arnold speculated on the original pressing, “it sounds like they were mastered direct from a cassette tape” and it doesn’t sound like Seventh Sign were able to improve on the sound quality much. But there is no denying the raw and emotional power contained on this release. Very much in the style of Ron Trent’s “Altered States,” these four tracks maneuver through tense synth strings, throbbing bass lines and syncopated drum programming and stand on equal footing. But it’s the title track, its quivering synth melodies bestowing an ethereal quality amid growling bass and a flurry of 909 snare crashes, that edges out the rest by a nose. Hats off to the Glasgow label for following up on their lone reissue from last year (Terence Parker’s Tribute To Ken Collier) and upping the ante.

04. Mayday, Relics Sampler [Rush Hour Recordings]
It’s been roughly 20 years since the world heard fresh music from Derrick May. And although this Mayday sampler from the Relics compilation isn’t technically new, it comes in a distinctly fresh package. Its four tracks are laid out for the first time over just one 12″, giving them room to breathe and respective focus on some of May’s lesser known tracks. If you never picked up the awesome Relics> album you may have missed hearing these, but there are ostensible ties to other Mayday work. “MS 6″ starts off with a muted chord rendering of “It Is What It Is” before launching into start/stop rhythm jerks, spiraling bass notes and flanged percussion. Complex hi-hat patterns and pitch bending strings are notable hallmarks of his material and are executed to perfection on “A Relic” and “Another Relic” (under the Long Ago and Long Long Ago aliases respectively). The former in particular achieving a striking balance between futurism and romanticism that is so rare in techno. Calling this a limited edition at 1000 copies may seem like a slap in the face but there’s no telling how precious this will be in another 20 years.

03. Black Rascals, Blaze Theme Track
[Slow To Speak/Sumo Records]
I’ve never been a huge fan of Blaze, their soulful jazz heavy house always seemed a little too refined for my tastes. But I’ve always had a hunch that there was some amazing underground cut of theirs just outside the reach of my ears. “Blaze Theme Track” is that piece. It offers a meaty bass line that ambles with an improvisational flare, imparting jazz idioms and vivid colors to what would otherwise be a pedestrian deep house number. A singular organ chord repeats ad infinitum with imperceptible changes while the bass melody dips and darts, moving from high and low tones to heavy and vibrant motifs. Over halfway through a shimmering open hi-hat pattern is revealed magnifying the jazz aesthetic. This addition to Slow To Speak’s Core series continued their singular [and single-sided -ed] devotion to celebrating house music’s much-loved classics in fine style.

02. Mr. Fingers, Slam Dance [Alleviated]
The four tracks on this release from Larry Heard under his Mr. Fingers moniker had been reissued previously in various forms, but getting an official reissue and remastering from Heard’s own Alleviated (via Clone) is just as good as having the original 12″. The real strength of this release is the diversity of the tracks, with each one maintaining an unsurpassed quality while straddling several different moods. From the straight jackin’ percussion beatdown that is “Slam Dance” to the celestial staircase disco of “Stars.” There is a damn good reason that Heard is often referred to as the Miles Davis of house.

01. Reel By Real, 20 Years Surkit [a.r.t.less]
The Belleville Three get the most credit for kick starting Detroit techno, but there are plenty of unsung heroes whose stories rarely get told and whose records remain an absolute mystery. Martin Bonds and his Surkit 12″ release as Reel By Real in 1990 fit on both counts. Bonds trained as a sound engineer at KMS and although he managed to gain some technical and writing credits his greatest achievement (until now) came early in his career. But since it was released as an extremely limited white label on Metroplex sub-label Interface Records it never received the acclaim it so clearly deserves. Finally reissued as a double pack or as two single 12″s that form the complete release, the six tracks here are something special (the double pack features stunning artwork by Abdul Qadim Haqq making it even more special). The four tracks that made up the original are all here, plus two extras, “Surkit (1991 I-102 Version)” and “Vessels In Distress,” a track Bonds did with Juan Atkins and had previously turned up years ago on a Model 500 release. Bonds’ collaboration with Anthony Shakir on “Serene” offers layers of lush synth harmonies, reverbed percussion and a gripping bass line before setting like a glorious sun. The original mix of “Surkit” stands as a gorgeous slice of techno, merging melancholic synth melodies with gritty bass and slashing flanged drum patterns. For the sheer fact that this release was so rare and the music is so damn moving I can’t overstate the importance of this reissue.

For our second year-end report, LWE correspondent Peder Clark showcases the top five reissues from 2009

When contributors to LWE were discussing end of year lists amongst ourselves, a colleague commented that “this past year has seemed so exciting to me, it’s amazing how much of what’s got me revved up has been compilations and reissues.” I found myself agreeing with him — It might have been a pointed comment about the perceived weakness of much of this year’s output, but it might just as easily be read as praise for the huge quantity of impressive reissues, represses and other re-presentations that have been released this year. For that reason, this list is far from exhaustive and merely offers a personal perspective on what has been a fantastic year for house and techno historians. I’ve excluded records that were reissued that I already own (Minimal Nation, Thomas Brinkmann’s “Isch”), ones that were either wildly expensive or poorly presented (Carl Craig’s 69 boxset The Legendary Adventures Of A Filter King, “The Foot Therapy” EP), compilations of previously issued stuff (Pépé Bradock, DJ Koze, Daniel Wang), those already covered in Chris Burkhalter’s excellent 2Q Report, and, for the most part, straight represses (sorry Black Cock, KMS). Even then, there was still trimming to do, so with apologies to Norm Talley, Bernard Badie, Cheap and Deep, Mike Huckaby and a whole host of others, here’s the final essential five.

05. Newworldaquarium, “Trespassers” [NWAQ] (buy)
This is an obvious choice, but if you don’t own this in one form or another, why the hell not? I did in fact already have a copy of this, but on a battered Carl Craig compilation, so Delsin’s lush dark red vinyl reissue, with an added 154 (another Jochen Peteri alias) dub on the flip, was a welcome treat. Evidently Efdemin had a similar problem: “If I’d know this [was being reissued], I could have saved some bucks I spent on Discogs to replace my scratched and beloved copy of this timeless mover.” Enough words have been spilt elsewhere, and more articulately, about Peteri’s way with a Sergio Mendes sample and a 909, but if you still don’t believe me that this is a “must have!” purchase, listen to a couple of people far more au fait with a pair of turntables and a mixer than me: “Best tune ever! Too good to have it again!” (Lawrence); “A timeless classic. Truly deeeeeep!” (Patrice Scott).

04. Rick Wilhite, Soul Edge [Rush Hour] (buy)
Rush Hour re-released two Rick Wilhite EPs this year, collecting material from music previously released on Moodymann’s KDJ label, as well as a couple of unreleased remixes. “Soul Edge” is the pick of the pair, as it contains Theo Parrish’s essential “Late Dub” of “Get On Up!!”. The double exclamation points of the title are justified with Theo’s trademark EQing, teasing the floor as the beat drops in and out, like a punchdrunk boxer bouncing off the ropes. The vocal urges the pugilist to stay on his feet, but by the end we’re all out for the count. Deep house snobs might bitch about their collection depreciating in value thanks to these reissues, but those of us with less gray beards can be thankful for this godsend from the Godson.

03. Shake, Arise [Synchrophone] (buy)
This is less of a recommendation and more of a “coming soon” feature. French label Synchrophone’s reissue of Anthony Shakir’s “Arise” is solid enough, devoting a full side to its deep, percussive beauty, and adding a Trus’me remix on the flip, but really this is merely an hors d’œuvre for the main course. Which is of course the forthcoming (at time of writing) Frictionalism boxset from those good people at Rush Hour, a lavish reissue of most of Shake’s groundbreaking work on his own Frictional imprint, and a few odds and ends from 7th City. This will include work from the legendary “Mood Music For The Moody,” “…Waiting For Russell” (from which “Arise” is excerpted) and Songs For My Mother EPs, and should be top of every Detroit techno fan’s Christmas list.

02. Da Posse, It’s My Life [Clone Classic Cuts] (buy)
Lost amongst the numerous releases on the ever expanding stable of Clone sub-labels, this one seems to have passed people by. One of the saddest aspects of the projected Clone retirement plans was that their Clone Classic Cuts division would also cease to seek out the finest and forgotten joints for the record-buying public’s pleasure. So it was a relief when this dropped in September on transparent red wax. Cowbell, a square bass line, and rising synths make “It’s My Life” (Aluh Mix) truly deserving of the title classic, but the other two tracks, taken from separate releases on Future Records in 1988, are worthy of your attention also. “Strings” cocks a snook at Derrick May, bastardizing “Strings Of Life” into a rough basement jacker, while “The Groove” is just that, a relentless acid track made for a very late hour of the evening indeed. “It’s My Life” makes most house records this year look very silly; all the more surprising when you consider one of Da Posse went on to form novelty 90s hip-house buffoons The Outhere Brothers.

01. Terrence Parker, Tribute to Ken Collier EP [Seventh Sign] (buy)
Saving the best until last, “Your Love” was a ubiquitous anthem for many this summer. Props to Glasgow label for this reissue of TP’s somewhat obscure “Tribute to Ken Collier EP,” which pays homage to the eponymous Detroit DJ by offering three tracks of disco-house goodness. “Love’s Got Me High” and “Something Here” are excellent, choppy disco edits, sorta proto-Soundstream style, but the real winner here is “Your Love.” Kicking off with a sashaying, strutting beat that is soon joined by a insistent vamp and triumphant strings, the cherry on the icing on the cake is that bass line, and when the diva vocal comes in — well, that’s just a sign that it’s time to throw your drink down and get on the floor. One of the best house records of that year (1996), this year, or any other year.

On the reissue front, last year saw a new CD package of Basic Channel highlights, the Gas boxed set, and a repress of Model 500′s seminal Deep Space. Can 2009 match that? Six months in, looks like it just might. My picks for the five crucial reissues of the year so far is restricted to tangible products. This means I’m excluding some of the big mp3 arrivals of the year, several of which are news in their own right. In January, Omar S brightened my holiday malaise by making a healthy chunk of his FXHE label available through Beatport. Then, as spring turned to summer, Jeff Mills announced a gradual program to market some of his many career highlights in digital form, with value-added outtakes to boot. This year’s also opened up crucial back catalog material from Bine, Cache, Non Standard, Platzhirsch, and R&S to fill your iPod as well. As for discs silver and black, here’s what’s had me excited.

01. Robert Hood, Minimal Nation [M-Plant] (buy)
At long last, the spine that separated minimal techno lifers from tourists can be had for the price of a Best Buy gift card. Folks, this is simply one of the best techno long-players you’re going to hear. And if it weren’t enough that we can now revel in the “neutral potency” of the likes “Museum” on the bus, Hood has tacked on a couple of bonus cuts contemporary to the album, plus an entire mix CD. And if you need even more lean, robotic funk, there’s a new pressing of “Who Taught You Math” on, of all places, Freak n’ Chic. As Hood himself said, “In order to maximize the feeling of the music, sometimes we have to ridiculously spoil the listener with an embarrassment of newly remastered riches.”

02. Studio 1, Studio Eins [Kompakt] (buy)
Should you be in the mood for a more austere strain of minimal techno (or maybe just a more Teutonic one), this would be the chef’s recommendation. The latest entry in what I hope is an ongoing Wolfgang Voigt reissue campaign, this is every bit as raw and pummeling as Minimal Nation is funky. The tight, aggressive gyrations and morphing effects leave a dizzying impression, but these synthetic dub tracks are, like Hood’s, assembled from a handful of elements. Lucky for us this archival restoration is such a rumbling thrill to listen to today. For more information on why you need this disc, do check out Todd Hutlock’s review.

03. Rick Wade, Harmonie Park Vol. 1
[Funky Chocolate] (buy)
Rick Wade’s routinely jaw-dropping releases have a nasty habit of disappearing from the market. Funky Chocolate’s certainly done their part to help remedying this. The numbered title of their latest Wade package muddles things a bit, as this isn’t a straight copy of the first record on Wade’s Harmonie Park imprint. It does, however, contain the entire B-side of that 1994 deep house masterpiece, two Wade’s very best tracks. Impossibly infectious, the chords are thick and buttery, while the vocal micro-hooks deliver the kind of earworms that heads still haven’t shaken 15 years later. HP01′s “Nothing To Fear” and its DBX remix are tragically omitted, but the disco-gilded “I Feel Good,” from the second Harmonie Park plate, makes for one hell of a consolation prize. If this isn’t in your crate, your crate’s light.

04. Chez Damier, Time Visions 1 [Mojuba G.O.D.] (buy)
Similarly, Berlin house fiends Mojuba have just kicked off an all-Chez-all-the-time sub-label. The gently grooving A-side of the first release is brand new, but on the B you’ll find an invaluable pair of sought-after greats from the Prescription vaults. Trippy masterpiece “Sometimes I Feel Like” previously appeared on the unforgettable Hip To Be Disillusioned record back in 1994. The track here is technically an unreleased version, but I haven’t found reason for disappointment. The fluttering keys and urgent strings of “Teach Me, Keep Me” also first stirred hearts in ’94, when it appeared on The Gift, released under the Noni moniker. Fifteen years on, these tracks don’t seem to have lost any of their classy, energizing magic.

05. Jim O’Rourke, I’m Happy, and I’m Singing, and a 1, 2, 3, 4 [Editions Mego] (buy)
Certainly one of the most emotive, affecting moments in laptop naval-gaze, this rare electronic outing from Jim O’Rourke was ambitious and far-reaching, but managed a lightness of touch and warmth I believe surpasses that of any of the busy, multi-talented musician’s work. Ruminative but not cerebral, the album’s shifts from dread to whimsy to melancholy to glee move with the fluidity of a daydream. Out-of-print for longer than it was ever in-print, this album finally gets the deluxe edition treatment, tacking on an album’s worth of top-notch extra material. I’m unsure why Mego always insists on replacing the original covers but, as long as I waited for this reissue, I don’t dare complain.

01. Gas, Nah und Fern [Kompakt] (buy)
It was only appropriate that Wolfgang Voigt would eventually start a label, Kompakt, whose intention was to keep every release in print. Before Nah und Fern, it bordered between difficult and near impossible to track down all of Voigt’s Gas albums. And considering their stature, it was difficult to imagine how they could have gotten lost to the wayside (RIP Mille Plateaux). But remastered and fully realized in a single package, Nah und Fern might be one of the biggest revelations of 2008. The ingredients to Gas — the drones, the de-tuned classical music, the gentle tap of a kick — don’t sound like much as ambient building blocks; their modesty is easy to get lost in. From the raw start of the self-titled through the nerve-wracked finale of Pop, there’s a unity and development between the four records. Voigt is never willing to repeat himself, but each track sounds like a compelling variation on the same template. My favorite variation is the last track on Königsforst. It’s probably different from yours.

02. Basic Channel, BCD-2 [Basic Channel] (buy)
In a year steeped in the resurgence of dub-techno, Basic Channel’s second CD compilation couldn’t have come out at a better time. Eschewing the dubbed out seascapes found on their debut compilation, BCD-2 cherry-picks Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald’s full-speed-ahead techno releases. It’s a welcome wrinkle to the Basic Channel mythology where “faceless techno bollocks” always seemed to de-emphasize the techno part for the appreciation of Basic Channel’s faceless aesthetic. BCD-2 contains so many of Basic Channel’s highlights — the onslaught of “Enforcement,” the prickles of “Octagon,” and the momentum of “Phylyps Track II/III” — that it’s hard not to be simply thankful for the care in transferring this work to CD. It almost makes you not miss the original’s vinyl crackle.

03. Pole, 1 2 3 [~scape] (buy)
There’s a tendency to talk about Pole’s work as aural illusions. Stefan Betke’s scrapes, pops and crackles refashion the inadvertent effects of technology into purposeful affects of depth. As much as Pole defined the glitch movement when he first released the monochromatic-trilogy of 1, 2, and 3, this collection of his seminal releases never sounds as dated as you’d expect in 2008. It might be how far Betke dubbed his techno or how many creases he imprinted onto the Basic Channel blueprint. If Basic Channel emphasized vinyl’s warm texture with their compositions, Betke ripped those sounds apart for the digital age. And if the intervening decade has proven anything, it is that Pole’s innovations were too big to forget.

04. Various Artists, FXHE: Collected [FXHE Records] (buy)
Soundhack, Soundkit EP [Soundhack] (buy)
First things first: FXHE: Collected and the reissue of Soundhack’s “Soundkit EP” are necessary deals with the devil. FXHE: Collected comes with a sub-title “Vinyl classics now digital” and “Soundkit EP” originally came from Hard Wax, whose first foray into CDs had “Buy Vinyl!” emblazoned on it. But after another difficult year for distributors (RIP Neuton, among others), 2008 might be the year when even vinyl-only labels were forced to recognize the importance of the digital format. Thankfully, FXHE: Collected is a fine introduction to the label and owner, Alex (Omar-S)mith. Beginning with FXHE’s 2008 highlights “Psychotic Photosynthesis” and “The Further You Look – The Less You’ll See,” the compilation touches upon past glories like “Day” and “The Grand Son of Detroit Techno.” “Soundkit EP” sounds just as fresh; Soundhack’s (aka Frank Timm) avant-glitch-dance music might have anticipated The Field’s melody drenched loops (“Scraper”), but the funk foundations of “Double Hammer” and “Funkyrule” hit the hardest. The two releases also show off what’s changed in the digital landscape — both are distributed as ‘Beatport Exclusives.’

05. Quiet Village, Silent Movie [Studio !K7] (buy)
Quiet Village is a conceptual music project from the duo of Matt Edwards and Joel Martin. They began by releasing their singles on Whatever We Want, which for all practical purposes, doubles as contemporary art factor, peddling pieces of vinyl scarce and in demand enough to command large sums of money almost instantly upon release. Because Quiet Village is conceptual, they do “live shows” where they play the CD of Silent Movie with an accompanying montage of cult movies. Because Quiet Village is conceptual, they release “compilations” where they re-edit old songs and claim the new songs as their own. You might not know it, but Silent Movie reissues lost gems from artists like Alan Parsons, Trade Mark, and Giorgio Moroder, all re-edited and finely honed. In other words, Silent Movie is a schlocky, bad taste update on Endtroducing. And with the popularizing of re-edits, which has seen their role shift from “for friends only” to “thousands of clamoring fans,” Silent Movie might be the best example of how ownership is playing out in 2008, with artists trying to cover their legal bases and claiming they “wrote” all their re-edits.