This Heat — Out of Cold Storage (boxset)

This Heat were truly a one off, born from the punk/new wave era but seemly had little to connect them with their peers. They mixed surprising and bizarre rhythmic and instrumental twists and turns, falling some where between improvised and very much controlled musical form. Melding ambient, electronics, discordant guitar, jazz and modern classical elements into a form that’s been unseen since, sadly they only lasted six years as a project, but this wonderfully lush box set brings together six CD's along with a 40 page booklet, covering the recordings they made in their lifetime.

This Heat's selftitled album or Blue And The Yellow – both are chilling and disturbing journeys into an odd surreal nighttime world. All odd shaped rhythms, guitars and sound elements forced in at the strangest angles, vocals wander in and wondering out dropping bizarre word pellets into your mind. Truly, you have to pinch yourself very hard to make yourself believe this was made back in 1979, it sounds utterly timeless and peerless. A weird mix of strange beatpatterns that bite back and soiled nightmarish jerk awake ambient stretches. Peel Back The Skin's odd take on punked up jazz. It’s been a long time since I wondered across an album so different, so strange. A truly freaked out audiotrip, where you're being dropped, blindfolded, in a strange place unsure what your ears are being led towards next.

Next up in 1980 was the single/ep Health And Efficiency, and it stands as one of the great singles of all time, a perfect piece of audio messing with your mind. Health and Efficiency's titletrack starts things off with what seems to be euphoric new wave riffing and caughty vocal layers, but as the track goes on it seems to get stranger as more multilayered vocals are added and then, all of a sudden, it drops into a looped odd rhythmic, strange timesignature-led guitar riff, with sound elements going on in the background like rolling bottles and children’s voices. This continues on for the next half of the track making it a very strange and disorientating listening. Graphic/Varispeed (45rpm) is the other track, it’s made up of a pitch changing drones, that really seems to mess with your body and mind, it almost makes you feel sick at some points, weightless at others.

Their second and last album Deceit was released in 1982 and seems more tightly woven than their debut. Twisting their odd unique sound into something going towards pop music, but this is unlike pop music you’ve heard before. The off kilter tunes, clash with off-tone melodies, bizarre rhythmic patterns and denser strange vocalising. The element of surprise is still very much alive still, you’ll be jogging along with a strange rhythmic riff then it will suddenly left turn into a bizarre collage of sound or just stop when you are least expecting it. The whole air of the album seems different too it seems alive with a city like paranoid, the lyrics moving away from personal strange landscapes towards social commentary, which is never the less deliver in a odd fashion.

And that was it the band split, leaving an amazing and uniquely musical legacy. The box also has the complete John Peel session recorded in 1977, showing some interesting and different versions of three tracks from their debut album, along with four other tracks not released elsewhere. One of the standouts here is the beautiful haunting seashanty-like piece Basement Boy, played out by what sound like bag pipes and along with a strange seagull-like sound, give the feel of a walk back through time to a sea fishing town at the turn of last century, you can almost smell pipe tobacco and fish. Next is Repeat which features a 20 minute remix of the track 24 Track Loop from the debut, coming over in more hectic jazz mood. Metal, a track recorded in 1980 made up of various layers of cluttering percussion that is pieced together to very jarring effect. Graphic/Varispeed(35 rmp) is the track that original appeared on Health And Efficiency, but reappears here played slower - the tones really seem to pull you in, in a less body altering way - it feels more sludgy, like treading in treacly.

Last is a disk of live material which is issued for the first time with this box set, taking live recordings from the period of 1980 to 1981 - understandable the recording quality is not great, somewhat murky. But nevertheless, there’s some interesting and different versions of tracks from all of their releases here. With the added element of live experimentation and improvisation with in the tracks frames.

All of it’s topped off with a great book, talking about the band's history, interviewing the surviving two members about the band and each album, along with some other worthwhile pieces. A truly must-have collection if you have interest in any form of experimental music there’s surely something to hear that will get your ears pricking up. Unmissable, and one of the nicest reissues to appear this year.