Now that Black Friday (25th Nov) seems to be ‘a thing’ in this country we have what’s become known as ‘Record Store Day 2’ creeping in just before the Xmas rush with yet another date to cram the pressing plants as the vinyl reissues keep flowing. The list got released this week and I’m very pleased to see these two on it.
Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert‘s hard-to-find-cheap outing ‘The Psychedelic Experience’, originally on Broadside Records and later, Folkways, and chock full of spoken word that has been plundered by many over the years in sampled form. Pressed on magenta splatter vinyl apparently.

A great-looking reissue of an underrated but utterly essential hip hop classic is the Jungle Brothers‘ ‘Done By The Forces Of Nature’ from Get On Down. Originally released in 1989 and featuring a post ‘3 Feet…’ De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Q-Tip and DJ Towa Tei (just before he found worldwide fame with Deee-lite), this is the whole crew at the height of their powers and possibly the moment that the Native Tongues posse were most united. It’s a sample smorgasbord too from a time when you could still ransack the past for the finest funk, jazz and afro beats imaginable. For me, this is up there with De La Soul, Beastie Boys and Public Enemy as one of the finest rap albums of all time. Originally pressed on a weedy single disc, it always suffered from poor sound quality and a new double vinyl edition has been a long-standing want within the hip hop community.