New Music Friday:1980s Jazz and Reggae Sounds, Ken Russell Favorites

Our picks of new music releases this week:

Digging Your Scene: New Pop & All That Jazz 1982-1987 

Celebrating an era when jazz inspired many pop acts, from bossa beats to mainstream covers of the classics; from Latin-fuelled club favourites to torch ballads and acid jazz grooves. 

In 1982 a new jazz era was dawning and Soho, a hotbed since the 50s, was where the renaissance began. Blue Rondo A La Turk, who had the first 'New Jazz' hit, were led by Chris Sullivan who opened The Wag Club in Wardour Street in April 1982, a vital catalyst for the 'New Jazz' scene. Vic Godard, singer with Subway Sect, recast as a crooner, hosted his Club Left jazz-swing nights at the Wag (as well as at London's jazz capital Ronnie Scott's). 

Chief among the new acts were Weekend who morphed into Working Week, whose 1984 debut single 'Venceremos' felt like a clarion call. Everything But The Girl had embraced jazz influences on their debut single, a cover of Cole Porter's 'Night And Day'. 

Meanwhile, Mark Reilly left Blue Rondo to form Matt Bianco, a more overtly pop/jazz creation. Julien Temple's Absolute Beginners film (including Eighth Wonder and The Style Council on it's soundtrack) based on Colin MacInnes' 1959 novel took jazz to a mainstream audience. When the film was released in 1986, jazz in its broadest sense was everywhere in British pop, from covers of jazz standards (Alison Moyet, Bronski Beat) to jazz pop hits from Swing Out Sister and The Blow Monkeys.

Armagideon Time: When Punk Met Dub 1978-1984

In the wake of punk rock, as artists began to express their eclectic tastes and broaden their sound palettes in ways unimaginable just a few years before, the scene's love affair with Jamaican reggae and dub blossomed. 

The resulting crossover saw punk rock groups begin to adopt dub rhythms and production techniques into their sound and established reggae and dub producers begin to work with punk rock bands. 

Oozing liquid, analogue echo, sparse reverb-laden vocals, heavy duty basslines and laid back rhythms, 'Armagideon Time' journeys into the dub-punk crossover in the UK and further afield, bringing together raincoat-adorned working-class bands, Jamaican producers, British reggae pioneers, die-hard punks and London-based future dub exponents in an unlikely soundclash adventure across 3CDs. 

With scene-setting notes by low-end legend Jah Wobble and band-by-band biographies, this is a must-hear sequel and companion piece to our highly regarded 'Roots Rock Rebels' punk/reggae set. For fans of post-punk, dub and reggae, and the socio-political scene of late 70s and early 80s multicultural Britain.

Ken Russell The Music Lover: Music & Images -The Art Of Britain's Greatest Filmmaker

Russell's work is uncompromising and controversial. He directed Tommy for The Who in characteristic bravura style, while the much-banned Devils upset the establishment - 50 years on, the director's cut is still considered too blasphemous for public consumption. 

Inspired by Orson Welles, admired by Michael Powell, Ken Russell set British cinema aflame in the 1960s and 70s with his superbly crafted, often highly controversial dramatised documentaries on the lives of classical music composers. 

Gravitating to film via the excellent British Monitor and Omnibus art television programmes, his subjects included Elgar, Debussy and Delius, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Liszt. Russell pulled no punches in putting their indulgences and personal demons up on the screen beside their genius. 

Until then, the immortals had been sacrosanct. Ken's filmmaking was uncompromising, passionate and instinctive, revealing a gift for pairing music with images; resulting in such indelible scenes as the nude male wrestlers in Women In Love. Ken Russell's audacity was much admired. For some, he was regarded as nothing less than the saviour of British cinema, while others saw him as an outlandish "reckless eclectic", out to shock. His incendiary tour-de-force, The Devils, sharply divided audiences but is regarded by his disciples to be one of the top ten films of all time.