This Heat

Years of hagiographic liner notes have argued that the value of a reissue lies in how handily its influence can be traced to contemporary acts. By that logic, it’s merely incidental that Out of Cold Storage, which contains the complete recorded works of the obscure British postprog band This Heat, sounds stunningly inventive and undated. Granted, the trio, active from 1976 to ’82, does have its disciples—Jim O’Rourke’s conceptual-rock project Brise-Glace, for example, was essentially a This Heat tribute band. But the group’s multifaceted sound, marked by ear-splitting industrial vamps, sophisticated tape-loop architecture, eerie pop melodies and cryptic protest lyrics, was ultimately too sui generis to birth direct descendants. Refreshingly, this set implores you to give the dot-connecting a rest and simply listen.

Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward and Gareth Williams arrived fully formed on their self-titled 1979 debut, assembled from recordings made over the previous three years. Taken together, the noise-rock gut-punch “Horizontal Hold,” the ambient plea “Not Waving” and the proto-breakbeat experiment “24 Track Loop” reveal a formidably diverse yet coherent aesthetic, which only came into sharper focus on the 1981 masterpiece Deceit. Both appear here in elegant Digipaks, along with four discs of live performances—some, unfortunately, with sub-bootleg sound—and interesting but nonessential rarities, plus an informative booklet of reminiscences. Is This Heat’s music seminal? That’s debatable. Is it still mandatory for any fan of adventurous music? Absolutely. — Hank Shteamer