Tal Rosenberg, Reader digital content editor, is obsessed with. . .

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Gwen Guthrie, Padlock Gwen Guthrie is a really good singer, but what’s most impressive about this mini album is that it’s the best music I’ve yet heard from the Compass Point All Stars, who are right up there with the Funk Brothers and the Muscle Shoals crew as one of the premier groups of session musicians. The credits are insane: Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare on drums and bass (they also produce), Wally Badarou on keyboards, Darryl Thompson on guitar, and then the whole thing remixed by Larry Levan. The music is technically “garage” (referencing Levan’s storied Paradise Garage nightclub), but it’s pretty uncategorizable. You can hear disco, new wave, dub, boogie, early house, and early techno in it. The future is the past is the future.

He asks. . .