In the liner notes, Brian Eno asserts that anybody under 90 has spent most of his or her life listening to electronic music. He’s not talking uhh-TSS-uhh-TSS trance or avant-garde noodling; once it’s fed through microphones and speakers, Eno argues the resulting sound becomes electronic music regardless of genre or form, so why not embrace it that? Such is the approach of OHM+, a box set originally released on a limited scale in 2000, expanded and reissued here with more music and a DVD. The tripped-out design makes it seem like a collection geared to club kids, but its contents reach deeper, beginning with Clara Rockmore, a virtuoso who could play Tchaikovsky on the theremin with stunning precision. The rest of OHM+ covers territory like Louis and Bebe Barron’s chilling cybernetic score from Forbidden Planet and the brash squeaking and squealing minimalism of Steve Reich’s “Pendulum Music,” a composition that is actually intriguing if you read his essay on how it’s done.—John Vettese

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Before “extreme” music got so damned X-Gamey and clean, Venom was making blueblack metal morass with a dirtball lo-fi aesthetic that’d frighten the devil himself. In fact, it’s probably that crusty no-production technique that gave their nachtmusik its thick, grungy heft. Anything slicker and tunes like “Cry Wolf,” “Bloodlust” and the never-ending version of “Bursting Out” would fall under the weight of the woe or seem silly with Satanic enthusiasm. But hearing Cronos’ chanted leers-and-jeers, their greasy bleak chord structures and sludgy rhythms intertwined into one sound (like “Rip Ride” and its earliest material from ’78-’81) gives you an understanding as to why Metallica and Slayer claimed Venom and its pentagram-stamped madness as their biggest influence. (That look looms large in the four-disc MMV’s big booklet and collector’s poster.) Venom created black metal. It’s time to take it back.—A.D. Amorosi

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“He just had the right feel,” Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun said upon first hearing “Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand” by a young singer-songwriter over 50 years ago. “He had more soul than the people he was supposed to be imitating. … No matter who he imitated, it came out as Ray Charles.” This seven-CD/one-DVD box set of Charles’ 1950s Atlantic output is similar to the recent Bob Dylan No Direction Home anthology; it’s a look at the early days of a genius mixing up different genres to come out with a sound entirely all his own. With his vocalizing and smooth arrangements on such early songs as “You Be My Baby” and “Funny (But I Still Love You),” it’s clear Atlantic was trying to groom Charles as another Nat “King” Cole. (Instrumental versions of “Music, Music, Music” and “The Man I Love,” in fact, display Charles’ underappreciated skill interpreting other composers’ work.) Before long, however, Charles began asserting his style with “Mess Around” and “Hallelujah I Love Her So” and took control of recording sessions. The accompanying DVD features a 45-minute kinescope of Charles performing with the Raelettes at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival. Many in the Newport crowd respond to “What’d I Say” by dancing in the aisles as if it were a rock concert, but this worthwhile collection proves that when Ray Charles performed, trifling distinctions like “jazz,” “rock,” “country” and “blues” fell by the wayside.—Andrew Milner

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When Verve Records decided to open its vaults to a horde of DJs and producers, they opted for accessibility over dramatic possibility, heavily concentrating on their roster of female vocalists. Too often, this results in awkward attempts to cram the singers’ more elastic lines into the regular confines of a dance beat. The more song-oriented chanteuses fare better — Nina Simone perfect for funky house treatments, Astrud Gilberto for Portishead atmospherics. Predictably, the most successful cuts pull from the label’s catalog of ’60s/’70s Latin and soul jazz. The set could have benefited from a few more adventurous, Aphex Twin-style deconstructions, but Verve got what it paid for with a selection of solid dance tunes benefiting from stellar source material.—Shaun Brady

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Before Bruce was a hero, he was a loser. By 1974, the scraggly Dylanite had struck out twice — despite deeply complex lyrics, spare jazz-rock twists, the crucial E Street Band and an image that was working-class wonk and lovestruck dope. Born to Run coulda been a safe bunt, but it was a grand slam — a meticulously planned epic that emboldened the roar-of-yore that was Spector’s wall of sound and Orbison’s operatic spirit. Dedicated to the bounce of rock’s predecessors (“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”), Born boogied without losing Bruce’s character-driven lyrical dexterity (“Jungleland”), jazzy E-band interplay (“Meeting Across the River”) and raucous edge. Escaping the dreariness of Jersey never sounded so necessary. And this remastering (one CD, two DVDs) couldn’t sound more vital, giving saxophonist Clarence Clemmons’ honks the breath they require while punching up Springsteen & Co.’s guitar clusterfuck. The best of the Born box can be found in the ragged footage of 1975’s Brit-trip (a Hammersmith Odeon debut with a glum, unanimated Boss) and a making-of DVD featuring primitively taped in-studio jive with newer recollections from the likes of David Sancious and Ernest “Boom” Carter.—A.D. Amorosi

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Behind the chick-a-wah guitars of “The Men,” the hot-buttered strings of “Shaft” and the deep, sultry voice that informed them (to say nothing of his Chef’s “Salty Chocolate Balls”) there’s a songwriter/arranger who made those loverman moments sonically innovative. The pre-crunk funk of “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic” and the slow dazzling grind of “Joy” could give the Neptunes a run for their production dollar. Hayes brought that same strolling sense of Technicolor discovery and huffy speak-songing to a handful of Bacharach/David covers (”Walk on By,” “The Look of Love”). But it’s a live performance — a DVD of 1972’s Wattstax Festival — that shows Hayes the bald, beautiful pimp at his Black Moses best. —A.D. Amorosi

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This two-CD, two-DVD set is a muscular maneuvering through the showroom dummies’ 35-year-old catalog. Lyrics like “It’s more fun to compute” may be as emotional as air-traffic patter. The sorrowful tone of ultimate stasis (“Neon Lights”) is heaving and dark. But rather than be cyborg-istic, Kraftwerk is a live (albeit chilly) wire filled with heart-attack bass pulses and twinkling, arcane touches that fire their dry icy-strings’ periphery. For all the futurist rapture found throughout its brooding melodies, slow celestial harps (“Tour De France”) and Gregorian-chanted speed garage grooves (“Radioactivity) make Kraftwerk as quaintly baroque as they are modernistic. The vision is as cool as the 5.1 Surround Sound, what with Ralf, Florian and friends looking for all practical purposes like Tron extras. Buy the deluxe package with the double live CD and thick hardback book featuring stage schematics and tech data.—A.D. Amorosi

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In retrospect, it’s clear that Phil Spector always needed girls more than they needed him. Even without any Spector productions, Rhino’s lavishly packaged, four-disc One Kiss Can Lead to Another does right by the boy-crazy girls who once ruled radio. With 117 tracks spanning the ’60s — from Mary Wells’ raw-throated “Bye Bye Baby” to The Lovelites’ jazzy teen-pregnancy crisis “How Can I Tell My Mom & Dad” — and a 201-page book, it’s deep enough to entice collectors and light enough to seduce casual listeners. Oddities like The Tammys’ manic “Egyptian Shumba” and Toni Basil’s old-maid pity party “I’m 28” (recorded a full 15 years before she tried to pass as a cheerleader in the “Mickey” video) sound even stranger alongside early efforts by The Supremes, The Ronettes and even Dolly Parton, but they all fit together nicely. And any collection that includes Donna Lynn’s kiss-off “I’d Much Rather Be With the Girls” has its heart in the right place.—M.J. Fine

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If Just Say Sire is a story, it’s one with incoherent organization, overfamiliar passages and a lot of forgettable characters. For every Madonna, there’s a Tommy Page; for every Ramones, a Tin Tin. Sure, there are a lot of great songs scattered throughout the three CDs — The Pretenders’ “Back on the Chain Gang,” Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” and Richard Hell & The Voidoids’ “Blank Generation” all rule — but the keepers are likely to be in any decent music library already, and the rest are missing for a reason. Unless you’re trying to settle a bet about which bands Vince Clarke was in (Erasure, Yaz and The Assembly are all represented, along with the post-Clarke Depeche Mode) or need a quick hit of 120 Minutes (nearly all of the 21 videos collected on the DVD are from the Dave Kendall era), you’d be better served by digging into the back catalog. —M.J. Fine