***Drag City and Galactic Zoo Disks first turned the world on to THE GEORGE-EDWARDS GROUP in 2009, with their never-exactly-released late ‘70s alien autumnal song-scape 38.38. Their music is singular and great, and like you, we assumed that was their one, definitive statement. Un-till...this new Archives release contains a treasure trove of bizarre riches spanning from the 38:38-era to what appears to be the mid-’80s (we'll never know for sure—and we don't have to, the stuff is sublimely WACK in a manner that requires no further explanation). In 1977, anxious for a record deal of some kind, veteran Detroit post-rockers EDWARD BALIAN and RAY GEORGE (formerly of ANDROMEDA) took matters into their own hands and pressed up a hundred or so LPs of their most recent work. When Galactic Zoo Disks brought this in for a a proper release two years back, 38:38 withstood any and all collector hype with a set of stately and haunting low-fit tunes that offered an unusually highbrow take on the archetypal Midwestern rock n roll existentialism usually addressed with a solid beat and sneering vocal. The group had created a lonesome, quasi-baroque pop sound replete with acoustic guitars, harmonies, heavily-reverberant piano riffs, bells, chimes and cold sheets of synthesizer in a near-total late-’70s void! Archives is a more rocking version of The George-Edwards sound. The tremulous, strangely timbered vocals are still their signature, but this time they’re atop a few highlycompressed and fuzzed-out rock cuts, as well as several synthed-out dirges that would make Suicide, Bruce Haack or Cabaret Voltaire cock an ear. (STREET DATE - 8/23/2011)