Buena Vista Social Club: 25th Anniversary Edition

Readers of Songlines will need no reminder of how the combination of Ry Cooder's meticulous production, a cast of veteran musicians who seemed to have emerged from the land that time forgot, a clutch of classic songs from the pre-revolutionary golden age of Cuban music and a suitably nostalgic feature film by Wim Wenders launched a world music phenomenon.

Many of the ageing musicians involved have since passed on, but as you would expect with such timeless music, everything still sounds as beguilingly evocative as ever on this expanded 25th anniversary reissue, which comes with alternative takes on eight tracks, 11 songs not included on the original album and a 40-page book, updating and expanding this reviewer's original 1997 liner notes. Highlights from the previously unreleased material include Compay Segundo taking charge on the track ‘La Pluma’, a lovely duet with Eliades Ochoa, and the slinky ‘Salud Compay’, while ‘Mandinga’ and ‘Descarga Rubén’ finds pianist Rubén González in miraculous improvisational flight. Even if the ‘new’ material lacks the polish of Cooder's nuanced post-production on the initial album, this anniversary reissue is nevertheless redolent with atmosphere and the off-the-cuff nature offers a fascinating insight into the spirit of the original enterprise.