By the time high-profile Detroit hip-hop producer J Dilla released his 2001 debut album, “Welcome 2 Detroit,” he was already somewhere in the realm of mythos. A member of the Soulquarians and Ummah production collectives, he was known for his music that was both luscious and booming – he was hugely influential and essentially uncopyable. (He passed away in 2006.) “Welcome 2 Detroit” is a musically wide album, but never booms with anything but its specific vibration, the J Dilla feel that exists somewhere just under the skin. This impeccably detailed box set contains 7” singles of the album’s songs, along with instrumental versions, alternative mixes and a book detailing the making of the album. CARAMANICA
Willie Dunn, ‘Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology’
(Light in the Attic; two LPs, $35; MP3 download, $10)
Willie Dunn (1941-2013) was a Canadian songwriter, filmmaker and Indigenous activist; this set offers only a selection from his extensive recorded catalog. He appeared in the 1960s with songs rooted in folk and country, sometimes featuring native instruments and melodies. His voice was a friendly but candid baritone, with hints of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot. Dunn was a clairvoyant storyteller, and in songs like “The Ballad of Crowfoot” he wrote down individual lives, historical injustice, and the power and majesty of nature. PARELES
Bob Dylan, ‘Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980-1985)’
(Columbia/Legacy; five CDs, bound book and memorabilia, $140)
The latest dig of Bob Dylan’s archives dates back to the first half of the 1980s, when he let go of the certainties of his born-again phase and returned to more thorny, more enigmatic songs that still struggled with morality, love, history and responsibility on the albums “Infidels ” (1983) and “Empire Burlesque” (1985). He also tried an ’80s-style production, which left those albums with exaggerated drum sounds and a dated electronic sheen. Two discs from the 1980 sessions and rehearsals for his 1980 “Shot of Love” are mostly disposable items, save for the dark, ominous “Yes Sir, No Sir.” But the session and tour numbers for “Infidels” and “Empire Burlesque” offer more. The set reveals a full band version of “Blind Willie McTell” and a boisterous, bluesy rock song that only made a brief appearance on tour in 1984, “Enough Is Enough”. It finds more fragile, less gimmicky versions of well-known songs, and it chronicles the evolution – and sometimes rewrites overnight – of the songs that became “Foot of Pride” and “Tight Connection to My Heart,” a close up from Dylan’s constant tinkering and improving. PARELES
Beverly Glenn-Copeland, ‘Keyboard Fantasies’ and ‘Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined’
(Transgressive; LP, CD, cassette or download, from $6.99 to $27.99)
This is the latest installment in the campaign to revive the work of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Canadian new age/electronic music producer and singer whose recordings were rediscovered a few years ago. “Keyboard Fantasies”, originally released in 1986 in a limited edition of cassettes, is enchanting and almost eerily soothing. “Welcome to you, young and old/We are always new, we are always new,” Glenn-Copeland whispers softly, a beacon of safety and opportunity. The original album, now released for the first time on CD and vinyl, was followed by a collection of remixes and reinterpretations by acolytes, most notably Kelsey Lu’s ecstatically elegiac version of ‘Ever New’. CARAMANICA