Digable Planets’ “Blowout Comb” Returns in Expanded Capitol Record Club Edition
Digable Planets’ Blowout Comb has always been the deeper, stranger sibling to the trio’s 1993 debut—and for many listeners, the record where the group’s particular fusion of jazz, hip-hop and political consciousness reached its fullest expression.
Now the landmark 1994 album is returning in a new expanded Capitol Record Club edition, due October 23.
Limited to 2,000 individually numbered copies, the release is pressed on dark indigo vinyl and adds non-album material from the original recording sessions. The real collector bait, though, is a bonus 7-inch featuring “Land of Mu,” a newly discovered and previously unreleased Digable Planets track, backed with “Dedicated.”
The album has also been remastered, with lacquers cut by Levi Seitz at Black Belt Mastering.
Blowout Comb arrived only a year after Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) introduced Butterfly, Ladybug Mecca and Doodlebug to a much wider audience. But rather than simply repeat the relaxed, jazz-heavy formula of their debut, Digable Planets pushed further inward.
The grooves became denser. Live instrumentation played a larger role. Guests including Guru and Jeru the Damaja appeared. And lyrically, the record moved more directly toward politics, oppression and life in Brooklyn without sacrificing the fluid, conversational interplay that made the group distinctive in the first place.
That combination is a big part of why Blowout Comb has aged so well.
It is unmistakably a product of early-1990s hip-hop, but it also belongs to that special class of records that rewards deeper listening as the years pass. The samples, jazz vocabulary, production details and lyrical references reveal themselves slowly, and the album feels less like a collection of singles than a complete environment.
For collectors, this edition is especially interesting because Capitol Record Club is not simply offering another color variant of a familiar title. The addition of session-era material—and particularly a genuinely unreleased song—gives longtime listeners something new to investigate.
And with only 2,000 numbered copies being pressed, it probably won’t be one to contemplate for too long.
Blowout Comb
— Expanded Edition Track Listing
Side One
“Slowes’ Comb”
“The May 4th Movement Starring Doodlebug”
“Black Ego”
“Dog It”
Side Two
“Jettin’”
“Borough Check”
“Highing Fly”
“Agent 7 Creamy Spy Theme”
“Dial 7 (Axioms of Creamy Spies)”
“MNY 21 Theme”
Side Three
“The Art of Easing”
“K.B.’s Alley”
“Graffiti”
“Blowing Down”
Side Four
“9th Wonder”
“For Corners”
“Three Slims Dynamite”
Bonus 7-inch
“Land of Mu”
“Dedicated”
The expanded Capitol Record Club edition of Blowout Comb arrives October 23 and is available for pre-order now.
