Weird, enigmatic, and unarguably wonderful would be three ways to describe the names that have been brought together on this reissue of part of a compilation series that first landed on cassette via the VP231 imprint as the 1980s got into gear. A collector's item in the truest sense, Alternative Funk Vol.2 is a strange yet recognisable beast, with so much here being almost familiar but alien at the same time.

Over the course of the track list, then, you'll find proto-e-funk (Dee Nasty's 'Orientic Groove'), block party electro hip hop ('Asphalt Zombie' by Scoop!), broken, guitar-lick-heavy funk that's almost definitely been sampled for pop and house mash ups, only set to the vocals of a militant German sex droid ('Der Sound Kosten' by Melsjest), and spoken word poetry worthy of Hunter S. Thompson layered over driving breaks (Randall Kenney's 'Norma Jones'), alongside a host of even trippier, experimental and abstract stuff.