Gone Digital: C.C.S., Artifacts, H & Claire, Jet, and Charice

If it’s Tuesday, then it must be time for Gone Digital, our weekly look at five recent additions to Rhino’s digital catalog. As ever, the types of music we’ll be covering will be all over the place, but that’s Rhino for you: we’re all about variety!

• C.C.S., TAP TURNS ON THE WATER: THE C.C.S. STORY (2020): Their full name was Collective Consciousness Society, but when you get right down to it, C.C.S. was generally just Mickie Most, John Cameron, and a bunch of different session musicians. Despite this, they still managed to score two top-10 hits (“Walking” and the title track of this compilation), a top-20 hit (their cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”), a top-30 hit (“Brother”), and a top-40 hit (“The Band Played the Boogie”). All of these, of course, were UK hits rather than US hits, although it’s worth noting that the aforementioned “The Band Played the Boogie” was actually a top-10 hit in Australia. Anyway, listen up, America, because now’s your chance to dive headlong into the C.C.S. catalog!

• Artifacts, BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE (1994): This hip-hop trio – consisting of El Da Sensei, Tame One, and DJ Kaos – originally came together in 1988, but it wasn’t until ’94 that they released this, their debut album. It was a relatively big hit on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, hitting #17 and spawning two singles (“Wrong Side of the Tracks” and “C’mon Wit Da Git Down”), but their second album, 1997’s THAT’S THEM, didn’t pack the same commercial punch, and Artifacts disbanded. They did, however, reunited in 2009, and at last report they were technically still a going concern.

• H & Claire, ANOTHER YOU, ANOTHER ME (2002): If you came of age in the UK during the 1990s, then it’s likely that you remember the pop group Steps, in which case you likely already know that Ian “H” Watkins and Claire Richards were members of that very group. When Steps called it quits in 2001, however, H and Claire struck out on their own, resulting in this LP, which hit #58 on the UK Albums chart and gave them three top-10 UK singles, “DJ,” “Half a Heart,” and “All Out of Love.”  They ultimately disbanded after Richards got married and stepped out of the public eye, but in 2011 they both participated in the Steps reunion, and the group is now on their third new studio album since then.

• Jet, GET BORN (EXPANDED EDITION) (2003): Yes, we know, there’s already a deluxe edition of GET BORN out there, but this is even better, because it’s been expanded even beyond the Deluxe Edition. Behold: what was once 24 tracks is now 35 tracks! Jet fans, rejoice!

• Charice, CHARICE (2010): Born Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco, the artist formerly known as Charice came out as a transgender man in 2017. As such, Jake Zyrus fans will want to give this a listen, as it features the worldwide hit “Pyramid,” featuring Iyaz.