Three albums from Roky Erickson’s troubled Eighties are to get some new polish, courtesy of reissue imprint Light In The Attic.

Erickson’s name remains synonymous with The 13th Floor Elevators, the psych-rock outfit he founded and led in the 1960s. Where that band’s legend is pretty much unassailable, Erickson’s subsequent projects – Bleib Alien, Roky Erikson And The Aliens – have a somewhat iffier reputation, with the music often taking secondary status to Erickson’s extraordinary personal tribulations (erratic behaviour, incarceration in a mental hospital, electroshock therapy).

Light In The Attic will put out remastered versions of a trilogy of Erickson solo releases from his prolific, highly variable 1980s: 1981’s The Evil One, credited to Roky Erikson And The Aliens and recorded in the months following Erickson’s release from the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane; 1986’s solo LP Don’t Slander Me; and the 1986 collection Gremlins Have Pictures. The Evil One shows Erikson at his most energetic and raucous, whereas Don’t Slander Me is a tight, taut collection of unhinged blues-rock. Gremlins Have Pictures, meanwhile, collects rarities and oddities recorded between 1975 and 1982.

All three LPs will arrive at the end of August on CD and LP. Head to the Light In The Attic site for further details of each release. [via The Wire]