Holding the Music in Your Hands ®
Embrace return from a seven year hiatus in April with a new self-titled album available in a variety of formats including a lavish super deluxe edition box set which boasts a broad array of content, much of which is personally signed by the band.
Continue reading ““Embrace” super deluxe box set”
Belinda Carlisle being kept busy today at Demon Music HQ as she personally signs 500 Certificates of Authentication exclusively for fans who order the forthcoming five-disc Anthology through her web store. It’s not too late, apparently, to get a copy with the signed certificate, you just select ‘Ultimate Fan Bundle’ from her shop.
The 1993 debut from The Auteurs is expanded with 21 bonus tracks including the demos that got Luke Haines’ band signed in the first place. 
Having issued the vinyl box last year, Demon Records are putting out all Suede‘s albums on vinyl individually, including this 3LP Sci-Fi Lullabies set.
Ocean Colour Scene‘s 1997 Marchin’ Already album is issued as a four-disc deluxe box set and their debut is also out today as a two-CD deluxe.
If the spectacular Here Come The Nice box was more Small Faces than you really wanted, then this one disc greatest hits might do the job. It uses the same excellent mastering as the box and all the singles are in glorious, original mono. There is a blue vinyl version available too, if you’re quick.
So8os Presents ZTT (Mixed & Reconstructed By Blank & Jones) will be released at the end of April 2014. More details on this project can be found here.
Edsel’s five-disc T Rex Tanx and Zinc Alloy deluxe book which comes with four CDs of Tony Visconti remastered audio and a DVD of videos and TV appearances had just tumbled significantly in price on Amazon in the UK.
At the time of writing the set is available for just under £44, having previously been priced at £68. Full track listing and other details can be found here.
Omnivore Recordings will issue Bob Mould‘s 1989 debut album Workbook as an expanded CD and LP set later this month.
The CD edition of Workbook 25 will feature a complete 1989 live performance at Chicago’s Cabaret Metro, with 13 of those 17 tracks previously unreleased. The B-side All Those People Know is appended to the album on disc one.
Continue reading “Bob Mould / “Workbook” 25th Anniversary editions”
On this February Friday, Rob Puricelli remembers the classic era of Zang Tuum Tumb – the excitement, the intrigue, the posters, the T-shirts and the records. Move with him inside the strange world of ZTT Records…
Some would have you believe that the 1980s were a decade of decadence and poverty, two social polar opposites created by Thatcher and her cronies. Some would have you believe that it was the decade that style forgot and also the one that gave birth to groundbreaking design. If anything, these statements go to prove that this decade was all about change, diversity and a nation, nay a global society, emerging from gloom, oppression and a desperate lack of creativity.
In 1984, when Frankie Goes To Hollywood finally topped the UK charts (it had taken three months from the day of release) with their debut single, Relax, I was 13 going on 14. I was impressionable. I was confused and in need of a fashion to follow or, at the very least, the inspiration to set a fashion of my own. Continue reading “#ZTT30 / One February Friday”
ABBA‘s 1992 greatest hits album ABBA Gold will be reissued in April this year as part of the band’s 40th anniversary celebrations.
There have been various versions of this evergreen compilation over the years, including a 2CD edition and a CD+DVD offering. This new edition will actually be a three-CD set, presented in a digi-pack, and will feature the standard 19-track compilation on disc one, the More ABBA Gold set on disc two, and a third CD made up of B-sides (see full track listing below).
Continue reading “ABBA Gold / 3CD anniversary set”
Gary Langan has enjoyed a successful 40-year career in the music industry as a recording engineer, producer, a mixer (and remixer) and is perhaps most celebrated as a founding member of the Art of Noise during the time when he was part of Trevor Horn’s studio team in the early 1980s. This period coincided with the formation of ZTT Records, indeed the Art of Noise were the label’s first official signing.
As part of our celebration of the 30th Anniversary of ZTT Records, we recently caught up with Gary and spoke at length about his career and in particular his time at ZTT and working with the Art of Noise.
SuperDeluxeEdition: Let’s talk about the old days. You first started working in the early days on some Queen records, didn’t you?
Gary Langan: Yes.
SDE: Did you always want to get into music? Were you always interested in working in recording studios?
GL: Yes, I did, from the age of 14, [I] always wanted to work in a recording studio. My father was a musician and used to do a lot of sessions for the BBC and I used to tag along with him in the summer holidays, so from an early age I was introduced to recording studios. He was a dance band musician, he wasn’t a rock musician. I sat on the piano stool from the age of seven and really hated it but still enjoyed music, so I saw this thing that I could be involved in music, but I didn’t necessarily have to be the guy playing it.
Continue reading “#ZTT30: Gary Langan on ZTT and the Art Of Noise”
After much anticipation, Demon Music yesterday revealed the track listing for their five-disc Belinda Carlisle Anthology deluxe set.
One of the main talking points amongst fans, was whether In Your Wildest Dreams – a track was used on the 1987 film Mannequin – would be included as part of this release. Unfortunately, no master tape for this song could be located, despite the best efforts of Demon. The fact that the track has never had a commercial release makes the hunt for a master even trickier. Should anyone out there know where a master tape of In Your Wildest Dreams might be (without film sound effects over the top) then do get in touch!
Continue reading “Belinda “Anthology” track listing”
The original founding members of influential avant-garde synthpop outfit the Art Of Noise are hoping to get back together and tour again, possibly in 2015.
Interviewed (separately) for this blog, Fairlight Programmer J.J. Jeczalik and Engineer/Producer Gary Langan both confirmed that there were ongoing “conversations” about hitting the road.
Langan told us: “What I’d really like, my wish for the future, is that somehow the Art of Noise gets back together again and we go on tour, and we do it properly. There are conversations, everybody’s aware of it.”
Continue reading “#ZTT30: Art of Noise in talks about reforming for possible live dates”
Scottish pop duo Hue and Cry are reissuing one of their most successful albums as a special deluxe book set.
Their second album, 1988’s Remote, becomes Remote: Major To Minor – a 3CD+DVD set packaged within a 48-page hardback book.
Continue reading “Hue and Cry / Remote: Major to Minor / 4-disc deluxe package”
If you wanted to buy an ‘import’ CD or music release in London in 1985 there was only one place to go – Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus. A record store so cool that you didn’t have to leave the tube station to go shopping (there was an entrance within the station itself).
It was there that this unique Frankie Goes To Hollywood Japanese EP was purchased almost 30 years ago.
Continue reading “#ZTT30: Japanese CD of the Day: Frankie Goes To Hollywood / BANG!”
Sony’s Legacy Recordings division will release the The Complete Studio Recordings of rock guitarist Joe Satriani in April 2014.
All 14 studios albums, starting with 1986’s Not Of This Earth, are included in this 15CD box set, with the final disc being made of a selection of rarities specially curated by Satriani himself (Added Creations and Bonus Tracks).
Continue reading “Joe Satriani / The Complete Studio Recordings / 15CD box set”
The high resolution blu-ray audio of The Rolling Stones‘ Let It Bleed will be issued on 24 February 2014.
The 1969 album will be the third Rolling Stones release to get the Pure Audio treatment after the GRRR! release in late 2012 kicked off the format and Exile On Main Street arrived in the latter part of 2013.
Continue reading “The Rolling Stones / “Let It Bleed” blu-ray audio coming soon”
In an extract from an exclusive interview with SuperDeluxeEdition Art of Noise member Gary Langan recalls when the band were nominated for a GRAMMY award in 1987 for Peter Gunn. By this stage Gary had left the band and relations has soured to the extent that he wasn’t invited to the awards…
Gary Langan: “I was producing Spandau Ballet. I was doing “Through the Barricades” and I was in Munich in Germany. We’d been put up for a Grammy Continue reading “#ZTT30: Close (To The GRAMMY)”
One of four ZTT releases this week, The Art of the 12″, Volume Three is probably the pick of the bunch with a fine selection of rare, obscure and new-to-CD remixes. The usual suspects (Frankie, Propaganda, Art of Noise) are joined by Sigue Sigue Sputnik, ABC, Nasty Rox Inc, and The Belle Stars, amongst others.
The Crowded House frontman’s first solo album from 13 years is produced by Dave Fridmann with Neil Finn opting for a more expansive and experimental sound.
Lisa Stansfield finally follows up 2004’s The Moment (produced by Trevor Horn and released on ZTT, fact fans) with Seven. Hubby and writing partner Ian Devaney is back producing and there is a deluxe edition which includes a bonus studio recording and two live tracks.
The excellent Frankie Said compilation is expanded into a Frankie Goes To Hollywood audio/visual experience thanks to the inclusion of a DVD which features videos and Top of the Pops performances.
DJs, producers, compilation curators and general eighties enthusiasts Blank & Jones are this year undertaking perhaps their most ambitious task to date.
The duo are working on a new volume of their well regarded SoEighties remix compilation series, but this one will be themed solely around ZTT releases from the classic era of the early eighties. What’s special about this project is that Trevor Horn has agreed to hand over the original multi-tracks and the pair have set about reconstructing new mixes with the self-imposed restriction of only using the original parts available from the original tapes. This will offer the freshness and excitement of a new reworking, coupled with the authenticity of a period remix.
Continue reading “#ZTT30: Blank & Jones working on ambitious ZTT SoEighties set”
The Parlophone Label Group (now part of Warner Music) will issue a 40th Anniversary Stranglers box set called Giants and Gems: An Album Collection.
This set includes the six studios albums issued in the UA/Liberty Records era, plus live albums Live (X Cert) and Live at the Hope and Anchor. 1986 B-sides compilation Off The Beaten Track also makes an appearance with The Stranglers two most recent albums Suite XVI (2006) and Giants (2012) making up discs 10 and 11.
Continue reading “The Stranglers / Giants and Gems 11CD anniversary box set”
Just in case anyone out there who wants the new Beatles US Albums box hasn’t picked one up yet, Amazon in the UK have just reduced it again by around £50 to £107. The last time they reduced the price similarly, it went back up to £150 after less than 24 hours.
