Toyah & The Humans / Noise in Your Head / five-disc box set

4CD+DVD anthology features studio albums & bonus material

Noise in Your Head is a new five-disc box set that brings together Toyah Willcox‘s three albums as ‘The Humans’ and presents them to a wider audience with a raft of bonus material.

Formed in 2007, The Humans were were Toyah, her musical director Chris Wong and multi-instrumentalist, the late Bill Rieflin (drummer for King Crimson and latter-day REM and many others). After a live performance in Estonia in 2007 (for the birthday celebrations of Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia), the debut album, We Are The Humans, was recorded in Seattle in 2008 and released the following year. The CD version of this album in the box set now includes four bonus tracks: a cover of ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’’ featuring Robert Fripp, and three of Toyah’s original home demos, demonstrating her original concept for the ensemble.

Toyah explains her thinking behind the band: “I was very keen to work on an idea where mid-range frequencies didn’t cancel out the natural space of the voice. Always having been in love with the bass I wanted to create a trio of just my voice and two basses, allowing power, prose and top line melody to dominate the audio spectrum. The Humans were to be music stripped bare.”

A second album Sugar Rush followed in 2011, and the sound was expanded slightly thanks to ‘guest Human’ Robert Fripp, who performs on every track. A different version of ‘Small Town Psychopath’ is appended to the CD version in Noise in Your Head.

2014’s Strange Tales completes the trio of albums and now features a previously unreleased seven-minute version of the King Crimson classic ’21st Century Schzoid Man’.

As well as those three albums the bonus material included in Noise in Your Head includes Live at Scala London 2010, the first full release of the entire concert (16 tracks) which features Robert Fripp throughout and memorably concludes with an encore of ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin” and ‘Purple Haze’.

Finally, a DVD Live at Trading Boundaries featuring a previously unreleased 90 minute concert, and four promo videos.

All the discs in this set come in facsimile wallets and this comes with a 40-page booklet with some notes by Toyah and an essay on the period covered by Craig Astley (Toyah’s official archivist and compiler of this box).

Toyah dedicates this set to Bill Rieflin, who died only last month. Strange Tales bonus track ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ is one of his last completed recordings and was recently mixed for inclusion in Noise in Your Head.

 In addition to the CD box, coloured vinyl editions of each studio album will also be available. Noise in Your Head is released on 3 July 2020.

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Toyah & The Humans

Noise in Your Head - 4CD+DVD box set

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Toyah & The Humans

We Are The Humans - 180g orange vinyl

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Toyah & The Humans

Sugar Rush - 180g olive vinyl

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Toyah & The Humans

Strange Tales - 180g red vinyl

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Toyah & The Humans

Live at the Scala London 2010 - 180g purple vinyl

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DISC 1 (CD)

WE ARE THE HUMANS

1. We Are The Humans
2. Is It Wrong
3. Twisted Soul
4. Telekinesis
5. Quicksilver
6. Labyrinth
7. Icarus
8. Noise In Your Head
9. This Belongs To You
10. Demigod

Bonus tracks:

11. These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ [feat. Robert Fripp]
12. We Are The Humans [Toyah’s Home Demo]
13. Twisted Soul [Toyah’s Home Demo]
14. Icarus [Toyah’s Home Demo]

DISC 2 (CD)

SUGAR RUSH

1. Titanium Girl
2. Love In A Different Way
3. Sea Of Size
4. Pebble
5. Small Town Psychopath
6. Sweet Agitation
7. Playing In the Dark
8. Snow at 10:23
9. Sugar Rush
10. This Reasoning
11. Fragment Pool
12. Put A Woman On The Moon

Bonus track:

13. Small Town Psychopath [version] 

DISC 3 (CD)

STRANGE TALES

1. Slow Descent
2. She’s Fast
3. Get In Your Car
4. Amnesia
5. Bedhead
6. Improbable Thing
7. Sleep Tight

Bonus track:

8. 21^st Century Schizoid Man 

DISC 4 (CD)

LIVE AT SCALA LONDON

1. Demigod
2. Is It Wrong
3. Twisted Soul
4. Fragment Pool
5. Sugar Rush
6. Quicksilver
7. Labyrinth
8. Icarus
9. Noise In Your Head
10. Telekinesis
11. Sweet Agitation
12. Put A Woman On The Moon
13. We Are The Humans
14. This Belongs To You
15. These Boots Are Made For Walking
16. Purple Haze

Disc 5 (DVD)

LIVE AT TRADING BOUNDARIES

Filmed live at Trading Boundaries, near Fletching, East Sussex, 11.04.2015 

1. Sugar Rush
2. Titanium Girl
3. Get In Your Car
4. Labyrinth
5. Amnesia
6. Small Town Psychopath
7. Telekinesis
8. Fragment Pool
9. Sea Of Size
10. These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
11. Bedhead
12. Is It Wrong
13. Quicksilver
14. Sleep Tight
15. She’s Fast
16. Pebble
17. Slow Descent
18. Improbable Thing
19. Twisted Soul
20. Put A Woman On The Moon
21. Demigod

BONUS FEATURE:

PROMO VIDEOS

1. We Are The Humans
2. Quicksilver
3. These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
4. Sea Of Size