Kate Bush is following up her ‘Escapologist Edition’ of The Dreaming with a third “illustrated” vinyl edition of one of her studio albums, this time 2011’s 50 Words For Snow.
Called, the ‘Polar Edition’ this ties in with her new animation, Little Shrew, which features a new radio edition of ‘Snowflake’, the song which opens 50 Words For Snow. The new 2LP set features new artwork, which has been designed by Timorous Beasties, the same Glasgow-based design studio responsible for the the two previous illustrated editions (Hounds of Love and The Dreaming).
The new illustrations inside the gatefold of the Polar Edition of 50 Words For Snow (click image to enlarge)
The double album has been pressed on 180 black vinyl at Record Industry from new lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman of the 2018 remasters. This is presented in a gatefold sleeve with metallic belly band with embossed text. The albums come in poly-lined sleeves and this set also includes a special Christmas card!
The Polar Edition of 50 Words For Snow will be released on 15 November 2024 via The State51 conspiracy.
It’s available to pre-order via the SDE shop using this link or via the pre-order button below.
The Flaming Lips / Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (blu-ray audio)
The Flaming Lips’ 2002 best-selling album is available for the first time on Blu-Ray. It features a brand new Dolby Atmos Mix (by Dave Fridman), and a 5.1 Mix & Hi-Res Stereo. Order via the SDE shop using this link or the button below.
Manic Street Preachers will release Critical Thinking, their 15th studio album, in January.
We are told that the album “celebrates conflicting ideas colliding, with unflinchingly soul-searching lyrics meeting some of the most head-on, addictive melodies the band have ever recorded”.
Nicky Wire says: “This is a record of opposites colliding – of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution. While the music has an effervescence and an elegiac uplift, most of the words deal with the cold analysis of the self, the exception being the three lyrics by James (Dean Bradfield) which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs”.
The new single is ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ which features bassist/lyricist Nicky Wire on vocals. You can preview it below.
The 12-track album (tracklisting has not been made available yet) is available on vinyl, CD and cassette. A 2CD deluxe edition looks to be consistent with previous deluxe editions (in DVD-sized hardcover book packaging) and features 12 demos on CD 2 along with a Steven Wilson remix of ‘Decline & Fall’.
Critical Thinking will be released on 14 February 2025 (was 31 Jan) via Columbia Records.
Kate Bush has told broadcaster Emma Barnett that she plans to get to work on a new album.
Bush was talking to Barnett in an interview broadcast this morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to promote a new animation called Little Shrew(Snowflake) that Kate has written and directed. The film, just over 4 minutes long, depicts a little shrew searching for hope as she makes her way across a bombed-out city. The music is a 2024 radio edit of ‘Snowflake’ a song that originally appeared on Kate’s last studio album, 2011’s 50 Words For Snow. The film ends with the message: “You could be hope for a child caught up in war. Please donate to War Child”.
Fans are likely to be both delighted with the news that Kate has firm plans to work on a new record but also somewhat dismayed that when asked by Barnett directly if she’s working on anything now, her answer was “not at the moment”. Kate cited recent endeavours on her archive, redoing her website and her lyrics book – along with this new animation – as things that have kept her busy.
Emma Barnett also asked about Kate returning to the stage (David Gilmour was asked recently if he could persuade Bush to get back on stage) and Kate said she was “not there yet”.
Tears For Fears return with Songs For A Nervous Planet, a brand new ‘hybrid’ album [out tomorrow] with four brand new studio recordings and 18 live tracks from part 2 of the band’s Tipping Point tour in 2023. A companion concert film Tears For Fears Live: A Tipping Point Film is showing at cinemas worldwide tonight and on Saturday (more info here).
Last week SDE caught up with Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith at their record company offices in London to discuss the new songs, the live album, the film and their reissue plans for the future…
SDE: It’s exactly three years since we last spoke, when The Tipping Point was being launched. How pleased are you with how well received that album was?
Curt Smith I think it’s done wonders for us. When we finished the album, we listened to it and thought, “this is great”, but of course, you don’t know how it’s going to be received until it’s received, and for it to be received that well makes you realize that you know your audience. It’s always gratifying when something you think is really good does well.
Were you confident, Roland, that it would get the reaction that it got?
Roland Orzabal : No! [laughs]. I think what it was, was in 2004 we put out Everybody Loves AHappy Ending, and we had a great time recording it, and it was just this fantastic outpouring of creativity and we weren’t encumbered in any way. And [long pause]… it became a series of disasters. You know, LA Reid [President & CEO of Arista Records] being fired just as the album was about to come out on Arista, etc, etc. So when we were making The Tipping Point, even though it still felt good and unencumbered, I wasn’t sure whether it would just disappear into the ether again. Having said that though, the Happy Ending album was very unlike early Tears For Fears. It was almost like a very relaxed follow up to The Seeds of Love. And then with The Tipping Point, I realised that we are good at dealing with the heavy issues, similar to The Hurting which I see as very much having a direct link to The Tipping Point.
You think the lyrical weight to The Tipping Point might have connected with people?
Curt Smith: Yeah, without question. I mean, after everything that had happened just prior to that, I think it did connect with an audience. And I think Roland’s right, when you look at Everybody Loves A Happy Ending, at times, it’s a bit more whimsical, but it sounds like we’re enjoying it and playing around a bit. The story of that album is really just the title [laughs]. It doesn’t really have a theme going through it, particularly, and…
Roland Orzabal …it didn’t go through the mill [laughs]. There’s something about us together and our lives, when it comes to music, that means we have to work harder than possibly most people… and that was certainly true for The Hurting, and it was true for The Tipping Point, which took years to come together.
Now you’re back with this live record. Why have you chosen to do a live album? There was that one before [Secret World] that came out in France…
Curt Smith …Over which we had no control
Okay, so this is the first proper ‘approved’ live album. So why did you decide to do it? Is it just an easy thing to do?
Curt Smith: I think the initial idea was the film, because we felt the band was so good, and visually, this tour, The Tipping Point tour was really good. And the music from the new album, fitted in so well and we really felt that the new music was as strong as our older music. But once we agreed to do the film, people from the record company were asking “what comes next?” and we felt that it was good enough to release a live album. We felt that the band was the best it’s ever been; we were the best, as far as playing and singing was concerned, that we’ve ever been. So we felt it was probably time to do that sort of anthology of where we were at this point in time, in a live album.
Roland Orzabal: Yeah, it was also a question of, how are we going to follow up The Tipping Point? Because it was very well received. It’s almost like that was enough. It’s like “we get Tears for Fears now, we understand them – don’t give us any more music”. We’ll dine out on this for many, many years to come. So then it became pretty obvious from the two of us independently, that we were going to do a live record, and after that it was a question of how we’ve got to sell it. What are we going to do with it? We could have quite easily done another album, but what’s the narrative? Everything is fine, now. Everything is wonderful. We’re happy again. So we didn’t do another studio album. We did four tracks very quickly and put it together, in a sense, to make a hybrid album.
Songs From The Big Chair was cobbled together
Roland Orzabal
With these four tracks you’re almost halfway to studio album, aren’t you? Certainly based on Songs From The Big Chair. But what you’re saying, Roland, is that it just didn’t feel like the right time. Too soon?
Roland Orzabal: This is, again, a good analogy, because you got The Tipping Point and The Hurting and then you’ve got Songs For A Nervous Planet and Songs From The The Big Chair. Songs From The Big Chair was cobbled together. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but it really was. We had a B-side, ‘Broken’, that kind of stuff, plus live material and then there was an instrumental [‘Listen’] that Ian [Stanley] had lying around. It was cobbled together. We could have done exactly the same thing [if we’d wanted to].
It did well for a cobbled together album…
Roland Orzabal: Very well, because of certain songs…
Curt Smith …certain songs, and weirdly, in terms of it being put together like that, tracks like ‘Listen’ are incredibly important for that album. It was cobbled together, but it worked, because we felt we had these three very big hits, and so the rest had to have some depth and be a little stranger. And so ‘Broken’ came in; ‘Listen’, came in. I mean, I think the gel that holds it all together, is actually ‘The Working Hour’. The only one I have an issue with on that album is ‘Mother’s Talk’. The rest I’m happy with. And the reason why – and that tells you the story – is there are so many versions of that song.
I’ve actually heard the unreleased early Jeremy Green version [recorded and rejected before the original album cut]
Roland Orzabal: Oh dear. I kind of hoped that would be buried.
Curt Smith: I still don’t think we ever got it right. But I think with the new four songs on Songs For A Nervous Planet, I think, for us, it’s more a snapshot in time. There was a lot of pain involved in The Tipping Point, and whether it was a conscious decision or not, it seemed important to update where we were emotionally at this point in time. It’s certainly far more optimistic; it’s far happier. So it’s basically saying, you can come out of the end of all of that and be okay. And I don’t think we needed to make a whole album stating that. Making a whole album of happy music… it’s just not us.
To a degree it’s probably self explanatory, but the title ‘Songs For A Nervous Planet’ can you expand a little, on where that came from?
Roland Orzabal: It’s a riff on a book by Matt Haig called Notes On A Nervous Planet. That was a book I was reading in 2018 when I was suffering from a little bit of anxiety, to say the least, and what he’s actually saying in that book, I believe, is that what is making you nervous is how you are receiving the information. So it’s not about an ecological disaster, it’s not about the wars, that are always a feature of the human world. It’s about the fact that most people nowadays get their information from social media. And if you don’t get your information from social media, certainly in the States, you’re looking at a news feed which is divisive, whether it’s Fox or CNN. So the idea, I think, for Songs For A Nervous Planet is just actually trying to get away from the things are, in a sense, making your life more toxic.
Let’s talk about the studio recordings. Were they new or were some of them from The Tipping Point sessions?
Roland Orzabal: We had ‘Astronaut’ around, for almost 10 years. And I would say that, ‘Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad’, that guitar riff – which is buried – and the title, came about while we were making The Tipping Point, and actually while we already had at least 10 songs. So it was never truly a contender [for The Tipping Point album] and it certainly wasn’t developed enough. ‘Emily Said’, was some dumb idea that been around for a while, but the verse is new, the bridge is new, the chorus is new… and A Girl That I Call Home there was a backing track from the days of trying to write for The Tipping Point which had been completely forgotten. I came across the verse while I was emptying out an old computer, and I thought it was kind of interesting.
Have you got any songs leftover from the so-called “speed dating” sessions [where Tears For Fears worked with a procession of other songwriters] that we talked about, before?
Curt Smith: We had a ton of songs…
Are they just never gonna see the light of day?
Roland Orzabal: Well, you never know, because the fact is with The Tipping Point, it was saturated with good songs, songs that became singles on [BBC] Radio 2… We wouldn’t have been able to fit on ‘Astronaut’ or ‘The Girl That I Call Home’.
Curt Smith: The problem with a lot of the things from those speed dating episodes, is that they weren’t really us. But that’s not to say they couldn’t become us. There may be germs of an idea that you then make your own. But the songs that were on The Tipping Point had a story and had a flow to them that anything else would have interrupted.
How do you record together these days, Curt? Do you two feel the need to be in the same room or is that not really relevant anymore, with modern technology?
Curt Smith: For recording it’s definitely better to be together. For the writing proces, it’s not necessary.
Roland Orzabal: Absolutely.
So with these new songs, that was the case? You were in the same room?
Roland Orzabal: I spent the first two months this year in LA [where Curt lives] and yeah, some of the songs obviously are older, like ‘Astronaut’, but it was only when we we got together in the same room, that we finished a song like ‘Emily Said’, which didn’t have the verse or anything like it had in the end.
Was it just the two of you?
Roland Orzabal: We’ve got a guy we work with in the studio, who did the Happy Ending album, and he did The Tipping Point…
You’re referring to Charlton Pettus…
Roland Orzabal: Exactly. He speaks Curt’s language [comedic pause] because he’s American, and he speaks mine as well [laughs]
I was going to ask you about Charlton, actually. It strikes me he’s someone in the lineage of an Ian Stanley or a Chris Hughes?
Roland Orzabal: He’s like the two of them together.
He does everything, doesn’t he? He produces, writes… Is he the musical director, when you’re on tour?
Roland Orzabal: No. I would say, I do that… but having said that, though, in our band live, I’m a musical director, but Charlton is also a musical director, and so is Doug Petty, our keyboard player, so between the three of us it’s like, “shut the fuck up!”
How do you see Tears for Fears as a live unit? How has that developed over the years? I remember, we talked quite a long time ago about the Big Chair tour and working with the limitations of having a Revox tape machine. How different is it these days?
Curt Smith: It’s very different. I mean, we still have a computer playing stuff, to a certain degree, you know. Or you can get to ‘Badman’s Song’ on the live record, and on the film, which is 100 percent live. It’s just a band playing and enjoying themselves. To me, the biggest difference is the level and the standard of people we’re working with. And when they’re that good and that talented and creative, it pushes you. You’ve got to be that good. And I think that’s a really good thing. They bring more to the party than people we worked with before.
Roland, are you enjoying the touring a lot more than you did in the old days?
Roland Orzabal: Far more.
Curt Smith: Without question. And that’s a combination of the people we work with because not only are they really good musicians, they’re easy to be on the road with. They’re older people with kids like us.
Why was it different in the 80s, then? Is that just because everyone’s younger…
Curt Smith: Everyone’s younger and…
Roland Orzabal …It’s egos and immaturity.
Curt Smith: And, you know, once you have kids in your family, it’s weird; you change completely because you have something far more important at home than this. Whereas when you’re younger, this is all of your life. And everything revolves around it.
When you start out, you are very much stuck in with your peers. You know, “they’re a bit like Depeche Mode”…
Roland Orzabal
Roland Orzabal: Also, it’s, quite simply, the amount of songs you have to pick from, which is fantastic nowadays. And you realise that when you start out, you are very much stuck in with your peers. You know, “they’re a bit like this”, “they’re a bit like Depeche Mode…” but the more you carry on, the older you get, the more everyone realises – and even you realise – that actually you’re doing something that no one else does, which is wonderful.
Curt Smith: Also, as you as you get older and keep creating things of quality, you get far more respect. I find interviews far easier to do now than I did then, because no one’s trying to pick us apart; we have a history now. And as far as touring goes, the other thing that makes it far easier is when we were younger and at the height of our fame, the record companies wanted us to do everything, you know, do interviews all day long, play, shake hands and kiss babies after the show and we never saw anything. And now when we go on tour, we’re actually visiting the places we go. I actually leave the hotel and walk out and go see it. If you asked me what I saw on the Songs From The Big Chair tour it would it be nothing. The inside of a hotel is what I saw.
And they were longer slogs in those days.
Roland Orzabal: Yeah, eight months for the Big Chair tour. Just ridiculous. That’s gonna put you off.
Do you get recognised much, in the street, these days?
Curt Smith: More than I have for a long time. When I lived in New York, this is 35 years ago, I didn’t get recognised much, or at least people there just didn’t stop you, but since going back a lot – because my kids are there – I get recognized a few times, every time I’m there with them. Recently I was in Dublin with my brother and I was there for three days, and I got stopped eight times, which never happens. But generally we tend to fly under the radar, which is great. We have quite private lives, and we don’t really enjoy that side of it, so it works for us.
What about you, Roland? You’re rocking a quite different look from the old days. Do people recognize you?
Roland Orzabal: Only when I’ve got my hair down, so I put my hair up!
Curt Smith: We get recognized a lot more if we’re together.
Roland Orzabal: I’ve been with other mature gentlemen, and they thought we were Tears For Fears!
Curt Smith: I had dinner with John Taylor once and they they recognized John but not me [laughs].
Getting back to the live shows, can explain how you can perform a song as complicated as ‘Sowing the Seeds of Love’ live, given it has all these different sections, tempos, whatever. How do you actually go about recreating that live?
Roland Orzabal: The sequencing on that song is more the overdubs, because – and I’ve probably told you this before – when we were recording ‘Sowing the Seeds of Love’, we took the tempo of [The Beatles’] ‘I Am the Walrus’, so live, we have a click track that keeps us in with that rhythm, including the tempo changes. And live the keyboard player is playing the whirly [Wurlitzer organ], Curt’s playing the bass, we’re playing guitars, the drums are real… It’s great. It’s easy.
Is it easy though?
Roland Orzabal: It’s got to be easier than ‘Emily Said’…
Curt Smith:…Oh, that’s fucking weird…
Roland Orzabal: The verse is in B major, and you try playing your arpeggios like that [mimes a difficult looking chord shape], okay? And then the chorus is the same arpeggio in C, which is a lot easier, but that song itself is a bit tough, yeah. And then even the guitar part from ‘Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad’. I’m like, God…
When you’re being filmed on stage, what level of stress does that add to proceedings?
Roland Orzabal: It adds a level of stress, no question.
Curt Smith: Yeah. You look at the film [Tears For Fears Live: A Tipping Point Film], and I know we play shows where we look far more relaxed than that. We don’t look that relaxed, although, I don’t know whether people notice it, probably not. But that stress and that self consciousness made us play well, you know, because we were actually concentrating on it. We record [the audio] every night and the filmed show was one of the best performances.
Roland Orzabal: By the end of the evening, I knew the three guitar / lyric mistakes that I’d made, and I asked Charlton [Pettus], who put it together, to take them from Virginia Beach show, to fix some of the mistakes. And he did some vocal tuning, as well, but that was it.
You’ve got this Vegas residency coming up. It’s only three days not seven months, but where did that idea come from? I’m coming, by the way!
Roland Orzabal: Ah, you’ve just made me extremely nervous [laughs]. Where’d the idea come from? Again, it was management. It was management that suggested we do a live film, it was management that said, ‘let’s just do a Vegas residency’. And I think partly it’s to do with the fact that we’re managed by Full Stop management, the Azoffs company (Irving and Jeffrey Azoff) and Sarah [Montgomery]. The Azoffs are almost Vegas centric – almost – because they’re managing U2 and the Eagles. So it’s like you go to Vegas to do an audition for The Sphere [laughs].
Now there’s a good idea…
Curt Smith: That would be fantastic. We could retire after that…
Roland Orzabal: Tears For Spheres?
You’ve got it! It sounds like you’re going to be incorporating some of the new songs in Vegas?
Roland Orzabal: We’re going to try to incorporate all of them…
Curt Smith: Depends if they come together,
Roland Orzabal: It’s gonna be down to how difficult, it is because Curt’s got the worst part [mimes playing a very complicated bass part to ‘Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad’]. It’s like, what the hell? [To Curt]: Good luck! I was originally singing that song, actually…
Curt Smith: It would have been easier, if you had been singing. That would have been fine…
Roland Orzabal: Or if someone else played the bass. I know the bass part…
Curt Smith: I think I might have got it [laughs]
It’s a nice problem to have, but I guess there’s only so many songs you can fit into a one hour, 40 odd minute set…
Roland Orzabal: You’d be surprised. There’s already songs that I would probably replace from last time, and it may end up being, like, one song longer.
Are you gonna throw in any surprises, any ‘deep cuts’ that haven’t been played for ages?
Roland Orzabal: Yeah! [doesn’t expand on this, followed by hearty laugh]
Curt Smith: We start rehearsals next Monday. So let’s see.
You mentioned Everybody Loves A Happy Ending, earlier. That album was 20 years old this year. Do you have any plans to revisit that it at any point? It’s never been available on vinyl, for example, save for a promo red vinyl version?
Curt Smith: I don’t know. I mean, it’s something we could do. I brought it up before, because it’s one that would be easy, because we own it. That’s because we only gave them a license for a certain amount of years…
Roland Orzabal: Interesting…
Curt Smith: So the ownership came back to us quite a while ago, so we could… there’s some great tracks on that.
That album, as you were alluding to earlier, Roland, is somewhat forgotten and didn’t really get its proper moment in the sun.
Curt Smith: It was one of those things where it might just not have been the right time. I had my issues with the UK release here, because they never released anything from the album. Everything was a remix from the album. And then I hated them all.
Next year is the 40th anniversary of Songs From The Big Chair. What plans, if any, are there to mark that occasion?
Roland Orzabal: It’s not really an answerable question, because right now we’re really happy talking about the new tracks, and the live stuff is the live stuff. But Big Chair... Jesus, who knows? Maybe we’ll re-release ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’…
Curt Smith: …just to push it over the 2 billion mark!
There’s a reason that a lot of the songs from The Hurting or Songs From The Big Chair are not in the live set and it’s because we don’t enjoy playing them as much
Curt Smith
I think I’ve asked you this before, but have you ever given any thought to playing a whole album in full? Would you ever consider doing that? Like The Hurting – interval – Songs From The Big Chair, and other hits at the end?
Roland Orzabal: Yeah, I think we would, yeah. Never say never. It depends how much they’re paying us [laughs]
You’d have to play ‘Mother’s Talk’.
Curt Smith: Yeah, that’s a drag. And we’d have to play ‘Watch Me Bleed’…
Roland Orzabal: ‘Watch Me Bleed’ is okay…
Curt Smith: But, yeah, there are certain things that you’re not the biggest fans of. I mean, the joy of us playing live now is we’re not really playing songs that we don’t want to play. There’s a reason that a lot of the songs from The Hurting or Songs From The Big Chair are not in the live set and it’s because we don’t enjoy playing them as much. Or in the case of ‘The Working Hour’ because we don’t have a sax player.
Roland Orzabal: Yeah, shame.
Curt Smith: But there’s no point taking a sax player on the road for that one song. But would we do it? Maybe? But it wouldn’t be the first thought in our heads to go and do that.
Roland Orzabal: Plus, you’ve probably noticed that we are a lot more excited the newer the songs are. If we were promoting just a live album right now, it would be pretty boring,
Curt Smith: And there’s a reason why the four new songs come first [on ‘Songs For A Nervous Planet’], because we think that’s the important thing, that little snapshot in time that says ‘this is where we’re at right now’ and then we go into the live album, as opposed to the other way around.
There’s this fifth track studio track that’s on the Target CD. What’s that called, again and where’s that from?
Roland Orzabal: ‘Landlocked’. When we were trying to write for The Tipping Point, that was another thing that we did, in fact probably even before working with other people. Charlton [Pettus] and Curt came across to my studio in England, where I had a writing room, and they’d got that Maschine thing from Native Instruments [drum machine / beatmaker] and they’d done all these kind of strange electronic things. All they really did was press play and then we were off, and we came up with ‘Landlocked’. And personally, I really like that song. I like it a lot. It is a modern version of ‘Watch Me Bleed’. Ultimately, it comes from Sacha Skarbek sessions [Skarbek co-wrote ‘My Demons’ and ‘Please Be Happy’ from The Tipping Point].
Thanks to Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith who were interviewed for SDE by Paul Sinclair. Songs For A Nervous Planet is released on Friday 25 October 2024 (tomorrow!) and the live concert film is showing on 24 and 26 October at a cinema near you.
There’s still some copies of the SDE-exclusive blu-ray version of Songs For A Nervous Planet – with Steven Wilson Dolby Atmos, 5.1 and stereo mixes – which you can order via the SDE shop or using the buttons below. The album is of course available on vinyl and CD.
Wham!’s classic festive single ‘Last Christmas’ is being reissued again, this time – as with ‘Careless Whisper‘ – to mark the 40th anniversary of the song.
CD single and 12-inch vinyl variants will offering the following four versions of the track:
Last Christmas
Last Christmas (Pudding Mix)
Last Christmas (Live at Wembley Arena, December 2006)
Last Christmas (Instrumental)
The difference from the CD single released in 2023 is that the single and Remix versions of ‘Everything She Wants’ are absent (‘Last Christmas’ was a double A-side). They are replaced by the instrumental version of ‘Last Christmas’ and a ‘Live at Wembley Arena, December 2006’ version (performed by George Michael, obviously, and not Wham!.
12-inch Zoetrope vinyl edition of ‘Last Christmas’ (click image to enlarge)
The quirky, shorter Pudding Mix Edit of ‘Last Christmas’ (issued on the B-side of the 12-inch of ‘Everything She Wants’, and included on the SDE-exclusive blu-ray audio of Make It Big) does not feature on any version of this 40th anniversary reissue.
There’s a black vinyl 12-inch, a snowflake white vinyl 12-inch and a Zoetrope vinyl 12-inch. All feature the four tracks listed above.
Last Christmas is released on 13 December 2024, via Sony Music.
The Rolling Stones‘ club show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in June 1999 is being released as Welcome to Shepherd’s Bush, across a number of formats in December.
The legendary rockers were preparing to play two nights at Wembley Stadium – their first London shows in four years – when they announced the surprise warm-up show at the 2,000 capacity West London venue.
The band played a number of rarely heard gems over the course of an hour and a half with Mick Jagger telling the crowd “If you want to see the hits go to the big place down the road!”. ‘Melody’ (from 1976’s Black and Blue) was performed for the first time since ’77, while ‘Moon Is Up’ (from 1994’s Voodoo Lounge) had never been played live. Despite what Jagger said, there were hits, of course, and Sheryl Crow joined The Rolling Stones during a mid-set ‘Honky Tonk Women’.
This release is being issued as a 2CD+blu-ray set, on 4K UHD blu-ray and as a 2LP vinyl package. The show has been mixed in Dolby Atmos which is promoted as being on the 4K blu-ray but it should be on the blu-ray on the 2CD+blu-ray package as well. The packaging for the 4K release looks to be the same card sleeve as Queen Rocks Montreal.
Welcome to Shepherd’s Bush will be released on 6 December 2024 via Mercury Studios.
Standalone blu-ray only via SDE • Steven Wilson Atmos, 5.1 & Stereo Mixes of album & bonus tracks • Exclusive instrumentals • Quick pre-order
SDE is proud to announce that The Who’s classic 1971 album Who’s Next – “arguably their artistic pinnacle” in the words of Alexis Petridis – is now available to pre-order as an SDE-exclusive standalone blu-ray audio.
The band’s fifth studio long-player emerged from the ashes of a project called Lifehouse, an ambitious multi-media rock opera conceived by Pete Townshend in 1969, but ultimately aborted. Who’s Next features some of The Who’s best known songs, including ‘Baba O’Riley’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
The blu-ray was previously only available as part of the excellent, but expensive, super deluxe edition of Who’s Next, which was released just over a year ago. It features Steven Wilson remixes of Who’s Next and 14 bonus tracks. Those bonus tracks are of the highest quality and include unedited versions of singles such as ‘The Seeker‘, ‘Let’s See Action‘ and ‘Join Together‘.
The SDE Who’s Next blu-ray features exclusive instrumental versions
Wilson has created Dolby Atmos Mixes, dedicated 5.1 mixes and new stereo mixes of all 23 tracks with the exception of ‘Bargain’, for which the multi-tracks unfortunately could not be found (a Penteo ‘upmix’ was created for that track for the spatial/surround mixes).
The SDE blu-ray exclusively features Steven Wilson instrumental mixes of the album and all the bonus tracks (except ‘Bargain’, for the reasons stated above). These instrumentals do not features on the blu-ray in the box set.
The audio streams of Who’s Next on the SDE-exclusive blu-ray are as follows:
Who’s Next – Steven Wilson Dolby Atmos mix (48/24)
Who’s Next – Steven Wilson 5.1 mix (96/24)
Who’s Next – Steven Wilson Stereo mix (96/24)
Who’s Next – Steven Wilson Stereo Instrumentals (96/24)*
Who’s Next – Original 1971 Stereo mix (96/24)
The following 14 bonus tracks are available in SW Atmos (48/24), SW 5.1 (96/24), SW New Stereo (96/24)and SW Stereo Instrumentals (96/24):
The Seeker (Unedited Version)
Here For More
Now I’m A Farmer
I Don’t Know Myself (Eel Pie Sound Version)
Water (IBC Version)
Naked Eye (Olympic Sound Version)
Pure And Easy
Too Much of Anything
Let’s See Action
When I Was a Boy
Join Together (Unedited Version)
Put The Money Down
Relay (Unedited Version)
Long Live Rock
Jonathan Cornell of Immersive Audio Album reviewed Steven’s Atmos Mix on the blu-ray in the box set last year and concluded “as far as surround sound mixes of classic albums go, it simply doesn’t get much better than this” and Wilson himself noted that “it’s almost a cliche with surround sound to say that it’s like you’re in the studio with the band, but that really is the way it feels on these iconic recordings. You can almost reach out and touch the music”.
This Who’s Next blu-ray audio is #30 in the ongoing SDE Surround Series and will be packaged similarly to previous editions and ships with a free, collectible SDE Surround Series slipcase.
Do not miss out. This product is a limited edition and has a 10 day pre-order window, which closes on Friday 1 November 2024. Availability cannot be guaranteed after that date. The blu-ray is available only via the SDE shop. You can pre-order via the shop website or by using the button below.
This Who’s Next blu-ray is released on 17 January 2025 via UMR.
Tracklisting
Who’s Next The Who /SDE-exclusive blu-ray audio
Who’s Next
Steven Wilson Atmos Mix (48/24)
Steven Wilson 5.1 Mix (96/24)
Steven Wilson Stereo Mix (96/24)
Steven Wilson Stereo Instrumentals (96/24)
Original 1971 Stereo Mix (96/24)
Baba O’Riley
Bargain*
Love Ain’t For Keeping
My Wife
The Song Is Over
Getting In Tune
Going Mobile
Behind Blue Eyes
Won’tGet Fooled Again
*Atmos & 5.1 are upmixes. Missing from instrumentals & replaced with original stereo on SW Stereo Mix
14 bonus tracks
Steven Wilson Atmos Mix (48kHz 24-bit)
Steven Wilson 5.1 Mix (96kHz 24-bit)
Steven Wilson Stereo Mix (96kHz 24-bit)
Steven Wilson Stereo Instrumentals (96kHz 24-bit)
Watch as SDEtv explores the 5CD deluxe edition and 2LP half-speed mastered version of the Bryan FerryRetrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 release, which is out on Friday this week.
Compare prices and pre-order
Bryan Ferry
Retrospective - Selected Recordings 1973-2023 - 5CD deluxe set
Tears For Fears/Songs For A Nervous PlanetCD, Vinyl, Blu-ray
Tears For Fears release a ‘hybrid’ live album, Songs For A Nervous Planet. Hybrid because it includes four brand-new studio tracks. The SDE-exclusive blu-ray with Steven Wilson mixes has some final availability this week and the companion concert film is coming to a cinema near you (check out https://tearsforfearsfilm.com).
Paul McCartneyis releasing a second batch of Wings era albums as limited edition Japanese mini-LP SHM-CDs (compatible with all CD players).
These are sometimes called ‘paper sleeve’ editions and and each are presented as vinyl replica CDs with the usual exacting standards from Japan including OBI-strip, extra booklet with Japanese lyrics, ‘rice paper’ sleeve for disc protection and re-sealable outer clear sleeve. The albums in question are:
Venus and Mars (1975)
Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976)
Wings Over America (2CD) (1976)
Thrillington (1977)
Wings Greatest (1978)
These editions really normally are incredible and match the originals in amazing detail, so Venus and Mars has the two posters, stickers, inner sleeve etc., and Wings Over America has the poster and three inner sleeves (even though there’s only two CDs).
SDEtv explores the first batch
Masterings are all as per the original Archive Collection releases, so 2014 for Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound, 2013 for Wings Over America and 2012 for Thrillington (which was in the Ram box). No one seems to know about Wings Greatest. The official line from the label is “Remaster taken from latest remastered album” (?). All the CDs are ‘album-only’ with no bonus tracks.
As with batch one (now sold out) these are extremely limited, but the SDE shop has secured a guaranteed allocation and is offering them only as a 6CD bundle, which you can order via this link or the buttons below. Strictly one bundle per customer please (multiple orders will be cancelled).
All five are released on 16 December 2024.
Extra information
Venus And Mars
Released in 1975, Venus And Mars was the first of two albums to feature what many (Paul included) regard as the perfect Wings line-up, with the McCartneys and Denny Laine now joined by guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Joe English. Recording was done in New Orleans and Los Angeles.
2014 remaster. Includes miniature 2 x poster, 3 x sticker, inner-sleeve and the booklet featuring the Japanese translations of the lyrics.
At Speed Of Sound
Released in 1976, Reinforced by months on the road, the cohesion of a settled line-up was much in evidence on Wings At The Speed Of Sound, the band’s fifth album. So much so, that each band member had at least one lead vocal performance, including Linda’s ‘Cook Of The House’ and Denny Laine’s ‘Time To Hide’. Made at Abbey Road Studios, it was Paul’s first album to be recorded in Britain since Red Rose Speedway. Two more hardy perennials emerged in the shape of ‘Let ’Em In’ and ‘Silly Love Songs’. The album was another massive success, peaking at Number 2 in the UK (where it was the fourth biggest album of the year) and topping the charts in the US, spending nearly a year in the Top 100.
2014 remaster. Includes inner-sleeve and booklet featuring the Japanese translations of the lyrics.
Wings Over America
Released in 1976, selected from 90 hours of recordings, Wings Over America is a faithful account of the 1975-76 world tour that captures the band at its peak. It was taped at several of the US shows, but mixed as if it were a single performance. Paul combined old Beatle favourites with highlights from a solo catalogue that was now achieving real stature. Though an expensive triple disc on vinyl (it had been planned as a double, but a rival bootleg version encouraged Paul to expand it) sales were remarkable and it remains one of very few live albums to make Number 1 in America – incidentally becoming the band’s fifth Number 1 album in a row.
2013 remaster. Includes miniature poster, booklet, 3 x inner-sleeve and booklet featuring the Japanese translations of the lyrics.
Thrillington
Released in 1977, The mysterious Thrillington was an instrumental cover version of Wings’ 1971 album RAM, recorded that same year at Abbey Road Studios, under the pseudonym of Percy “Thrills” Thrillington. Paul produced the album while Richard Hewson (who had previously worked on The Beatles’ Let It Be) arranged and conducted. Thrillington was shelved following the formation of Wings and finally appeared, after a teaser ad campaign in the press, in 1977.
2012 remaster. Includes inner-sleeve and booklet featuring the Japanese translations of the lyrics.
Wings Greatest
Released in 1978, Wings Greatest was the first official retrospective of Paul’s post-Beatles career and included many of his single-only releases since 1970 including ‘Live And Let Die’, ‘Hi Hi Hi’ and ‘Mull Of Kintyre’. Despite there being enough hits to fill a double album, the decision was made to slim it down to one disc, even at the expense of a US Number 1, ‘Listen To What The Man Said’.
Remaster taken from latest remastered album. Includes inner-sleeve and booklet featuring the Japanese translations of the lyrics.
Nick Heyward’s debut album, North of a Miracle, is being reissued early next year.
Produced by Geoff Emerick, the 1983 album features the hit singles ‘Take That Situation’, ‘Whistle Down The Wind’, ‘Blue Hat For A Blue Day’ and ‘On A Sunday’.
An expanded 3CD deluxe edition features a new mastering of the album (using the original stereo tapes) annd two discs of bonus material. CD 2 offers twelve-inch mixes, instrumental versions and non-album B-sides while CD 3 (“Recordings 1984”) features Heyward’s 1984 single releases ‘Love All Day’ and the brilliant ‘Warning Sign’ (in all its versions) and three previously unreleased tracks: ‘Teach Till You Reach’ (a single that never was), ‘Give Love More Time’ (an alternate instrumental version of ‘Love All Day’), and ‘Kiss Those Tears Goodbye’ (an unfinished recording featuring the backing vocals only).
North of a Miracle 3CD deluxe edition with signed print (click image to enlarge)
The 3CD set comes in seven-inch packaging and features notes from Daryl Easlea, based on a brand-new interview with Nick Heyward. There’s also a 180g half-speed mastered vinyl edition which features an OBI-strip and comes with an insert and a poly-lined sleeve.
North of a Miracle is released on 31 January 2025 (was 17 January), via Demon Music.
Pet Shop Boys will release ‘New London boy’, a “fifth and final” single from Nonetheless, in November.
It is being promoted alongside their cover of David Bowie’s ‘All the young dudes’ and, in an exciting development, there will actually be two CD singles for this release (when’s the last time any band issued two CD singles for one song?).
The first CD – with Neil cover – features a radio edit of ‘New London boy’, a new song ‘Beauty has laid siege to the city’ and two remixes of ‘All the young dudes’.
Chris Lowe is on the cover of CD 2
The second ‘remixes’ CD single – with Chris cover – includes two further remixes of ‘All the young dudes’, a remix of ‘New London boy’ and – finally – ‘Clean Air Hybrid Electric Bus’ the bonus track from the Japanese CD of Nonetheless.
Both CD singles are packaged gatefold card wallets, printed on uncoated board, which is consistent with all the CD singles from Nonetheless.
‘New London boy’ / ‘All the young dudes’ will be released on 15 November 2024.
Having secured a deal with Apple Corps for Peter Jackson’s The Beatles Get Back and then the restored version of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 Let It Be, Disney+ continue their association with the Fab Four by announcing Beatles ’64, an “all-new” documentary that captures The Beatles first visit to America.
The film is directed by David Tedeschi and produced by legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese. That pair have collaborated previously, with Tedeschi editing 2011 George Harrison biopic Living in the Material World and editing and executive producing the more recent Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, both of which were directed by Scorsese. They were also both involved in the 2016 HBO mini-series Vinyl.
On 7 February 1964, The Beatles arrived in New York City and were famously mobbed by fans at Kennedy Airport. Beatlemania swept NYC and the entire country as the band performed on ‘The Ed Sulilvan Show’ and travelled to Washington for their first American concert. All of this has been documented before, of course, via Albert and David Maysles’ superb What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. which later became The Beatles: The First US Visit when re-edited in the early 1990s.
Unsurprisingly, Beatles ’64 will include footage shot by Albert and David Maysles, restored in 4K by Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post, in New Zealand. Also, the live performances from The Beatles first American concert at the Washington, DC Coliseum and their Ed Sullivan appearances, have been ‘demixed’ by WingNut Films and remixed by Giles Martin, which will undoubtedly generate speculation about a future vinyl and CD release. The music and footage in Beatles ’64 are augmented by newly filmed interviews with Paul and Ringo, and Beatles fans.
Beatles ’64 starts on Disney+ on 29 November 2024. A week earlier, Capitol/UMe will release a vinyl box set called 1964 US Albums in Mono. You can read more about that on this post.
Bronski Beat/The Agent of ConsentCD, Vinyl, Blu-ray
London Records reissue Bronski Beat’s classic 1984 debut The Age of Consent for its 40th anniversary. Formats are 4CD+DVD deluxe edition and a now sold out SDE-exclusive blu-ray audio with the album and plenty of bonus material.
Kevin Ayers / All This Crazy Gift Of Time (10CD box)
This Kevin Ayers box includes all of the surviving BBC sessions and In Concert appearances recorded by Kevin during this period, including a previously unreleased John Peel concert from 1970 and other tracks featuring Soft Machine, Bridget St. John and Gong.
Pete Townshend / Psychoderelict (2LP half-speed master)
First time on vinyl for the ‘music-only’ version of Pete Townshend’s last studio album (issued in 1993). Miles Showell at Abbey Road has handled the half-speed mastering. 1989’s The Iron Man is also issued this week.
Red Box had two hits in the UK from their 1986 album The Circle & The Square – ‘Lean on Me (Ah-Li-Ayo)’ and ‘For America’ and then promptly disappeared. That’s not the whole story of course, and this 4CD box fills in the gaps with the help of frontman Simon Toulson-Clarke who “undertook a deep dive into his archives” and discovered eleven previously unreleased demos from 1980-1982. You get both studio albums on CDs 1 & 2, remixes on CD 3 and those demos on CD 4.
Simple Minds’ 1984 album Sparkle in The Rain was reissued back in 2014 as a 4CD+DVD super deluxe edition. Long out of print, that box set is being made available again, newly presented, but without the DVD.
The album features the classic hits, ‘Waterfront’, ‘Up On The Catwalk’ and ‘Speed Your Love To Me’ and the box set features the original album on CD 1, a selection of B-sides and rarities on CD 2 and then what was a previously unreleased Glasgow Barrowlands concert across the last two CDs. My interview with Jim Kerr back in 2014 was used for Simon Cornwell’s sleeve notes the booklet. These notes are repeated in the new box.
The new Sparkle in the Rain 4CD box set (click image to enlarge)
The audio mastering is identical to the previous release but as you can see from the above image the 2024 Sparkle in the Rain box is offered in more compact packaging. There will also be an opaque blue vinyl edition released at the same time as the CD box.
Sparkle in the Rain will be released on 22 November 2024, via Virgin/UMR.
Following the box set release back in August, the blu-ray edition of The Alan Parsons Project’s 1978 album Pyramid is now available as a standalone release and features Alan Parson’s new Dolby Atmos Mix.
The group’s third studio album – a concept album centred on the pyramids of Giza – was originally released in May 1978. It was It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios with a variety of different lead vocalists employed including John Miles, Colin Blunstone, Lenny Zakatek, David Paton, Jack Harris and Dean Ford. Session musicians included guitarist Ian Bairnson and drummer Stuart Elliot, with arrangements by Andrew Powell.
Pyramid standalone blu-ray audio
The album sold in excess of two million copies, achieving platinum and gold status in numerous territories including the USA, Germany and Canada.
As well as the first ever Dolby Atmos Mix of an Alan Parsons Project album athe Pyramid blu-ray also features a 5.1 Surround Sound Mix (also by Alan Parsons) and a hi-res stereo remaster by Miles Showell.
Audio streams:
Dolby Atmos Mix by Alan Parsons
5.1 Mix of original album by Alan Parsons
Stereo HD Remaster by Miles Showell
The blu-ray is multi-region and comes with a booklet containing sleeve notes featuring quotes from Alan Parsons, the Woolfson family and the musicians, full lyrics and Alan Parsons’ thoughts on Dolby Atmos and 5.1 Surround Sound.
It’s released on 13 December 2024 via Cooking Vinyl and is available to pre-order via the SDE shop using this link or the button below.
Tracklisting
PyramidThe Alan Parsons Project/Blu-ray Audio
Dolby Atmos Mix of the original album by Alan Parsons
Voyager
What Goes Up…
The Eagle Will Rise Again
One More River
Can’t Take It With You
In The Lap Of The Gods
Pyramania
Hyper-Gamma-Spaces
Shadow Of A Lonely Man
5.1 Mix of original album by Alan Parsons
Voyager
What Goes Up…
The Eagle Will Rise Again
One More River
Can’t Take It With You
In The Lap Of The Gods
Pyramania
Hyper-Gamma-Spaces
9. Shadow Of A Lonely Man
HD Stereo Remaster of the original album by Miles Showell
3LP Style Council anthology that features two unreleased tracks: a demo ‘My Ever Changing Moods’ with strings, and an extended version of ‘Dropping Bombs On The Whitehouse’.
How low can this box go? Originally around £150 it’s now virtually being given away when you consider the content is five CDs, two LPs, a blu-ray and loads of ‘stuff’ (see the SDEtv unboxing).
Frank Zappa/Apostrophe (‘) gold vinyl LPgold vinyl LP
Overseen by original producer Jerry Goldstein, this 4CD set includes the original album, and each of the six songs from the original album in the original jam recordings.
This alternative version of the Budokan album includes 14 previously unreleased recordings. It features all the songs that didn’t make the original release, plus the best alternate versions. The vinyl comes in a gatefold sleeve with a Japanese OBI-strip and a 4-panel insert with liner notes.
The Who/Who’s Next 4LP box4LP (with Live in San Francisco)
Pete Townshend and Elton John are amongst two artists who have collaborated on what is being called a ‘literary and musical reinvention’ of Herman Hesse’s classic novel Siddhartha.
The German-Swiss writer’s 1922 novel deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Buddha, and it has now been reimagined in print and as a record.
Rachel Fuller’s book, The Seeker
Rachel Fuller (who’s married to Pete Townshend) has reimagined the story as a graphic novel with artwork by Emelia Wharfe. But there will also be a double vinyl album version which sees the story narrated by the late Christopher Plummer, and features performances by Pete Townshend, Sir Elto John, Nakhane, Emeli Sandé, Layton Williams, Sunidhi Chauhan and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and choir. The album features additional music and lyrics by Pete Townshend.
Inevitably, as well as the hardcover book and the 2LP vinyl, there will be a deluxe edition that brings music and book together. This is only available via the official shop. If you don’t opt for the deluxe version, the standard book has a QR code which gives access to the audio.
Alongside these products will be a new podcast series featuring conversations with guests including Pete Townshend and members of the album cast, together with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and choir, will perform the music at a special concert at Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 6 November.
The book, album and deluxe edition are released on 7 November 2024.
