The 50th anniversary of the career of songwriter and guitarist JJ Cale is marked by the release of Tulsa Sound, a limited edition coloured vinyl 9LP box set.
This new package offers Cale’s first eight albums – Naturally, Really, Okie, Troubadour, 5, Shades, Grasshopper and #8 – and a bonus LP called The Early Years which is a collection of his 1960s singles.
Tulsa Sound is a 9LP coloured vinyl box set (click image to enlarge)
The audio has all been remastered at Abbey Road and this box also includes All have been a 40-page hardcover book with a foreword from a certain Mark Knopfler.
One of the most important artists in the history of rock, quietly representing the greatest asset his country has ever had… His records are really minimal, light, it’s all about finesse. It’s almost like he’s whispering in your ear but you hear everything single word. I don’t know how he does it. It’s such a cunning technique.”
Eric Clapton on JJ Cale
The unassuming Cale was raised in Tulsa, hence the ‘Tulsa Sound’ that he was crediting with originating. His work in this vinyl box spans the period 1971 to 1983. Cale’s influence was enormous, with many, many artists covering his work including The Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton, Captain Beefheart, Santana, Jerry Garcia and more.
Tulsa Sound will be released on 6 October 2023 via UMR.
CD 2: PETE TOWNSHEND’S LIFE HOUSE DEMOS 1970 – 1971 – PART 1
Teenage Wasteland (Demo)*
Too Much (Demo) *
Going Mobile (Demo)*
There’s A Fortune in Those Hills (Demo)*
Love Ain’t For Keeping (Demo)*
Bargain (Demo)*
Greyhound Girl (Demo)*
Mary (Alternate Mix) (Demo)**
Behind Blue Eyes (Demo)*
Time Is Passing (Demo)*
Finally, Over (Demo)**
Baba O’Riley (Original Demo)**
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
CD 3: PETE TOWNSHEND’S LIFE HOUSE DEMOS 1970 – 1971 – PART 2
Pure And Easy (Home Studio Mix) (Demo)*
Getting In Tune (Alternate Mix) (Demo)**
Nothing Is Everything (Let’s See Action) (Demo)*
Won’t Get Fooled Again (Demo)*
Baba O’Riley (Demo)*
Song Is Over (2021 Remix) (Demo)**
Pure And Easy (Olympic Studios Mix) (Demo)**
Mary (Original Mix) (Demo)*
Baba O’Riley (First Editing Demo)**
Song Is Over (Original Demo)*
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
CD 4: RECORD PLANT, NYC SESSIONS MARCH 1971
Don’t Do It (aka Baby Don’t You Do It) [Take 2, Unedited, March 16, 1971]**
Won’t Get Fooled Again [Take 13, March 16, 1971]*
Behind Blue Eyes (Version 1) [Take 15, March 16, 1971]**
Love Ain’t For Keeping [Take 14, March 17, 1971]*
The Note (aka Pure and Easy) [Take 21, March 17, 1971]*
I’m In Tune (aka Getting in Tune) [Take 6, March 18, 1971*
Behind Blue Eyes (Version 2) [Take 10, March 18, 1971}*
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
CD 5: OLYMPIC SOUND STUDIOS, LONDON SESSIONS 1970-72
Pure And Easy*
I Don’t Know Myself [B-side with Unreleased Count-in]
Time Is Passing [Stereo Mix]**
Too Much of Anything [Original 1971 Vocal]**
Naked Eye [1971 Remake]**
Bargain (Early Mix)**
Love Ain’t For Keeping (Unedited Mix)**
My Wife (Unedited Mix)**
Getting In Tune (Take 1 with Jam)**
Going Mobile (Alternate Mix)**
Song Is Over (Backing Track) [with Nicky Hopkins]**
When I Was a Boy**
Let’s See Action (Unedited Mix)**
Relay (Unedited Mix) [Alternate Vocal]**
Put The Money Down [Remix with Original Vocal]*
Join Together [Unedited Remix]**
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
CD 6: SINGLES & SESSIONS 1970-72
The Seeker (Original Single Mix)
Here For More [Original Single Mix]
Heaven And Hell [New Stereo Mix]**
Water [Eel Pie Sound Studio – New Unedited Mix]**
I Don’t Know Myself [Eel Pie Sound Studio – New Unedited Mix]**
Naked Eye [Eel Pie Sound Studio – New Unedited Mix]**
Postcard [Eel Pie Sound Studio – Original 1970 Mix]**
Now I’m A Farmer [Eel Pie Sound Studio – New Remix]**
The Seeker (Unedited Version)**
Water (IBC Version)**
I Don’t Know Myself (IBC Version)**
Let’s See Action (Original Single Mix)
When I Was a Boy (Original Single Mix)
Join Together (Original Single Mix)
Relay (Original Single Mix)
Waspman (Original Single Mix)
Long Live Rock (Original Olympic Mix)
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
CD 7: LIVE AT THE YOUNG VIC, LONDON – APRIL 26, 1971
Love Ain’t for Keeping*
Pure And Easy*
Young Man Blues*
Time Is Passing*
Behind Blue Eyes*
I Don’t Even Know Myself*
Too Much of Anything*
Getting In Tune*
Bargain*
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
CD 8: LIVE AT THE YOUNG VIC, LONDON – APRIL 26, 1971
Pinball Wizard**
See Me, Feel Me**
Baby Don’t You Do It*
Water*
My Generation*
(I’m A) Road Runner*
Naked Eye*
Bony Moronie*
Won’t Get Fooled Again*
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
CD 9: LIVE AT THE CIVIC AUDITORIUM, SAN FRANCISCO – DECEMBER 12, 1971
Introduction**
I Can’t Explain*
Substitute*
Summertime Blues**
My Wife*
Baba O’Riley**
Behind Blue Eyes*
Bargain*
Won’t Get Fooled Again**
Baby Don’t You Do It*
Magic Bus**
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
CD 10: LIVE AT THE CIVIC AUDITORIUM, SAN FRANCISCO – DECEMBER 12, 1971
Introduction To Tommy**
Overture**
Amazing Journey**
Sparks**
Pinball Wizard**
See Me Feel Me**
My Generation**
Naked Eye*
Going Down*
* Previously released with new remix
** Previously unreleased tracks
Blu-ray Audio
Steven Wilson Atmos Mix (48kHz 24-bit)**
Steven Wilson 5.1 Mix (96kHz 24-bit)**
Steven Wilson Stereo Mix (96kHz 24-bit)*
Original 1971 Stereo Mix (96kHz 24-bit)
Baba O’Riley
Bargain
Love Ain’t For Keeping
My Wife
The Song Is Over
Getting In Tune
Going Mobile
Behind Blue Eyes
Won’t Get Fooled Again
Bonus Tracks: Steven Wilson Atmos Mix (48kHz 24-bit) & Steven Wilson 5.1 Mix (96kHz 24-bit), Steven Wilson Stereo Mix (96kHz 24-bit)*
This ‘Ultimate’ Greatest Hits celebrates 50 years of Aerosmith. Have it your way, with 44 tracks on 4LP or 3CD, 20 tracks on a 2LP vinyl set or 18 tracks on a single CD. The SDE-value-o-meter shows that vinyl fans get charged around £2.90 (4LP) or £1.85 (2LP) per track, whereas CD buyers get charged 66p (single CD) or 48p (3CD set) per track.
The 2015 Erasure compilation is released on vinyl for the first time. This 2LP set features 18 tracks from the 20-track single CD edition – omitting ‘Be With You’ and ‘Sometimes (2015)’ – while adding ‘Love You To The Sky’ and ‘Hey Now (Think I Got A Feeling)’ (from 2017’s World Be Gone and 2020’s Neon, respectively) bringing it right up to date. Nice touch.
Bad News / Every Mistake Imaginable: The Complete Frilly Pink Years 1987-1988
Complete collection of the recordings by spoof metal act Bad News. Created for UK Channel 4’s The Comic Strip Presents series in 1983, the spoof rockers went on to issue two albums: their Brian May-produced self-titled debut (1987) and Bootleg (1988).
Ocean Colour Scene / Yesterday Today 2005-2013 (4LP box set – signed)
The OCS vinyl box sets continue with Yesterday Today 2005-2013 which includes the albums A Hyperactive Workout For The Flying SquadOn The Leyline, Saturday and Painting. Coloured vinyl and comes with a signed print.
To mark the 40th anniversary of Howard Jones’ recorded music career, Cherry Red are releasing a new compilation called Celebrate It Together: The Best of Howard Jones 1983-2023.
This will be available in four formats: a 64-track 4CD clamshell box, a 2CD digipak with 35 tracks and a 2LP edition pressed on ‘mint green’ vinyl with 22 tracks. This best of brings together his Warner-era recordings as well as work from his independent Dtox label.
The deluxe 4CD box includes collection of hit singles, remixes, key album tracks, live versions and alternative recordings, with each disc themed (Popular Hits, Electro, Chill and Curiosities). Given that the album reissues have been amazingly comprehensive, there’s not a whole lot left in the vault, but there’s still room for four previously unreleased tracks and a further six tracks that have never been issued on CD.
The 4CD edition of Celebrate It Together (click image to enlarge)
Although Cherry Red kicked off their Howard Jones campaign back in 2017 with another best of (Best 1983-2017) they boast that the new compilation is the “first anthology that looks at his entire catalogue” which is somewhat disingenuous, given 1993’s The Best of Howard Jones looked at his complete catalogue at that time, as did the the 2017 compilation!
The 2CD version does away with any themes and just distils the offering down, although casual fans are going to know next to nothing from the second disc. However, there is a new remix of an old number towards the end (New Song (2023 Elephant Talk Remix).
Celebrate It Together: The Best of Howard Jones 1983-2023 will be released on 6 October 2023, via Cherry Red.
Duran Duran’s 10th studio album Pop Trash will be released on vinyl for the first time in September.
Released in 2000, the long-player features the single ‘Someone Else Not Me’ and was the last studio album to feature guitarist Warren Cuccurullo. John Taylor was also not in the band at this point. Not long after release, the original Duran Duran line-up reunited and started working on what would become the Astronaut album.
The exclusive 2LP vinyl picture disc edition of Pop Trash (click image to enlarge)
Originally issued on Hollywood Records, Pop Trash was out of print for decades until BMG reissued it on CD last year. There was no vinyl reissue at that time, but that is now corrected with the label offering a 2LP black vinyl edition and a snazzy 2LP picture disc version which is exclusive to the official Duran Duran store and limited to 1500 units worldwide.
Kudos to the label for including bonus tracks on side four rather than going the ‘etched’ disc route.
Pop Trash will be released on vinyl on 1 December 2023 (was 29 September) via BMG.
Mike Viera, who runs the excellent spatial audio-celebrating Life in Surround YouTube channel, asked if he could talk to me on camera about SDE and, in particular, the ongoing SDE Surround Series of exclusive blu-ray audios. I told him that I’d be delighted to do that and you can watch the interview below!
The latest release in the SDE Surround Series is ABC’s The Lexicon of Love, which is still available at the time of writing exclusively via the SDE shop. You can browse the other titles in the Surround Sound section of the SDE shop.
Now That’s What I Call Music celebrate 1973 with a new Yearbook devoted to those 12 months which includes hits from Elton John, Paul McCartney & Wings, Slade, T. Rex, Faces, Billy Joel, Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye, Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and more.
As usual you can choose from the 4CD deluxe set in book packaging or a standard card sleeve version. Both offer 83 tracks from 1973 and there’s even room for some David Bowie this time, although perhaps not the track you were expecting.
A 3LP vinyl edition offers a cut down 47-track selection and is pressed on red vinyl. Full tracklistings for both formats can be found below.
NOW Yearbook ’73 will be released on 8 September 2023.
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Various Artist
NOW yearbook 73 - 4CD deluxe hardcover book edition
Get the Message: The Best Of Electronic, the 2006 compilation featuring music by Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner’s 1990s ‘supergroup’ Electronic, will be issued on vinyl for the first time, and expanded on CD, in September.
The 15-track compilation featured hits like ‘Getting Away With It’ and ‘Get The Message’ with a fair sprinkling of single mixes and radio edits.
On CD, this re-released version now comes with a second disc offering a selection of remixes and bonus tracks (the original deluxe CD came with a DVD with videos). The new 2LP vinyl edition (cut by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road) has the same 15 tracks as CD 1 on the 2CD set.
Get the Message: The Best Of Electronic will be released on 29 September 2023 via Parlophone.
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Electronic
Get The Message - The Best of Electronic - 2LP vinyl
Metallic Spheres, The Orb’s 2010 collaboration with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour has been remixed and reimagined for a reissue which will be called Metallic Spheres in Colour.
The original album featured Youth, who also produced the record and speaking about this reissue he says “The idea for Metallic Spheres In Colour, was that Alex Paterson could have done more on the first version, and he didn’t really have the opportunity because we had a philosophy of making the music like the Blade Runner soundtrack meets Wish You Were Here. So, I asked him why don’t we remix it and make it like an Orb classic? And in doing that, it’s almost like a completely different album.”
The new album is available on CD and vinyl. It has just two tracks which span around 20 minutes each and are therefore on each side of the vinyl record.
Metallic Spheres in Colour will be released on 29 September 2023 via Sony Music
Robbie Robertson, the Canadian guitarist and songwriter for The Band, has died aged 80.
The Band famously worked with Bob Dylan on a number of occasions and released seven studio albums in the original era of the late Sixties and 1970s. Their two acclaimed live albums included The Last Waltz, the soundtrack to the 1978 Martin Scorsese documentary of the same name. Robertson and Scorsese became good friends and Robbie would help with the music for his films (he co-wrote Eric Clapton’s ‘It’s in the Way That You Use It’ which was used for 1986’s The Color of Money and was still working with the legendary director in 2019, composing the score for The Irishman).
In the 1980s, Robbie signed with Geffen as a solo artist and enjoyed success with his self-titled 1987 debut which was co-produced with Daniel Lanois. The album was nominated for a Grammy and featured the single ‘Somewhere Down The Crazy River’ which was a top 20 hit in the UK.
In later years, Robertson continued working on film projects and was given many accolades, including in 2019, a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame.
A statement from his manager said he died on Wednesday surrounded by his family after a long illness.
Van Halen will release The Collection II, a new box spotlighting the band’s second incarnation, with singer Sammy Hagar, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen, and bassist Michael Anthony.
The package, which is available in 5CD or a 5LP vinyl variants, includes newly remastered versions of four studio albums. They are as follows: 5150 (1986), OU812 (1988), For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (1991) and Balance (1995).
The 5LP vinyl edition of The Collection II (click image to enlarge)
The bonus disc in this set features a selection of rarities recorded between 1989 and 2004. This exclusive compilation assembles eight tracks from this era, including ‘Crossing Over’, the B-Side to Balance’s ‘Can’t Stop Lovin’ You’ and two songs from the Twister Soundtrack – ‘Humans Being’ and ‘Respect The Wind’.
This remastering utilised the original master tapes and the process was overseen by the band’s longtime engineer, Donn Landee.
The Collection II will be released on 6 October via Rhino.
The career-compressing single LP edition of Elton John’s 2017 ‘best of’ Diamonds was reissued on vinyl at the end of June in a very special ‘Pyramid Edition’ after his record-breaking performance at the 2023 Glastonbury Festival.
The collection has been newly artworked and comes pressed on a special coloured vinyl featuring a purple/white pattern. It also includes a commemorative 10″x10″ litho print.
Pyramid Edition of Diamonds features new artwork, unique coloured vinyl and a litho print (click image to enlarge)
It looks really good, to be fair, and seemed to sell out almost instantly at the time. However Amazon in the UK appears to have availability once again. If you don’t like this version then the pretty cool ‘baseball’ picture disc edition, which was D2C-only (direct-to-consumer) is now available across various retail channels (although it’s quite scarce).
The Diamonds coloured vinyl Pyramid Edition is out now via UMC/Mercury.
Altered Images third album Bite will be reissued for its 40th anniversary in October.
Having worked with Steve Severin and Martin Rushent for the first two albums, 1983’s Bite was produced by both Mike Chapman and Tony Visconti and features the single ‘Don’t Talk To Me About Love’, which was the band’s last top 10 UK hit.
The album was a progression with its more polished production, something Grogan alluded to when she spoke to SDE last year: ““I like that record a lot. Stephen (Lironi, drummer and Grogan’s husband) came along and took us to another level, as he was obsessed by technology. He had a Linn drum, and he was the first person I knew who owned a computer. He was obsessively tech and we had a lot of attention to detail. Also, imagine getting to make a record with Mike Chapman and Tony Visconti. In your wildest dreams – tick. The gobby Glaswegian side of us had to be there for Bite: working with legends like that and telling them how you want it to work. That’s just cheeky. Mike is brilliant. I saw him a few years ago, and he told me: ‘You guys nearly pushed me over the edge.’ I felt quite proud of that.”
The reissue sees the album expanded to 2CDs and presented in deluxe 7″ packaging. The bonus disc offers seven-inch versions and remixes, including the fairly elusive on CD 8’30” version of ‘Don’t Talk To Me About Love’.
There’s also a half-speed mastered vinyl version which includes an OBI-strip, poly-lined inner sleeve and a 4-page insert. Limited to just 1000 units, the vinyl comes with a print signed by Clare Grogan. Audio has been remastered by Barry Grint at Air Mastering.
Bite will be reissued on 27 October 2023 via Demon Music.
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Altered Images
Bite - half-speed mastered vinyl with signed print
Sony are to issue a 40th anniversary coloured vinyl edition of Bonnie Tyler’s landmark album Faster Than The Speed of Night.
Jim Steinman produced the 1983 album and wrote two songs for it, the title track and the transatlantic number one ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’.
So excited were Columbia about that song’s success that they released virtually every track from the album as a single (across various territories), but remarkably, there were no more hits, aside from a ripple of success in Ireland. None were needed in the end, since ‘Total Eclipse…’ did all the heavy lifting and propelled the album to the top of the UK charts and into the top five in America and many other countries.
This reissue, on ‘ruby red’ vinyl, coincides with the release of Tyler’s autobiography Straight From The Heart and Bonnie is also embarking on a 40th anniversary ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ tour in Europe in October.
Faster Than The Speed Of Night will be issued on 15 September 2023, via Sony Music. The autobiography is out on 28 September.
A lot of early ’80s pop stars had pretentions that evidently extended further than the pages of Smash Hits and the studios of Top Of The Pops. They were the products of post-punk or art schools, not record company manufacture: left to their own devices, they were wont to make albums where hit singles shared space with the lengthy and the experimental, or start side-projects that might have been underwritten by their commercial success, but had no chance of replicating it.
But perhaps none of them ultimately ventured further away from the mainstream than Japan frontman David Sylvian: not even Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis travelled quite so far into the realm of abstraction as the music contained on Do You Know Me Now?, a 10 CD collection that compiles everything Sylvian released on his Samadhisound label between 2003 and 2014. Listening to its contents, you’re regularly struck by the feeling that his musical journey doesn’t resemble that of his early 80s contemporaries so much as it does that of Scott Walker, who undertook a roughly analogous path from the pop mainstream to the avant-garde outer reaches. But there’s one noticeable difference between them. There is literally no resemblance whatsoever between the music with which The Walker Brothers became 60s housewives’ favourites and the punishing sound of latterday Walker albums like Tilt or The Drift. That’s not quite true of David Sylvian’s oeuvre: if most of what’s on Do You Know Me Now? feels a world away from the music that made Sylvian famous, you can just about draw a line between the contents of 2003’s Blemish or 2009’s Manafon and Japan’s biggest hit, ‘Ghosts’, which – with its eerie, beatless and bass-less sound, its bursts of abstract electronics and occasional lapses into silence, felt like it was pushing at the boundaries of what a pop song could be, even as it occupied the Top 10.
You can just about draw a line between the contents of 2003’s Blemish or 2009’s Manafon and Japan’s biggest hit, ‘Ghosts’
Alexis Petridis
But, for all its weirdness, ‘Ghosts’ had a chorus: Do You Know Me Now? picks up Sylvian’s story at the point where he finally untethered both his career from a major label (Virgin, who, in fairness, had kept the faith from the moment Japan had split, releasing ambient collaborations with Can’s Holger Czukay alongside more straightforward song-based Sylvian albums) and his writing from standard verse-chorus structure. From the moment his solo career began, Sylvian had made a habit of gathering leftfield musicians around him – Czukay, Robert Fripp, trumpeter Jon Hassell and Russell Mills among them – but his latest choice of collaborator seemed telling: Derek Bailey, the grand old man of free guitar improvisation, his music as challenging and devoid of obvious melody as it gets, his name in the credits virtually a guarantee that the contents would require a lot of commitment on the part of the listener.
And so it proved: Blemish, which opens this set, picked over the collapse of Sylvian’s marriage in utterly uncompromising style. It’s heavy going, both musically and emotionally, whether the glitchy, abstract accompaniment is provided by Bailey, electronica auteur Christian Fennesz, or Sylvian himself, although chinks of light occasionally appear amid the gloom, as on ‘Fire In The Forest’ (“there is always sunshine above the grey sky”), and an accompanying album of remixes occasionally finds other artists leavening the emotional load a little: such things are obviously relative, but Burnt Friedman’s remix of the title track and Sweet Billy Pilgrim’s take on ‘The Heart Knows Better’ tease out a sweetness that’s not immediately apparent in the originals. Nevertheless, it’s an album that requires the listener to immerse themselves completely – you really can’t listen to it in the background while you’re doing something else – but its soul-bearing intensity and the originality of the sound world it creates is the repayment: if you make the effort, you can find yourself lost within it. Something similar is true, perhaps even more so, of Manafon, which assembled another group of committed avant-gardists – including Bailey’s sometime collaborator Evan Parker on sax, pianist John Tilbury and Austrian electro-acoustic experimental band Polweschel – for an album that occasionally makes Blemish sound poppy: for all the velvety quality of Sylvian’s voice, the tracks often feel more like recitations set to abstract music than songs per se; there’s almost nothing the way of conventional melody and nothing at all in the way of standard rhythm. But it has a power entirely of its own, occasionally a quite devastating one, as on its meditation on terrorism, ‘Random Acts Of Senseless Violence’ or ‘The Greatest Living Englishman’’s rumination on a life unfulfilled. Again, an accompanying collection of “variations” on the album’s tracks is at least a little easier-going, although clearly easy-going isn’t really the point.
Blemish is an album that requires listeners to immerse themselves completely… but its soul-bearing intensity and the originality of the sound world it creates is the repayment: if you make the effort, you can find yourself lost within it.
Alexis Petridis
Blemish and Manafon are the dictionary definition of ‘Not For Everyone’, and the same is true of the 70-minute long When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima, recorded as part of an installation at a Japanese exhibition, which seems to sit somewhere between ambience, musique concrete and sound collage. But not everything on Do You Know Me Now? is so uncompromising: it’s a noticeably more varied collection in terms of light and shade than that. Another ambient album, There’s A Light That Enters Houses With No Other Light In Sight is noticeably more straightforward than When Loud Weather… setting the poetry of Franz Wright to warm piano tones, snatches of violin and gusts of dark electronics. World Citizen, a 2004 EP that saw Sylvian working once more with frequent collaborator Riyuchi Sakamoto offered a skewed, rather beautiful take on pop: the melody even shines through a distortion-heavy remix by Ryoji Ikeda. The work of Nine Horses, a collaboration between Sylvian,his brother, Japan’s drummer Steve Jansen and electronica artist Burnt Friedman, shares some of Blemish’s bleak tone lyrically, but sets the words to mid-paced songs that variously take in trip hop, jazzy acoustic modes, sparse electronic balladry and a fantastic guest appearance from Stina Nordenstem on ‘Wonderful World’. Sylvian’s route into the world of The Wire magazine wasn’t, it seems, an entirely straightforward path.
But, like that of Mark Hollis, it was a path that eventually led to silence. Manofon is, to date, the last vocal album that David Sylvian has released: the last album to bear his name, There Is No Love – a collaboration with Mark Wastell and Rhodri Davis to which he contributed a spoken-word performance, was released in 2017. A year later, he told an interviewer that he was “not currently thinking about a future in the arts”, although there have been flickers of artistic activity since: a photographic essay in 2021, a track on a Riyuchi Sakamoto tribute album last year, a guest appearance on Isabelle Adjani’s forthcoming solo album. Nevertheless, there’s no getting around the fact that Do You Know Me Now? feels like a full stop, albeit an extremely elaborate one: beautifully designed, complete with a 100 page book (Sylvian’s new essay within it gives no clue as to his future intentions) clad in a slipcase, and retailing for just shy of 150 quid. The music in it is strange and unique: unique enough that you leave it hoping it isn’t really the end it appears to be.
Samadhisound 2003-2014: Do You Know Me Now? was reviewed by Alexis Petridis for SDE. It’s out today.
Sheena Easton’s 1982 album Madness, Money and Music will be reissued in September as a CD+DVD deluxe edition and on coloured vinyl.
The record was Easton’s third on EMI (she’d released two in 1981) and featured the single ‘Machinery’ which was a minor hit in the UK and ‘I Wouldn’t Beg For Water’ which was only issued as a single in the US and Canada.
The audio has been remastered and the deluxe CD+DVD offers eight bonus tracks on the CD and then a DVD which features her US TV special ‘Act One’ (with special guests Kenny Rogers and Al Jarreau) and promo videos forthe singles from the album.
The deluxe package comes with a 24-page booklet featuring new interviews with producer Christopher Neil and songwriters Deborah Allen, Steve Thompson, Peter Vale.
In addition to the CD+DVD edition, a green vinyl LP version will be released that features just the standard 12-track album.
Madness, Money and Music will be released by Cherry Pop, in association with RT Industries.
As part of Demon Music’s Suede30 campaign, the label are issuing Suede’s first four singles as seven-inch picture discs, reproducing the original arresting cover images on the discs.
The third release is the classic, ‘Animal Nitrate’, originally released on Nude Records on 22 February 1993, and to this day one of many highlights of a Suede concert. It reached number 7 in the UK charts, making it the highest- charting single from the debut album.
The B-side to this single was ‘The Big Time’ which didn’t appear on the Suede album. The picture disc is strictly limited to 1000 units worldwide and is only available via the SDE shop and the official Suede store.
The ‘Animal Nitrate’ seven-inch picture disc is released on 24 November 2023 via Demon Records. Pre-order via the shop using this link or the buttons (‘pre-order’) below.
SDE editor Paul Sinclair takes a first look at No 12 in the SDE Surround Series, ABC’s 1982 album The Lexicon of Love.
This physical product features FOUR exclusive versions of the album, as follows:
A Dolby Atmos Mix of The Lexicon of Love (by Steven Wilson)
A DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Mix of The Lexicon of Love (by Steven Wilson)
A hi-res stereo remix of The Lexicon of Love (by Steven Wilson)
A hi-res stereo instrumental mix of The Lexicon of Love (by Steven Wilson)
The 1982 mix of The Lexicon of Love in hi-res stereo
This product is exclusive to SDE. It is No.12 in the ongoing SDE Surround Series and ships with a collectible SDE slipcase.
The Lexicon of Love SDE-exclusive blu-ray is released on 4 August 2023. Pre-orders are shipping right now and there is still some stock available. Order using this link or via the buy button (‘pre-order’) below.
TECHNICAL NOTES: This blu-ray audio requires a blu-ray player. Decoding the Dolby Atmos mix requires a Dolby Atmos-certified soundbar or a Dolby Atmos-compatible AV Receiver/Amp. The Dolby Atmos mix will ‘fold down’ to 5.1 or stereo if a Dolby Atmos decoder is not detected.
EU SHIPPING NOTES: If you are ordering from the EU please be aware that that goods may be subject to import VAT when they arrive from the UK. The prices the SDE shop charge you do not include VAT
Tracklisting
The Lexicon of LoveABC/40th anniversary
SDE Blu-ray Audio
The Lexicon of Love in the following audio mixes:
Steven Wilson Dolby Atmos Mix
Steven Wilson DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix (96/24)
Steven Wilson Stereo Mix in hi-res stereo (96/24)
Steven Wilson Stereo Instrumental mix in hi-res stereo (96/24)
It’s tempting to wonder what executives at their record company might have made of the recently-formed Fun Boy Three. On the one hand, they should have been as close to a guaranteed success as pop music got in late 1981: after all, they were comprised of Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple, three most immediately recognisable members from one of the biggest British bands of their era, a band that had ended their career a few months previously with one of the most celebrated number ones in UK chart history. On the other… well, just listen to their idea for a debut single. A stew of lumbering percussion, needling organ and doomy backing vocals, topped off with impossibly pessimistic lyrics about famine, nuclear war and global conspiracy, ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum’ was certainly original, a decisive musical shift that underlined the Two Tone era had drawn to a close, but it sounded like it was aimed specifically at anyone who thought the one problem with The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’ was that it was insufficiently gloomy.
As it turned out, ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum’ was a Top 20 hit, which probably tells you more about residual affection for their former band than its radio-friendliness. It kicked off a brief, intriguing career that feels rather forgotten in 2023, inevitably overshadowed by The Specials’ legacy. The Fun Boy Three may have had huge hits and gold-selling albums, they might have helped launch the career of Bananarama, but they didn’t have the same kind of impact The Specials did: no youth subculture was spawned in their wake, no legion of bands were inspired by them, they never released anything with the eerie presence of ‘Ghost Town’, a song that literally appeared to be commenting on current events while it sat at number one.
Fun Boy Three didn’t have the same impact The Specials did
Alexis Petridis
None of which reflects on the Fun Boy Three’s actual music, which deserves better than its current status as an addendum to The Specials’ career, a situation The Complete Fun Boy Three’s four CDs and a DVD – the latter collecting promo videos, Top of the Pops appearances and a live show from the Old Grey Whistle Test – attempts to rectify. If anyone else had come up with an album as experimental, dense and strange as their eponymous debut, you suspect it would be hailed as a masterpiece of boundary-free post-punk thinking: as it is, they warrant literally one sentence at the end of a chapter about Two Tone in Simon Reynolds’ otherwise exemplary post-punk history Rip It Up And Start Again.
Interviewed around the time The Specials reformed, Terry Hall described The Fun Boy Three’s eponymous debut as “the sound of three people sent mental by being in The Specials”. It was a flippant remark, with a grain of truth at its centre. A dark, oppressive mood hangs over its contents – even the Bananarama collaboration It Ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It), a Top 5 hit in early 1982, would sound pretty ominous stripped of their vocals – that was presumably a response to the pressurised world the trio had inhabited in the last 18 months of The Specials’ career: ”everything was a trauma,” recalled Hall, “you didn’t get any kind of space, which is what I started to want: just an hour or two… you didn’t get a minute off”. It’s an effect the album achieves via a remarkable cocktail of influences.
Over the course of its 11 tracks, you can hear traces of reggae, Afrobeat, the spooked, clattering instrumentals found on Dr John’s debut album Gris Gris, the percussion-heavy, paranoid atmospherics of Public Image Limited’sFlowers Of Romance (a regular, if controversial, choice of soundtrack on The Specials’ tourbus), spy film soundtracks, and the post-disco electronic dance music bubbling up from New York, given a distinctly Fun Boy Three-esque spin on Faith Hope And Charity. The rhythms variously seem rooted in West Africa, Brazil and in the Nyabinghi drumming of Count Ossie – although ironically, one of the signature percussive sounds turns out to be a child’s xylophone, sourced from the distinctly non-exotic environs of a Habitat store – the backing vocals touch on African choral singing and, on opener ‘Sanctuary’, Gregorian chant. Stirred with a selection of simple but hooky tunes, the album is minimal but heady: it sounds both humid and overcast. It’s also so far removed from whatever else was happening in 1981-2 that it hasn’t dated at all: it still sounds remarkably fresh and unique 40 years on.
It wasn’t a sound the Fun Boy Three pursued further: the following year’s Waiting was produced by David Byrne – they originally wanted Brian Eno – and offered the first obvious flowering of Terry Hall’s hitherto-secret passion for lushly melodic classic pop. Later in his career, he would cover Bacharach and David’s ‘Close To You’, Todd Rundgren’s ‘I Saw The Light’ and even The Captain And Tennielle’s ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’, but you can hear the early stirrings on Waiting: the tango-fuelled ‘Tunnel Of Love’ and waltz-time ‘Well Fancy That!’ offered richly satisfying melodies, ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’, co-written with Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Gos, is an authentic pop classic and – with the greatest respect to The Go-Gos, who recorded it first – The Fun Boy Three’s version is definitive.
But the strangest thing about The Complete Fun Boy Three might be the correspondence between the music here and the music Jerry Dammers went on to make with The Special AKA. Dammers’ increasing interest in easy listening and jazz finds a match in the Fun Boy Three’s covers of Ron Godwin’s ‘Murder She Said’ – the theme tune from Margaret Rutherford’s early 60s Miss Marple movies – Gershwin’s jazz standard ‘Summertime’, released as a standalone single in 1982, and indeed ‘It Ain’t What You Do…’, a swing-era hit that had previously been recorded by Ella Fitzgerald and Fats Waller. The claustrophobia of In The Studio’s Housebound and The Lonely Crowd is mirrored by that of ‘The Telephone Always Rings’ and ‘Alone’, while the political despair of War Crimes reflected in ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum’ and ‘The More I See (The Less I Believe)’, the latter Waiting’s bleak meditation on The Troubles which ends with Hall repeating the line “does anybody know any jokes?”, as if desperate to escape his own sense of hopelessness. For people who couldn’t get on with each other, they still seemed to have a lot in common: if you squint, you can just about envisage an alternative history, where The Specials hold together for a couple more albums, release a Dammers-arranged version of ‘The Telephone Always Rings’ as a single and Terry Hall sings ‘What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend’ and ‘Free Nelson Mandela’.
‘Well Fancy That!’ from Waiting
But of course, The Specials couldn’t hold together, and neither could the Fun Boy Three: Hall suddenly bailed after a US tour in support of Waiting, apparently without telling his bandmates. Beyond “not wanting to restrict myself”, his reasons are shrouded in mystery. Certainly, Waiting didn’t sound like a band running out of steam. Quite the opposite: on ‘We’re Having All The Fun’, ‘The Tunnel Of Love’ or ‘Well Fancy That!’, it sounded like a band finding a new niche, as purveyors of vignettes of everyday life – sometimes funny, sometimes pointed, sometimes harrowing (‘Well Fancy That!’ starkly details the sexual abuse to which Hall was subjected as a school kid) – not a million miles removed from Madness in what you might call their post-nutty era. That the opening brace of singles by Hall’s next venture, The Colourfield, could have slotted onto Waiting without jolting the listener only seemed to underline the point.
But short-lived or not, what the trio left behind was far from shabby, as The Complete Fun Boy Three proves. You could query whether it was entirely necessary to put their two albums on separate CDs (both barely half-an-hour-long, you could fit them onto one, although the marked difference in sound arguably warrants separating them) and not everything on the two CDs of singles, b-sides, remixes and outtakes counts as essential, but there’s some fascinating stuff inbetween the completist-only US single versions and monitor mixes: the Fun Boy Three’s first demos – recorded while they were still in The Specials, and featuring the first version of Ghost Town’s b-side ‘Why?’ – an outtake from Waiting called ‘If Dogs Run Free’, which features a guide vocal by David Byrne. Frequently informed by dub reggae, the 12” versions of their hits tended to be more creative than the extend-it-by-any-means-necessary approach that bedevilled pop bands grappling with the format in the early 80s: the version of ‘Our Lips Were Sealed’ with Indian strings and vocals in Urdu is a low-key delight; the extended version of ‘It Ain’t What You Do…’ unravels in a mass of echo and backwards tapes.
It’s nicely rather than lavishly packaged (the box is an A5-sized hardback book) but in a market cluttered with reissues of questionable worth, The Complete Fun Boy Three feels strangely necessary. More than a definitive last word, it’s an opportunity to re-evaluate an unfairly overlooked oeuvre. “Not enough people talk about the Fun Boy Three,” laments Neville Staple in the sleeve notes: they should, and the reasons why are here.
The Complete Fun Boy Three is released on Friday 4 August 2023.
