Stewart Copeland, founder of The Police concentrated on creative pursuits in concert and film music in his post-Police career and in 2021 created a new project, Stewart Copeland: The Police Deranged for Orchestra.
This focuses on the rise of his career featuring The Police’s biggest hits arranged for full symphony orchestra along with hand-picked highlights from Copeland’s own compositions. The project has toured across Northern America and Europe throughout 2021 – 2022 and will continue in 2023/24 in a new format.
Copeland explains the origins of this enterprise: “It began as the score for a movie I made out of Super8 footage of the band that I had shot during our rise to glory. Film puts capricious demands on music, so I had to carve up the songs to serve the scenes in the movie, and once the scalpel was out, a whole new frenzy of inspiration from Police music began. Delving into the multi-tracks of our original recordings and live performances revealed lost guitar solos, bass lines, and vocal improvisations that were just too cool to leave in obscurity.”
He continues: “This discovery is what brings us to this performance: Sting’s songs, Andy’s inventions, and my impunity; all on the page for a wild ride with orchestra and unique musicians from around the world to adapt some of the most loved The Police hits for old and new audiences alike.”
This ‘Derangements’ are now being released via BMG and are available on CD and vinyl, with a blue vinyl also available. All formats are extremely limited with only 300 copies of the black vinyl available in the UK (and 500 blue, meaning the black is the rarer of the two!). Amazon in the UK also appear to have a signed black vinyl edition.
Stewart Copeland: The Police Deranged For Orchestra will be issued on 23 June 2023.
Eric Clapton’s 1991 live album 24 Nights will be reissued in June as The Definitive 24 Nights, two massively expanded super deluxe box sets.
Clapton’s groundbreaking run of 24 concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall were some of the most ambitious shows of his career. Each night featured him performing a career-spanning set with one of three lineups – a rock band, a blues band, or an orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen.
Clapton surrounded himself with superlative musicians for these concerts. The roster includes the likes of Johnnie Johnson, Jimmie Vaughan, Chuck Leavell, Phil Collins, Robert Cray, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Nathan East, Greg Phillinganes, Steve Ferrone, Ray Cooper and Jerry Portnoy.
The 8LP + 3xblu-ray edition of The Definitive 24 Nights
The double album that was released (on vinyl, CD and cassette) covered a fraction of what was filmed and recorded but 34 years later that is about to change with a total of eight physical editions lead by 6CD+ 3blu-ray and 8LP+3blu-ray super deluxe edition box sets!
All audio has been restored, remixed and remastered and the three types of concert have been effectively formatted into three double albums which all fit on two CDs or three vinyl records (the exception is the Blues concert which fits on 2LPs). The two super deluxe edition box sets bring all of these together, which is why the CD version has six CDs and the vinyl edition has eight LPs.
Both box sets include three blu-rays (unavailable anywhere else), details of which are scant but which clearly will be devoted to the three types of show. A limited theatrical presentation called Across 24 Nights is planned for May which features a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, so that suggests the blu-rays included in the box set should also feature a Dolby Atmos soundtrack (not confirmed).
The 6CD + 3xblu-ray edition of The Definitive 24 Nights
Each box set also includes a hardcover book and an individually numbered lithograph featuring a photograph of Clapton by Carl Studna.
The three concerts (Rock, Blues and Orchestral) are also available individually as 2CD+DVD sets or 3LP (Rock, Orchestral) or 2LP (Blues) vinyl sets.
The Definitive 24 Nights and the individual 24 Nights sets are released on 23 June 2023 via Warner Music.
Last year’s super deluxe includes the Eric Clapton documentary on Blu-ray, the soundtrack on both 2LP vinyl and CD, a bonus CD with four extra tracks and an exclusive hardcover book with memorabilia, including a numbered lithograph, 12 x 24 poster, Clapton guitar string set, custom guitar picks, and an exclusive bandana!
David Bowie/Brilliant Adventures 11CD box set11CD box
Gatefold 2LP vinyl features 80s Dance Classics featuring artists such as Neneh Cherry, Grandmaster Flash, Yazz, S ‘Express, M/A/R/R/S, 808 State, Colonel Abrahams, Soul II Soul, Derrick May, Inner City & many more!
Gatefold 2LP vinyl features tracks such as – Sonic Youth ‘Teen Age Riot’, R.E.M. ‘The One I Love’, Soundgarden ‘Black Hole Sun’, Pixies ‘Debaser’, The Flaming Lips ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’, and many more.
Gatefold 2LP vinyl features 26 Iconic Classics of the 90s from the biggest DJs, Bands, and Producers. Artists include Fatboy Slim, Basement Jaxx, Faithless, William Orbit, David Morales and more.
Lowest price to date for the Animals box set which features four formats with both DVD and blu-ray offering hi-res (new) stereo mixes and 5.1 surround sound.
The Beatles/Let It Be 5CD+blu-rayLet It Be 5CD+blu-ray super deluxe
Paul Simon will release a new album called Seven Psalms, in May.
The record is not a traditional studio album, it’s a continuous 33-minute piece of music, a “journey which consists of seven interlinked segments”.
Seven Psalms is described as having an almost “hymnal ambience” and features Paul Simon’s vocals at the top of an acoustic arrangement. Predominantly performed by Paul, the album is seasoned with esoteric percussion instruments, choral elements from the British vocal ensemble VOCES8, and a vocal appearance by Edie Brickell (Simon’s wife, of course).
Available on CD and vinyl, the record’s front cover art is a close-up extract of ‘Two Owls’ by the celebrated landscape artist Thomas Moran.
Seven Psalms will be released on 19 May via Sony Music.
Dannii Minogue’s 2003 album Neon Nights will be reissued in June for its 20th anniversary across a number of physical formats, including a remarkable 7CD box set edition.
The album was well received, both critically and commercially, delivering a number of top 10 UK singles after a decade of hit-and-miss 45s from Kylie’s sister.
Described as “the perfect snapshot of the early Noughties dance-pop zeitgeist” the long-player reached number eight in the UK album charts and is to date, Dannii’s penultimate studio album.
London Records are reissuing Neon Nights as a CD+DVD casebound book edition which offers 21 audio tracks including ‘Begin To Spin Me Round’ (Dannii vs Dead or Alive) and ‘Don’t Wanna Lose This Groove’ (Dannii vs Madonna). It also features B-sides, rarities and, on DVD, all the promo videos and TV performances including Top of the Pops.
A vinyl ‘bootleg edition’ picture disc edition (the album wasn’t released on vinyl back in 2003) also features ‘Begin To Spin Me Round’ (Dannnii vs Dead or Alive) and ‘Don’t Wanna Lose This Groove’ (Dannii vs Madonna).
Most impressive is the7CD box set version which is exclusive to the official shop. This features over 100 tracks, 12 new mixes and many unreleased from the archives. It’s comes with sleeve notes from Pop Justice’s Peter Robinson (as does the CD+DVD version) and is excellent value at only £35.
Neon Nights is reissued on 16 June 2023 via London Records.
Metallica’s twelfth studio album runs for 77 minutes and is the band’s first full length collection of new material since 2016. It’s produced by Greg Fidelman alongside frontman James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich.
Massive new box sets dive deep into Julian Cope’s archivefor detailed examination of The Teardrop Explodes recordings
Universal Music Recordings will release Culture Bunker 1978-82 in June a new The Teardrop Explodes box set available as a 6CD package or a 7LP vinyl offering.
The Teardrop Explodes originated as a critical band in the emerging Liverpool post-punk scene of the late 1970s, which included Echo & The Bunnymen, their former manager Bill Drummond of The JAMS/KLF, The Mighty WAH! and future pop stars Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and The Lightning Seeds Ian Broudie, who would also produce many bands from the scene. The group also launched the career of group frontman Julian Cope and keyboard player David Balfe, who later founded Food Records and signed and mentored Blur.
The 6CD version of Culture Bunker comes with a 64-page hardcover book (click to enlarge)
Culture Bunker 1978-82 compiles all the band’s singles and B-sides as well as four CDs / five LPs of unreleased studio outtakes, a wealth of unheard live recordings and several tracks taken from ‘Zoology’, the Teardrop Explodes compilation that Cope released himself in 2004. Writer and long-time band publicist Mick Houghton has curated Culture Bunker and has gained exclusive access to Julian Cope’s archive. These early and later recordings show the evolution of one of the era’s most influential bands from their inception to their finale.
The 6CD set features a staggering 57 previously unreleased tracks and is packaged in a 10-inch slipcase with a 64-page hardcover book which features a 12,000 word essay from Mick Houghton (drawing from new, recent conversations with Julian Cope). That same story is told via the seven printed inner-sleeves on the 7LP vinyl box set which features 43 previously unreleased tracks (the CD box has 95 tracks in total, the vinyl box, which comes with a poster, has 82).
The audio for this new box set has been remastered by Andy Pearce wherever possible from original tapes and cassettes.
Culture Bunker 1978-1982 is probably the last word on The Teardrop Explodes and both editions are described as “very limited” by the record label. These boxes are not available via normal retail channels are can only be ordered via Universal direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites. It is released on 2 June 2023, via Universal Music Recordings.
The 7LP vinyl box set of Culture Bunker (click image to enlarge)
Tracklisting
Culture Bunker 1978-1982The Teardrop Explodes/
CD 1: IT’S SO ETHEREAL – THE SINGLES
Sleeping Gas – Zoo Single
Camera Camera – Single B-Side
Kirby Workers Dream Fades – Single B-Side
Bouncing Babies – Zoo Single
All I Am Is Loving You – Single B-Side
Treason – Zoo Single
Read It in Books – Single B-Side
When I Dream – First Mercury Single
Kilimanjaro – B-Side
Reward – Single
Strange House in the Snow – B-Side
Treason (It’s Just a Story) (Remixed Version) – Single
Use Me – B-Side
Traison (C’est Juste Une Histoire) – B-Side
Ha Ha I’m Drowning – Single
Poppies In the Field – B-Side
CD 2: CHRIST VERSUS WARHOL – THE SINGLES
Passionate Friend – Single
Christ Versus Warhol – B-Side
Colours Fly Away – Single
East of the Equator – B-Side
Window Shopping for a New Crown of Thorns – B-Side
Tiny Children – Single
Rachel Built a Steamboat – B-Side
You Disappear from View – Single
Suffocate – No Strings from US LP of version of Kilimanjaro
Ouch Monkeys – B-Side
Soft Enough for You – B-Side
The In-Psychlopedia – B-Side
CD 3: FROM DRUG PURITAN TO ACID KING
Camera Camera – Granada TV, February 1979
Band on The Wall – Live, Manchester, 05 March 1979
Instro
Sleeping Gas
Seeing Through You
Straight Rain
All I Am is Loving You
Read It In Books
Jury Service
Take A Chance
The Tunnel
Camera Camera
Outstro
Sleeping Gas (Encore)
Beauty Come Second – Live Bristol 06 October 1979, unrecorded song
Take A Chance – Cargo Demos / To the Shores of Lake Placid Version
Poppies In the Field – Cargo Demos
Brave Boys Keep Promises – Cargo Demos
Bouncing Babies – Cargo Demos, all November 1979
Ha Ha I’m Drowning – Live at Studio Y 30/05/1980
Second Head – Live at Studio Y 30/05/1980
Went Crazy – Live at Studio Y 30/05/1980
Thief of Bagdad – Live at Studio Y 30/05/1980
Save Me – Live Y Club – London 30/05/1980
When I Dream – To the Shores of Lake Placid Version, Rockfield, 1980
CD 4: THE GREAT DOMINIONS
Dialogue Between (Window Shopping for a New Crown of Thorns) – Rockfield, 1980
For Years aka Nobody Knows This Is Everywhere – Zoology Version, 1980
Suffocate (With Strings) – Baroque Version, Rockfield, Spring 1982
Bent Out of Shape – Skinner Session – 17 August 1981
Colours Fly Away – Club Zoo – 25 November 1981
Pure Joy – Club Zoo – 25 November 1981
Falling Down Around Me – Bearshank Lodge, April 1981
Passionate Friend – also Bearshank Lodge
Tiny Children – Zoology / Air Rough Mixes, Summer 1981
…And The Fighting Takes Over – Zoology, 1981
The Culture Bunker – Club Zoo – 25 November 1981
The Great Dominions – Soundboard Tape Guildford June 1981
Butchers Tale – Air Studios Rough Mixes, summer 1981; credited on the original Wilder inners but not included on the LP. Cover from the Zombies Odyssey and Oracle
Screaming Secrets – from Copes Notes: TheTeardrtop Explodes , 1981
Not My Only Friend – also Bearshank Lodge
I’m Not the Loving Kind – Zoology Version, 1981, John Cale cover from Slow Dazzle
World Shut Your Mouth – Instrumental Demo #1 – Liverpool Feb 1981 / Portastudio
CD 5: CLUB ZOO
Club Zoo – December 22 1981
Log Cabin
Tiny Children
Passionate Friend
Bouncing Babies
You Disappear from View
Ha Ha I’m Drowning
Reward
Culture Bunker
Sleeping Gas – also b-side Tiny Children
Bonus tracks from Club Zoo, 25 November 1981
Like Leila Khaled Said
Treason
Bouncing Babies
Vox Clemantis in Deserto
Sleeping Gas
CD 6: DEATH RATTLE
Whopper Kwalo Koblinsky’s Lullaby – from To the Shores of Lake Placid, January 1981
You Disappear from View – from Zoology. Demo, Producers Workshop, 1982
Log Cabin – from Zoology, 1982
Serious Danger – Julian Cope And Dave Balfe Cassette – demos, May 1982(Take 2 of 3)
Count To Ten and Run for Cover – JC And DB Cassette
Ouch Monkeys – JC And DB Cassette
Icarus #1 – JC And DB Cassette
Terrorist – JC And DB Cassette
Pussyface – Instrumental backing track, Spring 1982
Flipped Out on LSD – Excerpt, 1982, featuring rare Dave Balfe vocal
Your Big Lies – Julian Cope home demo, Tamworth May 1982
Camera Camera – With World Shut Your Mouth producer Steve Lovell, 1984
LP 1: IT’S SO ETHEREAL
Side One
Sleeping Gas – Zoo Single
Camera Camera – B-Side
Kirby Workers Dream Fades – B-Side
Bouncing Babies – Zoo Single
All I Am Is Loving You – B-Side
Treason – Zoo Single
Read It in Books – B-Side
When I Dream – First Mercury Single
Side Two
Kilimanjaro – B-Side
Reward – Single
Strange House in the Snow – B-Side
Treason (It’s Just a Story) (Remixed Version) – Single
Use Me – B-Side
Traison (C’est Juste Une Histoire) – B-Side
LP 2: CHRIST VERSUS WARHOL
Side One
Ha Ha I’m Drowning – Single
Poppies In the Field – B-Side
Passionate Friend – Single
Christ Versus Warhol – B-Side
Colours Fly Away – Single
East of the Equator – B-Side
Side Two
Window Shopping for A New Crown of Thorns – B-Side
Tiny Children – Single
Rachel Built a Steamboat – B-Side
You Disappear from View – Single
Suffocate – No Strings – from US LP version of Kilimanjaro
Ouch Monkeys – B-Side
LP 3: BAND ON THE WALL
Side One
Camera Camera – Live on What’s On – Granada TV – Feb 1979
Instro – Band on The Wall – Live, Manchester 05 March 1979
Sleeping Gas – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
Seeing Through You – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
Straight Rain – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
All I Am is Loving You – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
Side Two
Read It in Books – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
Jury Service – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
Take A Chance – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
The Tunnel – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
Camera Camera – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
Outstro – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979
Sleeping Gas – Band on The Wall – Manchester 05 March 1979 (Encore)
LP 4: FROM DRUG PURITAN TO ACID KING
Side One
Beauty Come Second – Live Trinity Centre – Bristol 06 October 1979 (Un-Recorded Song)
Take a Chance – Cargo Demos, November 1979 / To the Shores of Lake Placid Track
Poppies in the Field – Cargo Studios, Rochdale – November 1979
Brave Boys Keep Promises – Cargo Studios, Rochdale – November 1979
Bouncing Babies – Cargo Studios, Rochdale – November 1979
For Years aka Nobody Knows This Is Everywhere – Zoology Version – Alan Gill’s Studio 1980
Side Two
Ha Ha I’m Drowning – Live at Studio Y (YMCA London) 30/05/1980
Second Head – Live at Studio Y (YMCA London) 30/05/1980
Went Crazy – Live at Studio Y (YMCA London) 30/05/1980
Thief Of Bagdad – Live at Studio Y (YMCA London) 30/05/1980
Save Me – Live at Studio Y (YMCA London) 30/05/1980
When I Dream – To the Shores of Lake Placid Version – Rockfield Studios March 1980
LP 5: OUT OF THE CULTURE BUNKER
Side One
Dialogue Between (Window Shopping for a New Crown of Thorns) – Rockfield, March 1980
Suffocate (With Strings) – Baroque Version – Hugh Jones 1982
Reward – US LP Version of Kilimanjaro
Bent Out of Shape – Skinner Session – 17 August 1981
Colours Fly Away – Club Zoo Liverpool – 25 November 1981
Falling Down Around Me – Bearshank Lodge April 1981
Side Two
Pure Joy – Club Zoo Liverpool – 25 November 1981
Passionate Friend – Bearshank Lodge April 1981
Tiny Children – Air Studios Rough Mixes, Summer 1981
…And The Fighting Takes Over – Warner Brothers Demo 1981 – Zoology Version
The Culture Bunker – Club Zoo Liverpool – 25 November 1981
LP 6: FALLING DOWN AROUND ME
Side One
The Great Dominions – Guildford Civic Hall, 18 June 1981
Butchers Tale – Air Studios Rough Mixes – Wilder Sessions, credited on the original Wilder inners but not included. Cover from the Zombies Odyssey and Oracale
Screaming Secrets – 1981, from The Teardrop Explodes Copes Notes
Not My Only Friend – Bearshank Lodge April 1981
I’m Not the Loving Kind – Producers Workshop – Zoology Version, 1981. John Cale cover from Slow Dazzle
World Shut Your Mouth – Instrumental Demo #1 – Liverpool Feb 1981 / Porta Studio
Side Two
Whopper Kwalo Koblinsky’s Lullaby – from To the Shores ofLake Placid Version – Jan 1981
You Disappear from View – From Zoology. Producers Workshop 1982 demo.
Log Cabin – Demo 1982 (Ft. Kate St John and Nicky Holland) – from Zoology
The In-Psychlopedia – B-Side of ‘You Disappear From View’, Spring 1982
Serious Danger – Julian Cope and Dave Balfe Demos May 1982 (Take 2 of 3)
LP 7: DEATH RATTLE
Side One
Count To Ten and Run for Cover – Julian Cope and Dave Balfe Demos May 1982
Ouch Monkeys – Julian Cope and Dave Balfe Demos May 1982
Icarus #1 – Julian Cope and Dave Balfe Demos May 1982
Terrorist – Julian Cope and Dave Balfe Demos May 1982
Soft Enough for You – B-Side of ‘You Disappear from View’
Side Two
Pussyface – Instrumental backing track 1982, Spring 1982
Your Big Lies – Julian Cope home demo, Tamworth May 1982
Camera Camera – Recorded with World Shut Your Mouth producer Steve Lovell 1984
Cherry Red continue their Safari-era Toyah reissues with Live at Drury Lane, a concert performance from December 1981.
This was broadcast live on the BBC for The Old Grey Whistle Test on Christmas Eve in 1981 and was ‘simulcast’ (as they used to call it) in stereo on BBC Radio One. Live at Drury Lane was never issued on vinyl, CD or cassette but was released as an edited VHS (called ‘Good Morning Universe’) in 1982.
Live at Drury Lane is issued on CD and DVD for the first time!
This new reissue is available as a CD+DVD combo pack or as a 2LP set on pink vinyl. The CD contains all 13 songs performed on the night plus three bonus audio tracks recorded live in Milan from earlier on that same Winter Tour. The DVD reinstates ‘War Boys’ and ‘Victims of The Riddle’ which were missing from the VHS, but performed on the night.
The coloured vinyl features the whole 13-song concert but doesn’t have space for any of the Milan bonus audio despite being a 2LP set.
Live at Drury Lane will be released on 12 May 2023, via Cherry Red.
SDEtv unboxes the recently Mötley Crüevinyl box set from BMG. Crucial Crüe: The Studio Albums 1981-1989 features five albums all pressed on coloured/splatter vinyl. It’s out now.
Compare prices and pre-order
Mtley Cre
The Studio Albums 1981 - 1989 - 5LP coloured vinyl box set
Twenty something years ago, I interviewed Andy McCluskey. He was funny and charming, if a little defensive in tone. But that was understandable: I was speaking to him not as the former frontman of Orchestral Manouevres In The Dark, but in relation to his latterday career, as the mastermind behind Atomic Kitten – not, perhaps, among early Noughties manufactured pop’s more artful practitioners. It all seemed a very long way indeed from OMD, at least in their initial incarnation: “a two-piece conceptual art project in the guise of a musical band”, as McCluskey described them in Dylan Jones’ history of the new romantic era, Sweet Dreams, dedicated to combining “the melancholic emotion of Neu! to the rigid structure of Kraftwerk”.
The thing was, McCluskey said, it was a journey he’d begun long before OMD split up. “OMD just made the records we wanted to make and they somehow became hits. Then, one day, we made the album we wanted to make and nobody bought it, so we thought we’d better start trying to write some hits – there’s nothing wrong with doing that”.
Thus did I end up enthusing about OMD’s 1983 avant-pop masterpiece Dazzle Ships – the album “no one bought” – when I should have been talking about Atomic Kitten. Listening to it 40 years after it nearly ended the duo’s career – luxuriously reissued on blue and grey vinyl, tricked out with a second album of extra tracks different from both those already released on the 2008 reissue and the outtakes found on the 2019 Souvenir box set – you do boggle a bit at the idea that this was the work of people who’d spent the preceding three years as a fixture on Top Of The Pops and the cover of Smash Hits. It’s not just that it’s heavy on sombre ballads and light on pop hooks. It’s that you’d struggle to describe nearly half of its tracks as songs: instead, they’re assemblages of found sounds, instrumentals exploring the possibilities of the Fairlight sampler, bursts of ambient atmospherics, things that sound like jingles. Dazzle Ships is an album that gets under a certain kind of listener’s skin – if you’re willing to go with it, its chilly, idiosyncratic sound-world can envelop you – but you’d have to call it an acquired taste.
‘Genetic Engineering’ was the first single from Dazzle Ships
Then again, you can see why OMD thought they might get away with it. It was recorded in 1982, a year that began with their single ‘Maid Of Orleans (The Waltz Joan Of Arc)’ at Number 4 in the chart. If the British public was willing to buy that – a chorus-free song that opened with nearly a minute of atonal noise, then turned into a loving homage to the sound of the least commercial of Kraftwerk’s “classic” albums, 1975’s Radioactivity – then why would they necessarily have a problem with an album that also leaned heavily on Radioactivity for inspiration: this time, not the ghostly choral synths of its title track, but the faintly creepy recordings of radio call signs and news broadcasts that punctuate its first side? Perhaps they might have done, had OMD elected to release the vaguely ‘Enola Gay’-like ‘Telegraph’ as the first single (to be specific, if they’d released the slightly less frantic version of ‘Telegraph’ they had recorded during sessions for 1981’s Architecture And Morality, or even the “very early demo” on LP 2 of this reissue, both of which are noticeably more commercial than the finished product). But instead they plumped for ‘Genetic Engineering’, a song that heavily deployed the scratchy, trebly guitar sound they’d already used on Architecture And Morality’s opening track, ‘The New Stone Age’ – and that suggested the duo might have been listening to the early Orange Juice and Josef K singles that Scotland’s Postcard Records had released in 1980 – alongside a children’s Speak And Spell toy, a clattery rhythm track built out of handclaps and what sound like samples of a typewriter and a particularly wracked-sounding McCluskey vocal: it was simultaneously thrilling and a little cacophonous, and ominously stalled at Number 20.
You’re occasionally struck by the sense of a band going out of their way to be as difficult as possible
Alexis Petridis
Indeed, you’re occasionally struck by the sense of a band going out of their way to be as difficult as possible. ‘The Romance Of The Telescope’ also dated back to the Architecture And Morality sessions: re-recorded for Dazzle Ships, OMD seem to have deliberately made the synthesizers more off-key. The second LP of this reissue features a demo of ‘Silent Running’ that has a slightly more propulsive chug to its rhythm track: a little thing, but it definitely affects the atmosphere of the sound. There was clearly weirder stuff than made the album on the cutting room floor – one of the extra tracks here, ‘Shakespeare 82’, sounds like a brief burst of incidental music from a BBC costume drama set in the Elizabethan era – but there were also more directly appealing songs, including the gorgeous ‘4 Neu’, relegated to ‘Genetic Engineering”s b-side.
But if OMD had made it more commercial or directly appealing, it wouldn’t have been Dazzle Ships, the kind of album of which cults are made. Which is precisely what happened in the long term. It was initially the subject of second thoughts and recriminations. The band’s manager said it should have been entirely re-recorded, McCluskey took the blame for what he described as a paucity of ideas: there was certainly some recycling going – closer For All The Things We’ve Made had begun life on the B-side of the Maid Of Orleans 12” – but it still feels an odd interpretation of an album that gives every impression of teeming with ideas, about communication, the Cold War, technology, human interaction and whether the boundless progress of science was an entirely good thing, many of which still seem pertinent 40 years on.
‘Shakespeare 82’ sounds like a brief burst of incidental music from a BBC costume drama set in the Elizabethan era
Alexis Petridis
Over time, attitudes towards Dazzle Ships shifted. It began being talked as a prime example of expansive 80s avant pop – up there with The Dreaming by Kate Bush, Thomas Dolby’sThe Flat Earth, The Associates’Sulk, its weirdness fuelled by the new, expansive possibilities of sampling. Its oddness was amplified by what OMD did next, 1984’s Junk Culture and 1985’s Crush, which restored their commercial standing by dealing in delightful, but infinitely more straightforward pop: if you wanted to hear the duo’s lost experimental side, then Dazzle Ships represented its purest distillation. Latterday artists and producers began hailing it as an inspiration – Mark Ronson, Moby, Anohi – and rappers began sampling it. Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys changed their tune accordingly, claiming it as one of their best albums. After OMD reformed in 2006, they performed Dazzle Ships in full. There’s a fabulous moment on the subsequent live album where the audience burst into spontaneous applause when the title track kicks in: a foghorn noise being received like a greatest hit.
You could quibble with the latest reissue package – the second album lasts barely 20 minutes, which means there was room to include the outtakes scattered across other releases: an opportunity to release a definitive last word on Dazzle Ships has been missed – but what’s there is harder to argue with. The half-speed mastered vinyl sounds great, and looks good too – its colours corresponding with the remixed artwork, closer to the original European CD than its initial British sleeve. And the music feels infinitely more deserving of its latterday reputation than the response it received in 1983: strange and strangely appealing, austere but somehow heady, a transmission from the past that’s worth tuning into today.
Dazzle Ships was reviewed for SDE by Alexis Petridis. The reissue is out now, via UMR/EMI.
Great price for this Madness deluxe edition which adds 18 bonus tracks (including demos, B-sides and BBC John Peel Session tracks) alongside brand new sleeve notes which include interviews with founder Madness members Chrissyboy Foreman, Mike Barson, Mark Bedford and Daniel Woodgate. An ‘album-only’ red vinyl version is also available.
Chrysalis remaster and reissue Athlete’s platinum 2003 debut album. The 4CD set is in DVD-sized casebound book and offers all the B sides from the debut album’s singles, previously unreleased demos, the complete London ULU concert from March 2003, and exclusive BBC sessions. For vinyl the album is issued as a 2LP set for the first time and is pressed on blue vinyl. The vinyl is expanded to include B-sides!
The ‘Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover’ singer-songwriter returns with her first album in 11 years. That single was from her 1992 debut Tongues and Tails but the Steve Lipson-produced follow-up, Whaler, is the better record in SDE’s opinion. Free Myself could be promising – have a listen to ‘Better Off Without You’.
Mike Oldfield’s seminal 1973 album Tubular Bells is being reissued for its 50th anniversary and amongst the formats is an SDE-exclusive blu-ray audio which features a brand new immersive Dolby Atmos Mix along with other rare spatial audio versions, a new stereo mix and an unreleased demo of a planned – but scrapped – Tubular Bells 4, which was made five years ago!
Back in 1973, the largely unknown 20-year-old Mike Oldfield released his debut album, the first release on brand-new label, Virgin Records. Tubular Bells became a phenomenon, topping the UK charts, winning a Grammy and it was famously featured in William’s Friedkin’s film The Exorcist, which itself became a global sensation in ’73.
This 50th Anniversary celebration of Tubular Bells, overseen by Mike Oldfield, is available on SDE-exclusive blu-ray, 2LP half-speed mastered vinyl and on CD.
The Tubular Bells SDE-exclusive blu-ray is packed with content and features the following audio streams:
Tubular Bells – 2023 David Kosten Dolby Atmos Mix*
Tubular Bells – 2009 Mike Oldfield 5.1 Surround Mix
The Dolby Atmos Mix has been created by producer David Kosten (who’s worked with the likes of Steven Wilson and Bat For Lashes) and he had the challenge of trying to recreate Oldfield’s original 1973 mix in immersive audio, going back to the original multi-track stems which feature almost none of the processing you hear on the final mixes – the levels, echoes, reverbs, radical tone shifts, panning etc. Kosten also created a new stereo mix and the blu-ray also includes a new edit of the classic Tubular Bells intro which is also in stereo and Atmos. All four versions are only available physically via this SDE-exclusive Blu-ray Audio!
Additionally, Mike Oldfield’s 5.1 Surround Mix from 2009 is also included. That was only ever issued on DVD at the time, so it sees its debut here on Blu-ray as lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.
The four-channel Quad Mix was mixed by Phil Newell in 1975 and was issued on 2001 on SACD. It has some differences to the original stereo and 5.1 mixes, most notable the Viv Stanshall voiceover on ‘Sailor’s Hornpipe’ at the end It has been unavailable since that time but is the third different spatial audio mix on this Blu-ray.
The original stereo mix on the Blu-ray is as used on the new half-speed mastered vinyl and of course fans will be very interested in the Tubular Bells 4 demo. The story is, Mike Oldfield retired from releasing music in 2018, after giving up touring many years previously. In the months after his last album, Return To Ommadawn in 2017, Oldfield toyed with going the whole way and making a fourth and final instalment of Tubular Bells in time for its 50th anniversary. Work began in earnest, and Mike felt he had finally cracked the secret of being able to successfully return to and rework the opening motif. An eight-minute taster was sent to his A&R team. And then, nothing. Mike decided against continuing. Five years later, this final paragraph of the Tubular Bells story is being released as part of the 50th anniversary celebration. It may well be the last thing ever recorded by Oldfield and this is stereo-only.
The SDE-exclusive Blu-ray Audio will ship with a free, collectible SDE Surround Series slipcase
This Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells Blu-ray Audio is #10 in the ongoing SDE Surround Series and will be packaged similarly to previous editions and ships with a free, collectible SDE Surround Series slipcase.
Here’s the now traditional reminder as to why this product is highly recommended:
It’s the only way to enjoy the Dolby Atmos mix (and the new stereo mix) of the album via a physical product
You don’t need to sign-up to a streaming service such as Tidal or Apple Music to hear the spatial audio mix
The Atmos Mix on the Blu-ray is not compressed due to streaming bandwidth restrictions
You own the product, you are not renting it from a digital service provider
The Blu-ray audio is an excellent format for music and you don’t want to see it die off
Supporting SDE with these initiatives leads to similar collaborations with labels/artists and we are keen to bring your more in the near future!
The 50th anniversary 2LP half-speed mastered vinyl includes the original stereo mix on the first record and a series of bonus tracks on LP 2. These are Tubular Bells 4 Intro – Demo,Tubular Bells/In Dulci Jubilo from the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, Tubular X (first time on vinyl for this 1998 X-Files inspired version), a Mike Oldfield & YORK remix of Tubular Bells and ‘Mike Oldfield’s Single (Theme From Tubular Bells)’.
The 50th anniversary CD version has the same content as the 2LP set but without ‘Tubular X’ and ‘Mike Oldfield’s Single (Theme From Tubular Bells)’.
The SDE-exclusive Blu-ray Audio of Tubular Bells is a limited edition item. It will be pressed based on demand and due to the short lead time to manufacture, it will be available to pre-order for 10 days only. Availability after that cannot be guaranteed, so secure your copy today by pre-ordering at the SDE shop, either directly via this link or using the special SDE shop buy button (‘add to cart’) below. We ship worldwide (the tracked service to USA for blu-ray is £8, for example) and the CD and vinyl editions are also available individually or via a specially-priced bundles.
Tubular Bells 50th anniversary Blu-ray Audio and the CD and 2LP vinyl formats will be released on 26 May 2023, via UMR/EMI.
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
Tubular BellsMike Oldfield/50th anniversary
Tubular Bells – 2023 David Kosten Dolby Atmos Mix*
Tubular Bells – 2009 Mike Oldfield 5.1 Surround Mix
The Auteurs were a British ‘indie’ rock band whose 1993 debut album New Wave was lauded in the press and was runner up (to Suede’s debut album) at the Mercury Music Prize awards in 1993. Fronted by singer and songwriter Luke Haines, the band would go on to record three more albums in the 1990s with Haines occasionally taking a left turn for side projects such as the Baader Meinhof album in ’96 and forming Black Box Recorder with John Moore and Sarah Nixey, whose debut England Made Me was released in 1998.
Last month, Cherry Red issued a comprehensive 6CD Auteurs box set called People ‘Round Here Don’t Like To Talk About It: The Complete EMI Recordings, which brings together all four studio albums with a wealth of bonus material, the Baader Meinhof record and Das Capital a semi-orchestral collection of re-recorded Auteurs tracks that Haines put out in 2003.
Luke remains as prolific and busy as ever, having recently issued a second collaborative album with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck [All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out] which he toured with Buck earlier this year, but he found the time to sit down with SDE in a north London pub to discuss the Auteurs output and the new box set…
SuperDeluxeEdition: Where did your musical talent come from? Did you learn the guitar in your bedroom as a kid ?
Luke Haines Yeah. I didn’t have musical parents and they didn’t really actively like pop music; they disapproved of it. My mum had me when she was about 30, in 1967, and they were the generation where the ’60s passed them, a little bit. The two pop records they had, apart from stuff like Perry Como and Matt Monro were ‘She Loves You’, the Parlophone single, and ‘Hey Jude’. You wonder what happened in the intervening years…
So when you when you were older and you were at school, what were your ambitions?
To be in a rock and roll band. From about age 13. Ludicrous.
Obvously lots of people have that ambition, but you actually did it.
I wanted to be in a rock band and I wanted to be an artist, because my dad was a graphic designer. He started off through art school and all of that and it sounded really attractive. And when I was young I was quite good at drawing and painting and all of that.
Did you go to art school?
Yes. I was probably the last intake at the free arts school and I did my foundation, like all good rock and rollers do [laughs]. But then I promptly abandoned art for many, many years.
But did you get lots of support from friends and family or did people think you were a bit mad and needed to go out and get a proper job?
Yeah, they thought I was a bit mad…
Did you have a period where you were just doing normal jobs?
No, I’ve never had a proper job in my life. Never. I went to music college after I left art college. I studied music composition, guitar and piano.
That’s quite a surprise, in a way…
You wouldn’t think so… [laughs]
No, not for that reason [laughs] but I just didn’t have you down as someone who went that route of learning properly, how to read music etc.
I liked the sound and the feel of the acoustic guitar but then I got corrupted, quite early on, by electric guitar. My dad bought me a cheap electric guitar. He was quite encouraging. I was doing things that he maybe wanted to do. He didn’t want to play the electric guitar but he liked the creative arts and he was really pleased when The Auteurs had a hit album.
That’s good. He got to see some success.
Yeah. And I bought him a television. I couldn’t afford the house [laughs].
Were you writing songs from an early age? Do you have tapes of songs that might not be the best…
Unfortunately, yes. I was writing bad songs probably from the age of 15.
Were you recording them into a dodgy cassette recorder?
Yeah, in bands we’d do demos. I was good at getting bands together.
Did you do lots of gigging then?
We did gigs, but not lots. It wasn’t like I was on tour or anything.
You didn’t seem to be interested in music technology in any way which comes across from those first Auteurs albums. When people are starting out, especially when they haven’t got a proper band, the normal thing is to get a sampler, synthesiser, drum machine etc.
No. I was before that time. It wasn’t till my mid-20s that I had a Portastudio and that seemed quite technological, for the time.
How hard was it to get a band together? Was that relatively easy thing to do?
For The Servants [Luke played guitar in David Westlake’s late 80s indie band], it was always really hard to keep the band going. You can never keep a drummer, or bass player, for long. They usually go and join Felt. Lawrence even asked me to join Felt – he’s probably forgotten that – but he asked me a long, long time ago. He’ll probably deny it!
In the sleeve notes for this new box set, you are quite lighthearted about how easy it was to get signed and have an album out…
It was! The first Auteurs album was incredibly easy…
But why? Was it just that people recognised the quality of your songwriting?
I think with five years in The Servants I learned what being in a band entailed. I really liked a lot of stuff I was on, the stuff I recorded with Dave – and I still record every so often with Dave, if he asks me, he’s a good friend – but there was a lot of sitting around, not doing very much. We’d record a song in a studio once every three years and put it out 18 months later and then go to Switzerland to promote it a year after that! I decided I was going to give it one more shot. I wrote my best songs, learnt to use a Portastudio, and just got a scratch band together: my girlfriend at the time Alice [Readman], who played in the dying embers of The Servants, learnt to play bass. So there was two of us, that’s good! She thought of the name, and then an old school friend [Glenn Collins] on drums.
What about the cello? Because James Banbury’s cello became almost a signature sound.
He came in after the first album. He recorded on three tracks for the first album, I think, but as a session player. I wanted a cello, [but] I didn’t know I wanted a cello, so I was recording these low backwards sounds on the piano… and the producer said, “I know a cello player” and that’s where he enters [laughs].
The thing that comes across clearly, especially from the 4-track demos which you put at the end of this box set, is that it’s all in your head, the arrangements, and you knew exactly how you wanted it to sound. I’ve been reading this new Paul McCartney book called ‘The McCartney Legacy’ that covers the early Wings years and Paul starts out saying how they are going to be a proper band with equal contributions, but then everyone gets really pissed off with him because he’s telling them exactly how and what to play. How was it in The Auteurs? Was it always obvious that you were the boss?
Yeah… Because that’s what happened in The Servants. David could have very specific ideas about what the lead guitar – i.e. me – should be playing, and at first, I was a bit put out by this, but then I kind of got into it, and I thought “this is good” because he had really good ideas and I enjoy the company of people that are kind of on the same wavelength. Bands don’t have to be democratic.
How did The Auteurs get signed? Did you just take those demos to Hut [the record label]?
No. I was just like phoning up people asking for gigs. On the strength of those demos, they very reluctantly gave me a show; third on the bill. A lot of people who went on to become ‘names’ in the music industry, were very dismissive of those demos… I mean, they were very badly recorded. Then Jon Eydmann, who was at that time the manager of Suede, called up and asked if we wanted to support Suede. They’d heard the demos and simultaneously I’d send tons of them to a label called East West. They sent them all back to me! I’d sent about 20 demos. But they were thinking of signing Suede to a major deal and so they told me Suede had picked up my demo, played it, liked it, and said to their manager “could we get this band to support us?”. This was Jon, who’d seen the live review in the NME and we away. It’s like one of those weird, mad things that you always hope is gonna happen. Suddenly the phone started ringing…
Were you good having to work with ‘suits’ and people in record labels? In your books you’re quite dismissive and jokey about that aspect…
Well, we weren’t The Replacements, put it like that. It wasn’t like a suicide mission from day one. There were things I knew we had to do. But we got really lucky because while all these labels were hovering around, by that point we had a manager who was an alright manager. He fronted the whole of the first album, paid for it all, we’d recorded it all before a label signed us…
That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
Yeah, yeah, so basically, he just went around the labels with a finished album and said “here you go…”.
If you’re the record label that’s quite attractive because you don’t have to pay for all the sessions, etc.
Yeah, and we kept it very cheap, so we didn’t have to get involved with all that thing of “we’ll put you in a studio” etc.
Does that mean you managed to retain ownership of that first album or did they end up nicking it as part of the deal?
They had it for a time, but I now have ownership. I’ve got ownership of all of The Auteurs stuff, so it worked out all right. I have to say, a lot of this is 50-50 luck and judgement. I wasn’t so super savvy that I engineered it. We got lucky that we had a manager who was a bit of a bastard, but not a bastard enough… inasmuch as he didn’t try and pull anything on us. He didn’t steal anything and we got signed to a label, and they were onside…
This was Hut, who were part of Virgin. They were that thing of a major ‘pretending’ to be an indie…
‘Pretending’ yes. People used to get very het up about that.
Did it have a proper indie ethos?
Yes. David Boyd was the main guy and he came from Rough Trade.
‘Showgirl’ from New Wave
The first album was kind of in tune with the vibe of what was going on at that time, but that was presumably just luck, because it doesn’t sound like you were trying to follow any trends. You’re just doing what you wanted to do.
I mean, arrogantly, I prefer to say that the times got in tune with that album. We recorded it in May/June 1992 so none of that stuff we are slightly associated with really existed at that point, although Suede were around…
You toured quite a bit with Suede. Did you feel a kinship with them or a rivalry?
Not a rivalry, no. A slight kinship… I mean, they helped us out. Big time. They didn’t need to. I mean, I think the fact that we couldn’t possibly blow them off stage, at that point, was probably quite attractive. So we kind of made them look good.
So they didn’t see you as any kind of threat, basically?
No, I wouldn’t have thought so. They had Bernard [Butler]. He was an explosive guitarist at that point. I hadn’t seen anyone who could touch him. And Brett was a great frontman. They had it all. They were super, super tight and we were super, super shambolic. Before we supported them we’d only played about five gigs.
Suede were super tight and we were super shambolic
Luke Haines
Brett had that frontman glamour, where he was thinking back to Bowie, Lou Reed or whoever. Who were the people you were thinking back to?
Jonathan Richman [founder of proto-punk band The Modern Lovers], Mark Smith, Robert Forster.
So a very different kind of thing…
Very different. And the stuff that was being thrown back at us when people started writing about The Auteurs, like the Bowie thing – I mean I love Bowie – but I thought that we had absolutely nothing to do with Hunky Dory. I always thought it was more sort of vaguely somewhere between [The Kinks’] Village Green and early Fall. And Television and stuff like that. And The Modern Lovers.
Going back to your first album, New Wave… So you get signed, the album is basically done. What are your aspirations at this point, because you must have been hoping to have a hit shingle and be quite successful…
No, not at all, not at that time. I remember getting called up a few days after the release and someone said, I can’t remember the exact number, but something like “You’re number 14 in the midweek”. I’m like “what’s a midweek?” I didn’t know what a midweek chart was. I said “So that’s like in the independent charts?” “No, no, that’s that’s the big charts. The main charts”. Wow, okay. How did that happen? I just thought it was cool to have an album out and that we did shows and people came to them.
Did the record company articulate to you what they wanted, what their idea of success may or may not be?
No, not really, which is weird.
Obviously, once you’re signed to a record label there’s a certain element of being on a treadmill, and sometimes you read about bands who can’t get off this treadmill and they lose control of their own destiny. Did you think about that sort of stuff at the time?
I thought about that after the second album [1994’s Now I’m A Cowboy]. I realised that we were on the treadmill. For the first album we were touring and that was good. Because I’d wanted I’d always wanted to be in a band…
And have that lifestyle?
Yes. But then it got… I sort of realised I was finding it hard to write songs and the band weren’t always… erm… in terms of personalities, it wasn’t the romantic vision I had. I’m not sure that really exists…
I’m surprised that you said you found it hard to write songs because you come across as being very prolific. The second album followed quite closely on the first, there was a certain momentum happening.
I should say I was finding it harder to write songs. I wasn’t as as prolific as I am now, but I guess I don’t tour as much. Now, at the grand old age of 55 it’s very easy to write songs. I could write could write an album, tonight on the walk home.
Are you still striving for the perfect pop song?
No, I don’t think in those terms.
You seem to be quite very conceptual…
I’ve come to realise I’m an idiot savant. I think I’m very fearful – no fearful is the wrong word – I’m aware of wasting an idea, perhaps because I don’t want to miss an idea. Not because I think it’s gonna be ‘the song’ or it’s going to solve the problems in the Middle East. It’s just like, this is a nice idea for a song. It’s as simple as that.
That first album [New Wave], got nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and you famously nearly won it. And maybe with a bit more luck, you could have had bigger hit singles. Do either of those things bother you, that you didn’t have a top 40 single or that you didn’t win the Mercury Music Prize?
At the time it did, but again, even with the Mercury Music Prize I didn’t know what it was. For the first year of The Auteurs, even though I’d been in a band for five years, I was quite naive about how things worked. And I was quite bratty as well, because I thought, well, you know, fuck this. I’m a pop musician, I’m a minor pop star. So I’m gonna, eek a lot out of it.
Did you like the music industry? I mean, not all the people working in record labels and PR and stuff are going to be your cup of tea and that is a world that is new to everyone, particularly when they become a signed artist and a successful band.
I think in the early ’90s It was a bit more like the Wild West. I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do. Although I didn’t really enjoy the videos, I thought it was all a bit… We worked with nice people, so it wasn’t the fault of the directors. But you would come across some really thick people, at points, but a lot of our dealings with the people who were important, were alright. I’d marked myself out as someone who could be a bit bratty, a bit tempestuous, so they tended to be a bit…
Scared of you?
A little bit like that, yeah. Which is kind of all right. It was useful.
Presumably, there was the public Luke Haines who would talk to NME journalists and then a private one, who was different.
Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, if someone tweets an old interview or something, I never read it, because I don’t want to hear the thoughts of me, aged 25. Would you? But I was smart enough to say interesting, provocative things.
But did that come at a cost? Did you ever pay a price for that?
I don’t know. I don’t know, really. Whilst I was sometimes ‘in character’ somewhat, I still had a very strong idea of what I wanted Auteurs records to be and what I wanted us be and the important thing was always making the records.
‘Lenny Valentino’ from Now I’m A Cowboy
So what happened after the first album? The second album had the same producer and the same sound, more or less…
Inevitably, it got a bit more ‘professional’. The reason that I’m sometimes a bit sniffy about the second album, after the fact, is that it did get more professional. We got rid of the original drummer [Glenn Collins], which was partly as a result of a bit of pressure on me and partly – bless him, because he’s still a great friend of mine – partly because he wasn’t cutting it. We got a new drummer who was bit more durable when doing longer shows. The first drummer was great doing 20 minute shows, but would then flag out a bit.
Alice [Readman] learnt the bass. I’m always impressed with people that seemingly learn an instrument relatively quickly and she was pretty good.
She got really good, she had a style and it really worked. [Steve] Albini was really impressed.
What was your vision for that second album? There’s more electric guitars and a few rockier tracks. Did you have any kind of different outlook compared to what you were doing on the first record? I guess there was more money and you could maybe muck around a bit more…
We didn’t muck around. I thought I was trying to hone the songs, make them better and make them kind of broader. I don’t think I had the time to really think it out.
Those first two albums are really the two that are most similar to each other. Even to the extent of the artwork and the whole look of them; they feel like a pair, almost.
Yes, yes, very much so. I mean, in the light of day, now, many many years later – I don’t listen to these albums much, unless I’m doing something like this [the box set] and need to do my homework – but I’m pleasantly surprised. Okay, yeah, it’s kind of ‘part two’, but it rocks more and it sold the most in the US, by quite a lot. It has ‘Lenny Valentino’ on it. That’s one of the few things that the record company made me do, they made me go back and get Lenny Valentino right. So we got it right on the album and it’s a great recording. It’s great record.
The record company made me go back and get Lenny Valentino right. We got it right on the album and it’s a great recording.
Luke Haines
That’s the single where it’s unbelievable that it wasn’t a hit.
It was a bit too early. That was released the same week that Pulp had ‘Lipgloss’ out, just prior to them going really big. They obviously deserved to go big, but I just think that it was a little bit too early. We just missed out by a few places, but the thing is, that song has earned me money over the years. It’s got on many soundtracks.
So after those first two records, do you remember thinking quite specifically about what to do next? You must have been fairly pleased with yourself because…
Not really, no.
Why not?
I thought that, recording-wise, we needed to do something better. I remember being quite fed up with the first album – ludicrously – because I just thought it overshadowed the second album, which is kind of mad. Looking back on the second album now – in a non-career way and just hearing the record – it sounds great. It sounds weird for the time and other worldly… Things like underground movies and all this sort of stuff. People had huge expectations for the second album, chart-wise, but I think it went a couple of places higher than the first album and then the Pulp album at the time [His ‘n’ Hers] I think it went to number one, or something [it actually peaked at number 9. Now I’m A Cowboy peaked at #27, five places lower than New Wave]
So with the third album, After Murder Park, you got in a different producer, Steve Albini, and everything seemed to have a harder edge to it…
It was probably a reaction. Part of it was a reaction against what was going on, which I thought was incredibly lightweight, what is now called ‘Britpop’.
What did you think about Suede and their success, because they were obviously a band that you knew and you would have seen that first record do really well and then they went a bit proggy with Dog Man Star and stuff…
And Bernard left. I don’t really know the album… I know the Head Music album a more because it was a bit more in touch with them, then. I wasn’t really around when they were doing the Coming Up album, but I think their best album is that Sci-Fi Lullabies collection. It’s a fantastic record.
‘Unsolved Child Murder’ from After Murder Park
Back to your third record, After Murder Park. Lyrically, you had songs like ‘Back With The Killer Again’, ‘Unsolved Child Murder’… Where was all that coming from?
‘Unsolved Child Murder’ is a true story about a kid in my road who disappeared, when I was about seven and I’m telling that story and the whole thing just started taking a very sort of… I don’t want to use the word ‘dark’, but…
That song was very musical, but you’re not going to have a hit single with that lyric and you would have known that.
I didn’t, I thought in my 20s that anything is viable as a single, thinking with a John Cale, Jonathan Richman kind of mindset. I wasn’t thinking along the lines of Supergrass and ‘Alright’. Supergrass were a good band, but I’d broken my ankle, so I was on a lot of painkillers and I’d spent the year on tour being very untogether and in a very nihilistic state of mind. We hadn’t had a break since the first album and so I went away and wrote those songs and that’s just what came out, this avalanche of… I always get labelled with ‘misanthropy’, and that tends to be from people don’t understand what misanthropy means, but in that case it’s perhaps justified, what happened was a very misanthropic album, a very hard album, came out and it was necessary. It was kind of like ‘let’s clear the decks’…
After Murder Park was a very misanthropic album, a very hard album. It was necessary.
Luke Haines
Did you ever have any concerns about being dropped and having to do something else?
No. I had conviction. I sort of knew that for life, I’m in a rock ‘n’ roll band. I don’t know why I had such confidence in that.
What were the reviews like for that record at the time? Was it well reviewed?
Yeah. It was pretty well reviewed.
How well did it sell?
It sold less, but it still sold, I think. I mean, I think it ended at about number 50. Again, it’s sold quite well in America and we had a good thing in Europe. So it sold enough for us to not be up against it. Someone told me a figure after a few weeks of something like 60,000…
Which compared to today is great
But at the time that was thought of as not a lot. We were in Abbey Road [to record the album] and it didn’t cost much. I think Albini took 10 grand and no royalty or anything. It was 10 grand, plus accommodation, so he stayed in the Abbey Road chateau! We spent ten days in Abbey Road, so the whole thing probably cost less than £40k.
Why did you want to work with producer Steve Albini?
I wanted to work with him on the first album. I mean, things would have turned out a whole lot differently if I’d worked with Albini on the first album. It probably wouldn’t have worked out as well.
What did he bring to the third record?
Attitude. He bolstered my attitude. We became friends; we’re still friends. We were completely on the same wavelength. He got where we were coming from. He got whatever psychic space I was trying to occupy. He made, not concessions, but he took some things from me that he hadn’t done before like recording brass sections and string sections.
What’s interesting about this period is you then recorded the Baader Meinhof album, which is one of my personal favourites…
Me too. After Murder Park had been recorded. The record company liked it! David Boyd was a great A&R man, I remember he said something like “I didn’t sign you to have hit records”, which was like, what the fuck? He said “These are art statements”. I mean, he wanted the records to do as well as they could, but that’s why I never bought into the idea that Hut were some bullshit version of an indie label, because for me they were the perfect version of an indie label. They left me to do things that probably Rough Trade or Mute wouldn’t have done. He was like “You’re the artist. You’ve just got to do what you do”.
I remember buying the Baader Meinhof record at a time and really liking it. I would talk about the album a lot with someone I was working with. He found a book about the Red Army Faction and I became very interested in the whole thing, and understood the lyrics a bit more because of it. How did you become interested enough to want to write songs about it?
I just read a lot, anyway and, at the time, I was drawn to these quite esoteric subject matters. This was before the internet, so you had to go and find the books. I was kind of always into those ideas, not terrorism [laughs] but…
It’s interesting, because it’s pre-9-11 it didn’t have that stigma. And while I didn’t think the characters in the songs were cool, and I didn’t admire the people involved, it was fascinating to understand what would drive people to those acts.
That’s sort of where I was at, with it. Initially I wrote the one song, ‘Baader Meinhof’, probably around the time we were recording After Murder Park and in fact there’s a Baader Meinhof reference in the song ‘Tombstone’. But it could have been on the After Murder Park album and just been a song on that record. But it wasn’t and we had so much time off after recording Murder Park until the release [almost a year between March 1995 and March 1996] so Baader Meinhof got recorded with Phil Vinall, who was the producer of the first two albums and after we did the single [‘Baader Meinhof’] we just stumbled upon this sound. Phil’s friend Kuljit [Bhamra] – who played on the first album – owned a studio in Southhall, so Phil suggested we do it there. We got Kuljit to play on it and once he did, we thought “this sounds brilliant”. It’s just basically acoustic guitar, Kuljit on tons of tablas, mad synth bass and then the most distorted sound I could do. I thought it was a great new sound. I think we added the strings on later, to give it that kind of weird, B-movie feel. We had an Indian percussionist so I wanted Indian-sounding strings. It was just before people started getting interested in Bollywood soundtracks. I just really liked the sound of it and the lyrics seemed to work brilliantly with it, even though they were nothing to do with it. And we just kept on, over weekends for about six months, we just recorded more tracks. And it became this sort of concept. The lyrics became less important, to me it’s more about the sound.
But it was good though. Obviously the album is topped and tailed by ‘Baader Meinhof’ and I don’t know whether it’s a perfect narrative or not, but you feel like you’re following the plot.
I’m not trying to cop out of the lyrical aspect – I wholly stand by it, I think it’s a good idea – but I wasn’t trying to make any kind of political statement. I think what I was trying to do was make the music sound really cool. Like a pop record!
You could have made Baader Meinhof another Auteurs album, in theory, so why make it a side-project with the band name the same as the album title? You must have known that that would make it harder to find, harder to categorise…
Not really. Again, I hadn’t really thought about those terms. I just thought this is another record and it goes somewhere different.
And the record label were supportive?
I was amazed that they were gonna put it out. They gave me an advance for it, afterwards.
‘Meet Me at the Airport’ from Baader Meinhof
That’s like living the dream. You can write about anything, do anything and people were paying you to do it and releasing the albums.
It seems like it now, but in the 90s it was almost like a day-to-day [occurance]. I didn’t think it was that strange, which might be delusional on my part, but it just seemed like ‘this is the next record’, and we’re doing it. It wasn’t something I fretted about. I didn’t think “I’ve done this and I’m going to get dropped”
Were you pleased to be making a living out of being in a band, being an artist, recording music, and releasing it. Were you satisfied with that?
No [pause]. I still hadn’t made [the album I wanted to make]… although I’d say Baader Meinhof comes close – I think it’s one of the best records I’ve made. But at the time, I thought, I’ve got to do more like this. It’s was actually really hard to get out of the mindset of that sound, because I just thought that was a great sound.
Okay, but that’s an artistic aspiration. What I’m talking about is dreaming of owning a mansion, driving a flash car, having the triple platinum album where you never have to work again for the rest of your life, which I know is a clichéd rock star aspiration. That doesn’t sound like that was something that interested you.
Not really. I mean, when we were doing the Black Box Recorder album The Facts of Life, and we had a hit single and went on Top of the Pops; I felt a bit disillusioned.
What, like you’d blotted your copy book by being in the charts? [laughs]
A little bit, a little bit. But I’m not looking down on pop. Pop’s great.
Putting the whole Britpop thing to one side, the interesting thing about that period in the mid 90s is a lot your contemporaries, or however you want to describe them – like Suede, or Pulp or whoever – they had a moment in the sun where they had a big crossover-type record. And you didn’t really have that, which doesn’t sound to me like it really bothers you that much.
Not in retrospect…
But at the time, did you ever think, ‘it’s not fair..’?
I thought that when ‘Lenny Valentino’ missed the charts by one place [it peaked at #41]. Even if it had been 39…
…You could have gone on Top of the Pops.
No, the thing is, I refused to do Top of the Pops, like an idiot. With ‘Lenny Valentino’, I think in the midweek it was like #30 or something. “Do you want to be on Top of the Pops?” “No!” [laughs].
Do you regret that?
I don’t regret it, no. I don’t think it would have made an ounce of difference to what happened afterwards if ‘Lenny Valentino’ had got to #32. There wasn’t really another big hit single on the album, anyway.
‘Future Generation’ from How I Learned To Love the Bootboys
The last Auteurs album was How I Learned to Love the Bootboys, which came out in 1999. So you had AfterMurder Park, Baader Meinhof, and then England Made Me, the first Black Box Recorder album in ’98. Were you getting bored of the construct of The Auteurs as a band?
Yeah. I felt after After Murder Park we were kind of done. We’d already started what became the Boot Boys album during the Baader Meinhof sessions. 1996 to 1999 is rather like a blur of recording. The dates are always a bit scrambled, because a lot was going on. The Boot Boys sessions were a bit more efficient and they were in bigger studios. That’s the point where Hut were starting to say “can you have a hit, please?”. So eventually I kind of got it together. We went to another label for Black Box Recorder. David [Boyd] was fine about that; an amazing A&R man. The first BBR album came out and was a critical success. Again, it’s one of my favourite albums, and again we kind of found a sound for it. So the last Auteurs album was recorded concurrently. And at the time I thought it kind of suffered a bit because of that… but listening back, it sounds okay.
You were on a role with Baader Meinhof, England Made Me and How I Learned to Love the Bootboys, but it wasn’t perceived like that by many people because it was effectively three different acts.
I think journalists really had a hard on for the next Black Box Recorder album. The Auteurs were seen as the old thing. It’s 1999, it’s the fourth album, there’s no hits on it. But for many years, I’ve always thought that’s a much better record than I ever gave it credit for
So that was the last Auteurs album. Obviously you made the Das Capital album.
I got called in, which was very rare – me and my then manager. And we had the meeting with David Boyd. Back in 1992 the Hut office was this very cool place, on top of the old Virgin building in Kensal Rise. Everyone smoked spliffs, Dave’s hair was really long and he looked like he was in the Grateful Dead. It was great. And as the years went by the the office gradually moved down the building and by the time we got to the Das Capital album it was at the front door [laughs]. Anyway, we had this meeting and Dave had this bit of paper which he showed to us and on it was just a few words: “Auteurs contract to be terminated” [laughs]. And then he said “I don’t want to do this” and he screwed it up and threw it in the bin and said “I’ve got an idea. We’ll do a greatest hits album and just record the songs again”. We were for the chop, so it was a case of let’s get as much money out of the bastards as we can. So you could look upon it as a contractual obligation album, but it was done in the best spirits of like “fuck the company”. I hadn’t listened to that album in ages, but it was the first one I played for the box set and it sounds good. I wasn’t sure at that point what I was going to do, so I wrote a couple of new songs. We had great fun. I just re-recorded not the best songs but the songs that would work well with that treatment.
Thanks to Luke Haines who was talking to Paul Sinclair for SDE.The Auteurs box set,People ‘Round Here Don’t Like To Talk About It: The Complete EMI Recordings, is out now via Cherry Red.
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THE AUTEURS
People Round Here Dont Like To Talk About It - 6CD box set
The Pet Shop Boys will release a new greatest hits album in June called Smash: The Singles 1985-2020.
This release features new 2023 remasters and includes 55 singles, starting with West End Girls from ’85 and ending with 2020’s I Don’t Wanna. It includes most of their singles although there’s a few grey areas/omissions such as no ‘How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?’ (from 1991’s Behaviour) and a lack of ‘Burning The Heather'(the latter, from 2020’s Hotspot, was issued on seven-inch vinyl in the UK).
The 6LP version of Smash: The Singles 1985-2020 contains 55 tracks (click image to enlarge)
The physical formats are a 3CD+2xblu-ray, 6LP vinyl and a 3CD set without the video content. Where appropriate, all the singles are seven-inch remixes or edits. A special 6LP white vinyl and triple-cassette edition are available exclusively via the Pet Shop Boys shop.
The 3CD+2blu-ray sees all the videos on blu-ray for the first time. A second blu-ray contains bonus videos and lyric videos including for some of the songs excluded from the main audio offering. 66 videos in total!
The Pet Shop Boys commented: “As we start work on a new album, and later this year continue our ‘Dreamworld’ greatest hits tour, it seems like a good time to take stock and bring together every single we’ve released.”
Smash: The Singles 1985-2020 will be released on 16 June, via Parlophone.
Demon Music continue their Ocean Colour Scene reissue campaign with Yesterday Today 1999-2003 a 3LP coloured vinyl box set that includes three albums.
The albums in question are 1999’s One From The Modern, Mechanical Wonderfrom 2001 and North Atlantic Drift which was issued in 2003.
All three records have been remastered by Phil Kinrade at Alchemy Mastering and they are presented on coloured vinyl as you can see from the image above. This set is available from the usual channels but the official artist store has copies that come with a signed print.
Yesterday and Today 1999-2003 will be released on 12 May 2023.
With the 67th contest taking place in the UK in May, NOW That’s What I Call Eurovision Song Contest is a new collection available in three different variants – including very limited 5LP clear vinyl box set – featuring the ultimate collection of winners, memorable and enduring classics, and fan favourites from across the decades.
The vinyl box features 84 songson five clear vinyl records and includes track-by-track annotations, including facts about the song, artist, and result at the contest! This box is presented and branded like the ‘Electronic’ and ‘The ’70s’ NOW sets of recent times.
The “very limited” 5LP vinyl box set
A 4CD edition offers the same 84 tracks and is packaged as an eight-panel card wallet, just like the non-deluxe Yearbooks and finally a 2LP set is pressed on red and blue vinyl and offers 36 tracks.
Full tracklistings for all editions are below and the big 84-track versions are a veritable A to Z of Eurovision, from ‘Arcade’ (Duncan Laurence’s contest-winning Dutch entry from 2019) to ‘Zitti e buoni’ (Italian group Måneskin’s winning song for 2021).
All formats of Now That’s What I Call Eurovision Song Contest are released on 28 April 2023.
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Various Artists
Now Thats What I Call Eurovision Song Contest - limited edition 5LP clear vinyl box set
Rick Astley’s 1988 album Hold Me In Your Arms will be reissued in May as an expanded 2CD set and on coloured vinyl.
The album is 35 years old and features three top 10 UK singles in ‘She Wants To Dance With Me’, ‘Take Me To Your Heart’ and the title track. Astley also continued his success in North America; ‘She Wants To Dance With Me’ was a top 10 hit and the US-only single, ‘Giving Up On Love’, was a top 40 hit.
Hold Me In Your Arms is reissued as a 35th anniversary 2CD set (click image to enlarge)
Hold Me In Your Arms has been newly remastered and the 2CD edition offers 18 bonus tracks, which doesn’t quite match the 21 from the 2010 double-CD from Edsel. Like last year’s reissue of Rick’s 1987 debut Whenever You Need Somebody, this new 2CD set offers some ‘Reimagined’ versions (first issued on the 2019 Best of Me compilation). This deluxe CD edition comes with an expanded booklet that includes previously unseen photographs of Rick from 1988/1989.
There is also an album-only LP which features the new remaster is presented on blue vinyl.
Hold Me In Your Arms will be reissued on 12 May 2023, via BMG.
The debut album of short-lived psychedelic 60s pop group Tomorrow has been ‘reimagined’ by guitarist Steve Howe and will be reissued as Permanent Dream, next month.
That band (originally Soul & covers outfit The In Crowd) appeared in the 1967 film Smashing Time and released their one studio album the following year. It features two singles: ‘My White Bicycle’ and ‘Revolution’, neither which, sadly, troubled the charts in any meaningful way.
The lack of commercial success had little to do with the quality of the music, rather timing, since the album was recorded in early 1967 (before The Beatles’Sgt. Pepper helped define this era) but not released until February 1968 when the Psychedelic movement was well past its peak. Also, the original, slightly dull, black-and-white album cover did little to represent the vibrancy of the music within.
The original album was produced by Mark Wirtz and engineered by Geoff Emerick and Pete Brown and 55 years on, Tomorrow band member, and future prog guitar hero, Steve Howe has reworked and rejigged the album, thanks to developing audio technology and access to the original mono mixes, delivered to Howe from Warners. The multi-tracks are presumed lost and Howe was keen to use the mono mixes since the original stereo versions “suffered greatly from the misguided use of stereo mixes of that era”.
Howe, with the help of engineer Curtis Schwartz, has been able to “refine” instruments and vocals within these original mixes and do pitch and tempo adjustments where necessary. The goal being a “more rounded sound with greater continuity to an achievable level of perfection”. Everything is remastered from the original mono mixes.
Now called Permanent Dream, the new version features some less well-known studio tracks, a new running order and new artwork (by long time Yes collaborators The Gottlieb Brothers) which better reflects the psychedelic music within.
The album is available on CD and black and coloured (violet) vinyl. The vinyl editions are gatefold presentations with notes by Steve Howe and John ‘Twink’ Alder (which I’m sure will be in the CD booklet too). It will be released on 28 April 2023, via Spirit of Unicorn Music.
Interview
