The Church / Starfish 2LP vinyl reissue

Australian band The Church‘s fifth album Starfish is being reissued as a 2LP vinyl set in November. The 1988 album was a surprise commercial success, particularly in America where it went gold and first single ‘Under The Milky Way’ climbed into the top 30 hit of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

The reissue expands Starfish from 10 tracks to 18, with the album proper across almost three sides of vinyl (“for maximum bass and dynamics” say the label). The bonus tracks include acoustic versions of ‘Under The Milky Way’ and ‘Antenna’ and other studio recordings.

This release is from Intervention Records and they state that the album and bonus tracks are 100 percent analog-mastered from the original analogue tapes, by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound. We are promised these will be “ultra-quiet” because they are pressed at RTI in Camarillo, CA and that Intervention “replaces it’s stampers every 500 copies so every pressing is is a hot stamper”.

The artwork has been restored and this becomes a gatefold with the original inner sleeves printed as the inside gatefold panels. The jacket is the ‘tip-on’ variety made by Stoughton printing in L.A. This means heavyweight card with the artwork ‘pasted’ onto the board. This has then been laminated.

Clearly much effort is going into this, although being an import here in the UK, it’s pretty expensive. If you are wondering about a CD version, Intervention actually issued that early on this year. Not just CD either, the it’s a hybrid dual-layer SACD which is compatible with all normal CD players but gives you access to the hi-res stereo on SACD players (there’s no surround version). This contains the same 18-tracks.

Starfish is reissued as a 2LP set on 26 November 2021, via Intervention. The SACD set is available now.

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The Church

Starfish 2LP all-analog vinyl

Shop Price gbp Stock Amazon uk   54.45 Order Amazon de   60.24 Order Amazon usa   45 Order Amazon fr   66.94 Order Amazon it   68.05 Order Amazon es   67.49 Order Amazon ca   76.98 Order Amazon jp   5374.00 Order JPC de   64.99 Order

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Compare prices and pre-order

The Church

Starfish 2 x hybrid SACD edition

Shop Price gbp Stock Amazon uk   34.06 Order Amazon de   37.05 Order Amazon usa   27.8 Order Amazon fr   39.93 Order Amazon it   43.45 Order Amazon es   47.26 Order Amazon ca   57.83 Order Amazon jp   4303.00 Order JPC de   41.99 Order

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Tracklisting

Starfish The Church / 2LP vinyl

• • LP 1
    1. Destination
    2. Under the Milky Way
    3. Blood Money
  • Side 2
    1. Lost
    2. North, South, East and West
    3. Spark
    4. Antenna
  • Side 3
    1. Reptile
    2. A New Season
    3. Hotel Womb

    Bonus tracks

    1. Under the Milky Way (Acoustic)
    2. Antenna (Acoustic)
  • Side 4

    Bonus tracks continued

    1. Frozen and Distant
    2. Texas Moon
    3. Anna Miranda
    4. Afterlife
    5. We Both Know Why You’re Here
    6. Perfect Child