Coming off the less-than-classic Shake It Up, the Cars decided again to change things up, this time moving from their home studio in Boston to London to record with Mutt Lange. The producer was coming off a string of sleek modern hits, most recently Def Leppard’s Pyromania, and the Cars put themselves in Lange’s capable and demanding hands. They spent six months in the studio painstakingly putting the album together, sometimes spending days getting the right bass sound or vocal take. The bandmembers were rarely in the room at the same time and instead of using live drums on the record, Lange and David Robinson put together drum tracks using samples of Robinson’s playing. This sounds a bit like the recipe for a airless, stale album,…
Category: deluxe edition
Formed in 1987 by Fruitbat and Jim Bob, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine burst onto the scene with their signature style of punk-pop infused with samples, drum machines, and social commentary.
Released in 1995, Worry Bomb was Carter USM’s fifth album and their fourth in a row to break into the top ten of the UK album charts. It would also be the first to feature their new drummer, Wez, marking a shift away from the famous drum machine sound.
The album mixed things up musically, balancing mellow acoustic tracks like ‘My Defeatist Attitude’ with Carter’s signature high-energy indie rock, including ‘Let’s Get Tattoos’ and ‘The Young Offenders Mum’ which both hit the UK top 40.
To mark the 30th\u202Fanniversary…
An expanded deluxe edition of A Tab in the Ocean by Nektar. First issued in November 1972, the album was the second release by Nektar and was a milestone for the band as it set the template that that would bring them success in both Germany and the USA.
Originally featuring just four pieces, the albums first side would be dominated by the extensive title track which was a progressive rock tour de force. The remaining tracks, ‘Desolation Valley / Waves’, ‘Crying in the Dark’ and ‘King of Twilight’ would also become Nektar classics.
The album was recorded and mixed at Dierks Studios, Stommeln, Germany in October 1972, produced by Peter Hauke and Nektar and engineered by Dieter Dierks.
…featuring the original album, B-sides, remixes, singles and never-before-released live at NEC, Birmingham, which has been newly mixed by Dan Hawkins.
From the moment the pan flute fanfare on “One Way Ticket” kicks off One Way Ticket to Hell…and Back, it’s clear that the Darkness still believes that more is more. If anything, the band believes that even more is even better: with the help of producer Roy Thomas Baker, they make their second album incredibly glossy and expensive-sounding, with layers of sitars, marching drums, bagpipes, and tubular bells on top of their already-powerful guitars, drums, and keyboards (and, of course, Justin Hawkins’ formidable falsetto). But while the band’s excess succeeded on…
Toyah’s 1994 studio album was recorded with Salisbury band Friday Forever and includes eight re-recordings of classic Toyah material and six original compositions. CD1 adds four tracks of which three are previously unreleased. This includes demos of album tracks Invisible Love and Lu$t For Love, first recorded in 1992 with Kiss Of Reality.
CD2 contains 16 rarities with seven of these previously unreleased. CD2 features the long-awaited release of original material Toyah wrote with members of Girlschool for their ‘supergroup’ project Strange Girls, who played live UK gigs and supported The Beach Boys in Germany. Long desired by fans who saw the Strange Girls live gigs; these three studio demos were recorded in 1991 but have remained unheard until their…
Toyah’s 1991 solo album Ophelia’s Shadow is released as an expanded Deluxe 2CD Edition for the first time ever. Packaged in deluxe 7”-sized gatefold packaging, it continue the series of expanded solo Toyah albums released by Edsel.
Alongside the studio album that features Robert Fripp playing guitar on two tracks, CD1 adds six tracks Toyah recorded in 1993 with Kiss Of Reality, previously available on a very rare CD released only in Germany.
CD2 adds a full 1992 concert recording of Toyah and Kiss Of Reality in Warsaw, Poland. All 10 live tracks are previously unreleased with highlights being the otherwise unrecorded vocals for Amazon, Daydreaming and Shirt Of The Muse plus a rendition of Toyah’s 1987 album track…
Despite all your rage, you are still just a reader on a post about a new expansion of one of The Smashing Pumpkins’ biggest albums. The iconoclastic band will reissue Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness this fall for its 30th anniversary, pairing the original, sprawling album with a new double album of unreleased live performances on the band’s ensuing tour in support of the record.
Conceived from the outset as a double album – frontman Billy Corgan described the 2CD set as “The Wall for Generation X” – Mellon Collie represents part of the band’s most prolific era and commercial apex. Working with the best-known line-up of the group (guitarist James Iha, bassist D’arcy Wretzky and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain) plus producers Flood and Alan Moulder…
…Available on four CDs, Alive! features the original double album along with two more complete shows (plus some relevant rehearsal audio and an excerpt of a third) that were, with a few post-production tweaks, used to create the landmark Alive! These overdub-free recordings have been newly mixed by the album’s original engineer, Eddie Kramer, who’s also done mixes of the original album in Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround on the accompanying Blu-ray.
The timing of Alive! could not have been more fortuitous. KISS was desperate to break through, and their label Casablanca Records desperately needed a hit after sinking a major investment in an underselling record of clips from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
…include a new remastered version of the original album, a disc of rarities and a CD featuring a live show from that year.
One in the winter of 1983, Paul Westerberg – singer, guitarist and songwriting leader of Minneapolis trouble boys The Replacements – phoned manager Peter Jesperson with hot news: “I just wrote the best song I’ve ever written, and we need to record it right away.” Jesperson said there was no rush; the band’s second album, Hootenanny, had just gone to the pressing plant.
Jesperson soon heard why Westerberg was so excited. During a gig at a local club, the singer, drummer Chris Mars, lead guitarist Bob Stinson and Bob’s teenage brother, bassist Tommy Stinson, lit into “a bouncy tune I didn’t…
…feature 13 non-LP remixes and B-sides. Original mastering engineer Bernie Grundman has overseen the remastering along with engineer Chris James.
…An eternally hard-to-pin-down artist, Prince was already at work on the album when Purple Rain hit theaters and record store shelves, and the LP arrived less than a month after he’d finished touring that record. “I didn’t wait to see what would happen with Purple Rain,” he told Rolling Stone. “That’s why the albums sound so different.” (He’d call it “the smartest thing” he did in that same interview.) Influenced by the psychedelia of the West Coast-based Paisley Underground movement (but not, he was clear in one of his only period interviews, The Beatles), Around the World mixes Middle Eastern orchestration…
If The Hurting was mental anguish, Songs from the Big Chair marks the progression towards emotional healing, a particularly bold sort of catharsis culled from Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith’s shared attraction to primal scream therapy. The album also heralded a dramatic maturation in the band’s music, away from the synth pop brand with which it was (unjustly) seared following the debut, and towards a complex, enveloping pop sophistication. The songwriting of Orzabal, Smith, and keyboardist Ian Stanley took a huge leap forward, drawing on reserves of palpable emotion and lovely, protracted melodies that draw just as much on soul and R&B music as they do on immediate pop hooks. The album could almost be called pseudo-conceptual, as each song holds its place and each…
…include previously unreleased recordings, B-sides, and exclusive live sessions. The new Stargazer Editions add 3 new songs (“Cancerian,” “Anything at All,” “Eye to the Telescope”) which were first attempted during the original sessions and have been completed for this release.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that K.T. Tunstall’s Eye to the Telescope will draw initial comparisons to Dido, since they’re both female adult alternative singer/songwriters who bear a certain similarity in their vocal timbres. But as Tunstall’s debut starts to unfold, those superficial connections fall away, as she reveals herself to be a soulful vocalist, a restless musician, and a serious songwriter. At times, she may be on the verge of being a little too serious, as her songs are…
Bête Noire was the follow up to 1985’s Boys and Girls and was co-produced with Patrick Leonard (who had worked with Madonna on her True Blue album and would later co-produce 1989’s Like A Prayer). Johnny Marr was amongst the contributors to Bête Noire, whose singles were ‘The Right Stuff’, ‘Kiss and Tell’ and ‘Limbo’. Only ‘The Right Stuff’ troubled the UK top 40, peaking at No 37.
For the 2025 reissue Bête Noire is released as a 2CD deluxe edition and on purple vinyl. The second disc of the 2CD set offers remixes and edits from the original singles. This appears to be mostly comprehensive, with the exception of a small number of ‘Limbo’ versions, and extra points go to BMG for putting together a ‘listenable’ running order (not grouping remixes of the same…
…contains a new remaster of the original album plus eight original demos, two new mixes, various B-sides and rarities, and a previously unreleased concert recorded at SHIBUYA-AX in Tokyo in March 2001.
Green Day’s sixth album, 2000’s Warning, arrived nearly three years after the band’s multi-platinum Nimrod. It built on the expansive sound of Nimrod by incorporating even more varied textures drawing on pop and folk styles. Now, 25 years later, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool are revisiting Warning in a new Super Deluxe Edition.
With longtime producer Rob Cavallo moving up to the executive producer’s position, Green Day self-produced Warning – their first self-produced major label effort. (R.E.M. producer…
…The box include an expanded version of the album (remastered from 1/4″ production master tapes by Chris Athens and including one B-side and two newly-mixed outtakes) alongside the “lost” album Tallest plus a set of unreleased studio and live sessions.
The Crowes – then consisting of Chris Robinson on vocals/harmonica/guitar, Rich Robinson and Marc Ford on guitar, Johnny Colt on bass, Eddie Harsch on keyboards and Steve Gorman on drums – were flying high from the start of their major-label career on Rick Rubin’s Def American (shortened to American Recordings the year Amorica was released). Shake Your Money Maker yielded pop crossover hits in “She Talks to Angels” and a rousing take on Otis Redding’s…
…features a brand new mix by Steven Wilson, alongside a six track disc of previously unreleased recordings, including the Jagger/Richards composition “I Love Ladies“, plus a take on Shirley & Company’s “Shame, Shame, Shame”. Also included are four Stones instrumental jams from the 1975 sessions featuring the guest guitarists. The set also includes a full live concert recording from the band’s celebrated six night residency at London’s Earls Court Exhibition Centre in May 1976, where they were joined onstage by Ian Stewart, Billy Preston and Ollie Brown.
…Black and Blue marked the Stones’ rebirth in the wake of Mick Taylor’s departure from the band. As a result, Keith Richards took on the lion’s share of the guitar work while the group…
Widely acclaimed British band The Levellers are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their chart hit album Zeitgeist. The Zeitgeist 30th Anniversary Collection will be released in November 2025 via Warner Music and is available as a 2LP and 3CD.
The aptly titled album ‘Zeitgeist’ cemented the Levellers’ position at the top of the UK music scene in 1995. Following their headline appearance at Glastonbury Festival that summer, ‘Zeitgeist’ stormed to the top of the charts upon its release in August, beating off competition from Blur and The Charlatans to become the sound of the summer alongside Supergrass, Oasis and Pulp.
Now, in 2025, Zeitgeist’s 30th year, the album has been gloriously remixed and remastered by Al Scott, the original producer who first sat down…
…Featuring the original 1969 mix, the album has also been newly mixed by Charlie Russell from the original 1/4″ production multi-track tapes, while the third disc contains a newly discovered live recording from the Finnish radio archives of the bands stunning performance at the Kulttuuritalo Hall in Helsinki on 3rd December 1969, recorded just months after the bands’ career-altering performance at Woodstock.
Ssssh was Ten Years After’s new release at the time of their incendiary performance at the Woodstock Festival in August, 1969. As a result, it was their first hit album in the U.S., peaking at number 20 in September of that year. This recording is a primer of British blues-rock of the era, showcasing Alvin Lee’s guitar pyrotechnics and…
…featuring unreleased demos and a pair of previously unheard tracks from the original sessions.
Life in Slow Motion is an appropriate name for David Gray’s sixth album, since this languid, deliberate album crawls out of the speakers at a speed that suggests everything is stuck in molasses. Not that this is a bad place for Gray to be, or that it is even a big change of pace for him. As the years passed, he’s trimmed away the faster tempos from his music, leaving behind an even-keeled, meditative, soft reflective folk-pop that brought him a hit in 2000 with “Babylon” from his fourth album, White Ladder.
Life in Slow Motion isn’t too far removed from that album, although it does lack…
…Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings partner once again to issue a new deluxe edition of The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s seminal second album from 1968. Retitled simply Bold As Love and available on four CDs or five LPs and a Blu-ray, the box set include the original album in its original stereo and mono mixes, along with a wealth of rare outtakes and live tracks from the period (28 of which are previously unreleased).
With Axis: Bold As Love, Hendrix started to come into his own as a studio visionary. Working again with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the team of producer Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer behind the boards, the album featured more expansive original…
100% agree. Also, the description of the record was CLEARLY written but RA. Such a douche.