New releases: April 2016

01.04 Pet Shop Boys - Super
- new album out lready and certainly their best for a long time. Now on heavy rotation at LiM - plenty of electro-dance stuff with a few slower numbers chucked in. Fave tracks atm: Groovy, The Pop Kids, The Dictator Decides







08.04 All Saints - Red Flag
Bit of a throwback to the nineties rather than the usual eighties, although these lovely ladies have always produced quality pop music so their new comeback album has been worth a listen.  Fave tracks atm: One Strike, Red Flag.

08.04 The Very Best of Associates
- while waiting for re-issued remasters of their first three albums (including Sulk on vinyl) here's something to tide you over. 2 CD collection including a lot of previously unreleased material.

 
15.04 Phil Collins - No Jacket Required
Phil Collins continues his re-mastered deluxe re-issue schedule (inclusing updated cover artwork) with his  third album origianlly released in 1984. Includes hits such as Sussudio and One More Night, with the by now customary live performances and demos on the extra disc.


15.04.2014 Duran Duran - Girls On Film 1979 demo

Out in both CD or clear 7" vinyl format, this is the official release of tracks which have going round on bootleg for some time now. The recordings pre-date Simon Le Bon as vocalist and, obviously, their first hit singles and album in 1981, so definitely for curiosity's sake only.

Spotted on Spotify: Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls (1984)

Pet Shop Boys are very much in vogue again at the moment what with a new album and no less than 30 years of pop music making under their collective belts. Radio 2 dedicated a special documentary series to them in fact.

On a warm spring day in 1984 I remember, as a student, going into a record shop in Morecambe Lancs., and fishing out a 12" single from the bargain bin. It was the first release by Pet Shop Boys entitled West End Girls - an extended mix by Bobby Orlando on the A side and another song, appropriately called Pet Shop Boys, on the flip. I'd heard of them via Smash Hits - Neil Tennant was famously a former journalist on the fortnightly mag - so I bought it, took it home and listened to it quite a lot. That record, together with Shannon's Let the Music Play and Depeche Mode's People Are people were on heavy rotation during those warm early summer days indoors.

It wasn't until a few months later that pet Shop boys had a hit with the song West End Girls, although it was in a radically remixed form with beefier drums, trumpet and a female backing vocal, which gave it a bit of extra oomph and indeed got them to number one.

I've jealously kept hold of my original West End Girls 12" over the years especially as I'd noticed that it had never been re-released on CD or in digital formats.

Until now. I just noticed that there are two versions of their somewhat obscure and half-forgotten debut (though still not the one I've got!) on Spotify, where PSB are extremely well represented both with albums and singles. Enjoy the original West End Girls and an early version of  One More Chance here on Spotify - also available on digital download platforms.

Spotted on Spotify (an occasional series)

Over the next few weeks we'll be posting a number of reasons why we think Spotify is a totally wonderful thing and is not killing music at all, in fact it's making it more widely available for a reasonable amount of money, and artists are getting paid anyway so they should stop moaning.

Stay tuned, stay Spotified.

6/04/16: David Bowie - I Can't Give Everything Away (Lyric) - video

"I'll drink to that..."

Depeche Mode's album Black Celebration was released 30 years ago today (17/03/86).

Time heals all wounds, as someone once said, and I think it's definitely the case for me and my initially very difficult relationship with Black Celebration. On first hearing (I bought the cassette a few days after its release) I was rather disappointed and didn't like the overall sound of it, or the quality of the songs.

That was for two reasons in particular. Firstly, their previous album Some Great Reward released in late 1984 had been a fantastic album for me. I loved every song, every note, every lyric. I saw them perform live that winter too and it was also when I met my first and only love. We've been together ever since. Secondly Depeche Mode had produced a couple of fine singles since that: Shake the Disease, (bypassing the 'Greatest Hits' pusher It's Called a Heart) and more recently, as a taster to the new album, Stripped, with its truly magnificent Highland Mix.

But any hatchets that arose between myself and Depeche Mode in the Spring of 1986 have now been firmly buried and I can appreciate Black Celebration for the great album that it is. 

Black Celebration can be heard on Spotify here.

Read The Quietus' re-visitation of Black Celebration here (originally published for its 25th anniversary in 2011)

West End Girl

I've been keeping my eye on British actress Jane Horrocks ever since she did a cover version of JD's Isolation a while back .. 

Now she's gone for the full blown West End show featuring music by some of my fave artists: Joy Divison, The Human League (Mk. 1), Soft CEll, New Order.....oh and the Smiths.

The show, called If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me will be at the Young Vic from tonight until 16 April. A soundtrack album has also been promised.

source and pics: BBC News 

2016 > 1976

Looking back on a year in music that happened 40 years ago.

Jean-Michel Jarre: Electronica 2 announcement

release date: 06 May 2016

David Bowie - 1947 - 2016

My Top 10 Bowie, off the top of my head, but in more or less chronological order

1. Space Oddity

2. Life on Mars?

3. Sound and Vision

4. Boys Keep Swinging

5. Ashes to Ashes

6. Let's Dance

7. Loving the Alien

8. Sunday

9. Sue

10. Blackstar


He will live on. Forever.

★

Bottoms on sleeves no. 6

Zombi - Escape Velocity (2011)

Bottoms on record sleeves are like No. 9 buses these days. You don't see one for ages, then... Anyway here's another recent example which also happens to be a very good record musically speaking. Zombi are an American duo (that's not them on the cover, sadly) with some luscious electronic Moog-driven tunes backed up by live skin 'n' bone drumming which is all very good indeed. The sleeve itself is very 'retro' in style and intentionally so as the music within is a sort of Tangerine Dream meets Keith Moon in 1975. Zombi possible collaborators on Jean Michel Jarre's next Electronica album? We'd like to think so...

Listen to Escape Velocity here or purchase from all good record outlets.

Read the full LiM Bottoms on Sleeves series here.

Bar Two

via:  Post Punk Flyers