The Next Compilation

Well, David Bowie's latest compilation Nothing Has Changed is finally now after being announced a few weeks back. Available in three different versions (double CD, triple CD - with their relative digital download equivalents - and double vinyl) each with its own different artwork, depicting Bowie looking into a mirror at various stages of his career (my favourite one here on the left). Although they all stick to basically the same songs each has its own individual tracklisting.

The triple CD version is possibly the most interesting, and the most complete to date. This version features the tracks Your Turn to Drive, previously an internet-only single, and Let Me Sleep Beside You, which is previously commercially unreleased, both being from Bowie's nigh-legendary unreleased 2001 album Toy. The jumbo version also follows the original idea of presenting tracks in reverse chronological order starting with new single Sue and winding up with Liza Jane, a track released by Davie Jones and the King Bees, apparently the first single ever to be released by the boy Bowie back in June 1964...and quite a corker it is too! Nothing has changed? Well, we wouldn't say that...

Ace of Trons*

Ladytron are one of those moody electronic bands you sort of think you should like, but then never get round to liking them that much, if thatnmakes any sense.
Anyway the band have a greatest hits compilation coming out soon. Aptly titled "Best of 00-10" it features (apparently) all thier best stuff from the past ten or so years plus new track Ace of Hz (geddit?). i-tunes is pushing a double deluxe-album thing and photo booklet to boot.


Here are Ladytron looking appropriately miserable, performing said new track, featuring vintage synthesisers in a post-war landscape. I'm sure it all makes sense to someone.

*post title may take some working out...

Unsurpassed!

A previously unreleased extended version of John Foxx's electro-classic Underpass will be featured on a new collection of Foxx's electronic music entitled Metatronic out on 3rd May.
Brand new mixes of the track by Mark Reeder are also included on the two CD + DVD compilation covering Foxx's thirty year solo career as well as live set recorded in Sydney in 2007.
The DVD features videos of the 1980 tracks Underpass, No One Driving and He's a Liquid as well as previously unreleased footage.

available from Townsend and Amazon

..end of plug, here's the music..and visuals re-purposed by Karborn:

Party like it's 1979

Continuing our belated '30 years of..' 1979-2009 celebrations, LIM picks this week's weird and wonderful compilation of the week, thanks to Compo Culture: CD & record compilations from the 70s and 80s.
The marvellous Rock n Roller Disco on the Ronco label delightfully highlights what a weird year 1979 was, fluctuating between MOR pop, disco and much watered-down reggae but with some 'new wave' and post punk creeping in there too.
So we therefore find The Boomtown Rats rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dollar (two hits featured here), and The Real Thing with Public Image Ltd. Jimmy Lindsay's Ain't No Sunshine blends almost seamlessly with Sparks' G Moroder produced Beat the Clock (which anticipated synth pop by a good couple of years) and the wonderfully whacky Flying Lizards come crashing in with Money after Bill Lovelady's crashingly boring Reggae For It Now. The Buggles 'Video Killed..' oft misquoted as the quintissential "80s" record takes it's rightful place in 1979 alongside B A Robertson (only one of his two hits featured here, sadly) and The Jolly Brothers...who?
Enjoy and party like it's 1979...
link
1979 music on wiki

B A Robertson - Bang Bang
Sparks - Beat The Clock.mp3




B A Robertson: 1979 incarnate

Top 5 cities

Been doing a bit of Euro-cityhopping this week so here's a quick top 5 I made up.

1. London Belongs to Me (St. Etienne)*
2. Drowning in Berlin (Mobiles)
3. Nightboat to Cairo (Madness)
4. New York City Boy (Pet Shop Boys)
5. Arrivederci Roma (various)

St Etienne - the Berlin U Bahn belongs to them

John Foxx - Glimmer: the best of

John Foxx's MySpace has at last given details of a new 2CD 'Best of' entitled 'Glimmer' to be released in the autumn. Glimmer is a collection of Foxx's solo work over the years, with a heavy bias towards the Metamatic (1980!) and later 'electronica' periods, skillfully, and thankfully avoiding the mid-80s wilderness save a couple of tracks. The earlier Ultravox! period songs are in their reworked versions with Louis Gordon. Collaborations with Harold Budd, Jori Hukkonen and the Metamatics also feature. Rare versions of standard faves also included for the fans.
full tracklisting as follows:

CD1:

Glimmer
Plaza
No-One Driving
Underpass
Quiet City *
Dislocation *
030
Twilight's Last Gleaming
Sunset Rising
Cities Of Light 5 *
Europe After The Rain
Hiroshima Mon Amour *
The Garden

CD2:
Through My Sleeping *
Endlessly
My Sex *
He's A Liquid
Carcrash Flashback V2*
Dancing Like A Gun

Just For A Moment *
Dislocated (with Jori Hulkkonen)
Burning Car
Miles Away
Stepping Sideways (with Harold Budd)
Free Robot (with Metamatics)
No-One Driving (early version)
Plaza (extended version)
Burning Car (Dub Terror/Karborn 2008 mix)

* Recorded with Louis Gordon

I love 1980

80s record cover of the day.

Thanks to Remember Music

I Love 1980 playlist:

Engineers

A wonderful Virgin compilation which I didn't get in 1980 but waited 28 years instead to be able to enjoy the thrill of downloading and finally listening to the damn thing. A mish-mash of electronic-based rock/pop music that was going round at the time all with a Virgin label connection. OMD's opening Messages is still a blinder to this day (perhaps former bedfellows Dalek-I could have done with a decent producer too to whip them into shape), and Numan / Tubeway Army shows us here how far ahead of his time he was. Be blown away with The Human League's massively sexed-up version of Being Boiled (see also Travelogue and Holiday 80), and of course Foxx's seminal Underpass from decade opening and massively influential Metamatic album. The rest is pretty much 'no-wonder-they-never-became-that famous' territory (Leer / Badowski et al where are you now), save perhaps Fad Gadget and Silicon Teens' cult classics. XTC's contribution is a bizzarre closing track but shows us how versatile and creative Partridge and co. were at the time.
A must. Don't wait 28 years chaps like I did....
Get it here newromantic rules