Spotted on Spotify: #newmusicfriday : ABC, John Foxx, Belbury Circle

Colourbox Box

Colourbox: under the box

Colourbox are perhaps one of the most underrated groups of the eighties, reamaining as they did for most of the decade on the fringes, too late for synth-pop and a little too early for the new electronica dance movement towards the end of the decade, which ironically they also championed.
Although they produced some good quality music influenced by electro, reggae, indie and all sorts of other stuff, they never really got the big hit, at least not until they somehow morphed into MARRS in 1987 and produced one of the biggest and most-influential 'one off' singles of all time Pump Up The Volume.

But now their label 4AD is set to celebrate the band's 30th anniversary (if somewhat prematurely) with a brand new 4 CD box set of all their released studio recordings and mixes put together by founder member Martyn Young. CD1 is the 1985 album, Colourbox, and includes all the tracks from the free album that was included with the original 10,000 LPs. The second disc is the 7" singles and the third is the 12" mixes. The final disc includes the 4 track mini-album, Colourbox (yes, same name as album) and loads of other previously unreleased stuff. Spiffing.

Order here if you will.

Back in 1986, Colourbox wrote a theme for the World Cup, aptly calling it The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme which, sadly, it wasn't. Here's the 12" version.

 

Total joy and order

As if Substance, the best of, the rest of, International, Singles and God knows what else weren't enough, New Order are publishing another 'greatest hits' package next month.
This time (oh let's make it a bit more original this time) they've also chucked in a few Joy Division tracks too just to get back to their roots...yeah. Total takes us from the very wonderful Transmission to 2005's Krafty in 17 easy moves and then (note subtle marketing ploy) tags a previously unreleased track Hellbent on at the end. Crafty.

All the better known tracks are included of course: Love Will Tear Us Apart, Blue Monday, True Faith, etc. etc., although of course punters will miss out on finer JD/NO moments such as Shadowplay, Your Silent Face and Everything's Gone Green. Tough.

Best thing about it would seem to be the Peter Saville sleeve design which makes good use of the letter 'O' (as in jOy and Order) making ghood use of primary colours which seem to be very fashionable these days. Total is available from June 6th - the kind of thing you might like to get your 17 year old nephew as a present, just to show hime how ace music used to be.

Here's the new track anyway:
New Order - Hellbent (Previously Unreleased) by Rhino UK

New Order: just havin' a laff

Essential rarities

Frenchy synth-maestro and guru Jean Michel Jarre has a new compilation out next week called Essentials and Rarities, ie. a disc of 'essentials' (better known stuff) and - more interestingly - a second disc of rare never-heard-before-pre-Oxygène stuff. Tracklist as follows:

from cool Jarre-blog - here's some stuff and mastering and that ....

cool n'est-ce pas?

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