With their breakthrough hit ‘Into The Valley’ in 1979, Dunfermline, Scotland’s premier export Skids quickly rose to become one of the most respected and popular bands to emerge from the UK punk and new wave era. Founding members Richard Jobson (vocals) and Stuart Adamson (guitars) were a dynamic combination up front (Adamson went on to even greater commercial success when he later founded Big Country) while the band’s tight, taut sound was grounded by William Simpson on bass and first Tom Kellichan and later Mike Baillie on drums.
Always considered up there with the greatest among their peers – The Jam, Siouxsie And The Banshees, and The Stranglers, for example – both singles and albums showcased…
Category: box-set
Official 5CD box set featuring all of the surviving British radio and television appearances by the legendary Strawbs between 1966 and 1984.
The roots of Strawbs go back to 1963 when Dave Cousins and Tony Hooper founded the bluegrass duo The Strawberry Hill Boys. The first Strawbs’ album was issued in May 1969 and saw the band embark on a wonderful career which produced a series of classic albums. Dave Cousins was the visionary, gifted musician and songwriter at the helm of many line-ups of the band which at various times featured such notable members as Ron Chesterman, Tony Hooper, Rick Wakeman, Richard Hudson, John Ford, Blue Weaver, Dave Lambert, Chas Cronk, Rod Coombes, and John Hawken. Cousins’ musical vision…
Halfway to the Stars gathers all the recordings made by Jack and his band The Cuicoland Express between 2001 and 2003. Includes the albums ‘Shadows In The Air’, ‘More Jack Than God’ and the double album ‘Live at The Milky Way’, recorded at The Melkweg in Amsterdam in October 2001, along with the concert video ‘Live at The Canterbury Fayre’, recorded in 2002.
‘Shadows In The Air’ was Jack’s acclaimed 12th studio album and saw him reunited with Eric Clapton on re-recordings of two Cream classics, ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ and ‘White Room’, along with other notable guests including Dr. John and Gary Moore.
‘More Jack Than God’ was his next studio album and featured new material…
Newly remastered 4CD box set by Peter Hammill featuring his first four studio albums issued on his own label, Fie! Records, between 1992 and 1996. Peter Hammill first came to prominence as the founding member and voice of the legendary progressive rock group Van der Graaf Generator.
Alongside his work with Van der Graaf Generator, Peter Hammill has enjoyed a long career as an innovative and ground-breaking solo artist. In 1992 he established his own label, Fie!, to handle his solo work, beginning with the release of the acclaimed ‘Fireships’ that year. A more introspective work, the album was labelled in the original liner notes as “Number 1 in the BeCalm series” and received much critical praise thanks to songs such as ‘I Will Find You’, ‘Curtains’ and ‘Gaia’.
The remarkable output of Ekseption, is compiled in this 13-part CD box set, Planet Ekseption.
Their real breakthrough came in 1969, when their first album Ekseption was released. With their unique combination of classical music and pop, they achieved international success and released 6 popular albums in 3 years. Keyboardist Rick van der Linden gave the band its recognisable sound during that period, until he left in 1973. After his departure, their success slowly declined, even though there were reunions later on.
Planet Ekseption brings together their musical legacy with remastered albums and rare bonus material.The first 9 albums have been remastered from the original master tapes. The remaining 3 albums have been mastered…
Featuring new member Simon House on synths and violin, and following the departure of Robert Calvert and electronic effects man Dik Mik, Hall of the Mountain Grill feels like something of an interim album for Hawkwind. Despite their cosmic pretensions, they were wary of the commercial success they had enjoyed with 1973’s Space Ritual and pondering which direction to go in next.
The album was named after a restaurant in London’s Portabello Road in which the group used to convene, a self-effacing title at odds with the grandeur of the cover, depicting a derelict spaceship in the mists of an alien lagoon; in 1974 we were two years into the post-space age. Tracks like The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke) are quintessential Hawkwind space…
Clearlight was formed in 1973 and was the vision of gifted pianist and composer Cyrille Verdeaux. The first work to appear under the Clearlight name was ‘Clearlight Symphony’, recorded in 1973 and 1974 and first issued by Virgin Records in early 1975. The album was notable for featuring Gong members Steve Hillage, Tim Blake and Didier Malherbe. The follow-up album, ‘Forever Blowing Bubbles’ was recorded in the summer of 1975 and featured a full band formed by Verdeaux and former King Crimson violinist David Cross guesting among others.
1977’s ‘Les Contes du Singe Fou’ was recorded with a full band who now included former Magma violinist Didier Lockwood and was a fine fusion of jazz, psychedelic…
Let’s look at the numbers: John Williams has been on this mortal plane for 93 years, and has been composing for visual media for 73 of those years. Compact discs have been a part of music lovers’ collections for at least four decades, and the “art” of John Williams on CD – a real, curatorial approach to his iconic film scores – began in earnest more than 30 years ago, when the 4CD box set Star Wars Trilogy: The Original Soundtrack Anthology hit record stores in 1993. From basic compilations like Greatest Hits 1969-1999 to hefty box sets covering his material recorded with The Boston Pops and other orchestras on two labels between the ’80s and the ’10s – not to mention the Herculean restoration work of remastering and expanding Williams’ scores beyond…
8-CD Box Set – Newly mastered albums with bonus B-Sides and live shows.
After leaving Deep Purple, Ian Gillan retired from the music business to pursue other business ventures including ownership of the Kingsway studio, where in 1974 he began to work on his first post-Deep Purple solo tracks. This combined with a warm reception to his appearance at Roger Glover’s Butterfly Ball live show prompted him to form a new band.
Initially called Shand Grenade, Ian was persuaded by the management to change the band’s name to the Ian Gillan Band. He recruited guitarist Ray Fenwick, bass player John Gustafson, keyboard player Mike Moran and Mark Nauseef on drums, using Roger Glover as producer…
During the late ’70s, the beginnings of a wave of music heavily inspired by the garage rock and psychedelia of the 1960s began to swell. Chalk it up to many factors — the availability of a number of reissues, especially the Pebbles series, a disillusionment with the restrictive rules of punk rock, the passage of enough time so that the era seemed glamorous, the chance to get cheap vintage gear — but the result was an underground that evolved in many interesting directions and even went quite overground at different times. Cherry Red’s 2026 collection This Can’t Be Today: American Psychedelia & the Paisley Underground 1977-1988 looks to document the scene, gathering together the many strands and sounds of the time to present a comprehensive view.
The Beatles are a singularly iconic rock band. While plenty of classic rock groups, like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and, most successfully, Queen, continue to rack up tens of millions of monthly Spotify streams, no other band remains as relevant as the Beatles. Many YouTubers build popular channels by explaining musical theory through their songs or by delving into the supposed mysteries of how their music was created.
That makes it increasingly more challenging to find a new perspective on the group. With a Little Help from My Friends: Covers of the Beatles 1967-1970 may well provide some interesting new points of discussion. Does it make for an equally enjoyable listening experience?
This 3-disc box set from Cherry Red Records…
This is a huge undertaking, an eight-CD set comprising all the band’s official studio albums released between 2006 and 2014, with a few added extras. It features not just the original albums, remixed and remastered (and notably not by Steven Wilson, prog’s ‘go-to’ man for this task), but also rarities, bonus tracks and acoustic reinterpretations, as well as new stereo and immersive mixes. Together, these highlight the journey The Pineapple Thief has been on since taking their early formative steps.
Retracing Our Steps is the second such release commemorating the legacy of The Pineapple Thief, following on from 2023’s How Did We Find Our Way, 1999–2006, which serves as almost the definitive guide to the band and their early…
Compiled by Jonny Slut of the influential mid-week London club night Nag Nag Nag, When the 2000s Clashed: Machine Music for a New Millennium anthologizes the hipster club scene of the decade, starting with the electroclash movement and moving through dance-punk revival on to blog-house. Electroclash stapes like Peaches, ADULT., Fischerspooner, and Ladytron all appear on the first two discs, which also feature neo-electro classics like Vitalic’s vampire-rave bloodcurdler “Poney Pt. I” and Legowelt’s sublime “Disco Rout.” The haunting vibes continue with a remix of Golden Boy and Miss Kittin’s “Rippin Kittin” and Pet Shop Boys’ remix of Atomizer’s “Hooked on Radiation,” while the likes of Detroit Grand Pubahs’ “Sandwiches” and Avenue D’s “Do I Look Like a Slut?” revel…
…’Power to the People’ features 9CD, 123 tracks (90 of which are previously unreleased) to chronicle the story of Lennon and Ono’s political activism, spanning the prolific period between 1969’s anthem “Give Peace a Chance” and 1972’s controversial live album ‘Sometime in New York City’ as well as that year’s One to One concerts at Madison Square Garden.
The most challenging of John Lennon’s post-Beatles albums, there was latterly an additional barrier to Some Time in New York City being afforded the lavish box set treatment: namely that opening track, the still contentious, ‘Woman Is the N***** of the World’.
With said song now removed, a newly remixed version of the album – retitled New York City…
Concord Music Group reissue R.E.M. at the BBC, originally released in 2018, the comprehensive broadcast collection from R.E.M.
R.E.M. grew up with the BBC, and this historic relationship is lovingly celebrated across an incredible collection that beautifully illustrates the career trajectory of one of modern music’s greatest bands. The collection—available as a super-deluxe edition 8-CD/1-DVD box set, as well as 2-CD, 2-LP and digital formats—comprises a treasure trove of rare and unreleased live and studio recordings culled from theBBC and band archives. This is a must-have collection for R.E.M. fans and an authoritative introduction for newcomers.
In-studio performances featured in the 8-CD/1-DVD box set include a John Peel Session…
…Tentative Decisions includes the baker’s dozen of 1975-1976 demos (plus one live recording and two tracks from The Artistics, an embryonic version of the band) that was released on one clear vinyl LP and 7″ last November, adding an impressive 32 additional demos (taken from an abortive session to audition for CBS Records) and live cuts from early shows performed as a trio of David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth.
While Talking Heads were one of the most striking acts to come out of New York’s late ’70s punk scene, Tentative Decisions shows they didn’t start there, offering early versions of single “Psycho Killer” and deep cut “Warning Sign” credited to The Artistics, a group frontman Byrne and drummer Frantz formed with bassist…
In January 1984, The Colourfield released their eponymous debut single. It stalled just outside the Top 40, a better fate than that awaiting its follow-up, ‘Take’, a few months later, which barely made the Top 75 at all. It was a markedly different reception to that afforded frontman Terry Hall’s previous enterprises, both of which had been successful from the get-go: The Specials’ debut single ‘Gangsters’ was a Top 10 smash, while The Fun Boy Three debuted in the Top 20, the British public having chosen to ignore the fact that ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum’ was wildly uncommercial.
But the fans that were happy to send that gloomy stew of lumbering percussion, needling organ and lyrics about famine, nuclear war and…
5CD set featuring two solo albums from The Byrds/Flying Burrito Brothers member, plus solo live recordings spanning his career and a live album from the Gene Parsons Band, along with unreleased studio demos.
Recorded between multi-instrumentalist Gene Parsons’ membership of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, his 1973 debut solo album ‘Kindling’ is a country rock and bluegrass classic that also features his friend and fellow ex-Byrd Clarence White on several tracks. Parsons demonstrates his versatility by contributing guitar, banjo, pedal steel, harmonica, bass and drums.
Acclaimed author of Are You Ready for the Country, Peter Doggett has written the notes for this box and describes ‘Kindling’ as “a joyous…
Historic 4 hours of previously unissued 1959 live Art Pepper recorded at Vancouver, Canada’s legendary jazz club The Cellar.
The release of Art Pepper’s Everything Happens To Me: 1959 – Live at the Cellar is the stuff music archivists can only dream of finding. Recordings by an historic and important jazz artist, at a storied venue, at a time when the artist was making some of their most essential work. In this case, catching Pepper on tape at The Cellar in 1959 finds him in the midst of creating and straddling landmark releases like, Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section (1957), Modern Art (1957), Art Pepper + Eleven (1959) and Gettin’ Together (1960). Though Pepper was going through a down time, Vancouver, Canada’s jazz club, The Cellar was in full swing…
Compiling music from throughout continental Europe during the height of psychedelia and progressive rock, So High I’ve Been: A European Rock Anthology 1967-1973 touches on several different styles and movements, from Dutch Nederbeat to Krautrock. This ranges from more blues-based rock & roll and beat music to groups exploring the outer limits, either through cosmic jamming or more ambitious and conceptual means, like French Zeuhl legends Magma, who sing in a self-invented language. Selections by a few groups like the Rattles and Necronomicon are occupied with occult themes, but the music is closer to the dark side of prog, and not heavy enough to be deemed metal. Other material runs the gamut from druggy freak-outs to more…