The ongoing retrospective of the late John Wetton’s live recordings lands in the 1990s, during the time he was plying his trade as a solo artist. This 10-disc set, which presents eight shows from that decade in either remastered or revised form, is a treasure trove of material recorded in Japan, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands.
While there are inevitably repeated songs across such a wide-ranging set of shows – especially the most crucial pieces from his work with Asia, King Crimson and UK – there are plenty of variations in performance and arrangement, and Wetton is in fine voice throughout.
Asia’s ‘Heat of the Moment’ pops up in every show, of course; but often in rearranged form, while Crimson’s ‘Easy Money’ regularly…
Category: box-set
Marianne Faithfull didn’t have to open her mouth to receive a recording contract. As the story goes, so vividly recounted in the liner notes to the new box set Cast Your Fate to the Wind: The U.K. Decca Recordings, the young woman was so striking in beauty and presence that impresario Andrew Loog Oldham didn’t hesitate to sign her on sight. (Even her name was made for stardom!) But it was just as clear that she was no ordinary pop starlet chasing dreams in Swingin’ London. Faithfull was remarkably clear-eyed, quipping to NME, “In the pop business, talent doesn’t count.” Thankfully, she had it…in abundance.
Cast Your Fate to the Wind: The Complete U.K. Decca Recordings 1964-1969 brings together all four of the late artist’s original U.K. releases…
In the early 1970s San Diego was a sleepy Southern California Navy town on the Mexican border and a seemingly unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their era. Yet the presence of Harry Partch – hobo composer, iconoclast and inventor of instruments such as the Harmonic Canon and Quadrangularis Reversum – and a newly established and highly experimental music department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) ushered in a revolution that was as much social as it was musical. Drawing from the occult, self-realization and radical political movements of 70s Southern California, these artists sought to dismantle the established control systems of American life, looking to the future even as they sometimes referenced a distant…
A remastered and expanded 4-CD box set of ‘Sea Dream’, with unreleased demos, live material, and new archival content.
…Sea Dream was a collection of previously unreleased demos and recordings made by the late Randy California and his band Spirit. Originally issued in 2002 as a double CD version and unavailable for many years.
The ‘Sea Dream’ suite was a project Randy had been working on since the late 1980s and this work was the basis of the original release which was greeted with praise from Spirit fans. For this new edition, Spirit archivist Mick Skidmore has located new master sources of the original material and has also enhanced this release by the discovery of an additional 2CDs of wonderful,..
A spellbinding five-CD box set Archives Box 1983-2005 documenting the entire enigmatic production of one of the missing links in experimental electronic and prototypical industrial music: Anne Gillis. From her groundbreaking 1983 Devil’s Picnic release through her 2005 installations and exhibitions, this comprehensive collection unveils the hidden world of a visionary French composer whose work anticipated much of what would follow in electroacoustic composition and sound art.
Since the early 1980s, Manon Anne Gillis has been creating music using primitive systems, pursuing the smallest of impulses to their logical end-points. Her work exists in a space simultaneously quotidian and theatrical, transforming spoken word, breathing, and singing into blurred noise…
Vinyl-on-demand presents the definitive excavation of Bryn Jones’ formative years with Complete Oblique 1980-1983, a comprehensive 7LP/7CD box set that collects every recording from the pre-Muslimgauze era. This extraordinary archaeological document captures one of experimental music’s most prolific figures in the crucial period before his transformation into the underground legend we know today. Between 1980 and 1983, working under the moniker E.g Oblique Graph, Jones was assembling what would become one of experimental music’s most singular vocabularies through minimal electronic pieces built from synths and tape manipulations. This collection gathers all three impossible-to-find cassettes originally released on “Kinematograph Tapes”…
…Following last year’s set 1976 – chronicling the breakthrough albums Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox – the Irish band release ’74-’75, a deep dive into Nightlife and Fighting. The 7CD box set chronicles the making of those two seminal albums which were the first to feature the “classic” quartet line-up with guitarists Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson joining frontman/bassist Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey.
Nightlife came first in 1974, produced by Lynott and Ron Nevison, whose credits would grow to encompass albums by Ozzy Osbourne, Jefferson Starship, Survivor, Heart, Chicago, KISS, and other marquee artists with a big sound. Nevison helped the band bring out the innate soul in its hard-rocking songs, finding the subtleties…
For a band often frozen in the public imagination as ’90s indie heroes, James have spent over four decades proving they are far more than that label suggests. Formed in 1982, the Manchester group have released 18 albums, survived industry shifts, internal upheavals, and even a five-year hiatus, emerging stronger than ever with their first No.1 studio album Yummy in 2024.
It makes sense, then, that now is the moment for a definitive look back — and Nothing But Love arrives with exactly that ambition.
This new 58-track anthology aims to be the most complete document of James’ single-driven journey to date. Where 1998’s The Best Of delivered chart success but left significant holes, and 2007’s Fresh as a Daisy: The Singles…
It has been announced that YMO 1979 Trans Atlantic Tour Live Anthology, the first live box set to compile audio and video recordings from the five concerts held in four cities during Yellow Magic Orchestra’s 1979 world tour, will released on April 2025.
In 1978, Yellow Magic Orchestra made their debut on Alfa Records (as it was then known) with the album Yellow Magic Orchestra. The following August, they performed their first overseas concert at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, where the show was recorded live and filmed. Later that fall, they embarked on the Trans Atlantic Tour, becoming the first Japanese band to undertake such a world tour. Transporting more than 1.5 tons of equipment, they performed seven shows across three countries- the UK, France, and the East Coast of the United States-true to the tour’s name, “Trans Atlantic.” Live recordings were made at their performances at The Venue in London (two shows), Theatre Le Palace in Paris, and The Bottom Line in New York.
A new box set highlight Propaganda’s significant legacy within the history of synth-pop. The Düsseldorf group’s work for the Zang Tuum Tumb label will be the focus of the new 6CD set A Secret Sense of Rhythm, A Secret Sense of Sin (The Complete ZTT Propaganda).
Propaganda was the first band to sign to ZTT, the label co-founded by Trevor Horn, whose music as a member of the Buggles, Art Of Noise, and Yes plus extensive production work earned him stature as one of the key architects of 1980s music. In their earliest recordings, captured for ZTT between 1983 and 1985, Propaganda were crucial contributors to that moment, as chronicled on the new anthology.
Disc 1, Secret, focuses on Propaganda’s 1985 debut album A Secret Wish, which featured…
Some time after Crowded House frontman Neil Finn indicated potential work being done with the catalogue of Split Enz – the cult-hero pop band co-founded by his older brother Tim – fans finally have some development on that front, with the first in a planned series of archival sets covering the group’s early, avant-garde years.
Enzyclopedia Volumes One and Two will focus on the group’s early years, coalescing around the material leading up to 1975 debut Mental Notes, which celebrates a half-century this year. The 5CD set feature remasters of Mental Notes and its sort-of follow-up Second Thoughts, a rework of the Mental material with Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera in the producer’s chair. Second Thoughts will also be newly remixed for the set…
Following the July release of their first 3 albums, Cherry Red have released the last 3 albums from rock band Be Bop Deluxe. The Albums 1976-1978 featuring the two latter-day studio records, Modern Music and Drastic Plastic, as well as their 1977 live work, LIVE! In the Air Age.
Recorded in June and July 1976 at Abbey Road Studios, Modern Music was the fourth album by Be Bop Deluxe and the second to feature the line-up of Bill Nelson (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Charles Tumahai (bass, vocals), Andy Clark (keyboards) and Simon Fox (drums). A top twenty hit in the UK, the album followed on from the success and critical praise for the band’s previous album Sunburst Finish and was once more co-produced by Bill Nelson and John Leckie.
…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…
No orchestra’s interpretation of a composer’s material is ever definitive, yet it would be hard to imagine another bettering the Orchestre National de France’s performances of works by Maurice Ravel. With its Music Director Cristian Macelaru conducting, the orchestra celebrated the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth by presenting his major orchestral works at an early 2025 Ravel festival in Paris, the first concert on February 28th and the last March 13th.
This expansive three-hour document of the shows includes Ma Mère l’Oye, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and the complete Daphnis et Chloé (with the Chœur de Radio France joining the ONF for the latter), plus stellar renditions of La Valse, Une barque sur l’océan, Pavane pour une infante…
A new box set from Rhino offer nearly all the studio material of Athens, Georgia alt-rock icons The B-52’s. The Warner Reprise Years brings together the six albums and two EPs the quirky quintet put together between 1979 and 1992 – a period where they went from cult favorites to unlikely hitmakers. The collection feature the group’s 1979 self-titled debut, 1980’s Wild Planet, the 1981 and 1982 EPs Party Mix and Mesopotamia, Whammy! (1983), Bouncing Off the Satellites (1986) – the last album to feature all five original members – plus Cosmic Thing (1989) and Good Stuff (1992).
…The box is a nearly complete chronicle of the group’s output, minus a few major omissions. Some single-only rarities and exclusive material has been released on two compilations by…
Extensive seven-CD box set following the career of English singer-songwriter Thea Gilmore. Covering her recordings from 2008 to 2015.
Released in 2008, ‘Liejacker’ was Thea Gilmore’s eighth album featuring contributions from Joan Baez, Dave McCabe, and Erin McKeown. Following in 2009 was Gilmore’s first live album, ‘Recorded Delivery’, with recordings taken from UK shows during 2006 and 2008, with the first half of the album being acoustic and the second half electric, with a full band.
Gilmore rounded out 2009 with the release of an album of winter-themed songs, ‘Strange Communion’, featuring eight originals penned by Gilmore with Nigel Stonier, as well as two cover versions – Yoko Ono’s ‘Listen, the Snow…
After a 2+-year break, Neil Young is continuing his Official Release Series with new box sets on both CD and LP rounding up another four albums from the 1990s. ORS Vol. 6 arrives on the Reprise label with newly remastered editions of Harvest Moon (1992, ORS Disc 26), Unplugged (1993, ORS Disc 27), Sleeps with Angels (1993, ORS Disc 28), and Mirror Ball (1995, ORS Disc 29).
…Following the heavy rock of the Crazy Horse collaborations Ragged Glory, Arc, and Weld – the latter an experimental sound collage – Young cooled down with a return to the mellow milieu of 1972’s chart-topping Harvest. Young picked up his acoustic guitar and reteamed with co-producer/guitarist Ben Keith for Harvest Moon. Though the songs had been written over…
Dave’s Picks Vol. 56, the fourth and final Dave’s Pick of 2025, feature two nearly complete shows recorded March 20, 1981, and March, 21, 1981, at the Rainbow Theatre in London. The shows were the opening two nights of a four-night stand at the venue.
The concerts, which were the first time The Dead returned to Europe in seven years, feature performances of such Dead classics as “Friend of the Devil,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “Fire on the Mountain,” “Althea,” “Truckin’” and “Alabama Getaway.”
“These London shows are right up there with the best,” Dead archivist David Lemieux says in a video shot in front of Big Ben. “Some really, really wonderful, wonderful music to end the year.”
Pete Namlook, one of the most influential figures in the history of electronic music, passed away in 2012, leaving behind a vast sonic legacy. Yet Air remains his most poetic, organic, and emotionally resonant project. Created between 1993 and 2006, the Air series is a five-part symphony of ambient, ethnic, jazz, neoclassical, and cosmic electronic elements.
Now, nearly two decades later, we proudly present the long-awaited reissue of the entire series – for the first time ever as a complete 5CD boxset. From the wind-kissed sensuality of Air I, through the abstract voyages of Air II, the rich instrumental palette of Air III, the stylistic fusion of Air IV, to the deeply personal and introspective Air V – this collection stands as a milestone in ambient…
Electronic music pioneers Soft Cell release a super deluxe reissue of their classic 1983 album The Art Of Falling Apart via Universal Music. Soft Cell’s – aka singer and frontman Marc Almond and multi-instrumentalist and producer Dave Ball – second album is freshly remastered by Barry Grint from the original tapes and shows off the feted duo’s gothic take on pop music in all its full, darkly textured glory. Following directly on from 1982’s seminal one-of-the-first remix albums ‘Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing’, ‘The Art Of Falling Apart’ reached No. 5 on the UK charts. As befits an album celebrating difference and choosing art over the glitzy 80s pop dream, ‘The Art Of Falling Apart’ gloriously twists and turns between anger, frustration and destruction to beauty, reflection and unity.