Category: new wave


The CD features the full concert remixed and remastered from the original multi-track master tapes and restored to its original running order and released for the very first time.
Includes live versions of the hit singles ‘New Song’, ‘What Is Love?’, ‘Hide And Seek’, ‘Pearl In The Shell’ and ‘Like To Get To Know You Well’ plus Howard’s previously unreleased version of the Xmas favourite ‘Ding Dong Merrily On High’, sung to the backbeat of his hit single ‘New Song’.
This ‘restored’ live in concert performance by Howard Jones is being released on DVD for the first time.
Also includes a version of the track ‘Human’s Lib’ featuring Howard’s full spoken introduction entitled ‘The Story Of Ruth, David and Dennis’.

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Continuing in its series of Yoko Ono reissues, Secretly Canadian has released Ono’s seminal 1982 album It’s Alright (I See Rainbows), in expanded CD and digital versions, and on vinyl for the first time in more than forty years, with expanded and enhanced artwork.
Influenced equally by 1960s girl group vocals and 1980s synthesizer experimentation, It’s Alright (I See Rainbows) is an album of “adventurous… lush… committed and convincing avant-gardism” (Rolling Stone). As Ono said in her 1992 Onobox liner notes, “It was ’82 and it seemed as though I was finally in sync with the world.”
Vacillating from a widow’s never-truly-over grief, to the necessary uplift for an artist and mother to continue her life’s missions…

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01. Joy Division – Transmission (Live The Factory Manchester 13th July 1979)
02. Buzzcocks – Hollow Inside
03. Blue Orchids – Dumb Magician
04. The Sound – Winning
05. Robyn Hitchcock – The Lizard
06. Echo & The Bunnymen – The Cutter
07. A Certain Ratio – Forced Laugh
08. Red Guitars – Good Technology
09. Josef K – Endless Soul
10. This Heat – Cenotaph
11. Scritti Politti – The ‘Sweetest Girl’
12. The Fall – Iceland
13. Crispy Ambulance – Bardo Plane
14. The Cleaners from Venus – Factory Boy
15. New Order – Ceremony

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Since Chapter Music’s inauspicious start as the musical spinoff of a Syd Barrett fanzine, the Australian label has had a knack for curating quirky, eclectic compilations. Their Can’t Stop It! series, initially released on CD during the ‘00s, is probably the most essential various artists project, tracing the roots of their label’s rugged, Antipodean sound back to the heyday of post-punk.
Cropping up concurrently with the abstract, splatter-y stylings of New York City’s mutant disco movement and England’s Factory Records, Melbourne’s Little Band Scene was carving out a new path for Australian art music. As its name suggests, the scene operated as a collective of loosely constructed bands that…

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At the BBC: The Complete Recordings 1979-1981 covers The Selecter’s glory years, from the first of two John Peel sessions in October 1979 (coinciding with their first-on-the-bill slot on the legendary first 2Tone tour, supporting Madness and The Specials) to an April 1981 performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test, recorded months before singer Pauline Black effectively called time on the band by leaving to pursue a solo career and acting ambitions (they’d officially split the year after). The 30-track set marks the first time that all the beloved 2Tone act’s BBC recordings have been released in one place. The eight live tracks taken from a December 1979 show in Paris supporting The Specials were released on 1992’s BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert CD…

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The inclusion of a couple Force-era demos on 2019’s ACR:Box indicated that there could be more such recordings languishing in A Certain Ratio‘s vault. Force Majeure, released in tandem with The Joy of Sextet in 2026, confirms it and then some. Bearing a title that can taken as a declaration of its superiority to the band’s 1986 album, it certainly has an urgency and altogether richer/rawer sound, and while the aforementioned tracks were classified on the box as demos, “original versions,” the term applied here, seems more apt given that the material is fully developed. Moreover, the performances come across as serious rehearsals and further accentuate the crucial additions of keyboardist Andy Connell and saxophonist Tony Quigley. With those two…

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After they released It All Comes Down to This, their third new LP of the 2020s, A Certain Ratio looked to the past by touting — and touring in support of — anniversaries related to two of their ’80s albums. Issued simultaneously with Force Majeure, which presented early versions of songs from the 40-year-old Force, The Joy of Sextet marked 45 years since the recording of Sextet. (Sextet was also intended for release in 1981, but did not materialize until early 1982.)
A different proposition from Force Majeure, The Joy of Sextet is the result of ACR handing the multitrack Sextet tapes to Andrew Meecham, aka the Emperor Machine, a veteran producer who had previously remixed ACR tunes and even played on 2023’s rather confusingly titled 1982.

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…5CD box set anthology of B-Sides, rarities and archive material from Toyah’s recording history for the Safari label (1979-1983).
Revelations provides an alternate history of the Toyah Wilcox-fronted new wavers by way of B-sides, outtakes, instrumentals, alternate versions, home demos and live tracks.
Record label Cherry Red say that “it has been designed to perfectly complement the album catalogue reissue programme”.
Remarkably, given how comprehensive the individual album reissues were, 50 of the 102 tracks on Revelations are previously unreleased. The box has been compiled by by Toyah archivist Craig Astley alongside Joel Bogen, co-founder, composer and guitarist with the band.

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‘Normalization’ in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s was paradoxical: rather than a return to normality, it in fact meant renewed state control over society, culture, and public life. It followed the Prague Spring of 1968, which had grown out of the political and cultural relaxation of the 1960s, where under Alexander Dubček, reforms aimed to create ‘socialism with a human face’ allowed greater freedom of expression and artistic experimentation. The Soviet Union considered these reforms too radical, however, and in August 1968 Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, bringing the reform process to an end.
From 1969 onwards, the authorities restricted freedom of expression and cultural activity, and excluded politically undesirable figures…

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…this new deluxe edition contains two additional discs inclusive of rare remixes and a complete previously unreleased live show recorded on the Meso-America tour in 1982.
In 1982, the B-52’s teamed up with David Byrne for an album and ended up putting out the Mesopotamia EP instead. Rumors swirled that the band didn’t like working with the Talking Heads frontman, but Kate Pierson told us a few years ago that their manager had been “pushing us, pushing us, to get the next record out” and they “felt rushed.” The deluxe edition arranges the tracklist as originally intended, pairing newly remastered versions of the original six songs with three outtakes: unreleased recordings of “Big Bird” and “Adios Desconocida,” plus…

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Avon’s lesser-hailed, glam ‘80s synth-pop and new wave movement is spotlighted in-depth via 20 songs compiled by studio engineer Dave Massey, who smartly portrays the breadth and quality of an ‘80s blindspot.
The Bristol & Bath Blitz Club Meets Art School Sound – 80’s Explosion traces the reverberating influence of Rusty Egan and co.’s new wave crucible, The Blitz Club, along the M4 leyline, where it met Avon art school kids advancing from punk and funk into a new decade. Egan’s signature DJ brew – e.g. Kraftwerk to Visage, Burundi Black to Bowie, Japan and Grace Jones – would spark myriad emulators who were also mirroring the chops of Duran Duran (sons of the Brum club scene an hour north) and the likes of Martyn Ware…

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Following the 2LP vinyl edition for Record Store Day, XTC’s 17 April 1981 gig at Emerald City in New Jersey is released once again as Live Boots – Official Bootleg but this time as a 2CD set.
Dave Gregory recalls this as “Gig 11 on a 19-date U.S. tour, planned to promote the living daylights out of our Black Sea album, this night was a return to a hot venue we’d previously visited in January 1980 as part of the gruelling Drums & Wires campaign…. XTC at that time was a performing machine capable of creating megawatts of excitement.” Andy Partridge says: “We were tighter than a firefly’s fundament that night, even more astounding was the adrenaline-soaked speed we took every song at”.
This is apparently the first of a planned…

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…6CD special edition featuring unheard material, including early demos, alternate takes, and unreleased songs.
There’s a live recording on this boxset that seems to perfectly embody the challenges faced by Paul Weller after he split up The Jam. He and his new band, The Style Council, are playing the Goldiggers in Chippenham, Wiltshire, in March 1984, showcasing tracks from the upcoming Cafe Bleu album to an increasingly restless audience.
“I need absolute quiet for this number,” Weller insists, before a bossa nova called “The Whole Point of No Return”. The crowd start wolf-whistling as Dee C Lee comes out to sing “Paris Match” and, as the band perform low-key acoustic songs inspired, variously, by Antonio Carlos Jobim, …

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…includes three bonus tracks: a previously unreleased alternate mix of “Dogtown”, “I Don’t Know Why” (Demo) and “Walking on Thin Ice”.
Born in the shadow of incredible grief, Yoko Ono’s fifth solo album, Season of Glass, holds a specific place in her greater body of work, its vivid expressions of a spectrum of painfully raw feelings frozen in place by tragedy. Released in 1981, Season of Glass arrived just months after Ono watched her husband John Lennon be murdered as they were returning home from a recording session. Infamously, a photograph of Lennon’s blood-spattered glasses served as the cover art for the album, a creative choice Ono fought for against pushback from label executives who felt it would horrify the record-buying public.

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True to its name, (the best & the rest of) New Order will include both the 1994 hits set (the best of) New Order and its 1995 follow-up (the rest of) New Order. The former featured their biggest hits up to 1993’s Republic and new mixes of songs like “Bizarre Love Triangle,” “True Faith” and ‘Round & Round,” while the latter collected 10 mostly recent remixes, including a handful of exclusive tracks. For this new package, those discs will be augmented by a further two CDs of remixes and bonus tracks, including the versions exclusive to U.S. and cassette pressings of (the best of) New Order and plenty more period remixes, including many which were only ever on vinyl and even a few unreleased cuts, including the first focus track: a vintage mix of Republic track…

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Scritti Politti’s modern masterpiece Cupid & Psyche 85 is to be celebrated with a new edition that brings a much-prized version of the record together & a host of handpicked cuts from the group’s archive.
Released on July, the Deluxe Edition feature a remastered version the original album, plus a series of extra tracks and remixes. For the first time ever, the 13-track version of the album which was created for the then brand new CD format on the record’s release in June 1985, will pressed on vinyl. Overseen by Green Gartside, this running order has been remastered by Chris Athens, who has also worked with the likes of Drake and Beastie Boys. In addition, three extra tracks have been selected from the Scritti Politti archive…

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