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…
Category: rock
Matt Berry release a box set of his recent album, Heard Noises, featuring 10 remixes and four additional songs from the sessions. Berry’s 13th long-player, Heard Noises became his first to make the Top 30 on its release in January, reaching No 22. Guests on the album include Kitty Liv of Kitty, Daisy And Lewis, Sax Appeal bassist Phil Scragg, Eric D Johnson of Fruit Bats and Orange Is The New Black actor Natasha Lyonne.
The box set features a remix LP, with reworkings by Sean Ono Lennon, Andy Votel, Tennis, ex-Skint Records head Midfield General, Rodeo Clown, Brian Kehew, Project Gemini and – in their first remix for 25 years – Moog Cookbook, aka Brian Kehew and Roger Manning. Further remixes by Ono Lennon and Project Gemini are included on the…
Sunset Blvd 1969: One of the most sought after live recordings from British rock icons, Humble Pie! This historic show documents the first ever US tour by HP’s founding members line-up including vocalist Steve Marriott, guitarist Peter Frampton, bassist Greg Ridley and drummer Jerry Shirley! Although consisting of only 5 songs, several of these performances get extended into improvised blues rock masterpieces conjured by some of the greatest musicians of the ’70s classic rock era!
A showcase for former Small Faces’ frontman Steve Marriott and one-time Herd guitar virtuoso Peter Frampton, the hard rock outfit Humble Pie formed in Essex, England in 1969. Also featuring ex-Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley along with drummer Jerry Shirley, the fledgling group…
…Available on four CDs, Alive! features the original double album along with two more complete shows (plus some relevant rehearsal audio and an excerpt of a third) that were, with a few post-production tweaks, used to create the landmark Alive! These overdub-free recordings have been newly mixed by the album’s original engineer, Eddie Kramer, who’s also done mixes of the original album in Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround on the accompanying Blu-ray.
The timing of Alive! could not have been more fortuitous. KISS was desperate to break through, and their label Casablanca Records desperately needed a hit after sinking a major investment in an underselling record of clips from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
…remastered edition with three previously unreleased tracks uncovered from the original recording sessions plus an additional bonus track.
It’s worth remembering that in the mid-late ’80s, Eric Clapton wasn’t firing on all cylinders. He had all but abandoned the powerful blues and blues-rocking that helped make him a superstar, instead focusing on slick, commercially viable pop that frustrated his core roots audience and left critics cold. The albums were adequate and professionally constructed, but far from inspired.
Then came 1988s Crossroads. That four-CD anthology tracked Slowhand’s extensive and influential resume starting with the Yardbirds, John Mayall and Cream, then continuing through his solo years. It was a hit; an early example…
…feature 13 non-LP remixes and B-sides. Original mastering engineer Bernie Grundman has overseen the remastering along with engineer Chris James.
…An eternally hard-to-pin-down artist, Prince was already at work on the album when Purple Rain hit theaters and record store shelves, and the LP arrived less than a month after he’d finished touring that record. “I didn’t wait to see what would happen with Purple Rain,” he told Rolling Stone. “That’s why the albums sound so different.” (He’d call it “the smartest thing” he did in that same interview.) Influenced by the psychedelia of the West Coast-based Paisley Underground movement (but not, he was clear in one of his only period interviews, The Beatles), Around the World mixes Middle Eastern orchestration…
…Anthology Collection include remastered editions of the original three collections of rarities and outtakes compiled by George Martin and released through 1995 and 1996, available across six CDs.
Martin’s son Giles, who remastered those albums, also curates a new collection, Anthology 4, across a further two CDs or three LPs. Anthology 4 is drawn mostly from archival sets released in the wake of the band’s 2009 remastering of the catalogue, with 13 unreleased tracks taken from eras that have not been covered by such releases. The album is rounded out by new mixes from producer Jeff Lynne of Anthology‘s then-new tracks “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” along with “Now and Then,” a song from the same sessions that was released in 2023.
Nebulous, experimental psychedelia with an emphasis on being heavy as shit, the latest from Italian group Citrus Citrus isn’t afraid to spiral into the sonic cosmos or mine a good n’ doomgaze-y riff, and take its time while doing so (only a single track is less than three minutes long, and this is a whole album).
The rather borderless, almost style-agnostic feel of the music could be chalked up to the record having being written and recorded all in one go, while the band was holed up in a studio outside of the small commune of Montello (population: 2,668), taking the time out not only to draw inspiration from their surroundings but also to meticulously construct their jams, adding in elements of shoegaze, punk, garage, space rock, and…
December 28th, 1990, at The Marquee was an interesting time and place for Phish. After making its NYC debut in the spring of 1988, the band bounced around various rooms — including eight shows at the legendary Wetlands Preserve — before making its debut at The Marquee for the band’s 13th career show in New York City. Phish would play The Marquee two more times in 1991, before continuing its climb up the ladder of NYC venues, to The Academy, Mariott Marquis, Roseland Ballroom, and Lonestar Roadhouse before making it to the Beacon Theatre in April ’94 and finally to Madison Square Garden later that year — almost four years exactly from the Marquee gig.
In extensive liner notes on LivePhish, an archivist writes that advanced tickets to…
Hyloxolos is the expansive and surprising new psych-rock supergroup featuring Dave Harrington (Darkside), Peter Matthew Bauer (The Walkmen), Dylan Carlson (Earth), avant-garde instrumentalist & drummer Dylan Fujioka (Meatbodies) and Otis Bauer (Trench) on bass.
This album, like the founding of the band itself, was birthed last year over an intense 48 hour period of writing and recording at 64sound in Los Angeles with engineer Tyler Karmen (Bat for Lashes, Devendra Banhart). The massive walls of sound, rolling swells and long, winding passages unfold deliberately, in heavy, kaleidoscopic waves. These six tracks are the sound of an inspired group of strangers cleaving something new out of the ether on arrival. The first notes of…
About two minutes into “Burn,” the second track on Black Eyes’ Hostile Design, Daniel Martin-McCormick yelps “Kill your shitty parents/let their blood flow free”: a signal that, in the two decades since the band last released new music, it has lost none of its anger. Born at the start of the century in the D.C. punk scene, Black Eyes — with two drummers, two bassists, two singers, and a guitar that sounded like Rowland S. Howard possessed by the ghost of Sonny Sharrock — upended the genre’s norms, melding no-wave noise and funk, percussive assault, and obtuse but guttural screeds against Bush-era America. By the time their second album, Cough, came out, a free-jazz influence had taken center stage, with songs that sounded like the work of a band ripping…
It’s been more than two years since Jethro Tull released an expanded version of “The Broadsword And The Beast” before letting their reissue programme stumble chronologically, with unexpected emergence of “Bursting Out” box set followed by the “Christmas Album” and “Living In The Past” repackages. All this means another go at 1984’s “Under Wraps” is long overdue, yet it might be closer than everyone thinks, or farther, depending on what a fans’ take on the band’s digital-only offering of a concert from that platter’s promotional tour will be.
Restricted to streaming, Live In Berlin 1985 may seem strange, as it doesn’t contain a single cut from the group’s then-latest record, but the special performance – featuring the temporarily…
You have to be a pretty big Billy Childish fan to notice the subtle differences between his many musical projects (and there are plenty of them), but they really are there if you’re paying attention. His earlier groups, like the Pop Rivets and Thee Mighty Caesars, tended to be musically gritty but lyrically playful, while he was more willing to explore the darker side of his imagination in his blues-oriented solo recordings and latter-day acts such as the Musicians of the British Empire and CTMF. In 2022, Childish reunited one of his most prolific combos, Thee Headcoats (initially active from 1988 to 2000) to pay homage to one of his musical heroes, Don Craine of the Downliners Sect, and they cut an album, Irregularis (The Great Hiatus), that arrived in 2023.
Welsh hard rockers Budgie are often cited as one of the first U.K. heavy metal bands, known for their dark, blues-infused sound built from gloomy melodies and fierce guitar riffs. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Budgie made music that hit harder than their peers, and without the smiling disposition that was common among bands of the psychedelic era.
Budgie’s 1978 offering, Impeckable, is a very uninspired affair, lacking both the adventurous songwriting and refreshing sense of humor characteristic of the band’s early records. The group continues exploring its funk obsessions on “Dish It Up” and “Love for You and Me” while shelling out boring metallic riffs on “Melt the Ice Away” and “Smile Boy Smile.”
Legendary Phoenix experimental band Paris 1942 – whose drummer was Velvet Underground icon Maureen Tucker – only existed for a year or so in the early ‘80s before core members Alan and Richard Bishop devoted their full attention to their main band, Sun City Girls. In that brief period, they rehearsed a lot, played a handful of shows and recorded a batch of songs, one of which appeared on a compilation in ’82, with a bunch more belatedly released as an album and an EP a decade later. Frustratingly, this compilation includes most – but not all – of that material, plus 11 previously unreleased tracks, sourced from the band’s mass of tapes. Why not just release it all? Too many repeated songs perhaps, but either way, this 19-song retrospective gives…
…Oasis have released a 25th anniversary reissue of their Wembley Stadium live album ‘Familiar to Millions’. The recording of their iconic July 21 2000 show at the London venue was released in November of that year, marking their first ever official live album. Now, the record is being reissued in limited edition formats in both 2CD and 3LP formats.
The Gallagher brothers’ boundless, boorish, boasting bluster and blather only felt like brazen British working class moxie as long as they made great records that backed up their obnoxious arrogance. So when the songwriting fell off the last six years, on the bloated Be Here Now and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, it was like watching helium hiss out of an overstuffed…
