Tag Archive: Cherry Red


The dawn of the British folk revival broke in 1965 when Bert Jansch’s “folk-baroque” finger style revolutionised tradition, providing the early morning light for a burgeoning psychedelic scene which, by 1972 had traveled from folk clubs to the high-concept landscapes of progressive rock, exemplified by the Eastern-tinged sitar-guitar on Yes’s ‘Siberian Khatru’.
Western artists utilised Eastern forms as a new musical bedrock. The Byrds transitioned from folk-rock into the uncharted territory of ‘Eight Miles High’, a track widely cited as the first true U.S. “Raga Rock” single. Driven by Roger McGuinn’s solos – inspired by Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane – it proved pop could embrace complex modal structures. Similarly, The Yardbirds’…

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In the decades leading up to its release there had been loads and more loads of excellent collections of girl group and related music that originated in the U.K., but Strawberry Records’ 2026 collection Really Into Somethin’: Brit Girl Sounds & Styles 1962-1970 is one of the best. It gathers up a few names familiar to semi-casual music fans like Dusty Springfield and Lulu and a handful of artists that medium speed collectors of the style might know and love like P.P. Arnold, Sharon Tandy, Barbara Ruskin, and Julie Driscoll, but most of the three discs are made up of singers and groups that were more or less lost to the sands of time unless you were super devoted to digging up the rarest of the rare. Luckily for those who don’t want to spend hours searching and many…

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The Riot Squad only released seven singles on the U.K.’s Pye label between 1965 and 1967. But thanks to the discovery of Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes, the story of the band that might be best known for a short-lived collaboration with David Bowie can now be told in full.  I Take It That We’re Through: Anthology 1965-1967 arrives from Cherry Red’s Strawberry imprint, with 3 CDs and 83 tracks (40 of which are previously unreleased and another 14 of which are new to CD).
Ron Ryan (guitar), Graham Bonney (vocals), Bob Evans (saxophone), Mark Stevens (keyboards), Mike Martin (bass), and future member of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mitch Mitchell (drums), formed The Riot Squad in late 1964. The group’s lineup was notoriously fluid; the band’s…

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Cherry Red previously anthologized shoegaze and dream pop with the expansive multi-disc sets Still in a Dream: A Story of Shoegaze 1988-1995 and Cherry Stars Collide: Dream Pop, Shoegaze & Ethereal Rock 1986-1995, neither of which included anything by My Bloody Valentine, presumably due to licensing restrictions.
In both cases, the compilations started near the beginning of when the genres were beginning to crystallize, then firmly stopped in the mid-’90s, after the music press stopped giving shoegaze attention, and most of the genre’s big names either disappeared or changed their sound. With We Are the Beautiful: Two Decades of Shoegaze 1991-2011, the compilers start right when shoegaze’s definitive releases were…

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4CD sequel to Heaven Sent: The Rise of New Pop 1979-1983, documenting the influence of jazz and ’50s/’60s black American music (including retro soul) on modern pop in the UK between 1982 and 1987. Featuring Everything But the Girl, Robert Wyatt, Working Week, Joe Jackson, Blue Rondo A La Turk, Matt Bianco, Carmel, Fine Young Cannibals, The Blow Monkeys, The Style Council and Swing Out Sister.
…In 1982 a new jazz era was dawning and Soho, a hotbed since the ’50s, was where the renaissance began. Blue Rondo A La Turk, who had the first ‘New Jazz’ hit, were led by Chris Sullivan who opened The Wag Club in Wardour Street in April 1982, a vital catalyst for the ‘New Jazz’ scene.
Vic Godard, singer with Subway Sect,…

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…box set includes alternative versions as well as an unreleased live show from Rennes, rough mixes and radio sessions from the era. Plus ‘Twenty-Seven Points’ (that was also released in 1995), an album that consists of live recordings made in various locations between 1991 and 1995, but also contains interludes and two previously unheard studio tracks.
Mark E. Smith once again landed on his feet after departing a label, ditching Matador in favor of Permanent, but Cerebral Caustic is notable for many other reasons. First, of all people, Brix Smith (still going by the name) rejoined the lineup, while future events made this the last studio album featuring Craig Scanlon. Though not an original member, his guitar playing for many…

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…Four albums from the McAuley Schenker Group from the late ’80s and early ’90s. All with bonus material.
After making his debut at a mere 17 years on Scorpions’ first LP ‘Lonesome Crow’ in 1972, guitar maestro and mad axe-man Michael Schenker spent five years as lead guitarist with the inimitable UFO, before forming The Michael Schenker Group (MSG for short) with singer Gary Barden in 1979. With four studio albums and two live records under his belt between 1980 and 1984, Michael returned in 1987 with the ‘Perfect Timing’ album, fronted by former Grand Prix and Far Corporation singer Robin McAuley, and a change of name to the McAuley Schenker Group – but still conveniently shortened to MSG. The new look MSG…

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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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Continuing Doctor Bird’s comprehensive anthology series of Lee “Scratch” Perry-produced singles, Jungle Lion tracks the innovator’s studio output from the beginning of 1973, just before he established his storied Black Ark Studios and created much of his most celebrated work. During this era, he was making tracks that still sometimes bore a resemblance to older rocksteady rhythms, but he was pushing reggae firmly into the future through his studio experimentation, as well as his work with deejays and toasters such as Dillinger and Charlie Ace. While there are a few more traditionally sung love songs, most of the tracks with vocals feature playful, reverb-heavy toasting and chatting. Perry growls heavily on the truly wild “Jungle Lion,” one of his…

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1973 was a pivotal time for Lee “Scratch” Perry, as it was the year he built his fabled Black Ark studio, where he created much of his most celebrated work, and he released Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle, often noted as the first full-length dub album. Up until then, he worked as a freelance producer, often recording at King Tubby’s studio. Flashing Echo, part of Doctor Bird’s comprehensive series of Perry’s single productions, compiles one last batch of material before he had fully switched over to recording at Black Ark. During this period, Perry was working with deejays and toasters like Dillinger, I-Roy, and U-Roy as well as singers including Leo Graham, David Isaacs, and Junior Byles. Several of these tracks appeared as singles on Perry’s own Black…

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…Includes rare mono version of third album, ‘Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon’, various singles and B-sides, outtakes and alternative versions, plus a version of The Doors’ ‘Roadhouse Blues’.
On August 23, 2024, this much-loved British rock institution played what is likely to be their last ever show. In a career that goes back to 1962, after several name changes, they settled on Status Quo in 1968. Signing to Pye Records for their breakthrough hit single, ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’, Francis Rossi (guitar and vocals), Rick Parfitt (guitar and vocals), Alan Lancaster (bass and vocals) and John Coghlan (drums and percussion), had a psychedelic sound and image in keeping with the fashion of the time.
Quo eventually found their signature,…

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CD 83-track box set tracing the development of indie music from the height of the Britpop explosion in 1995 through its aftershocks to the post-Britpop period in 1999, on the cusp of the new millennium. This box continues the story of indie/Britpop from Cherry Red’s Popscene: From Baggy to Britpop 1989-1994.
…1995 was the year that Britpop exploded into mainstream consciousness due to the infamous Blur vs Oasis chart battle that was even covered on the national News at Ten. Both bands had already scored UK number one albums in 1994 but going head-to-head in the singles chart ensured maximum media coverage. Their success focussed attention on a revolution in music that included acts such as Elastica, Paul Weller,…

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In addition to being one-half of synth pop legends Erasure for over 40 years and engaging in numerous other solo and collaborative projects, Vince Clarke has racked up a sizeable discography of remixes. Remix/Remodel: The Vince Clarke Remixes selects 26 of them, though that’s nowhere close to complete.
The set begins with the first remix he ever did back in the late ’80s, a house-inspired version of Happy Mondays’ “Wrote for Luck” which stripped out the guitars and placed a thumping kick drum up front. The remix ended up being a bigger hit than the original album version, and helped define the alternative dance sound of the Madchester scene. Aside from this remix, however, the collection skips ahead two decades (leaving…

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In the late ’80s and early ’90s, The Darling Buds made a trio of very fine albums that flirted with noise pop, dance rock, and trip hop while ultimately coming across like first-class guitar pop. Since their return in the late 2020s they’ve continued making fine music, first with the Evergreen EP in 2017, now on 2026’s Same Sun/Same Sky. The band are in fine form, sounding tight and energetic with guitars that alternately jangle and bite. Andrea Lewis Jarvis’ voice doesn’t sound like it has aged a day; she presides over a batch of peppy rockers and swooning ballads like she’s been doing it non-stop for decades. As nice as it is that everything sounds really good, what’s even better is that their songwriting is on par with what it was in their prime, and maybe even…

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The Lovin’ Spoonful were one of the most popular American bands of the 1960s; they were also one of the most confounding. They were a thoroughly modern band capable of transcendent pop moments like “Do You Believe in Magic,” beautiful ballads like “Didn’t Want to Have to Do it,” hot rockers like “Summer in the City,” and songs like “Rain on the Roof” that niftily anticipated country-rock, but they also padded out their albums with old-timey jug band and blues songs that made them seem like fogeys before their time. This split made them a brilliant singles band, while their albums were more hit and miss.
The whole unruly mess is available for view in one sprawling package on Strawberry Records’ complete retrospective What a Day for…

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Sidemen in rock regularly boast a side to them that comes bursting out later in life. Pink Floyd guitarist Snowy White made his presence known on the radio with the wistful “Bird of Paradise,” just as Genesis touring bassist Daryl Stuermer found a new lease of life as Phil Collins’ co-writer on No Jacket Required. Thin Lizzy bandmate Brian Robertson showcased a new layer in his trajectory with the fiery Diamonds and Dirt, now re-packaged as a two-CD deal. While the first disc showcases the 2011 album as it should be, the latter is an entirely new record named The Brian Robertson Album, which is entirely instrumental.
As it happens, the boxset is credited as Diamonds and Dirt, so it might make sense to rate it as one flowing whole. The collection…

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Freddie & the Dreamers were the clowns of the British Invasion, playing their pop music for laughs while the other groups of the time were dead serious. Lead singer Freddie Garrity began playing in skiffle groups in the late ’50s, switching to rock & roll in the early ’60s.
After the Beatles broke the American market wide open, Freddie & the Dreamers followed in the flood of acts that tried to duplicate the overwhelming success of the Fab Four. The group’s hits were more numerous in the U.K. than in America, where they had only one Top Ten hit, the number one “I’m Telling You Now.” As 1965 turned into 1966, the group stopped charting in the U.S. and the hits began to dwindle in the U.K.; by 1968 the original group disbanded.

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Sartre said that hell is other people, but hell is actually being stuck in the company of someone of a certain age banging on about the TV they used to watch as a kid. Thankfully, Luke Haines has previous where it comes to reanimating what could potentially be seen as nostalgia fodder, always bringing an intelligent twist, as 2011’s 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ‘80s attests. Fifteen years after that cult classic, we’re back predominantly in the 1970s, a fertile period for the Haines’ imagination where the Baader Meinhof gang are still bringing some much needed glamour to domestic terrorism (Haines also recorded the 2014 concept album New York in the ‘70s featuring songs about Alan Vega and Lou Reed, among others).

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Folk music in the United States underwent a rebirth of sorts in the 1960s when young people began using the direct messaging and emotionally bold sound of the genre as a component of protest, making songs that expressed their political views and reflected the sweeping social change their generation was experiencing. With 100 songs and well over four hours of music, When Will They Ever Learn? A Story of U.S. Folk Music 1963-1969 explores every phase of the folk revolution of the ’60s, tracking the evolution as it quickly grew away from traditional trappings into forms that were more experimental but no less righteous. The earliest waves of collegiate folk-rock are represented by the spartan production and vocal harmony-centric songs of groups like…

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Cherry Red Records compilation album A World of Our Own is a colossal release for one with such a finite scope. Comprising three discs and 86 tracks, it covers, as its subtitle suggests, The UK and Irish Folk Explosion of 1965 with maximalist gusto. This breadth is not the result of curatorial indecision but rather commemorates a singular slice of space and time, marked by an abundance of creativity and celebrating a gamut of interpretations of musical tradition.
Such a kaleidoscopic array exemplifies the core populist values that generally underpinned the folk revival movements of the mid-20th century. So, too, do the individual cuts selected to represent the metaphorical explosion at the album’s center. What emerges from it all is a well-fleshed-out…

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