‘Deep’ was very much Peter Murphy’s breakthrough solo album and perhaps it was in no small part due to the promotional push of the record company machinery of the era, still some years away from the MP3 meltdown and subsequent diminished times. This cassette is one of those curious promo-only releases of the era picked up along the way, a reminder of those times.
Some while back I posted about a John Foxx video compilation released back in 1989 on VHS format and noted that other releases from the same series, Virgin Music Vault, was a release by the Skids…
Continue reading “Skids video compilation (Virgin Music Vault, VVC580, 1989)”
‘Live In London 1986’ is a curious yet appealing release I spotted amongst the racks way back in the day, styled to fit in with the UK single releases of ‘Left Of Center’ and ‘Marlene On The Wall’ (1986 re-release) by the looks of it. Turns out that it was only issued in Australia, New Zealand and Japan and it is made up of a variety of live recordings that in some cases found themselves spread across various B side and 12″ singles in the UK – but also a couple that look to be exclusive to this release. My copy is the Australian vinyl mini-album, picked up on import.
Continue reading “Suzanne Vega – ‘Live In London 1986’ Australian Mini-Album (A&M, L20054, 1986)”
Released in early July 1986 (mostly?), 4AD issued all of the Cocteau Twins albums to date on CD format, in some cases compiling and enhancing or combining some of the releases along the way in the same way that some of the cassette editions had been released before.
Released in early July 1986, this initial CD version ran with the enhanced track listing that the 1983 cassette release introduced, by way of including the band’s second John Peel session of January 1983 as bonus tracks – and then went a step beyond the cassette by also including a further two tracks. These were the tracks intended to be the band’s very first single release, ‘See No Evil’ and ‘Perhaps Some Other Aeon’, which until that point were only ever released on i) a giveaway flexidisc with ‘Vinyl’ magazine in Holland for ‘See No Evil’, and ii) the ‘An Hour Of Eloquent Sounds’ compilation cassette, respectively, although in a very different recording – the version of ‘Perhaps Some Other Aeon’ on this CD is quite different by comparison to that earlier cassette release version.
The main image on the front cover is retained from the vinyl version, but the rest of the design is different and incorporates the additional photographic image that was first used on the 1983 cassette edition.
Continue reading “Year by Year: Cocteau Twins – 1986 – The back catalogue CD releases”
Much like 1985 had been, 1986 was another productive yet non-standard year, with the band shying well away from the traditional album and accompanying singles music business way of doing things. This year saw a stripped-down duo version of the band release a unique, subsequently well-loved minimal sounding album, one full-band, full-blooded EP and a collaborative album that didn’t even mention the band by name… plus a few more compilation releases yielding different versions or exclusive tracks once more…
1986 got off to a start with the first ever CD release by 4AD (apparently), in the form of the compilation album ‘The Pink Opaque’ – this CD version was issued in the UK with a release date of 17th January 1986 and I’m unsure of the US release date – the significance being that this was a joint pressing between 4AD in the UK and Relativity in the US. The CD has an identical track listing to the vinyl/cassette release of this compilation from the previous year. So, it is primarily of interest as far as versions go of containing the remixed/re-recorded ‘Wax and Wane’ and the non-album previously cassette-only ‘Millimillenary’. It’s worth noting too that the version of ‘Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops’ is the 7″ version. Continue reading “Year by Year: Cocteau Twins – 1986”
