Celebrating vinyl / CD / cassette / memorabilia releases of musical gems and curiosities from the punk era onwards
Found while rummaging at a record fair in London last year, some nice glossy black and white Dindisc press photos from 1980 of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark… or OMitD – i.e. before they lost ‘it’ and became just OMD…
^ Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark press photo – four piece line up with left to right: Dave Hughes, Paul Humphreys, Malcolm Holmes, Andy McCluskey
^ Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark press photo – Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey
The original release of the ‘Wheel In The Roses’ EP was one of the earliest 4AD releases, coming after the initial batch of four singles that had gone under the label’s original name of ‘Axis’. It was the only release from Rema-Rema, a short-lived band but from whom the seeds of a good few other acts would evolve or intersect, including Wolfgang Press, Renegade Soundwave, Psychic TV and of course most famously Marco Pirroni’s saddle-up with Adam Ant.
What I love about this small object of desire is that despite it being so wilfully obscure and the band’s only proper release (two other songs did appear as live recordings on a tape-only compilation, ‘The Men With the Deadly Dreams’) (the songs from which can be heard on the Rema Rema MySpace site), 4AD saw fit to lovingly reproduce it in CD form. Perhaps it could be down to the fact that despite it’s obscurity, two of the songs had been covered subsequently – ‘Fond Affections’ appearing on the first This Mortal Coil album, ‘It’ll End In Tears’, with Big Black taking on ‘Rema-Rema’ itself. Continue reading “Rema-Rema, ‘Wheel In The Roses’ CD EP (4AD, BAD 5CD) / Various artists: ‘Natures Mortes’ (4AD CAD 117CD)”
Japanese releases have always been fabulously exotic and collectable to me, with their disregard for replicating the exact same releases elsewhere and willingness to mix and match tracks into new combinations, such as 12″ mini-albums and so on. Plus of course the extra attention to detail with the quality of sleeve designs, inserts and packaging in general. Virgin released a series of ‘pic label’ releases by a few of my favourites such as John Foxx, The Human League, Japan, and, in the subject of this post, The Flying Lizards.
Hailing from late 1980, this 12″ compiles various tracks from all of the Flying Lizards singles up to that point and comes in a die-cut sleeve with an over-sized 6″ picture label on show (front only) – ‘Move On Up’ (Single edit) and Portugal from the A and B side respectively of the ‘Move On Up’ 7″ single, ‘All Guitars’ from the B side of the ‘Summertime Blues’ single, ‘Money’ (the longer, album version though) from the ‘Money’ single (which was available on 12″ in some territories) and ‘Tube’ from the B side of the ‘TV’ single. Continue reading “Flying Lizards ‘Move On Up’ Japanese ‘Pic Label’ series 12″ single (Virgin, VIP-5902)”
If you are not already familiar with it, ‘Textures’ is a CD by Brian Eno that has never been commercially available to the public, instead only a limited, promotional-only release, intended as a stock library music source for licensing by film and television makers, released by Standard Music Library, cat. no. ESL 003.
Despite its limited availability, it appears that it has been issued a few times, so this particular sleeve design is not the only one available. Continue reading “Brian Eno, ‘Textures’ CD (Standard Music Library, ESL 003)”
A four song promo CD dating from 2000, released on V2 records to promote their re-issue programme of the Associates back catalogue (‘Sulk’, ‘Fourth Drawer Down’ and ‘Double Hipness’).
It is curious because a couple of the mixes are not the ones present on the CD albums that this release is promoting. The tracks featured on this release include Continue reading “Associates – ‘Associates’ 4 track promo CD (V2, VVR5011563P)”
