Monthly Archives: July 2021

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The isolated audio of Paul McCartney chewing carrots and celery has been released by Super Furry Animals to announce the 20-year anniversary reissue of their acclaimed “maximalist,” fifth studio album, Rings Around The World, newly presented on 180g gatefold, double vinyl, triple CD, and double digital album in September.

McCartney’s playful addition is released on its own for the very first time as one of 75 curiosities from the vaults—including unreleased outtakes, remixes, hidden sounds and demos appearing across the multi-format release. So vast is the BMG reissue of Rings Around The World that the digital version will be split over two separate release dates. All physical versions and the first digital instalment will be released on Fri 3 September 2021, with a second digital collection being made available three weeks later on Fri 24 September 2021.

A story that starts with a chance encounter at the NME Awards in 2000 and ends with McCartney’s enthusiastic chewing being delivered by mail and then woven into the production of the Furries’ single, “Receptacle For The Respectable,” the ex-Beatle’s contribution is just one of the wild bends in the road of the expansive, Millennium-era, classic alt-pop album’s remarkable story.

Approached by artificially emboldened Furries’ keys player, Cian Ciarán at the ceremony at the Mermaid Theatre, London, initially to convince McCartney to let the band loose to remix The Beatles’ songs (a successful pitch as the Furries later received boxes of Beatles master tapes to contribute heavily to the Liverpool Sound Collage), McCartney agreed to appear on the band’s upcoming album. Within weeks, McCartney had sent the band a tape of just what they had requested. Having previously “played” the celery on The Beach Boys’ 1967 track “Vegetables,” McCartney took the chance to revive his penchant for percussion with roots.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rough Trade Records are extremely happy to announce the PHYSICAL release of reggae pioneer and innovator Dennis Bovell’s mixes of the JARV IS… track “Swanky Modes” on August 20th. These mixes were first made available digitally back in April (before Dennis was awarded MBE status in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list). Iggy Pop was so impressed he played BOTH of the mixes during the course of a single edition of his BBC 6Music radio show.

This limited-run 7” single features hand-drawn label art by Jarvis himself and is housed in a bespoke cardboard sleeve with reinforced edging. Tuff. It gets better: the song takes its name from a clothes shop Jarvis used to live near. The original song, taken from the band’s acclaimed album Beyond The Pale, found Jarvis Cocker confirming his position as one of the greatest lyrical auteurs of all time. The track weaved together a vivid series of snapshots of an unfurling affair with customary candid detail and electrifying erotic charge.

Bovell’s remix taps into that atmosphere, while forging his own, new take on Swanky Modes. Expansive, tender, yet laced with a thrilling edge, his musical reimagining of Swanky Modes nods both at the original track’s illicitness and Bovell’s own musical roots, as it takes the song into a new, truly original space with its haunting mix of darkness and light. Along with the remix of the original track, a dub cut of Swanky Modes is featured on the flip side of the 7”, which beautifully exposes the textures Bovell has interwoven into Jarvis Cocker and co’s original creation.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Varèse Sarabande has announced the re-release of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Smokey and the Bandit.

Widely available on vinyl for the first time in 25 years, the soundtrack to the classic Burt Reynolds film features massive hits from Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Jerry Reed, including “East Bound and Down” and “The Bandit.” Jerry also provides much of the instrumental score alongside celebrated musician and composer Bill Justis. The album additionally includes many memorable dialogue tracks taken right from the movie and featuring Reynolds, Reed, and Jackie Gleason. The soundtrack will release on September 10, and is available for pre-order today, July 20.

The film follows Bo “Bandit” Darville (Reynolds) and Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Reed), two bootleggers attempting to illegally transport 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana to Atlanta. While the Snowman drives the truck carrying the beer, the Bandit drives a Pontiac Trans Am to distract law enforcement (called blocking) and keep the attention off the Snowman. During their run, they are pursued by Texas county sheriff Buford T. Justice (Gleason). Smokey and the Bandit was the second highest-grossing domestic film of 1977, with $126 million against a budget of $4.3 million.

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Out of all the musicians knocked off the road by the pandemic, it must have been a real strain on Bob Dylan. A guy who has essentially played one tour after another since 1988, totaling more than 3,000 shows, pausing only a few months during a health scare in 1997, he had seen nothing like this eradication of his touring schedule. 

He filled it initially with his remarkable “Murder Most Foul,” an unexpected, 16-minute rumination about the assassination of JFK that was also his first No. 1 single, 57 years into his recording career. Released March 20, 2020, soon after lockdowns began, it was an anchor for his 39th studio album Rough and Rowdy Ways, released in June 2020.

It took a while, though, for Dylan to catch up to fellow artists using the internet to stream concerts as a way to connect with fans and maybe make up for all that lost touring revenue. Dylan had gotten used to traveling the world and reworking his tunes while dressed in cowboy garb and maintaining his career-long mystery before devoted fans.

His streaming event Shadow Kingdom on Sunday allowed him belatedly to continue that interest. On stages he surrounds himself with old Hollywood klieg lights and smoke to create a kind of atmosphere. In his streaming concert, smoke almost takes over.

The idea is that he’s in an imaginary ’30s cafe — the nonexistent Bon Bon Cafe in Marseilles, France (given “special thanks” in the credits). But with the cowboy hats of the denizens, surrounded by columns of long neck beers and overflowing ashtrays, it’s more like a period cafe in Hollywood, where it was almost certainly created. A slightly different setting for some songs has him on a checkerboard linoleum, adding to the dreamlike Twin Peaks nightclub vibe.

Not a live event, the 50-minute, 12-song presentation is more like an extended black and white video. There are no songs from Rough and Rowdy Ways (whose cover suggested a similar fantasy juke joint), and nothing in fact from the past 30 years of the Dylan songbook.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Montreux Jazz Festival and BMG announce the next anticipated installment in The Montreux Years series with Marianne Faithfull: The Montreux Years and Muddy Waters: The Montreux Years, both to be released on Friday, September 17, 2021. Available on multi-format configurations including double LP as well as download and streaming services, the two new full-length albums feature captivating performances from Marianne Faithfull and Muddy Waters’ multiple appearances at the iconic Swiss festival for the very first time, recorded and remastered in breath-taking quality.

The Montreux Years embodies the spirit of the Montreux Jazz Festival and the legacy of its much-loved founder, Claude Nobs. Nobs refused to compromise on quality or settle for anything other than the best and this ethos lives on in the superb quality of the recordings compiled in this collection. Mastering has been performed by Tony Cousins at London’s iconic Metropolis Studios, incorporating MQA to capture the original sound of these special concerts. Similar to the first albums in the series, featuring Nina Simone and Etta James, the Marianne Faithfull and Muddy Waters releases will be accompanied by exclusive liner notes and previously unseen photography.

Instantly recognizable with her raw, varied vocal talents and tangible charisma, Marianne Faithfull has been a long-time friend of the Montreux Jazz Festival, appearing five times over a nearly 15-year period: 1995, 1999, 2002, 2005 and 2009. The first live album of Faithfull in over 10 years, Marianne Faithfull: The Montreux Years opens with an enchanting rendition of Van Morrison’s “Madame George,” recorded live at Auditorium Stravinski on July 10, 1995, where Faithfull’s powerful range and unfaltering dynamism was instantly apparent.

The singer’s fans can immerse themselves in these unique recordings, which include several songs from her celebrated album Broken English, such as an electrifying, guitar-heavy performance of the titular track “Broken English,” the soaring “Guilt,” and John Lennon’s rousing anthem “Working Class Hero.” Meanwhile, the haunting sensitivity of “Strange Weather,” recorded live at Casino Barrière on July 6, 2005, captures the bottomless depths of Faithfull’s brutal and ragged beauty.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “The metal band everybody knows—but nobody has ever figured out. Ben Apatoff has taken the ultimate deep dive into the dark legend of Metallica, one of rock’s weirdest and most fascinating mysteries. In this brilliant book, he tells the definitive story of how a band of nobodies took on the world—and why the world will never be the same.” —Rob Sheffield, author of Dreaming The Beatles

With more than 125 million records sold worldwide, Metallica is the biggest metal band of all time. Four decades into their unparalleled career, Metallica is a massive cultural force who drastically changed the sound of popular music by creating their own rules. Yet for all their popularity, Metallica can seem impenetrable, raising more questions and inspiring more discourse as their mythos grows. They’re rarely given the kind of literary appreciation and analysis usually saved for the biggest rock artists, until now.

Metallica: The $24.95 Book looks at Metallica’s cultural significance, with chapters devoted to each member, each album, touring, fashion, books, film, influences, fandom, history, and more, exploring the band’s ideologies along the way. “I wanted it to it to be more than a fact book, and not just something people could just look up on the internet.” Says author Ben Apatoff, a writing teacher and music journalist.

The result is the most complete Metallica book to date, covering their career through 2021 and the first Metallica book written with access to the band’s box set materials. Compiled from years of exhaustive research and decades of fandom, and including previously unpublished photos, a foreword by Laina Dawes, the author of acclaimed 2013 memoir What are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal, new transcriptions of video interviews and magazine quotes previously unavailable on the internet, Metallica: The $24.95 Book finally gives Metallica the thorough biography and analysis the band deserves, providing an in-depth look at the band and their music that both die-hard fans and newcomers can enjoy.

Ben Apatoff is a New York writer and educator whose work has appeared in Metal Injection, MetalSucks, and the Morbid Anatomy Museum. He was born the summer Metallica released Kill ‘Em All.

The early 1980s was a magical time for electronic music. Artists like Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, and OMD were coming on strong and opened doors for other artists looking for the freedom to express themselves in new and untraditional ways.

Born in a dorm room in 1982 in St. Paul, Minnesota, three friends—Kurt Larson, James Cassidy, and Paul Robb—came together to form a band known simply as Information Society. Their 1985 classic “Running” became an instant classic in NYC and helped catapult the band from obscurity to stardom. Future singles such as “Walking Away” and “Peace and Love, Inc.,” cemented their place as one of the quintessential synth-pop bands of all time.

We recently spoke with Information Society founding member Paul Robb to discuss all-things INSOC including their challenging start in the music industry, a storied 40-year career, as well as their upcoming release, ODDfellows.

Share with our readers how you got your start in the music industry?

Well, that’s a pretty long story. In the early days of the band, we really didn’t understand much about the music industry. As a matter of fact, for the first year or two, we kept having discussions about why we weren’t being discovered and were very frustrated. Finally, someone pulled us aside and said, “If you want to be discovered, you’ll need to make some recordings in order to put out records.” Sounded fairly easy (laughs), so we eventually scraped up some money—I believe the whole recording budget was $600—went into a studio, and recorded our first self-released EP.

Funny thing about that EP, it just wouldn’t sell and most of the vinyl ended up being thrown away. About a year later, we regrouped and tried again with the support of a local DJ along with a small indie label in Minneapolis called Wide Angle Records. And like a lot of fledgling record labels, they started out by owning a record shop. Ultimately, they gave us some money and helped us distribute our next album. It was on that album that our song “Running” first appeared. Fast forward a year and a half later, and that single ended up causing a major stir in New York, ultimately inspiring Tommy Boy Records to license that song and eventually sign us to a first major record deal.

What artists inspired you along the way?

It is so hard to get across the idea to the younger generation how open it felt in the early ’80s. New wave was so important to us, yet we all came at it from different musical points of view. My focus at the time was jazz and funk. Kurt Larson was listening to Styx, The Beatles, and all things progressive. James Cassidy was in a band playing Black Sabbath covers. We were all influenced by what was around us, but when new wave music started to trickle into Minneapolis, which is where we grew up, it really opened our eyes to what was truly possible.

Bands like Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, and a German band called D.A.F., were incredibly influential on us in the early days even though we didn’t really end up sounding much like that kind of proto-industrial music. And then the whole new romantic thing kicked in with a lot of British and German bands. After that, we started hearing “electro” bands in NYC and that really turned us on. Ultimately, we combined the song craft and the romantic overtones that we were picking up from the British bands along with the beats coming out of New York, and that was the two-cent formula that we ended up eventually co-opting as the Information Society sound.

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Seattle’s Blue Glass is headed by Michael Shunk, his outfit having debuting in 2019 with the album Pale Mirror. It was a set undeniably impacted by UK goings on between 30 to 40 years’ time ago (you know, the 1980s), and its contents remain solidly likeable. But with Jardin des Étoiles, Shunk’s approach has undertaken a considerable detour, specifically into ambient territory. This is by no means a complete break from his prior work however, as guitar remains part of the design. Available now digitally, the limited edition (500 copies on double orange wax) ships out August 6 through the Two Roads label.

In giving Pale Mirror a short review a little over two years ago in this very column, I was impressed, if not blown away, by Michael Shunk’s adeptness at conjuring the moodier side of the ’80s Brit post-punk experience while maintaining urgency and heft, and with better than average songs. Cited influences included The Smiths, New Order, and Durutti Column, though sticking out to my ear was The Cure and The Church (who I realize aren’t from the UK, but neither are The Chills, who also made that list of influences). Also, in the drowsy near-rasp of Shunk’s voice, Pale Mirror recalled the Psychedelic Furs.

But what a difference a pandemic can make. There will be no comparisons to Richard Butler this time out, as Jardin des Étoiles is a record without vocals. The scoop is that after Covid scuttled a West Coast tour, Shunk opted for a shift of gears into what’s described as a meditative, healing zone, as he took additional inspiration from the films of director Chris Marker (La Jetee, A.K., A Grin Without a Cat, Take Five, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich) and Shunk’s son’s interest in the stars up above (the album’s title translates to Garden of the Stars).

The impact of Marker, who is frankly one of the greatest of all filmmakers, and in particular Shunk’s love of the masterful essay film Sans Soleil, is a promising sign that Jardin des Étoiles will unfold with positivity. And for that matter, so is taking inspiration from a childhood fascination with galaxies in the night sky (very relatable, as I shared this interest as a youth).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | For its 30th anniversary, Pixies 1991 album, Trompe Le Monde, is being reissued on limited marbled green vinyl, out September 24, 2021 (4AD). Pre-orders can be placed here.

Trompe Le Monde bookended a golden run of landmark records—a mini-album followed by four albums, released in quick succession—that cemented Pixies as one of the best for a generation. Translated from French to mean “fool the world,” Trompe Le Monde showed the band still restless to push their sound forward. Recorded between Burbank, Paris, and London, with producer Gil Norton again at the controls, their fourth album is arguably their most playful, with Black Francis’s lyrics on UFOs and conspiracy theories keeping things weird while power pop creeps in to amplify the space rock established on predecessor Bossanova.

Featuring singles “Planet of Sound,” “Alec Eiffel,” “Letter to Memphis,” and a flawless cover of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On,” Trompe Le Monde goes full throttle with 15 tracks coming in a quickfire 40-minute salvo. Receiving critical praise at the time and being supported by a huge tour that included playing stadiums with U2, it also proved to be the end of act one for the band, with them taking over a decade before returning to the stage together.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Somewhere amid the sea of pimps and tough guys, Blaculas and Blackensteins that came to characterize the films of the Blaxploitation era was a curious little oddity that defied classification. Not scary enough to be horror, too supernatural to be drama, with far too many animal sacrifices to be a romance, Lord Shango represented a solemn, contemplative, spiritual alternative to the sort of “exploitative” sex and violence-laden criminal storylines that gave Blaxploitation its name.

Released in early 1975, Lord Shango’s marketing materials painted it as a horror movie…but in truth, it’s a thoughtful, deliberately paced blend of genres similar in tone and cultural content (comparable to the spirit and feel of the 1973 film Ganja & Hess, and also starring Marlene Clark) and plays like a “woke” old-timey melodrama in the mold of the “race films” of the early 20th century from pioneering black directors like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams. This racial consciousness is undoubtedly a manifestation of the Afrocentrism and Black Power movement of the ’60s and ’70s.

Writer Paul Carter Harrison, whose playwright background comes through in the literate, dialogue-driven script, was raised in a family that had roots in Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanism movement and the Gullah culture, and a couple of years before Lord Shango, he wrote a book about the imprint of traditional African beliefs on the black experience and the need to reflect this influence in the arts.

Released by Bryanston Pictures who rose to prominence by financing and distributing films such as the crossover porn sensation Deep Throat, as well as big horror and cult films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Bruce Lee’s Return of the Dragon, the Andy Warhol productions Blood for Dracula-Flesh for Frankenstein, John Carpenter’s Dark Star and the animated Blaxploitation parody Coonskin.

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