Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs.
ARTIST: Ride
RELEASE: Nowhere: 20th Anniversary Edition
BACKSTORY: The beloved debut from the seminal British shoegazers — signed to Creation Records in the late ’80s — is reissued this week in a 2CD set exclusively via Rhino.com. The new set includes seven bonus tracks plus a second disc featuring a 12-song live set recorded at The Roxy in Los Angeles on April 10, 1991.
BUY IT: Nowhere: 20th Anniversary Edition via Rhino.com
ARTIST: Bob Geldof
RELEASE: How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell
BACKSTORY: The former Boomtown Rats leader and professional do-gooder returns to music with his first album in a decade, out this week in the U.K. The cheekily titled record features 10 new songs, including “Silly Pretty Thing,” “She’s a Lover,” “Here’s To You” and “How I Roll.”
BUY IT: How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell via Amazon.co.uk
ARTIST: Claudia Brücken
RELEASE: Combined: The Best Of
BACKSTORY: The singer this week releases, in the U.K., a new 15-track career retrospective featuring songs she recorded while in synthpop bands Propaganda and Act, as well as solo cuts and tracks with Erasure’s Andy Bell and her current band Onetwo — plus four brand new songs, including her current single “Thank You.”
BUY IT: Combined: The Best Of via Amazon.co.uk
ARTIST: Howard Jones
RELEASE: The 12″ Album
BACKSTORY: This six-track collection of 12-inch mixes originally released in 1984 between Human’s Lib and Dream Into Action makes its U.S. CD debut this week. It’s a straight-up reissue with no bonus material; tracks include “New Song (New Version),” “What Is Love (Extended Mix)” and “Always Asking Questions.”
BUY IT: The 12″ Album via Amazon.com
See more new releases from Bauhaus, Dead Can Dance and ZTT Records after the jump…
ARTIST: Bauhaus
RELEASE: Crackle
BACKSTORY: The band’s 1998 single-CD best-of — originally released to tie into the group’s first reunion — makes its debut on vinyl this week with a brand-new 2LP set featuring a new track sequencing and “a special substitution of an unreleased hybrid mix of ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ featuring a 1982 studio vocal over a live backing track.”
BUY IT: Crackle
ARTIST: Dead Can Dance
RELEASE: Into the Labyrinth
BACKSTORY: The sixth album, originally released in 1993, from the goth/world music combo is reissued this week by Mobile Fidelity in a limited-edition, 2LP audiophile set that’s being billed somewhat hyperbolically as featuring “awe-inspiring clarity and unprecedented depth” that’s “on the level of majestic transcendence.”
BUY IT: Into the Labyrinth via The Ideal Copy
ARTIST: Various Artists
RELEASE: The Art of the 12″
BACKSTORY: Trevor Horn’s label Zang Tuum Tumb this week releases a 2CD, 29-track collection of “classic, rare and unreleased” 12-inch mixes from ZTT’s vaults by the likes of Propaganda, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The Art of Noise, Act, Claudia Brücken and Glenn Gregory, and 808 State.
BUY IT: The Art of the 12″ via Amazon.co.uk
