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 : The English Beat
RELEASE: The Complete Beat, Keep the Beat: The Very Best of The English Beat
BACKSTORY: Shout! Factory this week releases a new 5CD box set from the Beat plus a new single-disc best of. The former collects the group’s three studio albums and adds two discs of bonus material, while the latter presents a 16-song overview (see tracklists here).
BUY: Amazon.com (Complete Beat, Keep the Beat)
ARTIST : Mission of Burma
RELEASE: Unsound
BACKSTORY: The Boston post-punk masters this week release their fourth post-reunion album (that’s three more records than they put out during their original run in the ’80s) and their first release on Fire Records following a three-album stint on indie giant Matador Records (stream full album here via Spotify).
BUY: Amazon.com (CD)
ARTIST : Mark Gardener and Robin Guthrie
RELEASE: The Places We Go
BACKSTORY: The former Ride frontman and the Cocteau Twins co-founder this week release a new single called “The Places We Go” that is being issued digitally by Guthrie’s label Soleil Après Minuit. Both artists have announced the collaboration, but there’s no suggestion yet that it represents anything more than a one-off single together.
BUY: Amazon.com (Digital)
ARTIST : Duran Duran
RELEASE: A Diamond in the Mind
BACKSTORY: Duran Duran this week releases, in the U.S. (it already came out in the U.K. last week), a new concert album on CD, DVD and Blu-ray. The concert, recorded and filmed last December in Manchester, England, features such track as “A View to a Kill,” “The Reflex” and “Rio” (see tracklists here).
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (CD/DVD/Blu-ray)
ARTIST : Bananarama
RELEASE: 30 Years of Bananarama
BACKSTORY: Rhino this week releases, in the U.K., a new CD/DVD best-of from the ’80s hit-makers, featuring a CD with 22 tracks spanning 1983 to 2009 and a DVD featuring 35 music videos, including such classics as “Venus,” “Cruel Summer,” “Help” “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” and “Robert De Niro’s Waiting.”
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (CD/DVD)
Anyone know if DIAMOND will be available on iTunes?
English Beat reissue includes the US remix of I Confess by J. Jellybean B. and not the UK Dave Allen mix as stated on the packaging etc.