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 : Sugar
RELEASE: Copper Blue/Beaster: Deluxe Edition, File Under: Easy Listening: Deluxe Edition
BACKSTORY: Merge Records this week releases expanded reissues of the studio output of Bob Mould’s post-Hüsker Dü trio, with the band’s 1992 debut and 1993 follow-up EP packaged in a 3CD set and the 1994 follow-up expanded into a 2CD set (see tracklists here).
BUY: Amazon.com (Copper Blue/Beaster, File Under: Easy Listening)
ARTIST : Claudia Brücken
RELEASE: This Happened: Live at the Scala
BACKSTORY: The former Propaganda singer this week releases, in the U.K., a CD/DVD set chronicling her March 2, 2011, career-spanning concert at London’s Scala, which featured guest appearances by Erasure’s Andy Bell, Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware of Heaven 17 and Propaganda bandmates Susanne Freytag and Ralf Dörper.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (CD/DVD)
ARTIST : Happy Mondays
RELEASE: Call the Cops: Live in New York 1990
BACKSTORY: The Madchester vets this week release, in the U.K., a 10-track live album recorded on the band’s inaugural U.S. tour in 1990. The set, which captures the “raw excitement and unique sound of the ban dplaying away,” features such favorites as “Step On,” Kinky Afro,” “Hallelujah,” “Wrote for Luck,” “God’s Cop” and more.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (CD, digital)
ARTIST : Yazoo
RELEASE: Upstairs at Eric’s
BACKSTORY: Mobile Fidelity this week releases an audiophile vinyl reissue of the 1982 debut from Alison Moyet and former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke, boasting the new pressing “breathes with a decongested openness, textural richness, and tonal palette never before experienced on previous analog or digital editions.”
BUY: Amazon.com (Vinyl)
ARTIST : Peter Gabriel
RELEASE: “Secret World Live”
BACKSTORY: The former Genesis frontman this week releases, in the U.S. (the U.K. release came last week), a newly restored, HD version of his Grammy-winning 1994 concert film — filmed over two nights in November 1993 in Modena, Italy, during the tour for 1993′s Us — on both DVD and Blu-ray (see tracklist here).
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (DVD. Blu-ray)
ARTIST : Icehouse
RELEASE: Primitive Man: 30th Anniversary Edition, Man of Colours: 25th Anniversary Edition
BACKSTORY: Iva Davies continues his reissue program this week with the release of expanded anniversary editions of his band’s 1982 and 1987 albums. The newly remastered records are supplanted with six to seven bonus tracks each and DVDs with live and archival material.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (Primitive Man, Man of Colours)
Says a lot for the music industry today that most of these are not actually new releases. Bring on the 20th anniversary reissue of “Wish” by The Cure