Back catalogue: All genres

Review: In 1978 The Sex Pistols embarked on the legendary American tour that they would never finish.

DOA: A Rite of Passage is the unique, grainy and up-close document of a unique moment in music history, packed with live footage of The Pistols' incendiary American shows, as well as live performances from Terry and The Idiots, Dead Boys, Generation X, Rich Kids, X-Ray Spex, Sham 69 and additional music from The Clash and Iggy Pop.

The cameras also go behind-the-scenes into bars, clubs and car parks and features the now infamous Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen bed interview.

Review: The Definitive Edition, comprising a DVD plus reproduction of the 1975 tour programme.

Notes: TALKING HEADS CHRONOLOGY EAGLE VISION/ADA/ARVATO
Ltd DVD EREDV788 5034 5049 7887 4 L11.06
DEAL: 15% RELEASED: 07.11.11
Limited edition Hardback Book Package with 48 page book
TRACKLISTING: 1 Mic Test (1976), 2 With Our Love (1975), 3 I''m Not In Love (1975), 4 Psycho Killer (1975),
5 Intros Montage (1976), 6 The Girls Want To Be With The Girls (1976), 7 Don''t Worry About The Government (1978),
8 Dressing room fan footage: Found A Job (1978), 9 Thank You For Sending Me An Angel (1978), 10 Warning Sign (1978),
11 Artists Only (1979), 12 Take Me To The River (1979), 13 Crosseyed And Painless (1980), 14 Animals (1980),
15 Love ? Building On Fire (1982), 16 Cities (1982), 17 Burning Down The House (1983), 18 Life During Wartime (2002),
Bonus Features: 35 minute South Bank Show feature (1979). David Byrne interview (1978).
Full audio commentary by David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth.

OVERVIEW: ''Chronology'' pulls together live performances from across Talking Heads'' career. It starts with their earliest days at CBGB and The Kitchen in New York City in the mid-seventies, through their breakthrough years in the late seventies and on to global success in the eighties. They completed their last tour in 1983 although they would continue to make very successful albums throughout the eighties before officially breaking up in 1991. The DVD concludes with their ''reunion'' performance of ''Life During Wartime'' on their induction into the Rock ''n'' Roll Hall Of Fame in 2002.
Initial quantities of the DVD are packaged in a hardback cover with a 48 page book containing photographs and an unexpurgated Lester Bangs essay written as a review of the ''Fear Of Music'' album for The Village Voice in 1979 but only ever published in a heavily edited version. This will only be produced as a single run of 15,000 copies for Europe.
Hugely influential band with an extremely dedicated fanbase.
''Stop Making Sense'' is the only other Talking Heads live DVD available and remains a very strong seller.
Features brand new audio commentary by all four band members.

Notes: After more than a year of entertaining the globe with his Elements Of Life World Tour, Tiesto will release his long anticipated 'Copenhagen - Elements Of Life' DVD with a full live registration recorded during his concert in the famous Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, Denmark. The DVD, scheduled for the beginning of March 2008, covers over four hours of Tiesto's performance in Copenhagen and will feature state of the art techniques like Blu Ray high definition imaging, DTS audio and a few surprising extras. Since Tiesto's Elements of Life World Tour concerts are supported by a vast array of modern equipment, the venue for the DVD recording had to be large enough to handle the full scale of the show. The Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, Denmark turned out to be an excellent location to shoot the footage for the DVD. With a little over 25,000 people attending the gig and enjoying the music of Tiesto, the atmosphere captured on video gives a fantastic impression of what the Elements of Life World Tour is all about.

Notes: Nosferatu is Del Rey & The Sun Kings' second instalment in a planned set of four new soundtracks for classic films made during the silent era of motion pictures. Their first release was a radically re-worked (and surprisingly, highly popular) score for Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 classic film Battleship Potemkin. Nosferatu also pays homage to several of Del Rey's favourite film composers, most notably Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, Rachel Portman and Thomas Newman. With a number of live performances planned and a built-in audience composed of (or is that decomposed of?) those who enjoy the death/glam/Goth lifestyle, not to mention the potential of midnight performance for actual vampires, Del Rey & The Sun Kings' Nosferatu should have no problem building upon and surpassing the strong commercial showing of its predecessor Battleship Potemkin.

Notes: 2023 sees the 50th anniversary of what is widely regarded as Thin Lizzy's breakthrough album 'Vagabonds Of The Western World' featuring their first UK top ten single 'Whiskey In The Jar' and 'The Rocker' which would go on to be one of the band's signature tunes, so much so that it was the last song they ever performed at their final show in 1983. To celebrate the album's golden anniversary, the Blu ray formats feature Atmos mixes for the first time.

Notes: 'Hold On To Your Dreams' is the first biography of the musician and composer Arthur Russell, one of the most important but least known contributors to New York's downtown music scene during the 1970s and 1980s. With the exception of a few dance recordings, including 'Is It All Over My Face?' and 'Go Bang! #5', Russell's pioneering music was largely forgotten until the posthumous release of two albums in 2004 triggered a revival of interest, which gained momentum with the issue of additional albums and the documentary film 'Wild Combination'. Based on interviews with more than seventy of his collaborators, family members, and friends, 'Hold On To Your Dreams' provides vital new information about this singular, eccentric musician and his role in the boundary-breaking downtown music scene. Tim Lawrence traces Russell's odyssey from his hometown of Oskaloosa, Iowa; to countercultural San Francisco; and eventually to New York, where he lived from 1973 until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1992. Resisting definition while dreaming of commercial success, Russell wrote and performed new wave and disco as well as quirky rock, twisted folk, voice-cello dub, and hip-hop inflected pop. Composer Philip Glass comments that he was way ahead of other people in understanding that the walls between concert music, popular music and the avant-garde were illusory: 'He lived in a world in which those walls weren't there'. Lawrence follows Russell across musical genres and through such vital downtown music spaces as the Kitchen, the Loft, the Gallery, the Paradise Garage, and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Along the way, he captures Russell's openness to sound, his commitment to collaboration, and his uncompromising idealism. Tim Lawrence leads the Music Culture: Theory and Production degree program at the University of East London. He is the author of 'Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979', also published by Duke University Press.

Notes: The vocoder, invented by Bell Labs in 1928, once guarded phones from codebreakers during World War II; by the Vietnam War, it had been repurposed as a voice-altering tool for musicians and soon became the ubiquitous voice of popular music.

In How To Wreck A Nice Beach, from a mis-hearing of the vocoder-rendered phrase, the How To Recognize Speech, music journalist Dave Tompkins traces the history of electronic voices from Nazi research labs to Stalin's gulags, from the 1939 World's Fair to Hiroshima, from artificial larynges to Auto-Tune.

Dave Tompkins saw the vocoder brush up against FDR, JFK, Stanley Kubrick, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Kraftwerk, the Cylons, Henry Kissinger, and Winston Churchill, who boomed, when vocoderized on the morning before V-E Day, We Must Go Off! And now vocoder technology is a cell phone standard, allowing a digital replica of your voice to sound human.

From T-Mobile to T-Pain, How To Wreck A Nice Beach is a riveting saga of technology and culture, illuminating the work of some of music's most provocative innovators.

Notes: Rockstar music critic Everett True has signed to Criminal Records for the imminent release of his in-the-flesh, first-hand account "Live Through This (Part 1 - Nirvana)".

Known for bringing Nirvana to the masses, Everett was the first outside journalist to interview the band. Sent to America to cover the Seattle underground scene for UK music paper Melody Maker in 1989, upon his return Everett wrote a hyper-enthusiastic article that featured such (then unknown) bands as Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Nirvana and was later credited with breaking 'grunge' to the outside world. Grunge and Nirvana would break in the UK. It was the UK that first embraced the scene's raw energy and Kurt Cobain's untrammelled scream. Within a couple of years, Nirvana would go on to break in America and become the biggest rock band in the world.

"It was Everett who brought the label men scurrying to Seattle with their cheque books after writing excitedly in Melody Maker about the city's independent rock scene in 1989" Carol Clerk, UNCUT

From these events bloomed a close personal friendship between Everett and Kurt Cobain, one that would last from the band's humble beginnings and throughout their superstardom. Described by Courtney Love as "that guy who runs England", Everett accompanied Nirvana and Hole on tour as a personal friend. Continuously photographed together, Everett famously wheeled Kurt out to play Reading Festival in his surgical robes (and wearing a blonde wig that had been sent to Everett the week before by his younger sister). It was Everett who introduced Kurt to his future wife Courtney Love.

Notes: The second volume of the photographic guide to the iconic lost live music venues of London, as they are today. The first volume, issued in 2020, during the first lockdown featured over 100 lost smaller venues from all over London, this second volume features over 140 more focussing on the larger halls and theatres of London's musical heyday. Did you dance the night away at the Hammersmith Palais? Queue outside the Rainbow theatre to see The Jam or The Osmonds? Or jive along to rock 'n' roll legends at the Cellar Club in Kingston? Then this is another book is for you! Paul Talling, author of 'London's Lost Music Venues 1', 'Derelict London' & 'London's Lost Rivers' returns his attention to the lost music venues of London. This time round he focusses on the larger, theatre sized venues as well as a few smaller venues not included in the first volume plus some more recent losses. This book takes a look at some of the iconic venues of the last 60 years with images, flyers and modern-day photos of what they are now. Venues include Hammersmith Palais, The Rainbow, The Astoria, The Borderline, The Lyceum and many more. Featuring photos, adverts & tickets, this book is a reminder of a less homogenised London, taking you back to the city's halcyon days of Rock N Roll, Jazz, Blues, Rolk, Rock, Punk, Indie and more. Paul Talling, author of 'Derelict London' and 'London's Lost Rivers' (Random House) turns his attention back to some of the iconic venues of the last 60 years with images, flyers and modern-day photos of what they are now.

Notes: A landmark release, the 200th addition to the Hospital Records catalogue is perhaps, rather surprisingly, not a record but a book. Written, compiled and edited by Graphic Artist Ricky Trickartt and Art Director Chris Goss, NHS200 is a must-have collector's item and coffee table book for fans new and old.

Celebrating Hospital Records' fifteenth year in business, NHS200, the two-hundredth catalogue addition, provides a visual compendium of the label's history. Exploring a decade and a half of Hospital's greatest artwork, photography, medical puns and the evolving hairstyles of the artists across over 150 full-colour pages, Chris Goss and Ricky Trickartt chart the label's development from 1996 to where we are today in 2011. From the signing of seminal artists and the evolution of the Hospitality events brand to the establishment of sister labels MASH and Med School, everything is covered in this panoramic retrospective of one of independent dance music's most loved labels.

Notes: Hardback: 160 pages Product Dimensions: 24.7 cm x 24.7 cm x 1 cm

Contributions from over 40 of the biggest names in jungle/drum & bass such as Andy C, Fabio, LTJ Bukem and DJ Fresh In-depth commentary on the anthems and classics that defined the scene Previously unseen images from photographer Eddie Otchere's extensive archive Deluxe coffee table hardback book in full colour on 130 gsm matt art paper.

Who Say Reload is a knockout oral history of the records that defined jungle/drum & bass straight from the original sources. The likes of Goldie, DJ Hype, Roni Size, Andy C, 4hero and many more talk about the influences, environment, equipment, samples, beats and surprises that went into making each classic record.

This is the story of music forged from raw breakbeats and basslines that soundtracked a culture of all-night raves, specialist record shops and pirate radio stations. It's the story of young producers embracing and reappropriating new technology, trying to best their peers and create something that would have hundreds of people screaming for a rewind on Saturday night.

Photography is provided by Eddie Otchere who has an extensive archive of images from the period in question, having been the photographer at Goldie's seminal Metalheadz nights. His previously unseen visuals capture the essence of the music in a way that only someone who was fully immersed in the culture at the time could, and are the perfect accompaniment to the story being told.

"Who Say Reload is essential reading for fans of the golden era of 90s drum n bass" - J Majik

"Nice to see a different take on DnB's history as Who Say Reload captures the early productions that laid down the music's foundations." - LTJ Bukem

"Jungle is the most unique and influential musical movement to come out of England. It's important that the pioneers get to tell their stories like this. It's great to see underground legends represented and put on a platform that highlight their contributions to a music genre that has become a worldwide phenomenon."

Notes: The sound arts and experimental music annual review's 4th issue, on the theme of utopias. bilingual edition (English/French)

Utopia belongs to those concepts that haunt both the history of ideas and the history of artistic practice. In this fourth issue,Tacetsets off to listen to the sounds of utopia emerging from sound art and experimental music, but also from sound design and our everyday use of sound technology. Mixing science-fiction short stories, theoretical analysis and artists' writings, this issue addresses utopian and dystopian futures of our sound cultures, the experience of other places at work in the schizophonic listening of recording, social and aesthetic implications of the formal principle of closure that characterizes utopia, the critical positions of some experimental musicians in their relationships to the soundscape and musical cultures, and furthermore the role of technology in the imagination of sounds of utopia.

Issue edited by Matthieu Saladin, with texts by Cornelius Cardew, J. G. Ballard, Francois J. Bonnet, Pali Meursault, Em'kal Eyongakpa & Amal Alhaag, Scott Gleason, Andy McGraw, Henry Flynt, Christophe Levaux, Francis Heery, Jonathan Sterne, Filipe Barros Beltrao & Andrew Gray, Pascal Broccolichi, Thibault Walter, Anne Zeitz, Loic Bertrand, Luc Ferrari, Xavier Hug, G Douglas Barrett.

Tacet is a new research publication dedicated to sound arts and experimental music. Published annually and bilingually (French, English), its ambition is to create an interdisciplinary and international space of reflection for this practices, in all its aesthetic diversity.