Back catalogue: Indie/Alternative

Review: The highly respected Northern English music journalist John Robb once described The Nightingales as "the misfits' misfits". In a small part, this is probably owing to the relentless changes in lineup the group have experienced since forming in Birmingham in 1979. However, that's really quite a reductive reading of the statement. Realistically, the post punk outfit just don't quite match their peers, with a take on the genre that incorporates elements of folk and gypsy rock.

Or at least that's our reading. Agree or not, In The Good Old Country Way was the outfit's third studio album, and at the time of its original release (1986), was recognised among their most polished and refined work. Nevertheless, it still sounds like a raw and rather uncompromising workout, sweat-soaked and dirty, experimental but really just aimed at making you spill your drink.

Review: "NINE INCH NAILS' GROUNDBREAKING DEBUT ALBUM
REMASTERED AND RE-RELEASED

Fans can now revisit the conception of Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor's Null Corporation has teamed with UMe/The Bicycle Music Company to release Pretty Hate Machine: 2010 Remaster on November 22, 2010. After completing the score for David Fincher's The Social Network, Reznor oversaw the digital remastering of Pretty Hate Machine from the newly unearthed original tapes with engineer Tom Baker (whose NIN credits include The Downward Spiral, Broken, The Fragile, With Teeth and Ghosts). This remastered version includes an eleventh track, a cover of Queen's ''Get Down Make Love,'' originally the B-side to the ''Sin'' single and produced by Al Jourgensen. Rob Sheridan, NIN's longtime art director, has also re-imagined the packaging of Pretty Hate Machine under Reznor's supervision.

As a young musician in Cleveland, Ohio, Reznor took a job at a local recording studio and employed unused studio time to develop his own material. The nascent album was later recorded with his favorite producers including Flood/Mark Ellis (U2, Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey), John Fryer (Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil), Adrian Sherwood (Ministry, Cabaret Voltaire) and Keith LeBlanc (Tackhead). The result was the first Nine Inch Nails album, 1989's Pretty Hate Machine. All songs were written, arranged, programmed and performed by Reznor. The album featured the breakthrough singles ''Sin,'' ''Down In It'' and ''Head Like A Hole,'' and ultimately sold over 3 million copies, reaching Triple Platinum sales status. In the wake of the album's initial underground success, NIN soon developed a reputation as one of the best live acts in rock and joined the inaugural Lollapalooza tour in 1991. NIN have since sold more than 18 million albums, collected Grammy® Awards and headlined arenas, amphitheaters and festivals worldwide.

The Bicycle Music Company acquired the rights to Pretty Hate Machine from a division of Prudential Securities in the spring of 2010. It was Bicycle's intention from the onset to enable Reznor to regain some control of this lost piece of NIN's legacy, resulting in this artist approved 2010 reissue of one of music's most groundbreaking and influential albums.

Reznor is currently working on new music as a member of the group How To Destroy Angels, continuing his Nine Inch Nails efforts and composing for future film score projects.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Head Like A Hole
2. Terrible Lie
3. Down In It
4. Sanctified
5. Something I Can Never Have
6. Kinda I Want To
7. Sin
8. That's What I Get
9. The Only Time
10. Ringfinger
11. Get Down Make Love"

Review: Nirvana still seems cool as fuck all these many decades after their frontman died. Their musical legacy lives on each time a new generation licks into the grunt chromes of the music, or each time we get a reissue or special limited edition picture disc album like the one. It is a very real and raw recording from their show at Hollywood Rock Festival which was actually held at Paca da Apoteose, Rio de Janeiro on 23rd January 1993. Plenty of the band's classics made the setlist and they sound as sleazy and gritty as ever on this recording.

Review: The third, controversial final album from Seattle's Nirvana should require little to no introduction. Repressed, remastered and redefined again and again, the Steve Albini-produced, mainstream-eschewing swansong has become one of the ugliest left-turns the 90's grunge scene ever spat up, and the subject of much heated internal fan debate over which is the definitive version. Celebrating its 30-year anniversary with a super-deluxe box set, boasting eight LPs made up of additional live performances as well as a myriad of memorabilia from the In Utero era, for the more lackadaisical collectors, there's this single LP gatefold pressing in a premium 'tip-on' sleeve similar to 2021's reissue of Nevermind, which comes with a bonus 10" of b-sides also featured on the monstrous deluxe edition.

Review: Nirvana's legacy is one of the most compelling of any 20th Century rock band. The voice(s) of a disillusioned generation weaned to sickness on processed culture, ending in tragedy, the ferociously powerful combination of music and message has understandably been long-lasting and still influences people today, but the albums-proper, and sad conclusion, usually dominate conversations about the group's work. Incesticide is proof of how much we're forgetting. Comprising demos, outtakes, cover versions, radio broadcasts, the 1990 non-album single, 'Silver', among other things, much of what's here was circulating among fans in low quality formats prior to the compilation's formal release in 1992, and goes some way to showing off the breadth and scope Nirvana were capable of. An education for the committed and unconvinced alike, grab it while you can.