Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: X-Ray Pop play live at Rockomotives Festival in 2020. The cult band was first formed back in 1984 by Didier Doc Pilot and Zouka Dzaza and are said to be inspirations for the likes of Beastie Boys and Stereolab. Their set at Rockomotives marked a triumphant return to the stage for the group with Charlotte Barfuss and Zouka Dzaza providing vocals, Doc Pilot on space guitar and Olivier Gicquel on drums amongst others. The setlist takes in tunes from four albums - Surrealistic Pilot, Fuzzy Soundtracks, All that Jazz and The Dream Machine - with psychedelic jazz mixed with novo beatnik overtones.

Review: The sophomore and final studio album from punk icons X-Ray Spex. The highly sought-after album received a very limited CD-only release in 1995 on Receiver Records, and has been officially unavailable for the past 27 years. The album reunited the iconic X-Ray Spex vocalist Poly Styrene with original saxophonist Lora Logic and bassist Paul Dean, as well as guitar from Kula Shaker frontman Crispian Mills (as Red Spectre). Conscious Consumer was an upgrade of the classic debut with a same punk rock urgency and themes of consumerism, but with a poppier edge and a more considered wisdom gleamed from the ups and downs of life from the perspective of an older, wiser, Krishna devotee. This reissue includes the original and expanded artwork, as well as previously unpublished lyrics and original sleeve notes from Poly.

Review: The third full-length from one of the UK's "big four" thrash metal acts, Xentrix, was quite the controversial project upon its initial release in 1992. Leaning into a more progressive metal influence saw the band abandon some of their metallic potency in search of more texture and artistry. They've since gone on to refer to the work as the biggest mistake of their career, while it also led to the departure of vocalist/guitarist, Chris Astley, until his 2006 return after the band reformed. Like most albums steeped in artistic self-deprecation and early fan backlash, 'Kin', has gone on to find its audience, with expectation and anticipation now removed from the conversation, the group's attempt to strive for material beyond their integral make up is as refreshing as it is forward thinking for an early nineties thrash record.

Review: Re-pressed on vinyl for the first time in 15 years, La Foret hears a full reissue via 5 Rue Christine. As conceptual as Xiu Xiu's fusion of post-punk, gamelan, synth pop, folk, and noise might seem, the group's music never feels overly cerebral or detached. On the contrary, it's usually brimming over with often contradictory emotions: love, hate, sex, violence, fear, and humor cling together so tightly in Jamie Stewart's songs that they can't be separated. Harsh and beautiful words and sounds remain intertwined on La Foret, which ranks among Xiu Xiu's subtlest - and scariest - albums.

Review: A whole series of XTC classics are being reissued right now and the latest is Mummer. It has been freshly cut at Loud Mastering and pressed up onto an eye waveringly good 200g vinyl. It was the sixth record from the British rock outfit and was released in 1983. It was the last record to feature the drumming of Terry Chambers and though it didn't have much album chart success it did spawn singles 'Great Fire', 'Wonderland' and 'Love on a Farmboy's Wages', which managed to hit No. 50 on the UK singles chart.

Review: English band XTC served up White Music, their debut album, in 1978 having already impressed three months earlier with their debut EP. The album had modest chart success, making number 38 i the charts, and spaced the infamous single 'Statue of Liberty' which the BBC promptly banned on account of the line 'In my fantasy I sail beneath your skirt. It sure seems tame by modern standards but it helped gain the band more notoriety for their hyperactive post-punk sounds. While one reviewer at the time said the album was "aimed at bored Yes fans" it was a fine and hard to define debut that set the band in good stead.

Review: XTC's cult 1984 album 'The Big Express' was essentially just that - a 'big expression' of brash indie noise, tempered by the shadow of the industrial old Wiltshire town in which the band grew up, Swindon. In true post-punk fashion, the band combined the electronic Linndrum with guitar, bass and vocals. But the 'Express', in their words, wasn't just self-expression; electronic rock, to XTC, also reflected the quite literal concept of the 'railway express', reflecting Swindon's reputation as one of the core towns behind the UK's railway system. A remarkable album, and a slice of history at that.

Review: Talk about being ahead of their time. Not only did XTC get the jump on everyone else (inadvertently) by predicting the letters XTC would change the course of Western European youth culture from the mid-1980s onwards, they also offered a very early stylistic premonition of the sounds that would, temporarily, usurp rave and associated genres as the pre-eminent adolescence, teen hood, and early adulthood music.
Formed in 1972, XTC are one of those examples of why we shouldn't really listen to what the hype men and women are saying. Struggling to break ground during their formative years - arguably their most fertile creatively - nevertheless the cult followers could see what was there. Most of the rest of us waited for another decade or so, at least, before realising this combination of elaborate pop, punk and art rock was actually prepping us for post punk, power pop and Britpop. Go 2 makes that very clear indeed.

Review: 1992's Nonsuch is the ninth in a series of XTC classics to be issued on 200g vinyl. It is often thought to be one of the more mature and sophisticated albums this band put out, and it was also the last they did for Virgin. It was never that widely available first time round, and certainly not on a good quality pressing, so now it has been mastered by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering with full approval from the band. The sleek on this version has also been fully restored and expanded to gatefold to accommodate the nice and heavy wax inside, plus full lyric sheets.

Review: The legacy of XTC simultaneously reveals the inner workings and inflexibility of the music industry and how easy it is to be incredibly talented and forward-thinking yet still languish in relative obscurity. Of course most musos are pretty familiar with these New Wavers, but at least some of that knowledge has been garnered retrospectively, through revisiting and reappraising.

'Oranges & Lemons', first released in 1989, is the band at their smash hit-potential best, and also on the cusp of their eventual decline. It's as fresh as any that came before - far more than just New Wave happening here (synth pop, DIY indie), and nobody was looking to reign anything in, allowing the sprawling contents to span two whole discs unabridged. Another piece of compelling evidence to say that XTC's main problems were the fact managers and labels didn't really get what they were aiming for, musically, rather than their notorious avoidance of tours.

Review: Arriving five years after the London trio's last album 'Co-Exist', this third effort shows a band ready to make a bold step on from the sound that haunted radio and TV links alike around the start of this decade. And in what could be said to be a move from innocence to experience, they're doing so with hitherto unrevealed confidence and chutzpah..'I See You' expands on their trademark intimate melancholia with considerable finesse, yet longtime fans shouldn't worry too much about them losing their gloomy charm in the process - more so this is a band brandishing an expanded palette where once they were content to paint their room black.

Review: Arriving five years after the London trio's last album 'Co-Exist', this third effort shows a band ready to make a bold step on from the sound that haunted radio and TV links alike around the start of this decade. And in what could be said to be a move from innocence to experience, they're doing so with hitherto unrevealed confidence and chutzpah..'I See You' expands on their trademark intimate melancholia with considerable finesse, yet longtime fans shouldn't worry too much about them losing their gloomy charm in the process - more so this is a band brandishing an expanded palette where once they were content to paint their room black.

Review: Ten years on, and Coexist has lost none of its charm. The anticipation around The xx's sophomore effort was high following their widely acclaimed debut, and the band were assured enough to not just play it safe with a repeat performance but instead evolve their sound in new directions. There was space for lighter, pop-informed moments to match the more sombre approach they became best known for, and standout moments like 'Angels', 'Reunion' and 'Swept Away' have since become classics in the band's canon. This commemorative pressing comes on clear vinyl - an understated celebration of an essential album in the indie-pop sphere.