6 LPs and a book, in a box.
All three studio albums are included, all three are re-mastered, Abbey Road studios creating the masters for UMG, and Skyline Tonfabrik fine tuning for vinyl. Many thanks to Kai Blankenberg for his patience. It took a while for me to be satisfied, but I’m very happy now. We did very little to Mainstream other than adjust level. Bob Ludwig’s original work was near perfect and still sounds great almost 30 years later. The original 1/2′′ mixdowns of Easy Pieces could not be used as the tape had disintegrated and baking, etc could not save it. We worked from the 1/4′′ back up (made the same day as the 1/2′′ for this very reason) and to my ears the album is significantly improved. The big news, to my ears, is Rattlesnakes. We were able to use the original 1/2′′ tapes and upon hearing a ‘flat transfer’ I was shocked at how far we had strayed from the original recordings over the years. I sent the files to the band to listen to to be sure I wasn’t imagining things. Is this as great as I think it is? They agreed. We decided to make the new version as close as possible to the original tapes. I hope you enjoy it.
The first bonus LP is all our collected b-sides, no live recordings or re-mixes.
LP 5 is demo recordings, many of which had never been heard, outside of our circle, until 2015.
The final LP is rarities, from the unreleased 1983 single Down At The Mission, the 1985 Paul Hardiman recordings, the live cover versions from our 1986 New York show, the 1986 Paris recordings with Chris Thomas, and one re-mix – our own extended version of My Bag, which we all pretty much agreed was the only decent dance mix we ever made. Pretty much everything we recorded which wasn’t a complete disaster is here. Full track listing below.
The book contains an extensive essay by Pete Paphides, who spent way more time and wrote many more words than was originally the plan. He spoke to all the protagonists. It’s a lovely story, if a little sad, at times.
Our shop is accepting pre-orders from North American customers only here. Due to the size and weight it is impractical for us to import these and then export them again. Not to mention the probable awful customs charges! We encourage all others to support Tapete Records who made this project possible. You can buy it from Tapete here.