Quite a few of my favourite bands were to see their albums sliced and diced and re-packaged for overseas markets. With no UK equivalent, these were interesting regional curiosities that the record industry of the time would throw up and were exotic manna for collectors such as I. Released in America only, this compilation is one such example, others being similar releases by Japan and Heaven 17. ‘O.M.D.’ pulled together much of the band’s debut, self-titled, album and their second, ‘Organisation’.
^ Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark O.M.D. US compilation LP, 1981, front cover design
‘Deep’ was very much Peter Murphy’s breakthrough solo album and perhaps it was in no small part due to the promotional push of the record company machinery of the era, still some years away from the MP3 meltdown and subsequent diminished times. This cassette is one of those curious promo-only releases of the era picked up along the way, a reminder of those times.
^ Peter Murphy ‘4 Cuts Deep’ Canadian Promo-only Cassette EP – front pack design
Some while back I posted about a John Foxx video compilation released back in 1989 on VHS format and noted that other releases from the same series, Virgin Music Vault, was a release by the Skids…
^ Skids Virgin Music Vault video collection – front cover design
‘Live In London 1986’ is a curious yet appealing release I spotted amongst the racks way back in the day, styled to fit in with the UK single releases of ‘Left Of Center’ and ‘Marlene On The Wall’ (1986 re-release) by the looks of it. Turns out that it was only issued in Australia, New Zealand and Japan and it is made up of a variety of live recordings that in some cases found themselves spread across various B side and 12″ singles in the UK – but also a couple that look to be exclusive to this release. My copy is the Australian vinyl mini-album, picked up on import.
^ Suzanne Vega – ‘Live In London 1986’ Australian mini-album front cover design
Released in early July 1986 (mostly?), 4AD issued all of the Cocteau Twins albums to date on CD format, in some cases compiling and enhancing or combining some of the releases along the way in the same way that some of the cassette editions had been released before.
CD: ‘Garlands’ (4AD, CAD 211 CD)
Released in early July 1986, this initial CD version ran with the enhanced track listing that the 1983 cassette release introduced, by way of including the band’s second John Peel session of January 1983 as bonus tracks – and then went a step beyond the cassette by also including a further two tracks. These were the tracks intended to be the band’s very first single release, ‘See No Evil’ and ‘Perhaps Some Other Aeon’, which until that point were only ever released on i) a giveaway flexidisc with ‘Vinyl’ magazine in Holland for ‘See No Evil’, and ii) the ‘An Hour Of Eloquent Sounds’ compilation cassette, respectively, although in a very different recording – the version of ‘Perhaps Some Other Aeon’ on this CD is quite different by comparison to that earlier cassette release version.
The main image on the front cover is retained from the vinyl version, but the rest of the design is different and incorporates the additional photographic image that was first used on the 1983 cassette edition.
^ Cocteau Twins ‘Garlands’ UK 1986 CD front insert design
