Not content with a somewhat hyper-active work rate in recent years which has provided a plentiful series of music releases, under his own name and with numerous collaborators, John Foxx has also seen fit to make available some more esoteric releases which focus on his graphical work. Amongst these, and the subject of this blog post, is ‘Science Fiction Stories’. This was a limited edition image collection postcard set which was for sale at the Roundhouse concert in London in 2010.
Included for no other reason than it happens to be one of my all-time favourite sleeve designs, graced with an artwork from none other than Russell Mills [http://www.russellmills.com/], who is identified with the Eno/Sylvian end of the musical spectrum more often than not, I’d say.
This ended up being the third single release from ‘Days in Europa’ – I’m sticking firmly to the original 1979 release when I say this – I know that the 1980 remix/re-release also includes ‘Masquerade’, so technically you might say it is the fourth single peeled off the album – but any Skids fan who knew the original first probably finds the 1980 version difficult to swallow, even with a tacked on single from a year before. (And, my goodness, a year was a long time indeed in the late ’70s/early ’80s – in the current era where bands take years between album releases, Skids themselves managed to release two original albums in 1979 – and they were far from the only band with that kind of work ethic.) Continue reading “Skids – ‘Animation’ UK 7″ single (Virgin, VS323, 1980)”
1986 saw Xmal Deutschland make the move to major label promotion, the first fruits of which were the Hugh Cornwell produced single, ‘Matador’, on 7″ and 12″. To give it a sales push, a limited edition of the 12″ came complete with an ‘Ilustration Booklet’, featuring artwork by the band’s singer, Anja Huwe, to accompany a selection of words to this single and the three tracks from the previous year’s ‘Sequenz’ EP. The images below, give some detail of the booklet’s various pages.
Since my earlier post that documented the recent CD re-issue of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s first album raised the idea of doing an unboxing of their latest opus, it seemed only fair to oblige now that I have received my copy. Being something of a Peter Saville fan as well, it is good to see OMD heading back in the direction of earlier artwork styles. It does rather feel as if the whole box set thing is a bit over the top though, I have to confess. As for the album itself, I would describe it as rather schizophrenic, with a jumble of styles – some obviously aiming to re-mint the classic ‘Architecture & Morality’ sound via the Mellotron-saturated sounds, some coming on all ‘Sugar Tax’ era pop/dance style, while the shadow of Kraftwerk continues to hang over pieces such as ‘History of Modern’ (Part II), ‘RFWK’ and ‘The Right Side’.
I wasn’t quick enough off the mark to get the limited edition free t-shirt as well, otherwise this is the contents of the UK edition of the boxed set.
So, I’ll let the pictures tell the story on this post… You can click on each image to see a 640×480 enlargement.
A new release this, as of June 2010 – an American re-issue of the first album by Orchestral ManÅ“uvres in the Dark, this time round packaged in something approaching the style of the original vinyl issue.
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves so you can see what the packaging is like. Musically, the CD is like the 2003 CD re-master except that it loses two tracks, the ‘Electricity’ and ‘Almost’ Martin Hannett/Cargo Studios versions. If you’ve already got the CD and aren’t overly fussed about the packaging, walk on by people, nothing to see here and you are losing two tracks. If however you have a thing for a miniature reproduction of such a fantastic sleeve design, this may well be softly cooing your name already…
