THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 22ND.

A year and a half after their first BBC session, Close Lobsters returned to Maida Vale at the behest of John Peel. What emerged was a stunning session including three songs destined for their next single ‘What Is There To Smile About?’ – among them the Lobsters classic, ‘Loopholes’ – plus a cover with near-legendary status among fans: their version of ‘Mirror Breaks’ by anarcho-punk outfit The Mob.

TRACK LISTING

Loopholes
What Is There To Smile About?
From This Day On
Mirror Breaks

When Sean Cimino and Isom Innis were getting ready to work on what would become Acid Star, the full-length debut of their syrupy electronic rock group Peel, they started by tapping into the music that they liked as kids - That is, the music they gravitated toward before they had "any taste or judgment," as Innis puts it - The results are an album that swirls dancemusic paint onto a rock canvas - Inspired in part by genre-bending Creation Records bands like Primal Scream and Madchester groups like Happy Mondays, Acid Star gives a modern spin on a classic formula.

TRACK LISTING

Y2J
Climax
Manic World
In The Sedentary
OMG
Acid Star
Pavement
Cycle
Mall Goth
The Cloak

Shortly after parting company with X-Ray Spex, post-punk icon Lora Logic went into the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios with the first incarnation of her own band, Essential Logic.

Now officially released for the first time by Precious Recordings of London to coincide with its 45th anniversary, this is that legendary four-song session for John Peel – pre-dating the group’s debut LP, ‘Beat Rhythm News’, for which these tracks would be re-recorded, and a famous 30-date Rough Trade UK tour with Stiff Little Fingers and The Normal.

TRACK LISTING

Wake Up
Shabby Abbott
Alkaline Loaf In The Area
Quality Crayon Wax OK

A rarity among Peel sessions in the mid-1990s as this one went out entirely live when the legendary DJ was sitting in for Mark Radcliffe and invited garage-punk stalwarts The Flaming Stars in to do the honours.

Never before released in any format, this outing at the BBC’s Oxford Road studios in Manchester finds the band in blistering form with a four-song blast featuring stunning versions of early singles ‘Ten Feet Tall’ and ‘Bury My Heart at Pier 13’.

TRACK LISTING

Ten Feet Tall
Spaghetti Junction
Bury My Heart At Pier 13
Down To You

Hailing from the rather more literate side of Camden’s garage-punk scene in the mid-90s, The Flaming Stars were Peel favourites over the years, recording no fewer than EIGHT sessions for the legendary DJ.

Six of them were collected on a Vinyl Japan CD at the turn of the century – but this fantastic final session is one of two never released before (the other one is PRE 042!). And what a session it is, featuring the brilliant ‘Cash 22’ (should’ve been a single!) and the noir vision of ‘Killer In The Rain’.

TRACK LISTING

Cash 22
Over And Done
Action Crime & Vision
Killer In The Rain

Chart-topping, million-selling, hamster-bothering Peel favourites of the 90s … we are delighted to welcome Cuban Boys to the Precious roster with their debut session for the legendary Radio 1 DJ, released to coincide with their 25th anniversary. Four tracks are headed by the unforgettable Oh My God! They Killed Kenny, which reached number six in Peel’s Festive 50; they were number one the following year with Cognoscenti vs Intelligentsia (the one with the hamster, destined to become a proper chart smash, pop pickers). This session also features three more Cuban classics, among them a cover of Blondie’s Hanging On The Telephone that longserving BBC producer Mike Engles listed among his personal favourites from his decades at the Maida Vale studios. Release features free download codes, a set of postcards and sleeve notes from the one and only Ricardo Autobahn.

TRACK LISTING

1. Oh My God! They Killed Kenny
2. (Let’s Get) Raunchier
3. Stardust (Part 3 Ariana In Space)
4. Hanging On The Telephone

The official release of The White Stripes Peel Sessions on one stuffed-to-the-brim disc. Capturing Jack and Meg at the precipice of international renown in the hubbub of "White Blood Cells," their two live sessions with famed BBC DJ John Peel are arguably the best document of the White Stripes at that time.

TRACK LISTING

Vol. I // Maida Vale // July 25th, 2001
1. Let's Shake Hands
2. When I Hear My Name
3. Jolene
4. Death Letter
5. Cannon
6. Astro / Jack The Ripper
7. Hotel Yorba
8. I'm Finding It Hard To Be A Gentleman
9. Screwdriver
10. We're Going To Be Friends
11. You're Pretty Good Looking
12. Boll Weevil
13. Hello Operator
14. Baby Blue

Vol. II // Peel Acres II November 8th, 2001
15. Lord Send Me An Angel
16. Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground
17. I Think I Smell A Rat
18. Lets Build A Home / Goin’ Back To Memphis
19. Little Room
20. The Union Forever
21. The Same Boy You've Always Known
22. Look Me Over Closely
23. Looking At You
24. St James Infirmary Blues
25. Apple Blossom
26. Rated X
27. Little Girl That Says
28. Jumble, Jumble
29. Little People

Recorded 12 months after their Peel debut, this is the second BBC session from the Sarah Records legends, released to coincide with their first UK appearance for five years at Glas-Goes Pop!

A version of much loved single ‘Blue Eyes Deceiving Me’ is backed by three tracks never before released on vinyl, including the lovely ‘(All You Find Is) Air’, which features wonderful sax from Louise Elliott of fellow Aussies, The Moodists. As for ‘The Revenge of Ella Mae Cooley’ … well, you gotta hear it.

Package includes sleeve essay by Julian Knowles and a set of five postcards with rare pics from a Melody Maker session – plus free download codes. Limited to 350 copies.

TRACK LISTING

Blue Eyes Deceiving Me
The Revenge Of Ella Mae Cooley
(All You Find Is) Air
Coz I Like It

It features ten tracks, four of which were never recorded elsewhere and early versions of some of their most popular songs such as The Tenant and Propaganda. Between 1980-85 they grew into one of the UK’s leading postpunk bands with regular indie chart hits and a large loyal live following. The Peel Sessions helped with their exposure alongside extensive gigging (with UK Decay, Sex Gang Children, Killing Joke, The Cult and more), subsequent headline tours in their own right and a live spot on the UK’s top music TV programme, The Tube.

With support slots alongside the likes of Ash and Bikini Kill, Scottish punk popsters bis were already old hands at this pop music game by the time of this, their second session for John Peel. With versions of the singles ‘Sweet Shop Avengerz’ and ‘Keroleen’, this EP showcases their rockier side, with Riot Grrrl influences shouted proudly from the rooftops … and you get a one-off tribute to John Peel as an unexpected fifth track.

Package includes sleeve notes from Manda Rin and a set of five postcards with rare pics – plus free download codes.

Limited to 500 copies.

TRACK LISTING

Sweet Shop Avengerz
Antiseptic Poetry
Rebel Soul
Keroleen
We Love John Peel

The Midwich Cuckoos is based on the 1957 science fiction novel by John Wyndham, and tells the story of an English village where the women become mysteriously pregnant. Hannah Peel‘s score is described as a unique and intricately produced soundscape, working in harmony with the sound design of Sky’s adaptation. With analogue synthesisers recreating the horror of the ‘Hive Mind’, tape manipulations, drones, woodwind and melodies echoing the song of the cuckoo bird, Peel creates a score that perfectly balances the organic instrumentations and melodies, juxtaposed with an increasingly dark electronic ‘invasion’. Peel explains, “Creating the score was a constant endeavour to find the balance between darkness and light, fear and beauty. It was a very fine and intricate equilibrium between the normal sunlit logical world as we know it, and a subversive unfamiliar musical language.”

TRACK LISTING

Hive Mind
Cuckoo
Help Me
Ward 300
Hive Scream
Seen
Underground
Midwich School
Midwich Cuckoos
The Blackout
Awakenings
Pregnant
Scared
The Keys
If And When
No Leaving
Waking
A Pattern
Come Out
It's Over

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.
 Echo & The Bunnymen's classic 1997 John Peel session available for the first time on vinyl, featuring 2 songs from 1997's 'Evergreen' plus the Bunnymen classics "Villiers Terrace" and "Altamont". Black vinyl, no download code. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. Don't Let It Get You Down
A2. Villiers Terrace
B1. Altamont
B2. Rescue

Never before released on vinyl, this is the Sarah Records’ legends at their finest on their debut session for John Peel in 1990. The four songs here include a cracking version of live favourite ‘Caveman’ (better than the Lyceum mini-LP version, how the band wanted it!) and two others destined to end up on their Unholy Soul album – plus one song never properly released at all. Precious package also features a set of six postcards with unseen pics from studio and tour and download codes.

TRACK LISTING

Caveman
Frank De Salvo
Dirty Clothing
And When I Wake Up

Now you’re gonna want this – more unreleased Orchids material! This is the enigmatic Scottish five-piece’s second session for John Peel, four years after the first, by which time they’d started phoning in football reports to the legendary DJ. Two of these songs were never released at the time, though one came out as a demo about 25 years later (the shoulda-been-single ‘Patience Is Mine’) – and the other two were very different on Striving For The Lazy Perfection. Package also features a set of six postcards with unseen pics from their famous session at Toad Hall Studios in Glasgow.

TRACK LISTING

Patience Is Mine
Waiting Seems Vain
A Living Ken And Barbie (Back To Basics Mix)
The Searching

Never before released on vinyl, this is the Soup Dragons’ very first session for the iconic John Peel show, back in the legendary Scottish popsters’ formative days when they were indie kids finding their way, long before their pioneering efforts in indie-dance crossover. Features an early version of blistering single Whole Wide World, plus never-released early-setlist staples such as Too Shy To Say and Learning To Fall. Sleeve notes by Sean Dickson, who also did the masters. Includes download codes and a set of postcards.

TRACK LISTING

Too Shy To Say
Whole Wide World
Learning To Fall
Just Mind Your Step Girl

“Boyracer were on Sarah for three EPs, but there wasn't a scene we easily fit into – we were often too twee for the punks, and a little too ramshackle for much of the Sarah supports we blagged our way onto.” Stewart Anderson

Find out for yourself with Boyracer’s only session for the legendary John Peel featuring the band in typically feisty form with three of their own songs (under pointed alternate titles, one of them a version of ‘He Gets Me So Hard’) plus a cover of a single by beloved Sarah stablemates Even As We Speak. Package includes sleeve notes and a set of six postcards with vintage flyers and other stuff – and we’ve stuck a Peel interview with Nicola Hodgkinson as a bonus hidden track on the download (thanks Stew!)

Without a doubt, To Rococo Rot are an exception within the German music landscape. From 1995 until they broke up in 2014, the group around Robert Lippok, Ronald Lippok and Stefan Schneider researched a unique sound between electronic music, ambient, post-melancholy and the further development of a new, free music like krautrock. The trio was invited 3 times by John Peel to record radio sessions in the BBC. Available on record for the first time, which, in addition to the versions of selected album tracks, also contains exclusive, unreleased songs.

TRACK LISTING

Intro
Thomson Colour
Tour De Repechage
Glück
This Sandy Piece
Prado
A Little Asphalt Here And There
Rocket Fuel
Telema
Esther
Glas

With his third album as Peel Dream Magazine, Joseph Stevens beckons you toward a fabulist, zig-zag world entirely of his own design. On ‘Pad’, he eschews the fuzzy glories of his indie pop past – vibraphone trembles while chamber strings take center stage. The curtains lift to reveal banjo. Chimes. Farfisa. And as he lets out a moan atop the album’s title track, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary performance. A conceptual work about losing oneself when all they have is themself, ‘Pad’ gestures towards an exciting new future for Stevens’ pop moniker by reimagining its own very existence.

The follow-up to 2020’s breakthrough album ‘Agitprop Alterna’, ‘Pad’ presents a major sonic evolution for the 34 year old songwriter, who moved to Los Angeles amid the cataclysm that same year. Seventies era drum machines and synthesizers remain here, but he’s traded his buzzing offset guitar for a nylon-string, opting for a gentle baroque pop sound steeped in Bossa, folk, and its own eerie mysticism. Alongside mid century touchstones like Burt Bacharach, Stevens draws on the cultishly-beloved tinkerings of late-1960s Beach Boys, offering a surreal melange of vintage organs and found percussion, as well as Harry Nilsson’s 1970 song tapestry ‘The Point!’.

And similar to ‘The Point!’, ‘Pad’ is a conceptual work reflecting on isolation and identity. The album tells a bedtime story in which Stevens’ bandmates kick him out of Peel Dream Magazine – banished and now without purpose, he sets out on a journey to rejoin the band. Misadventures ensue, such as when he joins a cult on “Self Actualization Center”, featuring friend and oft collaborator Winter. But this is also music that’s purely pleasurable in its own context, as our protagonist explores the boundaries of easy-listening with discordant textures, and bleeps and bloops that tickle. Songs like “Pictionary” chime delicately with sinister intent, evoking a palette that is outright Mod. ‘Pad’ also recalls the space age bachelor stylings of Stereolab and The High Llamas, with an occult twist that borrows from Tropicalia legends Os Mutantes.

There’s an unmoored frivolity to ‘Pad’, standing in stark contrast to the severe, droning motorik of Steven’s previous albums. Overwhelmed by the political upheaval of the day, he reimagines what Van Dyke Parks once referred to as musical counter-counterculturalism, blurring the line between blithe escapism and pointed subversion. “I felt like there was no other way for me to authentically react to what was happening than to make this record”. The album also draws on library music from the same era to similar effect, conjuring the likes of Basil Kirchin and Pierro Piccioni, as well as Stevens’ newfound arranging skills, honed composing advertisement scores as a day job.

While ‘Pad’ sounds beautiful, there’s a certain darkness to it as well. Stevens is addressing our general ambivalence toward the future of everything we know, informed partly by his time in New York at the onset of the pandemic. On “Hiding Out”, he laments: Wander past the Vernon Mall, and up to Queensboro Bridge. Made to feel I’m two feet small, but that’s no way to live. Ultimately, Stevens is embracing a first-thought-best-thought approach, leaning into the fantastical elements of his own life story. ‘Pad’ is as archetypal as it is strange, blurring the very lines that it asks to be defined by. Art imitates life, but life imitates art too – and the results can sometimes be unpredictable.

TRACK LISTING

Not In The Band
Pad
Pictionary
Wanting And Waiting
Self-Actualisation Centre
Walk Around The Block
Hamlet
Penelope’s Suitors
Hiding Out
Jennifer Hindsight
Reiki
La Sol
Message The Manager
Roll In The Hay
Back In The Band

“I love this session. Four great songs full of hooks. All of them under the three-minute mark. La-la-la singalongs. Shiny guitars. What more do you want?” Gideon Coe

From Perth in Scotland, This Poison! released two classic late 80s singles on the Wedding Present’s Reception Records and that was it. Apart from this stunning Peel session, featuring four songs that never saw the light of day on vinyl during the band’s lifetime. “Rip-roaring stuff!” said John Peel, and he wasn’t wrong. Package also includes download codes, sleeve notes from Derek Moir and a set of postcards – among them one from the great man himself sent to the band, a must for any Peel devotees.

TRACK LISTING

1. Question Mark (Peel Session) 02:13
2. St Johnstoun (Peel Session) 02:45
3. Driving Skills (Peel Session) 02:15
4. It'll All Work Out (Peel Session) 02:07

This is the only BBC session ever recorded by the wonderful Marine Research, the group formed by members of Sarah legends Heavenly following the death of Mathew Fletcher. Gatefold double 7” vinyl has four songs, among them the gorgeous ‘Angel In The Snow’ and previously unreleased ‘Bad Dreams’, featuring David Gedge of the Wedding Present) plus ‘Capital L', which would probably have been a single if the band hadn’t split up. Package includes a set of postcards with previously unseen pics, download codes and informative sleeve notes from Amelia Fletcher. As an added extra freebie on the download, you also get a live show from BBC Sound City in Liverpool in October 1999 - introduced by Peel himself.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Confess (Peel Session) 03:25
2. Angel In The Snow (Peel Session) 04:18
3. Bad Dreams (Peel Session) 04:16
4. Capital L (Peel Session) 04:55

Here's the explosive second Peel session from the masters of discord (or should that be dischord?). You'll want this for 'Deanshanger' alone but the rest's pretty good too – including two previously tracks – made up on the spot according to the group. Features a set of postcards, download codes and sleeve notes from Linda telling us how relieved she was to miss out on TOTP.

TRACK LISTING

1. Slash/Oblique (Peel Session) 04:19
2. Deanshanger (Peel Session) 04:59
3. Outside Of It (Peel Session) 06:34
4. Place Called Clock (Peel Session) 03:56

On vinyl for the fist time, this is Prolapse's spectacular debut session for John Peel, featuring divergent versions of a couple of classics and the previously unreleased 'Broken Cormorant', the subject of much debate among devotees down the years. As usual, comes with a set of postcards – among them a Joe Dilworth contact sheet – plus download codes for the BBC WAVs. And sleeve notes from Scottish Mick.

TRACK LISTING

1. Serpico (Peel Session) 05:40
2. Doorstop Rhythmic Bloc (Peel Session) 04:49
3. When Space Invaders Were Big (Peel Session) 04:25
4. Broken Cormorant (Peel Session) 05:21

John Peel liked Foyer des Arts so much that he not only played all the songs from their album several times on his show, he also invited the duo to record a session and were one of only a few German-speaking bands to do so. The Berlin duo made their way to London in October 1986, where they were joined by members of The Higsons and The Farmers Boys to record at BBC Maida Vale In the year 2000 Goldt asked the BBC what had happened to the session tapes, only to learn that they had probably been wiped. Twenty years later, the Cologne-based sound engineer Tom Morgenstern, with the help of a colleague from the BBC, managed to unearth the lost tapes. And here they are, 35 years on, as fresh as the day they were made.

There are pieces of music that seek to tell us deeper stories. Others harness the talents of the players at their disposal in adventurous ways. Then there are the rare, generous works that make us think back to our roots as human beings and to our shared beginnings in the universe, that lift us in their melodies, rhythms and textures, that carry us with them.

The Unfolding is all of these things. An extraordinary eight-part collaboration between composer Hannah Peel (Mercury Prize and Emmy nominee) and Paraorchestra, it was made over three years in precious morsels of time around a global pandemic. These circumstances – unexpected when the collaboration began – add weight to its explorations in sound about who we are, where we came from, and who we could all be. The Unfolding also explores Paraorchestra’s progressive idea of what an orchestra should be, mixing analogue, digital and assistive instruments with a unique ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians to make magic happen, and accessible to all.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Surpassing the meditative shimmer and oscillating beauty of last years' 'Fir Wave' was never going to be easy, but this is the most strikingly beautiful piece of work I think she's ever done. Choral and otherworldly, but imbued with a levity and optimistic glimmer that Peel does so well. Mindblowing.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. The Universe Before Matter [10:58]
A2. Wild Animal [3:55]
Side B
B1. Passage [5:22]
B2. The Unfolding [5:47]
Side C
C1. If After Weeks Of Early Sun [4:16]
C2. Perhaps It Made Us Happy For A Minute [4:17]
C3. We Are Part Mineral [6:06]
Side D
D1. Part Cloud [10:31]
D2. The Unfolding Credits Instrumental Version [02:19] *vinyl Exclusive Not On CD*
D3. The Unfolding Credits [02:19]

‘Devasting, with slow, burning songs that shudder and wince’ NY TIMES

Peel Sessions is an essential nine-track set catching Boston’s mighty Come at the peak of their powers. The collection includes two sessions recorded for John Peel in both 1992 and 1993, plus a previously unreleased live track ‘Clockface’ from 1991, unwrapping the blueprint of their sonic idealism. Raw, loud and live, exactly where the band’s dissonant blues noise rock originates.

1992’s four track session is direct from their debut; but more mangled, strangled and abrasive. The follow-up set from a year later includes live favourite ‘Mercury Falls’ and ‘City Of Fun’ neither of which surfaced as studio recordings.

The sessions feature the masterful guitar interplay of two central pivots of the post-post-punk and alternative noisnik underground, Chris Brokaw (Codeine, Pullman, Thurston Moore, Ryley Walker, Lemonheads) and Thalia Zedek (Uzi, Live Skull, solo). The session’s line-up is completed by the addition of Sean O'Brian and Arthur Johnson’s visceral bass and percussion, documenting an essential era for the band.

Peel Sessions follows their recently released ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ reissue, part of Fire Records forthcoming reissue series for the seminal group.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Dead Molly (Peel Session, 1992)
Bell (Peel Session, 1992)
William (Peel Session, 1992)
Off To One Side (Peel Session, 1992)


Side B

Wrong Side (Peel Session, 1993)
Sharen Vs. Karen (Peel Session, 1993)
Mercury Falls (Peel Session, 1993)
City Of Fun (Peel Session, 1993)
Clockface (Live In Boston, 1991)

One of Creation boss Alan McGee’s favourite bands, the Weather Prophets were regulars at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, where they recorded this never-before-released four-song session for John Peel late in 1986 featuring early versions of singles Hollow Heart and She Comes From The Rain. Also included are sleeve notes from Pete Astor, free downloads of original BBC files and a set of postcards.

TRACK LISTING

Swimming Pool Blue
Hollow Heart
She Comes From The Rain
Faithful

Reissue on vinyl of the 2006 collection of PJ Harvey sessions with the late BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, spanning recordings from the start of her career in 1991 up to 2004.

Reissue is faithful to the original recording and package, with cutting by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering under the guidance of longtime PJ Harvey producer John Parish.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
Oh My Lover – Peel 29.10.91
Victory - Peel 29.10.91
Sheela-Na-Gig - Peel 29.10.91
Water - Peel 29.10.91
Naked Cousin – Peel 2.3.93
Wang Dang Doodle - Peel 2.3.93

Side Two
Losing Ground – Peel 5.9.96
Snake – Peel 5.9.96
That Was My Veil – Peel 5.9.96
This Wicked Tongue – Peel 10.11.00
Beautiful Feeling – Peel 10.11.00
You Come Through – John Peel Tribute 16.12.04

“The Jasmine Minks were the first real Creation band – their single ‘Think!’ was the fourth single we put out. An amazing unknown gem of a band. Working-class heroes – to me, anyway.” Alan McGee

Formed in Aberdeen in 1983, the Jasmine Minks were one of the original artists on Alan McGee’s fledgling Creation label and regulars at the storied Living Room. They recorded several classic singles for the label – among them ‘Think!’, ‘What’s Happening?!’ and ‘Cold Heart’ – plus a number of LPs. These recordings are their only two sessions for the BBC.

This session for the legendary John Peel show, features the band’s original line-up with powerhouse songwriting duo Jim Shepherd and Adam Sanderson; among tracks included are ‘The Ballad of Johnny Eye’ and ‘Cry For A Man’, both favourites with their fans. 

TRACK LISTING

The Ballad Of Johnny Eye
Cry For A Man
You Take My Freedom
I Don't Know

Hannah Peel and Will Burns announce details of a new double-A sided single, ‘Pale Tussock’, released via Rivertones. The 7” single features a pair of new pieces from Hannah Peel and Will Burns, combining the same evocative, powerful sonic palette and plainspoken poetry as their acclaimed album ‘Chalk Hill Blue’.

TRACK LISTING

Moth Book
Wendover, Bucks

‘Chalk Hill Blue’ is the first album by poet Will Burns and musician and composer Hannah Peel: a record of electronic ruralism channelling lives threaded through the chalk landscapes of Southern England.

Existing and reacting off each word and sounds in the studio together; with the words of poet Will Burns, the analogue electronic compositions of Hannah Peel and the overarching eye of producer Erland Cooper, all tracks were produced and recorded in their entirety within 12 hours.

The spoken words and sound worlds often seem to emerge from subliminal processes of call and answer; a fertile blurring of collective inspiration and intention circling this abstracted chalk landscape.

This deluxe edition of ‘Chalk Hill Blue’ also includes a 7” single featuring a pair of new pieces from Hannah Peel and Will Burns, combining the same evocative, powerful sonic palette and plainspoken poetry as their acclaimed album.

A commission to create a new collaborative work for the BBC resulted in ‘Moth Book’, an elegiac mediation on loss which flowers into a driving, hypnotic synth workout, perfectly offset by the haunting flipside track, ‘Wendover, Bucks’.

TRACK LISTING

‘Chalk Hill Blue’ LP
Out Of Doors
The Night Life
Afterwards
Spring Dawn On Mad Mile
Change
Chalk Hill Blue
May 9th
Swallowing
Ridgeway
Summer Blues
February

‘Pale Tussock’ 7”
Moth Book
Wendover, Bucks

Echo & The Bunnymen - ‘The John Peel Sessions 1979-1983’ is a collection of all the Radio 1 John Peel sessions that they performed in the formative years of the band, and in celebration of these early recordings, a double black LP and a 1CD of this set will be released.

Significantly, this collection of 21 tracks are from the very beginning of the bands existence. With little money, the band used them to demo new material. Many of the songs were written due to the fact a Peel session had been booked, not because the show loved the new songs - demonstrating the level of trust, confidence and love they had for the band.According to Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant, these recordings could quite simply be some of the most significant in the bands career - “Without John Peel sessions, Echo And The Bunnymen in my opinion, would not exist! It’s that simple. The band got so much support from him and John Walters (Peel’s producer). Recording a Peel session was essential to the development of our songwriting skills while at the same time giving us amazing exposure and self-belief.”

TRACK LISTING

LP1
Side One
1. Read It In Books (John Peel Session)
2. Stars Are Stars (John Peel Session)
3. I Bagsy Yours (John Peel Session)
4. Villiers Terrace (John Peel Session)
5. The Pictures On My Wall (John Peel Session)
6. All That Jazz (John Peel Session)

Side Two
1. Over The Wall (John Peel Session)
2. All My Colours (John Peel Session)
3. That Golden Smile (John Peel Session)
4. Heaven Up Here (John Peel Session)
5. Turquoise Days (John Peel Session)

LP2
Side One
1. Taking Advantage (John Peel Session)
2. An Equation (John Peel Session)
3. No Hands (John Peel Session)
4. Silver (John Peel Session)
5. Seven Seas (John Peel Session)

Side Two
1. The Killing Moon (John Peel Session)
2. Nocturnal Me (John Peel Session)
3. Watch Out Below (John Peel Session)
4. Ocean Rain (John Peel Session)
5. My Kingdom (John Peel Session)

CD Track List:
1. Read It In Books (John Peel Session)
2. Stars Are Stars (John Peel Session)
3. I Bagsy Yours (John Peel Session)
4. Villiers Terrace (John Peel Session)
5. The Pictures On My Wall (John Peel Session)
6. All That Jazz (John Peel Session)
7. Over The Wall (John Peel Session)
8. All My Colours (John Peel Session)
9. That Golden Smile (John Peel Session)
10. Heaven Up Here (John Peel Session)
11. Turquoise Days (John Peel Session)
12. Taking Advantage (John Peel Session)
13. An Equation (John Peel Session)
14. No Hands (John Peel Session)
15. Silver (John Peel Session)
16. Seven Seas (John Peel Session)
17. The Killing Moon (John Peel Session)
18. Nocturnal Me (John Peel Session)
19. Watch Out Below (John Peel Session)
20. Ocean Rain (John Peel Session)
21. My Kingdom (John Peel Session

Along the hills that cradle this village, that throw their shadow on us, that hold themselves above the houses (on a day like today half-wreathed in fog) there is a path. Some people say it is the oldest path there is, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it is an old path. Worn out of the scarp in places, in others cut deliberately to mark the way. The way where, though? One answer is that once, it was the way across the country from East to West, from farm to market. The way of the drover. Another is that now, it is the way across a line of hills that run through what people call the ‘home’ counties. As if there are counties that are not home.

Sometimes these places that rub up against the hills and its path are strangely dull. The towns and villages can look alike, they have been predated on by the high street chains and the supermarkets and they have suffered the decay of pubs and the reluctance of themselves to demand more from the changes that come with time, which is, after all, inevitable and which should, in the end, be progressive. But if we look beyond the intensive farms, the lookalike market towns, the money, the golf courses and the expensive four-wheel drive cars, there is, still, a real place to see. A place with its own tang, as a wise man I know once described it. There are fishermen and builders and window cleaners who get round their drink-driving bans by going to work on a horse and cart.

There are Italian farmers whose legendary boys run the football club, there are old gypsy families that own garden centres, feuding tree surgeons, ex-hedonist-local-playboys who you wouldn’t believe did what they did when they owned a pub just outside of the village where they thought they could get away with anything (and for a while did), tiny cricket clubs where the treasurer ran off with the money and last anyone heard was running a burger van in Northamptonshire. There are still a few good pubs too, where people rub along like they do. More decently than it sometimes feels we’re capable of anymore. All that as well as affairs and heartbreak, death, illness, love. Of course, love.

And beyond the people, there is that other life. Not as much as there should be, no, we must say that. Not enough butterflies, not enough lizards or water voles or fish, certainly not enough birds. But what there is is. And if you take that path out of the village, and up into the hills it is there. It’s broken in many ways, and it’s changed and it’s changing. And we’re causing the changes. But what’s sad about the degradation of our times is that we can still see the potential nature of real places when we come up against them. These old paths, these old stories, these old buildings. We don’t need them for nostalgia, or for some artificial sentimental reverie, we need them to function as engines for our own epochal story-making. That’s what the blandness of a global market economy will put a stop to. The real tang of each person, as well as each place. All deserving of their stories. Here’s some fragments of some I heard along the path.

Will Burns, 2018

Will Burns is Caught by the River poet-in-residence, and Hannah Peel is a frequent fixture of Caught by the River festival stages – both with the ‘cosmic colliery’ electronica of her solo work, and with orchestral place-rock band The Magnetic North (of which Chalk Hill Blue producer Erland Cooper is also a member.)

As part of their collaboration, Burns, Peel and Cooper walked the landscapes around Burns’s Wendover house together: their chalk-heeled boots tracing shared routes through the rhythms and repetitions of the place. What emerges in Chalk Hill Blue is a site-specific-non-specific record of creative place portraiture; an album that traces elements of a living landscape, and reworks them into something that is as sensitive and finely-observed as it is visionary.

TRACK LISTING

1 Out Of Doors
2 The Night Life
3 Afterwards
4 Spring Dawn On Mad Mile
5 Change
6 Chalk Hill Blue
7 May 9th
8 Swallowing
9 Ridgeway
10 Summer Blues
11 February

Bivouac did everything a 3-piece alternative rock band from Derby, who grew up on a steady diet of Husker Du, Sonic Youth and The Pixies, could dream of doing in the nineties. They released a string of records on cool indie label Elemental, recorded sessions for John Peel, played with Fugazi and Jesus Lizard, danced onstage with Nirvana, signed to a major label and split up. They’d began in 1992 and were over by 1996, but in that brief period, Bivouac crafted some essential, skewed and fuzzy tuneage that has endured and lingered on the cult fringes of alternative rock, remember fondly by those that were there as the band got on with the rest of their lives.

Then in 2016 they returned. It’s all Stewart Lee’s fault. Sometime that year the stand-up comedian, writer and director wrote a Guardian column that mentioned Bivouac. This brief mention was read by the good people who organise Gigantic, the popular nostalgia festival in Manchester who were fans of the band, who promptly asked the band to play that year.

“What shall we wear?”, that’s the first thing that drummer Antony Hodkinson said in response to the question of ‘shall we do some gigs after not playing for 20 odd years?’,” explains singer and guitarist Paul Yeadon. “And that was pretty much the spirit of the few shows we played together thereafter! We made a racket (with earplugs this time), celebrated the folly of youth, grown men cried, people travelled from Scandinavia, Europe and America. It was very humbling…we planned a few more.”

All of which leads us to 2018, where the band have indeed planned a few more. This year marks the 25th anniversary of ‘Tuber’, their debut album, and to celebrate such an event, they've released a beautifully presented double vinyl. Remastered by Paul Yeadon himself, the album is coupled with the first official release of the two sessions recorded for John Peel in ’92 and ’94 and issued through the band’s own label Thanks Capitalism in a limited run of 500 copies.

“Tuber was recorded on a farm in Warwickshire, we played a lot of golf on the then cutting-edge Sega Megadrive,” remembers Paul. “At this point we had played a lot of shows and still liked one another, we were match fit and well-rehearsed. I think the combination of being confident at what we were doing but still not being really aware of why or what we were doing, (the needless pouring and scab picking would come later) made for a heartfelt and naïve record. Simplistic and uncontrived.”

And of the Peel sessions Paul remembers… “We all grew up listening to Peel. It’s a cliché I know but I listened under the bedclothes on an AM radio to his show in the early 80’s. The music he played me then still defines a large percentage of my musical taste. To be part of that legacy is still really humbling, we are very proud to release the Peel sessions. I remember him playing us as I walked across the Reading show grounds, puffing my chest out! He kindly supplied us and our labelmates AC Acoustics with beer from the VIP tent cos we were skint, we did awful radio interviews with him and he had us do three sessions. It really was a dream come true.”

TRACK LISTING

LP 1:
Side A
1. Good Day Song
2. Big Question Mark
3. Dragging Your Weigh Around
4. Rue
5. Dead End Friend

Side B
1. Drank
2. Steel Strung
3. Need
4. The Bell Foundry
5. Bad Day Song

LP2:
Side A
1. Drank (Peel Session)
2. Lead (Peel Session)
3. Trepanning (Peel Session)
4. 45 Seated (Peel Session)

Side B
1. Good Day Song (Peel Session)
2. Bad Day Song (Peel Session)
3. Money Song (Peel Session)
4. Pop Song (Peel Session)
5. Heat Emitter (Peel Session)

At both our Nashville and Detroit locations as well as a record store near you, we present the first-ever official release of The White Stripes Peel Sessions on 2 stuffed-to-the-brim discs.

Capturing Jack and Meg at the precipice of international renown in the hubbub of “White Blood Cells," their two live sessions with famed BBC DJ John Peel are arguably the best document of the White Stripes at that time. Having been widely bootlegged since their initial broadcast in 2001, these recordings are enjoying their first authorized release in celebration of their 15 year anniversary.

TRACK LISTING

VOL 1:
A1 Let's Shake Hands
A2 When I Hear My Name
A3 Jolene
A4 Death Letter
A5 Cannon
A6 Astro / Jack The Ripper
A7 Hotel Yorba

B1 I'm Finding It Hard To Be A Gentleman
B2 Screwdriver
B3 We're Going To Be Friends
B4 You're Pretty Good Looking
B5 Boll Weevil
B6 Hello Operator
B7 Baby Blue

VOL 2:
C1 Lord Send Me An Angel
C2 Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground
C3 I Think I Smell A Rat
C4 Lets Build A Home / Goin’ Back To Memphis
C5 Little Room
C6 The Union Forever
C7 The Same Boy You've Always Known
D1 Look Me Over Closely
D2 Looking At You
D3 St James Infirmary Blues
D4 Apple Blossom
D5 Rated X
D6 Little Girl That Says
D7 Jumble, Jumble
D8 Little People

Originally formed as teenagers in 1984, The Wolfhounds released four critically acclaimed LPs and numerous singles, appeared on the NME’s influential C86 cassette, extensively toured the UK and continental Europe, finally disbanding in 1990. The band reformed in 2006 at the request of St Etienne’s Bob Stanley to celebrate 20 years since the release of C86, and inflicted a severe guitar noisefest on an unsuspecting indiepop crowd at London’s ICA. Since 2012 they have been recording and releasing new material.

At the peak of media attention over the new bands promoted by the C86 cassette, The Wolfhounds recorded three four-song sessions for the BBC’s legendary late-night John Peel Show between March 1986 and January 1987, capturing all the excitement and youthful exuberance of a band just catching the public imagination. With an energy born of sweaty, rammed gigs in the function rooms of London pubs and a willful experimentation nurtured in suburban bedrooms and garages away from watchful eyes, The Wolfhounds blasted their raw live sound straight to tape with little in the way of overdubs or the more considered studio polish of their excellent albums.

Every song from these sessions is now gathered together on Hands In The Till, making a surprisingly coherent whole despite the heady disorganized thrust of the times and a couple of line-up changes in the meantime. More wiry and angular than most of their C86 peers, The Wolfhounds had more in common with The Fall than The Byrds, and "Hands In The Till" shows them at their caustic best.

The Wolfhounds are now (hyper-)active again, releasing two full-length LPs in recent years and performing at several popfests (including Berlin and New York) and Stewart Lee’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, as well as regular club dates of their own. The band continue to be more relevant than ever, grabbing their home country’s woes by the horns on the recent double LP, "Untied Kingdom or How to Come to Terms with your Culture" (which featured guest musicians from such bands as PJ Harvey, Gallon Drunk, Scritti Politti and Evans The Death), Hands In The Till is sure to illuminate such an expansive modern work’s precocious teenage beginnings, as well as providing the band’s contemporary listeners a nostalgic buzz – forever, a real all-ages show!

TRACK LISTING

1) The Anti-Midas Touch
2) Hand In The Till
3) Me
4) Whale On The Beach
5) Boy Racer RM1
6) Disgusted E7
7) Rule Of Thumb
8) Sandy
9) Happy Shopper
10) Non-specific Song
11) The William Randolph Hearse
12) Son Of Nothing

Nottingham’s finest rock export Six By Seven release a double vinyl reissue of their 2000 classic ‘The Closer You Get’, with an additional LP of Peel Sessions and B-sides via Beggars Arkive.

Despite heaping praise on Six By Seven’s breakthrough second album ‘The Closer You Get’, the press seemed confused as to how to categorise them. The band straddled a fine line between post-Brit Pop, British rock and a much edgier kind of punk. Inspired by The Pistols and The Stranglers as well as US bands such as Sonic Youth and Mercury Rev, Six By Seven consciously wanted to write songs that would get played on the radio, as Chris Olley explains: “We wanted to fill a gap I think, fill it with the sort of music we would like to hear and buy ourselves; sort of Captain Beefheart doing pop.”

Mixing misanthropic lyrics with Olley’s distinctive vocal style, the music was underpinned by malevolent, slow-burning guitars, creating a menacing, dense wall of sound. Chris Olley continues; “There is a great sense of vitriol running through ‘The Closer You Get’ both musically and lyrically.” Journalist Sharon O’Connell commented in her review for Mojo; “Few bands now have the courage to make noise as meaningful as this; it’s like warming your heart against a limited nuclear strike.”

Back in 2000 it didn’t seem like the country was ready for Six By Seven’s brand of politically aware, angry and astute rock & roll. Whilst Olley was singing about junk food culture, unexploded mines, fake success and “this country’s dirty and depressing,” others were embracing Blair’s Britain. People had it ‘good’ and Coldplay were about to become the biggest band in the world. It seemed like no one understood where Six By Seven were coming from. As Olley explains: “To us it felt like everything was being diluted, merged and homogenised.” He talks about the sense of isolation they felt from the rest of the music industry: “We actually felt quite helpless and not part of anything, it was almost like we were in our own broken dream, stranded on an island because we had pulled up the drawbridge.”

With everything going on in the world currently, the time is ripe to experience these impassioned songs again. The idea for the reissues came following a fan’s campaign to get the song ‘Eat Junk Become Junk’ to a Christmas Number One after Shaun Keaveney played it on his breakfast show last year, knocking both Slade and The Darkness off the Number One spot for a brief moment during Christmas week in 2015. Following this flurry of interest, Olley and Lesley Bleakley from Beggars Arkive decided to reintroduce the band’s classic sophomore album ‘The Closer You Get’ to a modern audience, as part of a carefully curated reissue package.

‘The Closer You Get’ is presented in all its former glory, without being remastered or tampered with and will sound the same as it did when it originally came out. In homage to Beggars Arkive’s re-release of Olley’s heroes and labelmates’ Mercury Rev’s ‘Yerself Is Steam’, the additional LP will be polybagged together with the album. It will feature Six By Seven’s third Peel Session on one side and various B-sides and other Peel Sessions on the other.

TRACK LISTING

‘The Closer You Get’ (LP1)
Eat Junk Become Junk
Sawn Off Metallica T-Shirt
Ten Places To Die
New Year
One Easy Ship Away
My Life Is An Accident
Don’t Wanna Stop
Slab Square
England And A Broken Radio
Another Love Song
Overnight Success
100 & Something Foxhall Road

‘Peel Sessions’ (LP2)
Sleep
Another Love Song
England And A Broken Radio
Sawn Off Metallica T Shirt
Overnight Success
Get A Real Tattoo (B-Side)
Oh! Dear (1st Peel Session)
I’m Wide Open (B-Side)

‘Garden Of The Arcane Delights’ / ‘The John Peel Sessions’: ‘Garden Of The Arcane Delights’ is the only EP released by Dead Can Dance, coming out in 1984 and acting as a bridge between their first two albums. Its sleeve a sketch by Brendan Perry, depicting “primal man deprived of perception, standing within the confines of a garden containing a fountain and trees laden with fruit... a Blakean universe in which mankind can only redeem itself, can only rid itself of blindness, through the correct interpretation of signs and events that permeate the fabric of nature’s laws.”

This new expanded version sees the EP faithfully pressed on to one piece of a vinyl at 45rpm with a second disc being added, compiling both of the band’s sessions for John Peel, recorded in the same time period.

The Pattern Forms is a collaborative project between Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson of Friendly Fires and Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle.

Peel Away the Ivy is the culmination of a fruitful collaboration that followed on from a debut single for Ghost Box’s Other Voices series in 2015.

On the surface this is a romantic pop album, but its roots lie in both bands’ shared love of soundtracks and electronic library music of the 70s and 80s.

The artists bring their own distinct sensibilities to the project but find a common ground that conjures up something entirely new to both. A balance of powerful pop hooks and sonic experimentation that masterfully evoke the melancholy of lost summers and lonely outsider reveries.

Heartrending ballads are lifted away on soaring electronics with beautiful pastoral and kosmiche instrumentals forming perfect atmospheric interludes.

Brooks and Macfarlane both have proven track records as outstanding producers and the sound here is, unsurprisingly, breath-taking.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A perfect mix of Jon Brooks' impeccably realised library/synth sound and the ethereal echoing vocals of the Ed(d)'s. Triumphant arpeggios and silky saw basses are injected with beautiful pad sweeps and delightfully neon synth solos. Melodic and thoughtful, resplendent with shine and exhibiting a how-to in perfect songwriting, this is a dreamy and breathtaking synth-pop masterpiece.

TRACK LISTING

1. Peel Away The Ivy
2. Black Rain
3. Don't Let Me Dream
4. A Simple Walk
5. Daylight
6. Sparrowhawk
7. Man And Machine
8. Fluchtwege
9. Polymer Dawn
10. First In An Innocent World

The twelve tracks featured here were chosen by Polly herself, and span her career from early versions of songs from "Dry" to songs from her seventh album "Uh Uh Her" which was released in 2004.