'Placebo RE:CREATED' is a definitive celebration of the 30th anniversary of the band’s self-titled debut album. Conceived as a "director’s cut," this project sees the band revisiting their original master tapes through the lens of three decades of live performance.

The release brings the record into the 21st century sonically, completing the album's vision while meticulously preserving its original integrity. It is a balance of modern evolution and preservation; a polished statement on the work that started it all.

TRACK LISTING

1. Come Home
2. Teenage Angst
3. Bionic
4. 36 Degrees
5. Hang On To Your IQ
6. Nancy Boy
7. I Know
8. Bruise Pristine
9. Lady Of The Flowers
10. Swallow
11. Drowning By Numbers
12. H.K. Farewell 

Blu Ray film of ‘This Search For Meaning’ documentary including ‘Never Let Me Go’ CD incl. bonus track ‘Shout’ (Tears For Fears cover).

An intimate exploration of Placebo's evolution, charting their journey through lyrics and songs that delve into the human experience.

Placebo’s second feature-length documentary called 'This Search For Meaning'. This intimate and enlightening film explores the ideas that inhabit the lyrics and subject matter of Placebo’s songs, whilst charting their evolution as a group and as human beings. It is a fearless, truthful and forthright exploration of the creative process and the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, along with its inevitable consequences.

Since emerging from obscurity in the 1990s with provocative songs such as 'Nancy Boy' and 'Bruise Pristine', Placebo forged a decidedly unfashionable path through the brazenly macho ‘Britpop’ scene to explore subjects such as the body politic and the continued erosion of our human rights and our individuality, the ever growing epidemic of apathy in society and the hubris and corruption of those in power. Placebo seemed to be asking the questions no one else dared to, then dared the individual to find their own answers.

Rather than present a conventional origin story, Scottish award-winning filmmaker Oscar Sansom, known for his trailblazing work in music films, charts the band’s ongoing impact and legacy through a visual meditation on contemporary themes such as surveillance, culture and scrutiny, sexuality and gender identity, addiction and trauma as well as the climate crisis. These significant and weighty themes are explored in both an informal and personally authored manner through brand new interviews with Brian and Stefan. Both reflective and revealing, these interviews also underline placebo’s ongoing socio-cultural curiosity and musical journey – a quest that continues in their chart-topping albums and sold-out live arena performances worldwide today.

In and around the band’s presence, we see contributions from other significant figures within the arts that either admire or have been inspired by Placebo. these entertaining and often emotive discussions are presented as a single, yet multi-faceted, overheard conversation – and include the likes of Shirley Manson (Garbage), Robbie Williams, Yungblud, Rebecca Lucy Taylor (Self Esteem), Joe Talbot (Idles) as well as contemporary artist Stuart Semple. The result is honest and rewarding – capturing the sense that we are all just trying to figure out our place in this world; and hopefully making some sense of it too.

The film’s overall narrative is structured around incredible and completely new performances of Placebo’s latest songs – taken from ‘Never Let Me Go’ – captured at Britain’s legendary Twickenham Film Studios, where The Beatles can be seen composing a new album in Peter Jackson’s “Get Back”, as well as intercut with archive footage of the band, and exclusive, never-before-seen, material that spans across their entire career, including their creative and personal collaboration with David Bowie and his enduring influence.

After launching his own record label Biloba, Raffaele Arcella, aka Whodamanny, returns to Periodica with a limited-edition double tracker infused with unmistakable Italo-disco vibes and a Latin touch.

“Placebo” and “Loca Loca” deliver rhythm with depth, reminding us how vacations can feel like a fleeting illusion of escape from reality—and how much nostalgia lingers in the memories of summer nightlife.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: There's definitely summat in the water in Naples. It seems like EVERYONE is a musician! Whodamanny is actually an integral part of West Hill studios - Periodica's recording base. So between recording and mixing all the other sick artists in his locale, he runs solo here with a vibrant double header touching on Latin and Italo vibes. What a ledge!

TRACK LISTING

A. Placebo
B. Loca Loca

In September, Placebo resurfaced from a long hibernation to release their first single in five years – and first from the new album - ‘Beautiful James’. A joyous and celebratory song, it came quietly loaded with antagonism for the increasingly prominent, ignorant, factions that have come to litter modern conversation. As Brian Molko commented at the time, “If the song serves to irritate the squares and the uptight, so gleefully be it.”

As great masters in cataloguing the human condition, Placebo’s unique way of examining both its flaws and beauty finds fertile ground in 2021. Crawling out of the pandemic into a landscape of intolerance, division, tech-saturation and imminent eco-catastrophe, theirs is a voice that has rarely felt more significant to contemporary discourse, and more appropriate to sing these stories to the world. Within the magnetic slow-burn of new track ‘Surrounded By Spies’ no punches are pulled in confronting the erosion of civil liberties, as Brian Molko’s deft lyrical delivery is married to a creeping sense of claustrophobia that fittingly makes the walls feel as though they are closing in from all around.

Brian Molko comments:

“I began writing the lyrics when I discovered my neighbors were spying on me on behalf of parties with a nefarious agenda. I then began to ponder the countless ways in which our privacy has been eroded and stolen since the introduction of worldwide CCTV cameras that now employ racist facial recognition technologies; the rise of the internet and the cellphone, which has turned practically every user into a paparazzo and spectators in their own lives, and how we have mostly all offered up personal information to enormous multinationals whose sole intent is to exploit us.

I used the cut-up technique invented by William S Burroughs and popularized in modern song by David Bowie. It’s a true story told through a lens of paranoia, complete disgust for modern society’s values and the deification of surveillance capitalism. The narrator is at the end of their tether, hopeless and afraid, completely at odds with our newfound progress and the god of money.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Forever Chemicals
2. Beautiful James
3. Hugz
4. Happy Birthday In The Sky
5. The Prodigal
6. Surrounded By Spies
7. Try Better Next Time
8. Sad White Reggae
9. Twin Demons
10. Chemtrails
11. This Is What You Wanted
12. Went Missing
13. Fix Yourself