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X-RAY SPEX
The sophomore and final studio album from punk icons - X-Ray Spex.
The highly sought after album received a very limited CD only release in 1995 on Receiver Records in the UK and has been officially unavailable for the past 27 years!
The album reunited the iconic X-Ray Spex vocalist - Poly Styrene with original X-Ray Spex saxophonist - Lora Logic and bassist - Paul Dean, as well as guitar from Kula Shaker frontman Crispian Mills under his then pseudonym Red Spectre.
This release has been remastered from the original master tapes and is available on LP for the first time ever! Including the original and expanded artwork, including previously unpublished lyrics and original sleeve notes from Poly.
Pop culture is full of classic albums that slip between the cracks. In recent years the late Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex have achieved iconic status with their 1978 debut ‘Germfree Adolescents’ album but the group’s follow up album 'Conscious Consumer’ released 17 years later has been lost to the sands of time.
These days most people don’t even realise that X-Ray Spex had a follow up to what is now embraced as one of the classics of the punk rock period. This lovingly compiled revisit puts the spotlight on a lost gem that has many of the hallmarks of the debut but is sieved through a different lens. ‘Conscious Consumer’ was an upgrade of the classic debut with a same punk rock urgency and themes of consumerism but with a poppier edge and a more considered wisdom gleamed from the ups and downs of life from the perspective of an older, wiser, Krishna devotee.
In 1995 the album was an unexpected comeback and a lost classic. It was the first new material recorded by the band for years despite many of the songs being written a decade before. On release, though, the album disappeared into a void being out of sync with the times and before Poly got her deserved iconic status.
The band who also re-formed in 1991, 1995 and 2008 are now revered worldwide for sparking a new kind of attitude in music. The late Poly is now a pop culture pin-up for an originality and feminism that barely existed at the time. Her acerbic, witty and brilliant lyrics and distinctive voice have stood the test of time, and along with the band’s original sax player Lora Logic, she has become part of the punk rock narrative. The fuzzy snapshots of the brief early lineup see the sassy and sharp dressed teenager core oozing talent, originality and style in a freeze frame of pop culture punk rock perfection.
Listening to the album again after a long break, Paul Dean is surprised.
“‘Conscious Consumer’ now sounds so much better than I remember. It wasn’t properly released at the time and so no one knows about it. If you love Germfree Adolescents you will love ‘Conscious Consumer’ they are linked together. X-Ray Spex didn’t have just one great album it was two!”
The highly sought after album received a very limited CD only release in 1995 on Receiver Records in the UK and has been officially unavailable for the past 27 years!
The album reunited the iconic X-Ray Spex vocalist - Poly Styrene with original X-Ray Spex saxophonist - Lora Logic and bassist - Paul Dean, as well as guitar from Kula Shaker frontman Crispian Mills under his then pseudonym Red Spectre.
This release has been remastered from the original master tapes and is available on LP for the first time ever! Including the original and expanded artwork, including previously unpublished lyrics and original sleeve notes from Poly.
Pop culture is full of classic albums that slip between the cracks. In recent years the late Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex have achieved iconic status with their 1978 debut ‘Germfree Adolescents’ album but the group’s follow up album 'Conscious Consumer’ released 17 years later has been lost to the sands of time.
These days most people don’t even realise that X-Ray Spex had a follow up to what is now embraced as one of the classics of the punk rock period. This lovingly compiled revisit puts the spotlight on a lost gem that has many of the hallmarks of the debut but is sieved through a different lens. ‘Conscious Consumer’ was an upgrade of the classic debut with a same punk rock urgency and themes of consumerism but with a poppier edge and a more considered wisdom gleamed from the ups and downs of life from the perspective of an older, wiser, Krishna devotee.
In 1995 the album was an unexpected comeback and a lost classic. It was the first new material recorded by the band for years despite many of the songs being written a decade before. On release, though, the album disappeared into a void being out of sync with the times and before Poly got her deserved iconic status.
The band who also re-formed in 1991, 1995 and 2008 are now revered worldwide for sparking a new kind of attitude in music. The late Poly is now a pop culture pin-up for an originality and feminism that barely existed at the time. Her acerbic, witty and brilliant lyrics and distinctive voice have stood the test of time, and along with the band’s original sax player Lora Logic, she has become part of the punk rock narrative. The fuzzy snapshots of the brief early lineup see the sassy and sharp dressed teenager core oozing talent, originality and style in a freeze frame of pop culture punk rock perfection.
Listening to the album again after a long break, Paul Dean is surprised.
“‘Conscious Consumer’ now sounds so much better than I remember. It wasn’t properly released at the time and so no one knows about it. If you love Germfree Adolescents you will love ‘Conscious Consumer’ they are linked together. X-Ray Spex didn’t have just one great album it was two!”
TRACK LISTING
Side A
1. Cigarettes
2. Junk Food Junkie
3. Crystal Clear
4. India
5. Dog In Sweden
6. Hi Chaperone
Side B
7. Good Time Girl
8. Melancholy
9. Sophia
10. Peace Meal
11. Prayer For Peace
12. Party
Real Gone Music is proud to present Germfree Adolescents, one of the signature albums of the early (1978) British punk movement, in an "x-ray clear" vinyl edition that serves as an ideal prism through which to see the hypocrisy of consumerist culture. The one and only LP release from X-Ray Spex and its irrepressible frontwoman Poly Styrene has been deemed by everybody from Greil Marcus to Robert Christgau to Spin to Mojo as one of the greatest punk albums ever made, and for this reissue, we've done it right; besides the clear vinyl (offering excellent sound), we've reproduced the inner lyric sheet, where you can read Poly's brilliant observations about the plastic, corporate nature of modern society. All of which she sings in a passionate yowl all her own (with Lora Logic among others backing on saxophone); this is not only one of the most penetratingly observant punk records, it's also one of the most passionate, and, surprisingly enough, catchy. Check out "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" and "Germ Free Adolescents" if it's hooks you're after; if it's righteous anger and a noisy racket you're seeking, every track will do ya.
TRACK LISTING
Art- I- Ficial
Obsessed With You
Warrior In Woolworths
Let's Submerge
I Can't Do Anything
Identity
Genetic Engineering
I Live Off You
I Am A Poseur
Germ Free Adolescents
Plastic Bag
The Day The World Turned Dayglo
Highly Inflammable
Age