The classic third album from XTC — 1979’s Drums and Wires — appears to be next in line to receive an audiophile vinyl pressing following last year’s Skylarking reissue, which was “corrected” and re-released “as it was intended to sound, but never has.”
Details are scant, but band mastermind Andy Partridge — referring to his label Ape House Records, which handled the double-vinyl Skylarking reissue — this morning tweeted, “Think APE will release a nice new vinyl cut of original DRUMS AND WIRES next.”
There’s no indication that there are problems with Drums and Wires as Partridge contends there were with Skylarking, which he announced last year had previously been released with its sound polarity reversed, resulting in a thinner sound, light on bass. The new double-vinyl pressing, with its original pubic-hair cover art restored, “sounds truly miles better than ever before in any format. Simple as that,” Partridge wrote on the Ape House forum just this morning.
Released in August 1979, the original U.K. vinyl pressing of Drums and Wires — there have been a number of different tracklists released around the world over the years — featured the Top 20 British single “Making Plans for Nigel” and the original version of “Ten Feet Tall,” which was re-recorded for the band’s debut U.S. single the following year.
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Milestones: Andy Partridge is 57 today; watch XTC perform 3 songs live in 1989
- XTC reveals ‘banned’ pubic-hair cover art for upcoming ‘Skylarking’ vinyl reissue
- XTC’s ‘Skylarking’ vinyl reissue ‘30% better sounding,’ will restore original artwork
- Vintage Video: ‘XTC at the Manor,’ 1980 doc about recording ‘Towers of London’
- XTC reissuing ‘Skylarking’ on vinyl ‘as it was intended to sound, but never has’
- Andy Partridge preps ‘aural sculptures’ inspired by sci-fi artist Richard M. Powers
I’m very curious to hear this, though I always thought Drums and Wires was a pretty good sounding album already.
I would be more curious to hear a Black Sea stripped of some of that reverb. Still have my fingers crossed.
@Mike S maybe it’s because i’m young, but I REALLY enjoy that tinny reverb. transports you to an older, trashier time… which is not always for everyone, so I guess i’ll be listening to the original more often than a remastered edition.