For this week’s installment of “120 Minutes” Rewind, we check in with late-’80s/early-’90s dreampop act Pale Saints, who appeared on the show in 1990 to discuss their debut on 4AD, The Comfort of Madness. The group, led by Ian Masters, also discuss covering a song by Opal.
In conjunction with the release this month of the 25th anniversary reissue of the Pixies’ classic second album Doolittle, the 4AD label has produced a 30-minute promotional film in which guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lowering reflect back on the making of the record.
The Pixies will mark the 25th anniversary of their classic sophomore album Doolittle with an expanded 3CD, 50-track reissue this December that will feature, as bonus material, the record’s B-sides, two of the band’s Peel sessions in their entireties, and a full disc’s worth of demos.
The Pixies will debut their new Kim Deal-less lineup with four Los Angeles concerts prior to their appearance at Riot Fest Chicago this September, to be followed by four more small club shows in New York City before the band embarks on a previously announced European tour.
Legendary independent record label 4AD — home in the ’80s and ’90s to the Pixies, Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Throwing Muses and so many more — will be the subject an exhaustive history this fall with the publication of Martin Aston’s new book “Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD.”
The 20th anniversary reissue of the The Breeders’ ‘Last Splash’ will come in a mammoth 7-disc vinyl box set that features the original record, a live album recorded in Stockholm, a collection of previously unreleased demos, non-album tracks and BBC session cuts, and four individual EPs repressed on 10-inch platters.
In the wake of the 2011 Sony warehouse fire in London, a group of U.K. record labels has launched Beat Delete, a Kickstarter-like website designed “for the rescue of potentially lost releases” by allowing labels to gauge fan demand for reissues before actually re-pressing niche vinyl titles.
For this week’s “120 Minutes” Rewind, we spotlight another “120 X-Ray” segment, this time a 1987 clip featuring host Kevin Seal discussing the 4AD label’s compilation album Lonely Is An Eyesore, which featured tracks from Cocteau Twins, Throwing Muses, Clan of Xymox, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil and more.
In the works for nearly three years, ‘Love This Giant’ — the joint album by former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and singer-songwriter/guitar ace Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent — will be released in September, after which the two will embark on a 25-date fall North American tour.
4AD and reissue imprint Beggars Archive this week announced a new special-edition 30th anniversary reissue of ‘Junk Yard,’ the second album from Nick Cave’s pre-Bad Seeds outfit The Birthday Party. The set will feature the album on 12-inch, the ‘Release the Bats’ single on 7-inch and a CD combining both.
4AD this spring will commemorate the 30th anniversary of genre-bending electronic pioneers Colourbox by collecting the group’s full studio output in a four-disc, 59-track box set that includes the free mini-album given away along with initial pressing of the group’s 1985 debut, plus 12-inch mixes and a BBC session.
Beggars Archive will reissue the Cocteau Twins’ 18-track compilation ‘Stars and Topsoil: A Collection (1982-1990)’ — originally released by 4AD in 2000 and spanning 1982 debut ‘Garlands’ through 1990’s ‘Iceblink Luck’ EP — in the U.K. early next year on a 2LP set on white vinyl.
The long-awaited This Mortal Coil anthology first announced a year ago — a 4CD box set featuring the 4AD collective’s three albums and a fourth disc of singles and rarities — finally will be released this November, while a Blu-ray disc called Tears in the Dropbox that includes all three albums in HD audio remains in the works.
As promised, the Throwing Muses will support the release of the 4AD band’s forthcoming best-of set ‘Anthology’ — which initially will be released in a deluxe package with a second disc of B-sides and rare cuts — with live dates, including a just-announced 15-date tour of Europe and the United Kingdom this fall.
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