The audiophile reissue of XTC’s fourth album, 1980’s Black Sea, is due out Nov. 10, and will include new 5.1 Surround, stereo and and high-resolution stereo mixes of the record by Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson, plus demos, instrumentals and music videos. More details here.
The highly anticipated XTC documentary “This Is Pop” — the subject of a petition earlier this year to convince the BBC to air it after the network allegedly passed on the program — will, in fact, be seen on TV in the UK this fall: Sky Arts is set to broadcast the film in October. Watch the full trailer here.
For the last few years, Andy Partridge has been overseeing audiophile reissues of XTC titles, releasing a series of albums — Nonsuch, Drums and Wires, Oranges and Lemons and Skylarking — with new stereo and 5.1 Surround mixes by Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson. It appears Black Sea is next.
For this week’s installment of Vintage Video, we flash back to XTC’s early turn as a touring band for this 1979 performance filmed in Paris and broadcast by French TV. The 20-minute set comes a few months after the release of Drums and Wires, and opens with three songs off that album.
Today was Record Store Day, and as one eagle-eyed Slicing Up Eyeballs reader alerted us, the Transportation Security Administration took to Instagram to relay an important message for traveling collectors: pack that fresh vinyl in your carry-on, not your checked baggage.
An XTC fan in the U.K. has launched a petition to convince the BBC to air a new documentary about the band called “This Is Pop” following reports the British television broadcaster has passed on showing Special Treats Productions’ film. By Saturday, the petition had collected more than 1,600 digital signatures.
There’s a new documentary about XTC in the works that’s currently titled “This Is Pop,” and a 6-minute, 20-second trailer for the film — featuring archival footage of the band and much screen time by frontman Andy Partridge — has made its way online. You can watch the whole thing here.
By all appearances, XTC’s 1989 album Oranges and Lemons is next up in the band’s current series of audiophile reissues, as bandleader Andy Partridge has been tweeting in recent weeks about work on the 5.1 Surround mix, including an attempt to transfer the baked album tapes that were “in a very bad way.”
This week’s new releases include a huge number of reissues, with re-released titles coming from Siouxsie and the Banshees, XTC, The Afghan Whigs, The Wedding Present and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, plus a brand-new live album from The Fall compiled by Mark E. Smith.
The audiophile reissue of XTC’s classic 1979 album Drums and Wires — with its new 5.1 Surround mix that frontman Andy Partridge last summer boasted is “so good it’s upped my opinion of the album” — finally arrives Oct. 27 on CD and Blu-ray, with the latter format stuffed with bonus material.
This week’s new releases include XTC’s “corrected polarity” version of ‘Skylarking,’ finally arriving on CD, plus Johnny Marr’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 soundtrack, a live set from The Fixx on CD and DVD, plus a reissue of The Godfathers’ 1993 self-titled album.
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