Midnight Oil prepping career-spanning box set with ‘unseen and unheard film and music’

Australian rockers Midnight Oil — who split in 2002 but have reunited for several benefit performances — will be the subject of a career-spanning box set next year that guitarist Jim Moginie promises “is going to be amazing in its depth and presentation of the band’s career, with rare recordings and so far unseen and unheard film and music.”

Little else is known about the collection, which Moginie referenced in an October post on his website, saying that “work continues on Midnight Oil’s boxed set.”

Last April, a band representative informed the Powderworks listserv that “we have now officially started work on the Oils box set,” with a released planned for September/October. This summer, an update revealed the “Oils box set release has been rescheduled for March.”

To date, the band hasn’t done much with its back catalog, having only has reissued 1987’s Diesel and Dust in an expanded CD/DVD edition. That 2008 reissue was followed by the digital-only release of newly remastered editions of the Oils’ preceding seven albums and EPs, with the promise that “the new masters will find their way to CD eventually.”

That appears to be happening with the in-the-works box set. The original note to the Powderworks mailing list last spring concludes, “It’s too early to advise what’s going to be on there — but those early remastered albums will finally get a physical airing.”

PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS:

• Vintage Video: Watch Midnight Oil’s complete ‘Oils on the Water’ concert from 1985
• Video: Midnight Oil rocks Exxon building in Valdez protest 20 years ago
• Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett demoted by Australian PM over insulation scandal
• Midnight Oil, Violent Femmes members form surf-rock band The Break
• Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds are Burning’ re-recorded as all-star climate-change anthem
• Peter Garrett rejoins Midnight Oil for Australian bushfire benefit
• Midnight Oil reunites for Australian bushfire benefit, warm-up gigs