Roxy Reuniting

I guess the news of a new Roxy Music reunion tour a couple of years was sorta big news, apart from the fact that it was a skeleton Roxy crew. Only Phil, Andy and Bryan had returned to the fold, accompanied by non-Roxy musicians.
Word out now is that not only are the full-on Roxy Music touring this summer, but they're also going into the studio. And when they say reunion, they mean it literally.
Founding member Brian Eno, who left after the band's second album is due to rejoin with the band almost 32 years after leaving. His involvement will apparently include touring and working on the band's new album, their first since 1982's brilliant "Avalon".
As Eno has divided the last three decades creating ambient music and producing albums for the likes of David Bowie and U2 (the latter with partner in crime, Canadian Daniel Lanois) it'll be interesting what influence his attendence will have on the band's new output.

Technology comes to the masses

Running on Wired's news site is a great article detailing how one of the internet's newest technologies is being used to promote new music.

For the South By South West (SXSE) music conference in Austin, Texas, organisers have managed to secure free tracks from around 750 bands to offer to the public. These tracks, in mp3 format, have been zipped up into one big 2.6GB BitTorrent file to be shared on P2P networks.

This allows massive downloads without the organisers having to run up massive bandwidth charges. Excellent.

The event also has several key applications that allow attendees to navigate the conference via their iPod.

Now before a showcase gig, you can see where the show will be as well as listen to a sample of the band to see if it's worth bothering in the first place.

It'll be interesting to see what the organisers for June's NXNE in Toronto have up their sleeves.

Comment: You have to had it to conferences like this and the indie labels who seem to be embracing new technologies and ideas, instead of trying to sue them out existence.

The promotion these bands will get is invaluable, but if the RIAA had their way, BitTorrent, MP3 and P2P in general would be as dead as Johnny Carson. Forward thinking? Not really.

Link: SXSE
Link: Wired news story

Pricing oddities and stuff

Upon hearing the news that Woolie's online shop has dropped the price of their downloads to 67p, I thought I'd go over to their website and take a looksie.

All in all, everything seems to be in order. Although, they purport to sell "singles" for 67p. What they actually mean is single tracks. You're not getting videos and b-sides and remixes for your sub-pound purchase.

Most albums are also priced at the more favourable £6.80, which - for a 10 track album - actually works out to 68p per tracks, but we won't bitch about a penny.

Funnily enough, checking out the new Lemon Jelly album, the site is still charging £9.35 for the downloadable version, even though you can buy each track seperately for 67p... and if you do, I'd suggest leaving off the first intro track, it's only 24 seconds and doesn't really do anything... that way too, you get the album for £6.03, saving a whopping £3.32 off the lazy "click one button to order the whole download album" price.

Link: Lemon Jelly and the price discrepancy

End of an Era

News comes today that Andrew Collins, that happy slap-stick reason to listen to BBC's digital radio 6Music is being shunted out of his wonderful drivetime slot.

His replacement, Steve Lamacq has been shunted from pillar to post since the demise of his Radio 1 evening program The Evening Sequence. Collins, whose profile is getting bigger than ever with a TV column in venerable magazine Word will be hosting a new show on Sundays from 2-5pm as well as taking over the 6Music Chart Show.

Both massive changes are set to happen in early April, so listen to the last month of Collins' afternoon show while you can, and hold back the tears - he not leaving us yet!

Link: Collins' 6Music Show

Crap filtered into charts

So, this week sees the American Billboard singles chart being infiltrated by downloads for the first time. The Hot 100, up until this point, was comprised of 80% airplay and 20% sales. Of course, hardly any of the Hot 100 was available commercially, so most of it was airplay.

For those who don't listen to the radio, the Hot 100 became less and less relevant to their everyday lives, myself included (having not lived near an American station in 10 years).

People who want low quality, DRM infected files for 99c a shot can now have their say in how the Hot 100 is comprised. Of course, the details haven't been made all that clear.

I'm just wondering, for instance, that if I buy 15,000 copies of "Wild Boys" by Duran Duran whether they can have it finally go to Number One or is there some sort of release stipulation about what can appear in the charts.

Btw, if it IS possible... let's do it!

Link: Hot 50

With the BBC reporting misleading claims, it would seem the CD single is even more doomed than ever. They're stating that "The last week of December 2004 saw download sales of 312,000 compared with 282,000 physical singles, according to the British Phonographic Industry."

Now when you consider that the average single has between 2 and 3 tracks, and a few have 4 or 5, those figured become a little less download-favourable, with download singles actually tallying around 156,000 2-trackers, or 104,000 3-trackers actually bought.

You can always find yourself lucky as well and buy a CD single that'll be worth a fortune in a few years time (just look for The Bravery's first single on Ebay. Wow! You won't find downloads going for $50 anytime soon).

Link: BBC News

Cure Reissues - The next round

For those of you who don't own the Cure catalogue on vinyl, cassette and CD already, Fiction are currently in the midst of trying to pry more money of out your hands by offering a 2CD remaster series of the entire collection.

Three Imaginary Boys came out in November, and the next three in the series have just been announced for release in April. They are:

Seventeen Seconds (1980)
Faith (1981)
Pornography (1982)

The track listings are as follows:

SEVENTEEN SECONDS: THE ORIGINAL ALBUM

01. A REFLECTION
02. PLAY FOR TODAY
03. SECRETS
04. IN YOUR HOUSE
05. THREE
06. THE FINAL SOUND
07. A FOREST
08. M
09. AT NIGHT
10. SEVENTEEN SECONDS

SEVENTEEN SECONDS: RARITIES 1979-1980

01. I'M A CULT HERO (vinyl single by CULT HERO)
02. I DIG YOU (vinyl single by CULT HERO)
03. ANOTHER JOURNEY BY TRAIN (home demo)
04. SECRETS (home demo)
05. SEVENTEEN SECONDS (live)
06. IN YOUR HOUSE (live)
07. THREE (alt studio mix)
08. I DIG YOU (CULT HERO live)
09. I'M A CULT HERO (CULT HERO live)
10. M (live)
11. THE FINAL SOUND (live)
12. A REFLECTION (live)
13. PLAY FOR TODAY (live)
14. AT NIGHT (live)
15. A FOREST (live)

FAITH: THE ORIGINAL ALBUM

01. THE HOLY HOUR
02. PRIMARY
03. OTHER VOICES
04. ALL CATS ARE GREY
05. THE FUNERAL PARTY
06. DOUBT
07. THE DROWNING MAN
08. FAITH

09. CARNAGE VISORS

FAITH: RARITIES 1980-1981

01. FAITH (RS home demo)
02. DOUBT (RS home demo)
03. DROWNING (group home demo)
04. THE HOLY HOUR (group home demo)
05. PRIMARY (studio out-take)
06. GOING HOME TIME (studio out-take)
07.THE VIOLIN SONG (studio out-take)
08. A NORMAL STORY (studio out-take)
09. ALL CATS ARE GREY (live)
10. THE FUNERAL PARTY (live)
11. OTHER VOICES (live)
12. THE DROWNING MAN (live)
13. FAITH (live)
14. FOREVER (live)
15. CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES (single)

PORNOGRAPHY: THE ORIGINAL ALBUM

01. ONE HUNDRED YEARS
02. A SHORT TERM EFFECT
03. THE HANGING GARDEN
04. SIAMESE TWINS
05. THE FIGUREHEAD
06. A STRANGE DAY
07. COLD
08. PORNOGRAPHY

PORNOGRAPHY: RARITIES 1981-1982

01. BREAK (group home demo)
02. DEMISE (studio demo)
03.TEMPTATION (studio demo)
04. THE FIGUREHEAD (studio demo)
05. THE HANGING GARDEN (studio demo)
06. ONE HUNDRED YEARS (studio demo)
07. AIRLOCK: THE SOUNDTRACK
08. COLD (live)
09. A STRANGE DAY (live)
10. PORNOGRAPHY (live)
11. ALL MINE (live)
12. A SHORT TERM EFFECT (live)
13. SIAMESE TWINS (live)
14. TEMPTATION TWO (aka lgtb) (RS studio demo)

Depeche Mode reissues ago-go!

Rumours are abounding that Mute Records are going to go back to the well again for their favourite sons and major cash cow Depeche Mode.

According to online zine Side Line, there are plans afoot to reissue the band's entire back catalogue. Chances are quite good the collection will be remastered and issued on SACD.

The label recently reissued a load of Can albums on hybrid SACD/CD and Depeche Mode's "101" live album was re-issued last year on multi-channel hybrid SACD/CD.

As everyone knows Martin Gore isn't the most prolific songwriter, so the chance of a 2CD set for any of the albums is quite slim, especially as Mute have recently issued boxsets for the singles, a remix collection and download for some of the more obscure remixes that featured on white label promos and the like. To continue an analogy, this repeated trip to the well is drying it up somewhat.

Chances are the reissues could co-incide with the release of the band's new album, which they're currently in the studio working on with producer Ben Hillier.

Not to be greedy, but if this trend continues, I've got my fingers crossed for some Recoil SACD reissues...

Link: Amazon.co.uk