Irish singer songwriter Lisa Hannigan has been recording for seventeen years. She first came to fame via her appearances on Damien Rice’s early albums, but her own ‘Sea Sew’ album from 2008 propelled her to stardom and earnt her a Mercury Prize nomination for the song ‘Lille’.
Each of her subsequent albums have been critically acclaimed and her career has continued to thrill fans. In May, Lisa will release her first full length live album, ‘Live In Dublin’, recorded with Stargaze.
Tony Palmer’s legendary film of Tangerine Dream’s 1975 UK visit has a troubled history. What should have been a fantastic document of a unique event ended up being a bit of a botch under the watchful eye of Richard Branson, when an executive decision was made to pair the visuals with (then) previously unreleased music, regardless of what was played at the show itself.
A new ‘Director’s Cut’ DVD finally married the images to the correct soundtrack, but a super-deluxe box set for 2019 goes a step further.
Plane Groovy Records were well ahead of the curve with regards to any kind of vinyl revival. Long before the retro format had a huge presence in HMV and before Record Store Day became a cash-cow on the record buyers’ calendar, the UK label was championing the format with high quality pressings of cult titles. They provided the only physical format for the first Strange Majik album and were responsible for bespoke, limited pressings of Big Big Train albums and more besides.
The last few years have been very much a case of “onward and upward” for The Radio Buzzkills. The St. Louis pop-punkers released their EP ‘The Quick & The Cheap’ in April 2016 and just five months later plans were afoot for the band to share a stage with their hero and Screeching Weasel co-founder, John Jughead.
Their tenacious and never-say-die attitude led to the Buzzkills working with another of their heroes, Dave Parasite, on the first full length album the following year. Released early 2018, ‘Get Fired!’ was a masterpiece of pop punk. With a couple of Parasite co-writes and an amazing production job, The Buzzkills had made a classic record, their very own equivalent of Screeching Weasel’s ‘Anthem For A New Tomorrow’.
Always a much loved band in melodic rock circles, Harem Scarem have released some great albums over the years, with their first two albums very much at the forefront of the scene at the point where the AOR glory days of the 80s reached their end.
Over the following years, Harry Hess, Pete Lesperance and band continued to make great music, with their 2002 release ‘Weight of The World’ ranking among their best.
Outside of Japan, most of their albums have been increasingly hard to find, but March 2019 will set that right when most of the band’s catalogue is set for release as a lavish fourteen CD set, pairing the first twelve albums with an “Early Years” disc and an exclusive disc of rarities. The good news for fans looking to fill those collection gaps is that each of the individual releases also includes the relevant bonus tracks from the Japanese releases and more besides.
The full details can be found in the press release below.
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