XTC

XTC’s most commercially successful album was, for many years, also its most mythical with tales of “lost” multi-track tapes (sadly true of other XTC albums but not this one).

A song originally dropped from the album only to be replaced when it inadvertently became a hit single in the USA, a perfect match, on paper, between the ideal Britpop band a decade before the term was invented & an Anglophile super-producer that turned rather imperfect in personality terms but still resulted in a classic album. Still, a masterpiece remains a masterpiece however traumatic its origins & this is one of those few albums that sounded great at the time & sounds just as great, if not better, now. When Steven Wilson remixed the album in 2016 – for new stereo & 5.1 Surround Sound editions on CD/Blu-ray, the release was successful again with both original & a new generation of fans. However, this remix was never released on vinyl. Frequently requested as a vinyl release in recent years & with the new CD/Blu-ray release this Autumn in Dolby Atmos (remixed again by StevenWilson), the timing is ideal for Ape House to make the 2016 mix available on 200-gram vinyl the first of Steven’s XTC mixes to be issued on vinyl.