07/04/21 - Record Store Day 2021

This year, Record Store Day partially follows the pattern of last year's staggered format, with two drops. The first is on 12th June, and this will include a record three releases by Dougans and Cobain. The first, and most interesting, is the latest in the series of re-imaginings of the band's '90s tracks. This time, We Have Explosive is in the chair, with a set of new re-interpretations of the track. Given that the last two releases have featured archival works among the new tracks, it's possible that tracks like 'Exploded Funk', 'Abandoned Housing Blocks of Prypiat' and 'Blue Green' may be among the tracks here, but in general expect a series of new tracks based around the band's second-most-famous piece. An expanded CD version a couple of weeks later is, at this point, a near certainty. Interestingly, the cover and given title lists no 'Re-Imagined' or '2021', as with previous releases.

Secondly, The Amorphous Androgynous tease a forthcoming reissue of Alice in Ultraland with a 10" EP, with The World is Full of Plankton as the title track. The b-side will feature two as yet unknown tracks, apparently from the album too. This is clearly more for the collector, although taken on its own, it's really nice to see 'Plankton' get its dues as one of the finest compositions in the Dougans / Cobain ouvre. The album itself, of course, passed back into the band's posession last year at the end of their contract with Harvest; a reissue is overdue, and one hopes a bonus disc in the style of The Otherness will accompany it. No release details have been revealed for the reissue yet.

The third and final release is the most curious: Accelerator is coming out again, this time on its 30th anniversary (the minor issue of J&P delayed the 1991 release until the start of 1992 notwithstanding). There are no details on the Record Store Day page (linking, annoyingly, to the WHE page), but the full listings have it down as a double LP, suggesting there'll be some extra material here (a 12-minutes-per-side 2020s style release seeming unlikely, given it being mixed to play as two gapless sides). One assumes it's likely to be a set of 'Papua New Guinea' remixes on the second disc - possibly the same set as the 2001 reissue, given a vinyl release at last - although given the amount of archived material being regularly uncovered over at 9LW, it's not impossible that we're getting a whole album of Accelerator-era outtakes. The cover provided is the same 'remixed' version from the 2016 RSD release, so it's not totally impossible that it's actually a 12" + 7" pack as we had then, simply mislabelled by the people at RSD. We're going to do some digging, but either way we'll find out in the next few weeks...