A present for the XTC fan in your life

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XTC Black Sea Steven Wilson remix review

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Mark Fisher, editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls , takes a sonic journey into the land of Black Sea, freshly spruced up by Steven Wilson in a stereo remix and glorious 5.1 surround sound . . . SORRY for stating the obvious, but XTC were a studio band for a long time. The last album they played live was English Settlement in 1982 – and then only about half the songs. After that came another seven albums, plus Dukes of Stratosphear outings, all of them created for the studio alone. That's why all these years later, Steven Wilson's remix of 1980's Black Sea , officially released on 24 November 2017, comes as such an ear-opener. What you hear, thanks to the booming bass and thudding drums, is a band at the height of its live powers. This Black Sea is a tight set of adventurous pop gems which, for all its angular arrangements and atypical subject matter (neighbours, navvies and nihilism) is raw, unadorned and ready for action.  Yes, as you’d expec...
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Review of Great Aspirations by TC & I, aka Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers

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Mark Fisher opens up the Great Aspirations EP STOP WHAT you're doing right now! It's time to welcome the release of Great Aspirations , a four-track EP reuniting Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers, the rhythmic powerhouse behind XTC, now trading under the tongue-in-cheek name of TC & I.  This really is as exciting as hearing a new XTC release – and it's a long time since that happened. While Andy Partridge has maintained a steady flow of collaborations and songwriting credits since the demise of the band, very little has been heard from Colin Moulding. He's taken his bass out for Anton Barbeau, sung for Billy Sherwood and Days Between Stations, and appeared on covers of It's Raining Again and Brain Damage, but the last Moulding song to be released was Say It on the Apple Box set over a decade ago – and even that had been recorded in 2002. The 15-year wait is but nothing compared with the 35-year hiatus during which Terry Chambers was not only out of XTC...
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Andy Partridge on Psurroundabout Ride and the Dukes of Stratosphear

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Psurroundabout Ride To celebrate the release of  Psurroundabout Ride , Mark Fisher talks to Sir John Johns (aka Andy Partridge) about the roots of the Dukes of Stratosphear, his formative love of psychedelia and what it's been like to revisit 25 O'Clock and Psonic Psunspot in 5.1 surround with ace remixer Steven Wilson. What is the history of the Dukes? Sir John Johns: You'll have to climb into my turdis (it's disguised as a small outside lavatory) and we'll go back to 67. I'll be at school and I'm just loving psychedelic music – or the psychedelic music I can hear, which isn't much. It'll be under the bed clothes with a tranny (that means something totally different) and I'm tuning in to Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg because I was one of those geeks that got Fab 208 magazine . I'm listening to obscure psychedelic singles and thinking, "This is fantastic. This is pop music gone upwards towards the stars. I...
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