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17.01.14 MusicWeek 47
NEW REISSUES / CATALOGUE ALBUMS
ELVIS PRESLEY •The Movie Soundtracks (RCA/Sony 88843016642)
Issued to mark what would have been Elvis Presley’s recent 79th birthday, this box set is an
almost completely exhaustive compilation of the soundtracks from Presley’s movies, with 238 songs on 20 discs, each of them in replica mini cardboard sleeves which are collectively housed in a sturdy cube alongside a chunky 36-page booklet with brief descriptions of each album, writer/producer credits and illustrations. In terms of presentation and price (less than £2 a CD) it could barely be better, with recently remastered recordings providing largely pristine recordings belying their age - which range from 56 to 45 years old. Presley was a movie- making machine at this point, and the albums were churned out with as much haste as the films, so they are rather a mixed bag, with some fabulous material, including Wooden Heart, Blue Suede Shoes, Return To Sender, Viva Las Vegas and Guitar Man. On the other hand, songs
created purely for contrived movie situations - abominations like There’s No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car, Ito Eats, The Bullfighter Is A Lady and Yoga Is As Yoga Does - helped to tarnish Presley’s image. However, they do have a period charm at this distance, and are doubtless loved by legions of Presley fans. Finally, although the albums are presented without bonus tracks to preserve their original integrity, they are at times woefully short, with playing times ranging from barely 20 minutes to 32 minutes.
ICEHOUSE •The Best Of (Repertoire REPUK 1169)/12 Inch Versions & Remixes
Volume 1 (REPUK 1170)/12 Inch Versions & Remixes Volume 2 (REPUK 1178)/Primitive Man (REPUK 1171)/White Heat (REPUK 1180)
Arguably Australia’s finest contribution to the new wave/synth-pop movement, Icehouse
coalesced around the commanding figure of Iva Davies and released a series of albums throughout the eighties and early nineties. The best known of those,
1982 release Primitive Man, has now been remastered and expanded, and is the sole original album release here alongside a quartet of compilations. Primitive Man was a masterful excursion paced by the excellent Street Cafe, the evocative and lengthy Trojan Blue and the hypnotic elegance of Hey Little Girl - their only UK Top 20 hit. The rest of their career is covered in varying styles by the remainder of the albums, with the 20 track single disc Best Of collecting together many hard-to-find (and, seemingly, dubbed from disc) single versions, with the fabulous No Promises and their US smash Crazy prime amongst them. White Heat offers a more comprehensive overview of the band, with 30 select recordings on 2 CDs, and a further 33 - among them rare regional alternate versions of their material - on an audio DVD. The 12 Inch Versions & Remixes sets, are both 2 CD compilations full of sonically satisfying extended and largely more substantial mixes, most of them intended for the dancefloor. All are housed in smart digipacks, with booklets including extensive essays and introductions by Iva Davies.
DAN HARTMAN •Relight My Fire (Hot Shot HSR 007)
Previously the bass player in the rock-slanted Edgar Winter Group, Dan Hartman pursued a
different direction when he went solo in 1976 and produced two of disco music’s most revered albums in Instant Replay (1978) and Relight My Fire, a 1980 gem that has now been remastered and issued in expanded form by Hot Shot. The title track - later a smash for Take That & Lulu - is a heady feel-good anthem prefaced by the instrumental Vertigo and vocalised partly by Hartman himself in excellent blue-eyed soul style and, more searingly, by Loleatta Holloway. The five other tracks on the original album contain some fabulous period pieces too. The soaring Free Ride - an inspired remake of an Edgar Winter Top 20 US hit penned by Hartman - brings the original proceeding to a joyous close, though there are a further six bonus tracks here, more than doubling the album’s playing time to 75 minutes.
VARIOUS •1960 British Hit Parade - Britain's Greatest Hits Volume 9 - The B Sides Part 1:
January-May(Acrobat ACQCD 7063), Part 2: May-September (ACQCD 7064), Part 3: September- December (ACQCD 7065)
Having anthologised every British hit in the first decade of the chart’s existence, Acrobat
have now started to delve deeper andfollowing the success of previous box sets dedicated to the B-Sides of hits from 1962 and 1961, take the next logical (backwards) step, and do the same for 1960. B-side collections are a wonderful way to capture the style and flavour of an era without having to resort to the more familiar, and often overplayed, hits - and informative 32-page booklets with each set provide 12,000 words of background information. Among the musical highlights are Frank Sinatra’s Brazil, fellow rat-packer Sammy Davis Jr’s rendition of Baby It’s Cold Outside, Elvis Presley’s Shoppin’ Around and The Drifters’ soulful Nobody But Me.
Contact Karma Bertelsen, 020 7226 7246,
karma.bertelsen@
intentmedia.co.uk
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