Minny Pops - Sparks in a Dark Room - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Digitally remastered and expanded two CD edition of this 1982 album from the Dutch Electronic band. Factory Benelux presents a new deluxe 2xCD edition of Sparks in a Dark Room, the second studio album by Dutch electronic group Minny Pops, originally released by Factory Benelux in May 1982. Formed in Amsterdam in 1978 by vocalist Wally Van Middendorp, Minny Pops took their name from the primitive Korg drum machine which propelled their austere, post-punk rhythms and provocative live performances. An early association with Factory Records in Manchester saw the band work with producer Martin Hannett, share stages with Joy Division and New Order, and become the first Dutch band to record a BBC radio session for John Peel. SPARKS IN a DARK ROOM is their second studio album, originally issued on Factory Benelux in May 1982. Self-produced by the group, the album was recorded without a guitarist and as a result sounded unusually polished and layered, it's smooth sequencers and motorik rhythms often redolent of Moroder, Kraftwerk and Cabaret Voltaire. Bonus tracks include the non-album singles Time and Een Kus, as well as demo tracks and an EP by instrumental splinter project Smalts. This new edition on FBN also adds a bonus disc featuring an entire live performance (13 tracks), recorded at Amsterdam Melkweg on 7 April 2012 on their 30th anniversary tour, with original members Wally Van Middendorp, Wim Dekker and Pieter Mulder joined by new guitarist Mark Ritsema.

2020 . After years spent looking out at landscapes and loved ones and an increasingly unstable world, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have turned their gaze inward, to their individual pasts and the places that inform them, on their second full-length, Sideways to New Italy. Led by singer-songwriter-guitarists Tom Russo, Joe White and Fran Keaney, the guitar-pop five-piece returned home to Australia after the relentless touring schedule that came following their critically regarded 2018 debut Hope Downs. Feeling the literal and metaphorical ground under their feet had shifted, the band began grasping for something reliable. The notion of crafting, in Russo's words, Incha utopia of where your heart's from,Inch permeates Sideways to New Italy, in which early attempts at writing big, high-concept songs about The State of the World were abandoned in favor of love songs, and familiar voices and characters filter in and out, grounding the band's stories in their personal histories. There's something comforting, too, in knowing the next time they're buffeted from stage to stage around the world, they'll be taking the voices of their loved ones with them, building a new totem of home no matter where they end up.

Digitally remastered and expanded two CD edition of the Dutch band's 1979 debut album. DRASTIC MEASURES DRASTIC MOVEMENT was originally issued on Dutch tag Plurex in September 1979. An uncompromising genre classic, the 13 track album mixed hard-edged electronica with modernist noise, and shared much in common with contemporaries Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, the Normal and early Human League. The nine bonus tracks on Disc One include all three cuts from the debut Minny Pops EP KOJAK, and a 2003 remix of 'Dolphins Spurt'. in addition there are 12 minutes of vintage audio-visual clips of five songs performed at the Amsterdam Filmacademie in 1979, playable on your PC in QuickTime . This edition also adds a bonus disc with an entire live performance of the album (12 tracks), recorded at Dansmakers, Amsterdam on 11 March 2012 during their 30th anniversary tour, with Wally Van Middendorp joined by Pieter Mulder, Dennis Duchhart, Thomas Myrmel, Bart de Vrees, Jeroen Kimman and Wilbert Bulsink.