The Last Year of The Old World

With their varied instrumentation, intimate song stylings, and poetic, allusive lyrics, the Dream Academy always stood apart from their 80s British rock brethren; that they dedicated their hit song, Life in a Northern Town, to Nick Drake and minimalist composer Steve Reich spoke volumes as to the reach of their intellectual and artistic ambition. Indeed, though they were together for only three albums and a handful of singles, Nick Laird-Clowes, Kate St. John and Gilbert Gabriel left behind a body of work as captivating as that of any of their contemporaries, their solid songwriting, unusual arrangements and innovative production touches (thanks in part to co-producer David Gilmour of Pink Floyd) only sounding better with age. Such a band deserves a proper retrospective; and so we at Real Gone Music enlisted none other than the band s own Nick Laird-Clowes to put together the definitive Dream Academy collection, a 2-CD, 24-track set chock-full of rarities and even including a new track ( Sunrising ) recorded for this release!

Siouxsie and the Banshees at the BBC is a stunning 84-track, all digitally-remastered, 4 disc hard-back book set of exclusive BBC sessions, live concert tracks and TV performances recorded between 1977-2001 split across 3CDs and a DVD. All tracks hand picked by the band and featuring Siouxsie s introduction to the liner notes. Includes alternative versions of 18 classic hit singles. Discs 1 and 2 feature key session tracks from 1977 1987 and a concert recording from the Apollo Theatre in Oxford in 1985. Includes the complete John Peel sessions alongside sessions recorded for Kid Jensen, Richard Skinner and Janice Long. Features 21 unreleased versions. Disc 3 contains highlights from their BBC concert recordings at the Apollo Theatre in Oxford and the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1988, where the band performed a storming set 3 nights in a row to a sold out crowd. Disc 4 is the real gem; a 29 track DVD of the band s BBC TV performances. Features the complete Old Grey Whistle Test broadcasts from 1978, 1982 and 1985, the Something Else performances from 1979 and 1980, the Rock Goes to College broadcast from 1981 and the band s complete Top of the Pops performances, complete, in places, with cheesy intros.

Nearly 1,000 years ago, the Vikings left Scandinavia and settled across Europe – giving their name to Normandy along the way – before their Norman descendants seized the English throne at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But what do we really know about them?

Nearly 1,000 years ago, the Vikings left Scandinavia and settled across Europe – giving their name to Normandy along the way – before their Norman descendants seized the English throne at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But what do we really know about them?

1992-1996 is a collection of Pietasters albums during their stints on the Slugtone and Moon Ska rosters. Featured are their first four full-length albums (1993's Piestomp, 1995's Oolooloo, 1996's Strapped (Live) and Comply) and a handful or so of unreleased tracks shoved into the cracks.

The last days of the American icon Walt Disney form a powerful and poignant subject for Philip Glass's latest opera, which was filmed at its first performances in Madrid in January 2013. Phelim McDermott's spectacular production is worthy of Disney's own visual imagination and its definitive influence on American culture, while in the pit is the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, an experienced and authoritative champion of the composer's hypnotically beautiful music, which gives wings to Rudy Wurlitzer's operatic transformation of Peter Stephan Jungk's novel, using both fact and fiction to peer into Disney's troubled psyche as illness forces him to confront his mortality.