Top of The Pops New Wave

This classic album is now available in this collectable 2CD digipack release, together with their famous live recording from the Glasgow Apollo on 23rd December 1978 – released at the time under the name of “Mission Accomplished… But The Beat Goes On”.

Since their singles have always been as well chosen as they were well crafted, Total Pop! The First 40 is top-shelf Erasure the whole way through, displaying the evolution of the synth pop band through representative singles. This Total Pop Deluxe Box features the original two-CD Total Pop! with all the synth pop duo’s singles in chronological order, and then adds material geared toward the truly devoted Bell/Clarke aficionado. Besides an expanded booklet, the box adds a bonus live CD, plus a DVD of the duo's mostly flamboyant performances on the BBC television network.

The Jam's Setting Sons was originally planned as a concept album about three childhood friends who, upon meeting after some time apart, discover the different directions in which they've grown apart. Only about half of the songs ended up following the concept due to a rushed recording schedule, but where they do, Paul Weller vividly depicts British life, male relationships, and coming to terms with entry into adulthood…

The brilliance of this collection is that it combines the standard Brit-punk anthems by the Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Buzzcocks, and Stiff Little Fingers with other great songs that typify the variety and range of punk-era independent music from both sides of the Atlantic. The songs are so well chosen that the punk aesthetic is further revealed by the inclusion of songs that characterize pub rock, new wave, and other related genres. The usual punk suspects ("New Rose," "Anarchy in the UK") are all here, along with many other treasures: Dr. Feelgood's "Milk and Alcohol", Devo's "Mongoloid," Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner," Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer," and Television's "Marquee Moon." The less commonly anthologized punk selections are inspired, too: the Ruts' "Babylon Is Burning," Generation X's "Ready Steady Go," and X-Ray Spex's "Identity," along with the seminal "Sheena is a Punk Rocker." The conception of the genre is expanded further to include Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, XTC, Joe Jackson, the Pretenders, the Tubes, and Blondie, and their presence overcomes the tendency for boring repetition on a very long collection.

Unavailable for many years on CD, WESTWORLD has now finally been treated to a deluxe edition. Alongside the original album, which has been remastered, are bonus tracks from the companion single, previously unreleased tracks from the band’s John Peel sessions, a unique Top Of The Pops version of their hit, alternative mixes and a bonus live disc featuring a previously unissued recording of a live concert from the Westworld tour.

In the late seventies, every other episode of Tomorrow’s World seemed to feature the futuristic ‘synthesiser’, a mass of patchboards, knobs and wires which was all set to make orchestras redundant around the world. But the singles chart was largely immune to the synth - with the honourable exceptions of Hot Butter’s Popcorn and Kraftwerk's Autobahn - until the watershed year of 1979. Then, Tubeway Army’s Are Friends Electric stormed to number one with its blend of bleak sci-fi, European cine-drama, and the heavy, ominous noise coming from machines labelled Roland, Arp and Moog…

The Comsat Angels were an English post-punk band from Sheffield, England, initially active from 1978 to 1995. Their music has been described as "abstract pop songs with sparse instrumentation, many of which were bleak and filled with some form of heartache". They have been credited as being an influence on later post-punk revival bands such as Blacklist, Bell Hollow, Editors and Interpol. The Comsat Angels toured heavily in the UK and western Europe, especially in the Netherlands; the band's two concerts in August 1982 in Iceland had a strong influence on the music scene in Reykjavík. They also toured the United States twice. Their music has been extensively reissued and recompiled since 1995 by various record labels.