As I hinted in the last XTC post, I'd deliberately omitted a rare Dukes Of Stratosphear track from the last XTC compilation as, when I came to look for it online, I found there were a number of other rare demos and out-takes available from the band - enough, in fact, to make up a Dukes album all of it's own. The first two tracks are acoustic demos of songs which never made it to either album, and these are followed by band demos of songs that eventually appeared on the '25 O'Clock' album, interspersed with a couple of out-takes in 'Open A Can Of Human Beans' and 'Tin Toy Clockwork Train', and the previously unheard radio session recording of 'Black Jewelled Serpent Of Sound'. The second half of the album is made up of demos of songs from 'Psonic Psunspot', as they didn't record any extra songs during the sessions for that album, and although you might not recognise the title of 'No One At Home', it is in fact an early version of 'Vanishing Girl'. While this isn't as impressive an album as I'd liked to post, it does have five brand new recordings, and the demos are generally very different from the finished versions, so fans of XTC and the Dukes will find much to enjoy.
Track listing
01 Nicely Nicely Jane
02 Susan Revolving
03 25 O'Clock
04 My Love Explodes
05 Open A Can Of Human Beans
06 Bike Ride To The Moon
07 Tin Toy Clockwork Train
08 What In The World??...
09 Black Jewelled Serpent Of Sound
10 The Affiliated
11 Little Lighthouse
12 Shiny Cage
13 No One At Home
14 Brainiac's Daughter
15 Collideascope
For anyone who wants to burn this collection to a CD, SmithWorksGrafx has designed some groovy artwork for it.
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