XTC - English Settlement: Deluxe Edition - Vinyl

Limited double 200gm vinyl LP pressing including CD edition plus 16 page booklet and lyric sheet. Digitally remastered edition of the classic 1982 album by the British new wave/rock legends. This is Pop and while the single of the same name from slightly earlier in XTC's career included a question mark, by 1982, recording a fifth album (and a double at that), with Hugh Padgham again sharing production duties, those three words could stand, simply, as a statement of fact. Fulfilling the promise of the band's previous albums Drums & Wires (1979) and Black Sea (1980), English Settlement emerged some eighteen months after Black Sea - the band's longest period between albums to that point - in early 1982 as a defining statement of XTC's vision of British pop. The pace of many of the songs is almost leisurely when compared to their earlier, more frenetic efforts, the scope of the music - in lyrics, songwriting styles and recording is expansive; the sense of a band both comfortable and confident in what it is doing is palpable. While looking for the (at this point still quot;lost in the archivesquot;) multi-track tapes to enable Steven Wilson to undertake new stereo & 5.1 surround mixes of the album, the original half inch master tapes were discovered. These tapes were used as source masters from which engineer John Dent cut new lacquers for this heavyweight vinyl edition. A new CD master from the same tape sources was prepared which is included in the set. An album which set standards in 1982 on release sounds, if anything, even better now.