Virgin Records
40th Anniversary Compilations 

A series of five compilations spanning the four decades to celebrate the 40thanniversary of Virgin Records out November 4th

2013 is the 40th anniversary of Virgin Records, the revolutionary British record label launched by Richard Branson in 1973.  To mark the event Virgin Records are to release a set a five comprehensive compilations specially compiled to celebrate this landmark year. The five CDs span the four decades and include lost album tracks, seminal hit singles as well as 7” rarities never before released on CD. Titles as below;

Losing Our Virginity 1973- 1976

Various Artists

‘Losing Our Virginity’ pays tribute to the label’s opening releases and stops off at all the important artists and tracks of its pre-punk years. These were the days when Virgin hosted much of the most pioneering progressive work of the 1970s and was also home to some other truly maverick talents. Starting with the album that began the amazing Virgin Records story, Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’,  the Grammy-winning album is still selling today and stands as a monument to the label’s fearless creative ambition. The new collection also includes selections from the other albums in Virgin’s initial quartet of releases in May 1973, by Krautrock collective Faust, progressive staples Gong, and an all-star jam session in the name of drummer Steve York. The album also notes the contributions of British acts such as Henry Cow, Slapp Happy, Egg, Hatfield & the North and Boxer, as well as highly influential, cutting-edge German band Can, France’s Clearlight, Finland’s Wigwam and the Virgin catalogue of avant garde forefather Captain Beefheart.The collection also features great British individuals nurtured by Virgin in these early years including Robert Wyatt, Kevin Coyne and Steve Hillage, not to mention the inimitable Scottish humourist Ivor Cutler.

 Key tracks include: Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells; Kevin Coyne – Marlene; Faust – Giggy Smile; Gong – The Pot Head Pixies; Captain Beefheart – Upon The My-Oh-My.

Never Trust A Hippy 1976-1979

Various Artists

This collection starts with Frontline reggae stars the Mighty Diamonds and Johnny Clarke with the angsty ‘Crazy Bald Head’. It was the reggae rebel stance and outsider attitude that really connected with the British teenagers who would go on to become the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Slits.... There was a kinship between the first generation British-born black community in London and white punks and we hear the blend of black and white right here, thanks to tracks such as the Members’ ‘Offshore Banking Business’. From the smooth tones of reggae we are suddenly thrown into the lion pit: ‘God Save The Queen’ – a seminal punk track from indubitably the most seminal punk group: the Sex Pistols. Lydon’s phenomenal post-Pistols group Public Image Limited is represented by way of ‘Public Image’.

Punk was as much about the odd, the humorous and the curious as it was about the shocking or the combative and therefore the Roogalator fit here nicely, as do Scottish art-punks the Skids, XTC and the insouciantly robotic Flying Lizards. British eccentric Wilko Johnson also features with his post-Feelgood band the Solid Senders and more idiosyncrasy radiates from the arch but no less fierce Magazine, Howard Devoto’s post-Buzzcocks project. We also have ‘Oh Bondage, Up Yours!’, an incendiary device of a song by X-Ray Spex from the hand of the much-missed Poly Styrene and another urgent female voice was that of Penetration’s Pauline Murray.

Punk was a healthy explosion of self-expression, and it continues to motivate and inspire us to look at life in a different way…Listen to this and let it stoke the fire.

Key tracks include: Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen; X Ray Spex – Oh Bondage Up Yours; Magazine – Shot By Both Sides; XTC – Making Plans For Nigel; The Skids – Into The Valley

New Gold Dreams 1979-1983

Various Artists

‘New Gold Dreams’ is a phenomenal overview of 40 songs that explore the story of Virgin at the turn of the ‘80s.  The sense of adventure that had been the label’s central tenet since its inception in 1973 was in rude health. Diversity was key and pop was getting strange, interesting and exciting. Off the wall as some of them may be, these tunes represent an exhilarating awakening for the label and music in general.

We marvel at how bands matured and indeed often the very nature of a ‘band’ as had been known was challenged. Duos, trios and machine-driven drums and synthesisers all became part of pop’s new language. Both sides of the original Human League had become hit factories; Japan took ambient poetry into the charts; and in Boy George, the former cloakroom assistant at the fabled Blitz nightclub and leader of Culture Club, Virgin had a bona fide superstar. 

Change was in the air. Strange was going overground. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark sounded like Kraftwerk singing on the Mersey estuary. Martha and the Muffins were on ‘Echo Beach’, far away in time; Simple Minds straddled art and prog and added some pop gloss, that would reach its apogee in their 1982 album, New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84). Tales of pasts catching up with you (‘Ghosts’); Dostoevsky set to post-punk (‘A Song From Under The Floorboards’; songs sung by established artists in their infancy (Neneh Cherry as part of Rip, Rig and Panic; Waterboy Mike Scott in Another Pretty Face). 

New Gold Dreams is a canter through yesterday’s future – an embracing of possibility and technology; an examination of the methods of dance. 

Key tracks include: The Human League – Empire State Human; Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Electricity; Public Image Limited – Flowers Of Romance; Martha & The Muffins – Echo Beach; Japan – Ghosts

Methods Of Dance 1973-1986

Various Artists

‘Methods Of Dance’ brings together the cream of the label’s electronic output from its first decade and a half in existence, drawing together a tapestry of disparate threads united by a singular desire to capture the sound of the new. It demonstrates effectively Virgin’s uncanny knack for picking out the cream of cutting-edge, forward-thinking new music.

From the late 70s into the 80s, Virgin had an almost uncanny knack for picking out the cream of cutting-edge, forward-thinking new music: The Human League, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Giorgio Moroder, Japan, Simple Minds, Mantronix, and many more besides.

To begin with, a lot of it came from Germany: The Faust Tapes; Can’s later, more cerebral output. By the end of the decade, however, electronic music had become a worldwide mainstream concern, springing forth Tooting (Snakefinger) via Cologne (D.A.F.) and Tokyo (Ryuichi Sakamoto).

Methods Of Dance takes in all of these sounds and more, in the process revealing Virgin Records to be at the forefront of more or less every key development in electronic music from 1973 to 1986—from ambient krautrock to taut electro-funk . . . and everything in between. Several key figures loom large over this collection. Italian-born, Munich-based super-producer Giorgio Moroder, Phil Oakey’s one-time bandmates Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh and restless sonic adventurer David Sylvian.

If the first half of this set is all about exploration and the realisation of newfound potential— John Foxx’s peerless underpass; Cowboys International’s rampaging ‘Aftermath’ and OMD’s melancholic ‘Souvenir’—by the second, the floodgates have not just been opened but obliterated.

Witness Simple Minds’ ‘New Gold Dream 81/82/83/84’, a pocket epic of electro-rock; Time Zone’s ‘World Destruction’, the earth-shattering answer to the question of what happens when the forefathers of punk (John Lydon) and hip-hop (Afrika Bambaataa) come together; the effortlessly funky chart-topper ‘Hangin’ On A String’ by Loose Ends; and the two great slabs of electro-funk that bring things to a close, ‘Ladies’ and ‘Bassline’ by Mantronix.

Methods Of Dance is the sound of the future being born before your very eyes.

 Key tracks include: Stephen ‘Tin Tin’ Duffy – Kiss Me; Time Zone – World Destruction; Sparks – The Number One Song In Heaven; Giorgio Moroder & Phil Oakey – Together In Electric Dreams; Public Image Limited – This Is Not A Love Song

Fascinating Rhythms 1987-2013

Various Artists

‘Fascinating Rhythms’ celebrates 25 years of Virgin Records soundtracking the nights and days, the highs and higher-stills, of those who hear the call to dance and answer it with no little pizzazz. Collecting a raft of disparately styled but consistently affecting tracks from 1988 to the present day, this compilation tells the story of dance music’s evolution, and its continuing trend to absorb myriad influences and transform into brighter and more brilliant forms. 

The albums begins its journey through the recent history of fluctuating BPMs with the fusion sounds of Neneh Cherry’s ‘Buffalo Stance’, the sort of song – Cherry’s debut and greatest hit – taking cues from hip-hop, but underpinned by production from a dance world titan (Bomb The Bass), it’s a cut that can still pack a dancefloor. 

Of similarly classic, timeless design are Soul II Soul’s ‘Back To Life’, Heaven 17’s ‘Temptation’, Everything But The Girl’s ‘Walking Wounded’, David Guetta’s ‘When Love Takes Over’ and Chemical Brothers ‘Block Rockin’ Beats. All are songs that capture a moment that stays with you.

Naturally, it’s not all zesty tempos – even the most ardent dance fans need to cool down occasionally and the album reflects that necessary contrast by including less-frenzied tracks from Massive Attack (‘Teardrop’) and Enigma (‘Sadness Part 1’). 

There’s space, too, for the tracks that caught a zeitgeist, but didn’t necessarily translate to longer-term recognition for their makers. So you’ll find the irresistible ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ here, a track written by William Orbit (as Bass-O-Matic) before he became a go-to guy for Madonna and Blur. 

And that’s the point of a compilation like this: to spread happiness. Nobody usually dances when they’re down, and the tracks assembled here are all instructions to make merry.

Key tracks include: Bass-O-Matic- Fascinating Rhythm; Empire Of The Sun – We Are The People; Soul II Soul – Back to Life (However Do You Want Me); Inner City – Good Life; Fluke – Groovy Feeling

For further information on all the events celebrating the Virgin 40th Anniversary go to www.virgin40.com

http://www.virgin40.com/