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METROBOLIST (AKA TMWSTW) 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

“Oh no, not me, I never lost control...”

DAVID BOWIE - 'METROBOLIST’ (AKA ‘THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD') 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

REMIXED BY TONY VISCONTI WITH ARTWORK BASED ON ORIGINAL TITLE & DESIGN
RELEASED 6th NOVEMBER, 2020 ON LIMITED VINYL AND CD FORMATS, ALSO FOR STREAMING AND DOWNLOAD AT STANDARD AND HIGH RESOLUTION DOWNLOAD (96kHz/24bit)

4th SEPTEMBER, 2020 London Parlophone Records is proud to announce release details for METROBOLIST (aka THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD) 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION to be released on 6th NOVEMBER, 2020.

This November sees the 50th Anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World in North America. The rest of the world would have to wait until April 1971 to witness Bowie’s landmark entry into the 1970s, marking the beginning of a collaboration with guitarist Mick Ronson that would last through classic works including Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane—as well as the first in a 10-year series of indispensable albums stretching through 1980’s Scary Monsters…

Originally titled Metrobolist, the album's name was changed at the last minute to The Man Who Sold The World -- the original stereo master tapes were in fact labelled Metrobolist, with the title ultimately crossed out. The 2020 re-release of the album under its Metrobolist moniker has been remixed by original producer Tony Visconti, with the exception of the track ‘After All’ which Tony considered perfect as is, and is featured in its 2015 remaster incarnation.

The Metrobolist 50th anniversary artwork has been created by Mike Weller who was behind the originally intended album artwork which Mercury refused to release. The gatefold sleeve also features many images from the infamous Keith MacMillan Mr Fish ‘dress’ shoot at Haddon Hall which would cause so much controversy when one of the shots was used on the cover of the The Man Who Sold The World album in the rest of the world in spring of 1971.

The original U.S. release of The Man Who Sold The World utilised some of the original Metrobolist design elements.

As with the Space Oddity 50th anniversary vinyl, as well as a 180g black vinyl edition, it will come in 2020 limited edition handwritten numbered copies on gold vinyl (# 1971 - 2020) and on white vinyl (# 1 - 1970) all randomly distributed.

For the 50th anniversary the 1970 story of the gatefold sleeve can be told in full with unused ‘dress’ photos. As Mike Weller explains “There is a story concealed in the carpet-scattered playing cards, David has thrown a plain 52 card deck in the air as though “casting the runes” but in a significant break from 60s Tarot divinations such as I Ching etc he casts runes using a four-suit pack and switches man-dress, along with the Court Card of the Future from right hand to left, signifying a new decade and new cultural era.”

David personally delivered the Metrobolist concept and his gatefold plan to the record company for production and now with this release, it can finally be seen much closer to its original concept. Bowie speaking in 2000 said of the sleeve imagery "Mick Weller devised this kind of very subversive looking cartoon and put in some quite personalised things. The building in the background on the cartoon in fact was the hospital where my half brother had committed himself to. So for me, it had lots of personal resonance about it.”

DAVID BOWIE METROBOLIST TRACKLISTING

The Width of a Circle
All the Madmen
Black Country Rock
After All
Running Gun Blues
Saviour Machine
She Shook Me Cold
The Man Who Sold the World
The Supermen

METROBOLIST ALBUM AVAILABLE 6th NOVEMBER, 2020 ON PARLOPHONE

#Bowie1970 #BowieMetrobolist #BowieTMWSTW
 
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2020 has been an intense year by any standard, with the first weeks of the global pandemic giving most of us feelings unlike anything we’d experienced before. Quarantine lockdowns and hovering dread shifted the fabric of time in a way that’s ongoing, but was at its most vivid in those early days when a new reality was sinking in. Before people eventually adapted and started using the newly mandatory downtime to learn new languages and bake bread, hours lurched by as the world sat restlessly indoors. All the shows were slowly cancelled one by one, the tours and recording sessions were scrapped, hangs and practices just stopped happening. Everything was on hold indefinitely, time lost meaning, every day felt unreal.

During the first days of lockdown, Rainer Maria’s Kaia Fischer came up with the concept of Exquisite Corpse by meditating on their perspective of the newly unfolding weirdness they and so many of their creative friends were going through. Obviously a deadly pandemic was wrought with negatives, and those in particular to independent music scenes were especially devastating. But could there be another side to what felt so all-consumingly terrible? “We know what the pandemic isn’t good for,” Fischer said, “but let’s find out what it is good for.”

Searching for silver linings in the earliest days of lockdown wasn’t easy, but one idea led to another. It began with the realization that every Polyvinyl artist now had a completely clear schedule at the same time. They were also mostly sitting around waiting for the storm to pass, in different states of boredom, anxiety, worry and malaise. Logistically speaking, there might not be another time when pretty much everyone was available for a collaborative project and needed something to occupy their frazzled minds. A round of emails went out explaining the project and inviting members of the Polyvinyl roster to participate. Eleven teams of four or five musicians were assembled more or less at random, bringing together artists that had in many cases never met, much less worked on music together. Remotely, each team worked from scratch to create an original song, a reworked sonic adaptation of the game where each player adds to a collaborative drawing.

The scope alone is exciting, with these eleven songs combining the talents of 47 musicians from all corners of the world and all ends of the Polyvinyl family tree. Even the artwork was assembled through remote collaboration, with visual artists from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Seattle collaborating on the design in true Exquisite Corpse fashion. Musically, the results are every bit as exciting and unpredictable as the concept envisioned. New creative chemistries between the different artists and a complete absence of expectations or precedent sounds made for fearless choices in production, genre experimentation and stylistic curveballs. Artists known for sparkling pop worked with more ragged rockers or folks from acoustic-leaning emo bands, and the end results almost always defied the expected sum of their parts. Even though Exquisite Corpse is timestamped with traces of the overwhelming uncertainty that colored the pandemic’s onset, the music is by-and-large joyful, daring, and fun. More than reflecting the hanging gloom of the non-stop news cycle and spiking graphs, artists tapped into expressions of hope and exploration. This moment of universal upheaval cast a shadow on the entire world, but also allowed for a meeting of minds that was truly unprecedented.

Most indie labels share some degree of familial connection, but Polyvinyl is built on that feeling of family. The label was born in the late ‘90s out of the closely knit regional diy scenes of the Midwest, and every aspect of growth since has been informed by the earnest connectivity of those early days. Polyvinyl bands go on tour together, collaborate regularly and exist within a framework facilitated by the label that values friendship and the sharing of ideas above all else. These songs zoom in on that spirit of kinship and community. Exquisite Corpse is a real-time experiment with some incredible outcomes, creating a space for Polyvinyl’s wide-ranging talents to come together and make something beautiful during a dark time.

Polyvinyl will donate $2 from each digital and vinyl purchase to MusiCares (www.grammy.com/musicares) - a non-profit organization that has provided more than $60 million in health, financial, and rehabilitation resources to musicians in their time of need.

 

Autographed RTJ4 Indie Exclusive @ Newbury.
Don't expect this one to last long
 

Autographed RTJ4 Indie Exclusive @ Newbury.
Don't expect this one to last long
Noiceeeee
 

Autographed RTJ4 Indie Exclusive @ Newbury.
Don't expect this one to last long
unnamed.jpg
 

Autographed RTJ4 Indie Exclusive @ Newbury.
Don't expect this one to last long

Gone....that should definitely been one per customer instead of two.
 

Autographed RTJ4 Indie Exclusive @ Newbury.
Don't expect this one to last long

Damn, I'm still waiting for my 4LP preorder to ship, and they're already dropping fresh variants?
 
Gone....that should definitely been one per customer instead of two.

For sure, no way most of those 2x orders arent being flipped.
They still have signed Cds in stock if people are interested. Not as good as the LP but you'll still have their sigs.

 
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