Comsat Angels - Chasing Shadows

Sheffield's Comsat Angels were masters of dark, atmospheric alternative music. The drums are almost always very muscular and simple. The guitar work is rich and colorful and very expressive. The keyboard work is modern and mature, on this album there is a lot of beautiful acoustic piano. Finally their vocals/lyrics are sensitive, intelligent and personal. This is their 6th studio album, and the first to show a good compromise between their artful side and the alternative pop market. The album was produced by Comsat Angels and Robert Palmer who sings backing vocals on You'll Never Know. It has been out of print for too long. Mine comes from a British pressing and is mastered to 20bit Sony Pro CD from a Stanton Pro turntable/cartrifdge, then transferred to VBR LAME mp3. There already is a nice version on the blogspot page, The Subversive Sounds, but I found almost all of the songs to have minor vinyl skipping (at least on my download of it). So I decided to offer mine, with a pinch more crackle at times, but no skipping that I could detect. I really hope this album comes out on CD someday, until then... enjoy!
UPDATE I have a CD of this great album, so I am now sharing it from CD at 320 kbps with a bonus track of Cutting Edge Stretched


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Hairspray (1988) OST Revisited

I am fan of the old original John Water's 1988 film, Hairspray but haven't cared for any of the remakes/spinoffs. They do however, reinforce my liking for the original. What I particularly liked about the film was the eclectic soundtrack. The album that was released featured only 12 of the 29 Songs featured in the film. So I have searched exhaustively for the other songs and give you a collection of 26 songs from the original film. Chubby Checker was featured repeatedly on the soundtrack, which is nice because many of us only knew The Twist and Limbo Rock. The other tracks by Chubby Checker were also minor hits in their time and deserve to be remembered. I strongly recommend you purchase a best of Chubby Checker from the Cameo Parkway years. Some of the other artists appearing here are Gene Chandler, Gene Pitney, Barbara Lynn and Leslie Gore. These songs came from a variety of sources, about 15% came straight from CD, the rest from P2P sources. If anyone knows how to get the missing 3 songs please let me know. They are:
The Bracelettes - Waddle Waddle
The Two Du-Tones - The Bird
The Dovells - Do The New Continental

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