The Fall 6-CD Box Set: The Fontana Years, August 25

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Singles, B-Sides, and John Peel Sessions Included in Three-Album Compendium

10 JULY 2017 (Toronto, ON) – This superb 6-CD set brings together the three albums that The Fall recorded for Universal with the Fontana label. With new liner notes by music writer Daryl Easlea, this box set features all the bonus discs that were included in the 2007 release of the 2-CD deluxe editions of each album.

Extricate, The Fall’s 12th album, was made immediately after bandleader Mark E. Smith divorced guitarist Brix Smith who was replaced by founding former member Martin Bramah, who had previously left the group in 1979. Lead-off single Telephone Thing could have been seen as a nod to the Manchester scene of the time as its origins were in Smith’s previous collaboration with Coldcut. The album’s best known track was one of the least typical of the group’s catalogue: Bill Is Dead, a slow-paced tender love song, which topped John Peel’s Festive Fifty that year,

Shift-Work is the 1991 offering by The Fall, which they began working on in 1990 while still touring in support of Extricate. Shift-Work marked, in the opinion of critic Ted Mills, a change in direction for the group, as “repetitious grooves became interspersed with pop song structures.”

Code: Selfish is the bands14th album which entered the chart at number 21. It is characterised by its harsher sound, in relation to the previous year’s Shift-Work, and draws influence from techno music. Despite this, the album also has some notably mellow moments with Time Enough at Last and Gentlemen’s Agreement being at odds with the overall sound of the album. Largely recorded in a converted church in Glasgow, Code: Selfish features the group’s only self-penned Top 40 single, Free Range.

CONTENT / TRACKLISTINGS:

DISC ONE – Extricate

  • Sing! Harpy
  • I’m Frank
  • Bill Is Dead
  • Black Monk Theme Part I
  • Popcorn Double Feature
  • Telephone Thing
  • Hilary
  • Chicago, Now!
  • The Littlest Rebel
  • And Therein …

DISC TWO                                                                                          

  • Telephone Thing (Extended Mix)
  • Telephone Dub
  • British People in Hot Weather
  • Butterflies 4 Brains
  • Arms Control Poseur (Single Version)
  • Arms Control Poseur
  • Zandra
  • Black Monk Theme Part 2
  • Extricate
  • Theme from Error Orrori
  • Chicago, Now! (BBC John Peel Session)
  • Black Monk Theme (BBC John Peel Session)
  • Hilary (BBC John Peel Session)
  • Whizz Bang (BBC John Peel Session)

DISC THREE – Shift-Work                                                                 

  • Earth’s Impossible Day 
  • So, What About It?
  • Idiot Joy Showland
  • Edinburgh Man         
  • Pittsville Direkt           
  • The Book of Lies                
  • The War Against Intelligence 
  • Notebooks Out Plagiarists                                                                
  • Shift-Work              
  • You Haven’t Found It Yet         
  • The Mixer                        
  • A Lot of Wind                          
  • Rose                                               
  • Sinister Waltz

DISC FOUR                                                                                        

  • White Lightning   
  • Blood Outta Stone 
  • Zagreb (Movements 1, 2, 3) 
  • Life Just Bounces 
  • The Funeral Mix
  • High Tension Line
  • Xmas With Simon 
  • Don’t Take the Pizza 
  • So, What About It? (Remix 1)
  • So, What About It? (Remix 2)
  • So, What About It? (Remix 3)
  • The Re-Mixer  
  • Cloud of Black
  • Arid Al’s Dream 
  • The War Against Intelligence (BBC John Peel Session) 
  • Idiot Joy Showland (BBC John Peel Session)
  • A Lot of Wind (BBC John Peel Session)
  • The Mixer (BBC John Peel Session) 

DISC FIVE – Code: Selfish                                                                 

  • The Birmingham School of Business School
  • Free Range
  • Return
  • Time Enough at Last
  • Everything Hurtz
  • Immortality
  • Two-Face!
  • Just Waiting
  • So-Called Dangerous 
  • Gentlemen’s Agreement
  • Married, 2 Kids 
  • Crew Filth 

DISC SIX                                                                                          

  • Free Range (Single Version)
  • Return (Single Version)
  • Dangerous    
  • Everything Hurtz (Single Version)
  • Ed’s Babe 
  • Pumpkin Head Xscapes
  • The Knight the Devil and Death
  • Free Ranger
  • Noel’s Chemical Effluence
  • Legend of Xanadu
  • Free Range (BBC John Peel Session)
  • Kimble (BBC John Peel Session)
  • Immortality (BBC John Peel Session)
  • Return (BBC John Peel Session)