Flaming Lips, Devo, Linkin Park and Jay Z Detail Record Store Day LPs
With Record Store Day a month away, more and more artists are beginning to share details of their planned April 19th releases. This week, the Flaming Lips announced two releases: a 12-inch vinyl edition of “7 Skies H3,” their hour-long single from 2011, which they describe as a distillation of the 24-hour song they released on Halloween that year. The other is a silver 7-inch entitled “Gates of Steel,” a cover of the 1980 Devo track that comes with Devo’s recording of the track from their 1981 EP Dev-O Live as its B-side. The record is dedicated to Devo guitarist Bob Casale, who died last month: “R.I.P. Bob 2. This is for you, wherever you are.”
Jay Z and Linkin Park will be reissuing their collaborative 2004 album Collision Course to celebrate the record’s 10th anniversary. The Record Store Day edition of the divisive album – which got two stars from Rolling Stone but has sold in the neighborhood of two million copies, according to Billboard – comes on transparent blue vinyl and includes a DVD of the rapper and rockers performing together.
Other notable releases include a vinyl release of heady headbangers Mastodon’s Live at Brixton digital album, which includes a DVD of their entire performance, and Neil Young‘s Official Release Series Discs 5 – 8 box set, which binds together limited-edition, analog-remastered vinyl releases of Time Fades Away, On the Beach, Tonight’s the Night and Zuma. Indie rockers Foals will be releasing Live at the Royal Albert Hall on vinyl, and Regina Spektor is putting out a vinyl release of her Orange Is the New Black theme song “You’ve Got Time” on, of course, orange vinyl.
As previously announced, Record Store Day – which named Public Enemy‘s Chuck D as this year’s ambassador – will also see the release of an 18-track collection of Green Day demos titled Demolicious, which includes a previously unreleased song, and LCD Soundsystem’s final concert as a five-LP set. Soundgarden are releasing a vinyl box set titled Superunknown: The Singles, and Bruce Springsteen will be putting out an EP containing four new songs.
Last year, Record Store Day set its own record (har har), when the consumer event saw a three-percent increase in sales over the previous year. More impressive, though, was that the event saw an increase of 36 percent more vinyl sold than in 2012.