A few more Record Store Day 2026 reviews: XTC | Coldcut | Ludus
Hello, loyal subscribers. You may remember not long ago when my Vinyl Cut partner Ned promised that this post would be our last word on Record Store Day 2026. Well, much like Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III, just when we thought we were done, we got pulled back in.
Today I’m heading back to the proverbial record shop in the wake of Record Store Day to review some of the stray pieces of wax that came in too late for us to include in our deluge of reviews. All three are releases by UK artists: a live recording of XTC whipping a Philly-area club into a frenzy, the fifth album by electronic duo Coldcut, and a limited repressing of the first full-length by art-punk outfit Ludus.
Have you heard these or any of the other RSD releases that came into our lives in April? We’d like to know! If you are paid subscriber to the newsletter, please take advantage of our new comments section and tell us what RSD gems you bought and enjoyed (or were disappointed by). A paid subscription also earns you the chance to enter our monthly giveaways. Last time around, we gifted one lucky reader a copy of the fantastic Rhino Reserve release of John Coltrane's Giant Steps. We’ll be announcing this month’s giveaway very soon, so consider smashing that button below so you don’t miss out.
With all that out of the way, let’s get into these reviews. Enjoy!
XTC: Live Boots (Emerald City, Cherry Hill, New Jersey 17th April 1981)
One of the best endorsements for Live Boots, the first in what is hopefully going to be an ongoing series of live recordings of UK post-punk group XTC, comes from the band’s drummer Terry Chambers. Inside the gatefold sleeve of this Record Store Day exclusive are reflections on the gig by the four men who sweated it out onstage at New Jersey club Emerald City on April 17, 1981. Most get into the details of the tour or the equipment they used at the time. Chambers, on the other hand, has little to no recall of the night in question. As he points out, the only shows he tends to remember are the ones where something went wrong, like, as he writes, “equipment breakdown, poor performance and this kind of thing…. I’ve not yet heard this recording but I imagine it was a very enthusiastic and lively performance.”
Chambers is greatly underselling what is on this 2-LP set. XTC were, at the time, touring a great deal in Europe and North America, building up support for the two albums they’d made following the departure of founding keyboardist Barry Andrews. The quartet was further developing their herky-jerky new wave sound with the brilliant addition of guitarist Dave Gregory, who brought jazz nuance and psychedelic textures to 1979’s Drums and Wires and 1980’s Black Sea.
The latter album was the focus of this particular performance, which came during a 19-date US run in support of the LP. The setlist boasts eight of the 11 songs from Black Sea, with the rest made up of material from Drums & Wires, a couple of quick return trips to their 1977 debut White Music (“Statue of Liberty” and “This Is Pop”), and a preview of “Ball and Chain,” a song that would be recorded for their next album, 1982’s English Settlement. The band is airtight and razor-sharp throughout, only briefly letting up on the accelerator for those midtempo tunes that allow them to catch their collective breath before launching into another speed run. As Gregory says in his Live Boots memory, “I’m exhausted just listening to it.”
The ear fatigue may extend to listeners struggling with the quality of the recording here. As singer/guitarist Andy Partridge mentions at one point, the show was aired on WMMR, an FM station in Philadelphia. And while I don’t have any details about the provenance of the source audio for this set, my assumption is that it originated as a home-recorded tape of the broadcast as it happened. Everything sounds clear enough, apart from a small bit of tape garble that mars a small portion of opening track “Real By Reel,” but the whole set sounds like it is happening behind a thick pane of glass. That said, once I acclimated myself to the sound quality, it was easy to then get lost in the performance and to once again lament that, barring some miracle, XTC will never play live together again. My soul is soothed somewhat knowing that the band has promised further entries into this Live Boots series, but great as I’m hoping those will be, they won’t come close to seeing it play out right before my eyes.
Ape House 2-LP 33 RPM black vinyl
• Live recording of XTC performing live at Emerald City, Cherry Hill, NJ, on April 17, 1981
• Jacket: Direct-to-board gatefold
• Inner sleeve: Black poly-lined
• Liner notes, insert, or booklet: Reflections from all four members of XTC printed inside gatefold
• Source: Digital
• Mastering credit: Jason Mitchell, Loud Mastering, Whitehall, UK
• Lacquer cut by: Jason Mitchell, Loud Mastering, Whitehall, UK; “JASDAFACE LOUD” in deadwax
• Pressed at: Unknown
• Vinyl pressing quality (visual): A- (inaudible mark on side 2)
• Vinyl pressing quality (audio): A
• Additional notes: A CD version of Live Boots will be released on June 19.
Coldcut: Sound Mirrors (20th Anniversary Edition)
A 20th-anniversary reissue of Sound Mirrors, the fifth studio album by London electronic duo Coldcut, isn’t really headline news. Original vinyl pressings of the record are still in plentiful circulation on the secondary market and no bonus material is appended to this new edition. What is interesting about the 2-LP set—released on Record Store Day in the UK and EU in April—is that, as the hype sticker explains, it was pressed on “injection moulded, zero PVC, non-toxic, and fully recyclable vinyl.”
Labels and pressing plants have lately been reckoning with the environmental impact of the product that they make, as the PVC pellets used to make each piece of vinyl are made using fossil fuels. Some progress has been made in trying to lessen the burden on the planet. On June 5, a group of labels—including Ninja Tune, the imprint started by Coldcut’s Matt Black and Jonathan More in 1990—will release a series of LPs made using all recycled material: the trim left over from cutting each record, unsold stock, and rejects. It’s a process that some pressing plants, like London’s the Vinyl Factory, have been quietly implementing with solid results, but this is the first loud proclamation that a consortium of music companies—Secretly Group, Beggars Group, and Warp Records among them—has made in support of, as Ninja Tune’s head of production Sean Preston said in a recent press release, “making eco vinyl the industry standard.”
Ninja Tune’s commitment to this cause is such that they have also been working with Good Neighbor, a California pressing plant that makes records using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and an injection-molding process rather than PVC and a hydraulic press, thus reducing their CO2 emissions and usage of electricity. All well and good, but, as I’m sure you’re also asking at this point, how does it sound?
At least from my small sample size, the prognosis is very good indeed. Both LPs in this set sound marvelous with silent backgrounds and no surface noise, two issues that online reviewers have noted with other PET releases. Coldcut’s dense, detailed productions are presented with clarity and depth on this new pressing. The emphasis, as with a lot of electronic music releases, is on the low end, and this does not skimp out on that front. The bass tones are deep and resonant without overpowering the mids and highs. The trap beats of “A Whistle and a Prayer,” a collaboration with Minnesota indie rockers Fog, have a wowing bass note that whooshes from one channel to the other like a quick thunder roll that is a blast to play at a high volume. And the thump of breakbeat on “Just For the Kick,” a tune that features vocals by the great Annette Peacock, would make a great addition to a disco-forward DJ set.
The records themselves, in addition to being a gorgeous shade of purple, are as perfect as they come. There’s a nice weight to each disc that doesn’t tip into the 180-gram range but definitely feels heavier than your average LP. And the lack of paper labels was a lovely artistic touch, as Good Neighbor had to mold some letters onto each disc so listeners would know what side they are about to drop the needle on. The A-side also features the name of the album and a number indicating which pressing of this limited run of 1,000 is in hand.
While I doubt that every pressing plant around the world is going to follow Good Neighbor’s lead with this new production process, I will say that this new edition of Sound Mirrors should be held up as a prime example of how to produce an eco-friendly record that both looks and sounds as incredible as any piece of wax made the old-fashioned way.
Ninja Tune 2-LP 33 RPM transparent purple vinyl
• 20th anniversary reissue of Coldcut’s 2006 album
• Jacket: Direct-to-board, die-cut single pocket
• Inner sleeve: Thin cardstock with album credits and lyrics
• Liner notes, insert, or booklet: None
• Source: Digital
• Mastering credit: Eric Conn, Independent Mastering, Nashville, TN
• Lacquer cut by: Eric Conn, Independent Mastering, Nashville, TN; “EC” in deadwax
• Pressed at: Good Neighbor, Los Angeles, CA
• Vinyl pressing quality (visual): A
• Vinyl pressing quality (audio): A
• Additional notes: “Injection moulded, zero PVC, non-toxic, and fully recyclable record,” according to hype sticker.
Ludus: The Seduction
The artist known simply as Linder (given name: Linda Sterling) first became known within the UK punk and post-punk communities for her art and design work. She produced a fanzine that centered on her photomontages and created the striking collage featured on the cover of Buzzcocks’ 1977 single “Orgasm Addict.” Soon, she was translating her theories on visual art to her first band, Ludus. In an online biography for this musical project, Linder says, “I couldn’t see any difference between making photomontage and making music… Using my voice, writing words and finding musicians was simply the method to produce the raw material for sound cut-ups. The songs were the glue.”
It’s worth keeping that quote in mind before dropping the needle on The Seduction, the first proper Ludus full-length, originally released on indie label New Hormones in 1981 and reissued for Record Store Day in the UK and EU by Italian imprint Lantern Rec. The music Linder cooked up with multi-instrumentalist Ian Devine and drummer Graham Dowdall is slippery and elusive. When I heard this alluring record many years ago, I thought I would have a handle on a song before it quickly shape-shifted on me and spun off in a new direction.
The nearly 10-minute improvised instrumental “The Dynasty,” for example, begins with a duet of frenetic hand percussion and simple piano chords, but the song starts to slowly dissolve within a cavern of reverb before emerging as a free-jazz meltdown. “Mirror Mirror” is all angular Raincoats-like beats and chiming guitars before turning on a dime into a late-night jazz-club swing. And “Herstory” can’t decide between a sped-up African highlife jam or Derek Bailey–inspired guitar lunacy.
Hearing The Seduction on vinyl may be easier said than done. Copies of the original New Hormones pressing are scarce to begin with, and the repress that Lantern Rec. brought out for Record Store Day was only available in a run of 500 copies. I lucked into nabbing one from the UK once shops over there were allowed to put their leftover RSD stock online, and I’m very glad I did. There are no details about who mastered this release or where it was pressed, but whoever did that work should be applauded for their efforts.
My assumption is that Lantern used the digital master created for a 2002 CD release on LTM, which couldn’t have been an easy task. The sessions for The Seduction happened in short bursts over the course of a year at three different Manchester-area studios: Pennine Sound Studio in Oldham, Cargo Studios in Rochdale, and Revolution Studios in Cheadle Hulme. The sound quality noticeably changes along the way, with the Cargo material coming off as a little muddier than the songs laid down at Revolution and Pennine. The unknown remastering engineer does a nice job evening everything out so the differences from track to track aren’t quite so jarring. I was especially impressed with how cleanly Dowdall’s drumming comes across, as his rototom-heavy work provides the needed ballast for listeners navigating these choppy sonic waters. The 2-LP set was also cut at 45 RPM, just as it was when it was originally released in ’81, which helps broaden the soundstage throughout—a necessity as the CD and digital versions of The Seduction mainly push the highs of Devine’s choppy guitar and Dowdall’s hi-hat assault. The added room in the grooves helps the bass lines (also played by Devine) pop.
While The Seduction was pretty high on my Record Store Day wantlist, I wonder if our regular Vinyl Cut readers share my enthusiasm. It’s a challenging album, to be sure, but a rewarding one, and perfect for fans of UK groups of the same vintage like the Raincoats, Essential Logic, or early Public Image Ltd. If that piques your interest, I’d recommend acting now before all the copies of this limited-edition release get snapped up.
Lantern 2-LP 45 RPM black vinyl
• Reissue of 1981 debut album by Ludus
• Jacket: Direct-to-board gatefold
• Inner sleeve: White paper
• Liner notes, insert, or booklet: Essay by James Nice printed inside gatefold
• Source: Digital
• Mastering credit: None
• Lacquer cut by: Unknown
• Pressed at: Unknown
• Vinyl pressing quality (visual): A
• Vinyl pressing quality (audio): A
• Additional notes: None.
Listening equipment:
Table: Cambridge Audio Alva ST
Cart: Grado Green3
Amp: Sansui 9090
Speakers: Electro Voice TS8-2
