New vinyl reissues: July 3, 2026

It’s time for our weekly look at the passel of new reissues coming our way—and it’s a slower week than usual, due to the American holiday of Independence Day on July 4. The upside of this is that many retailers are having sales this weekend, and if your inbox is anything like mine, it’s already littered with announcements about ’em.

Since I have fewer blurbs this week, I’ll preface them with a big ol’ vinyl news dump, culled from some interesting record-related articles that caught my eye.

• In pressing-plant news, Furnace Record Pressing—the Alexandria, Virginia, plant of which Metallica is a majority owner—got a writeup in Manufacturing Dive this week. Reporter Sara Samora interviewed Furnace CEO Ali Miller, and the tidbit that caught my attention is that Furnace added electroplating capabilities last year. Plating is the intermediate step in vinyl production that comes between lacquer cutting and the actual pressing of a vinyl record; it’s during the plating stage that the stampers are manufactured. It’s a fairly involved chemical process, which means there aren’t a ton of plating facilities in the US right now, so it’s notable that Furnace now has the capability.

• Meanwhile, in Salem, Oregon, a new pressing plant opened in June: Object Permanence Records is running a single M-Tech Allegro II press with the capacity to press 1000 records a day. They’re off to a gradual start of small runs and have taken the mantle of keeping vinyl production alive in Oregon, which lost its previous pressing plant, Cascade Record Pressing, when that facility shut down a few weeks back. Check out this profile in the Salem Reporter.

• On the opposite end of the size spectrum, the biggest—and oldest—plant in the country, United Record Pressing, was visited by, of all things, the Atlanta-based syndicated daytime show Aging Untold. Watch it here. They’ve got video of United’s ancient workhorse presses as well as a look at their lacquer-cutting lathe. Plus, if you stick around to the end of the clip, you get to hear the show’s hosts marvel at the vinyl resurgence. (They think it’s pretty neat!) United has gotten a good amount of flak over the years for flawed or unsatisfactory records, but my most recent experience with them—for the Dead Currencies reissue of Joseph Jarman and Famoudou Don Moye’s Black Paladins—resulted in an absolutely superb pressing. Let’s hope it’s a signal that United has turned the corner for good.

• Speaking of Nashville, a new mastering facility is about to open its doors in Music City, USA. The Mastering Company comes from some folks who were part of The Mastering Lab during its days in California, including Ron Hitchcock and Bud Wyatt. When I first discovered their placeholder webpage earlier this year, it looked as though they were going to try to operate as The Mastering Lab, which no doubt raised some contention with Chad Kassem’s Acoustic Sounds/Analogue Productions operation, which bought all of The Mastering Lab’s gear a few years back and is now running a prolific and well-regarded mastering studio under that name in Salina, Kansas. It looks like the two teams have reached an accord, and the new Nashville-based enterprise from Hitchcock and Wyatt will be called The Mastering Company. With Hitchcock designated as primary mastering engineer, they’re running a Neumann VMS 70 lathe, with first cuts scheduled for July. I’m looking forward to hearing their work.

• In the exciting world of vinyl disposal, Warner Music Group is running a recycling pilot program at 11 independent record stores across the US where you can take your unwanted or ruined vinyl and deposit it in a box where it will be sent to a recycling facility instead of going into a landfill. Seattle’s Easy Street Records posted this video to give you an idea. WMG’s Vinyl Retail Consumer Collection Program (that’s a mouthful) is part of a larger initiative to prove the viability of recycled vinyl, an initiative that also included a test program of recycled vinyl repressed at GZ Media into new records. The recycling process involves punching out the center label area so the labels don’t become part of the new recycled mix, as you can see in the photo above. The testing panel included Miles Showell of Abbey Road, who signed off on the quality of the recycled pressings; you can read more about all of this at Billboard, and WMG has a summary of the report posted here.

What does this mean going forward? I think there is a bunch of leftover skepticism baked into some vinyl aficionados’ perceptions of recycled vinyl due to bad early experiences, but I remain optimistic. There are several different methods being used to improve vinyl sustainability, including bio vinyl, non-PVC compounds, and direct-injection moulding. These methods are not all the same, and some have better results than others, so the blanket rejection of anything less than 100% pure virgin vinyl is painting with too broad a stroke, in my opinion. I think recycled vinyl and other sustainable initiatives are absolutely worth exploring, and the results will only improve with time and experience.

• Lastly, a new vinyl reissue series has appeared, this time coming from Capitol Records. The Capitol Record Club is actually not a subscription-based series (at least, not yet) but rather a monthly line of limited-edition titles plundered from Capitol’s back catalog. First up is a reissue of Sparklehorse’s 1998 album Good Morning Spider, cut at 45 RPM on two LPs by Levi Seitz of Black Belt Mastering, with a bonus 7-inch that includes a duet with Thom Yorke on a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” It’s limited to 3000 copies and is only available at Capitol’s web store. They’ve also listed the next three titles in the series: Butthole Surfer’s Electric Larryland for August, Crowded House’s self-titled debut for September, and Digable Planets’ Blowout Comb in October, although specifics for those—including mastering data, RPM (33 or 45), and actual release date—have not been specified.

With an emphasis on ’90s titles thus far (except for Crowded House), the Capitol Record Club looks to be an interesting counterpart to the other major-label premium reissue series, such as Vinylphyle from Capitol’s sister company UMe. It’s funny that the series shares the name as the Capitol Record Club from the ’60s and ’70s, which was a mail-order based operation like Columbia House or BMG; at one point you could buy seven LPs for $1.87 with the commitment to buy seven more. I doubt the new Capitol Record Club will offer such a screaming deal.

Now, let’s take a brief look at the vinyl reissues coming to stores and online sellers this week. To accompany your reading, here’s the weekly playlist for our wonderful paid subscribers. Wanna listen? Upgrade your subscription here.

Fountains of Wayne: Welcome Interstate Managers [Capitol]

The 2003 album Welcome Interstate Managers was a hard-earned hit for New York band Fountains of Wayne, who trafficked in immaculately written power-pop tunes honed to diamond-hard sharpness. By the time of Welcome, their third album, they were critics’ darlings but rarely got any mainstream play, until an attention-grabbing video for “Stacy’s Mom” starring Rachel Hunter in a bikini tipped them over the edge. Over the years the songwriting of guitarist Chris Collingwood and bassist Adam Schlesinger has become more widely recognized for its pop smarts, and Schlesinger’s writer-for-hire work (That Thing You Do!, Josie and the Pussycats) has become canonized in the wake of his COVID-related death in 2020. Now Welcome Interstate Managers is back on wax in a 2-LP set from Capitol, following its now-long-gone first-ever pressing from Real Gone Music in 2020. Looks like this one is on “neon jazzberry” wax, which is sort of purplish.

Grateful Dead: Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA (7/3/66) [Grateful Dead]

A very early live recording from the Grateful Dead is now available on vinyl for the first time. Dating from July 3, 1966—hey, that’s 60 years ago to the date!—it was first made available on the 2015 80-CD box set 30 Trips Around the Sun, so those without the means or wherewithal to pick that one up can get the stand-alone release now. While the Fillmore ’66 is getting a wide release on CD from Rhino, the vinyl is available exclusively from the Dead’s site, on a 3-LP set that features music on five sides and an etching on the sixth. For such an early recording, it sounds pretty good to my ears—Owsley “Bear” Stanley is responsible—but it bears some quirks of primitive two-track recording, including the vocals panned all the way to the left channel. This is when the Dead were speed freaks instead of acid kings, and the material is rawer, more peppery, and more soul- and R&B-influenced than the band would be during their peak dancing-bear era.

The Milky Way: Summer-Time Love Song [Wewantsounds]

The 1979 one-off album Summer-Time Love Song from the Japanese studio outfit the Milky Way is lauded by many as a City Pop classic, but the album has never been released outside of Japan until now. It’s a lush and breezy collection of City Pop, but bearing more bossa nova and lounge-pop influences than you might expect. Mostly consisting of covers, it includes tunes by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Boz Scaggs, Stephen Bishop, and of course Max Steiner and Mack Discant’s “Theme from A Summer Place.” This is a slick, mega-produced collection of soft, soft rock, but with some of the crisp playing and light funk City Pop lovers are looking for; it was produced by Makoto Matsushita and features playing from Yasuaki Shimizu. The French label Wewantsounds, responsible for the recent reissues of Meiko Kaji’s ’70s recordings, are on top of this one and have no doubt given this new pressing the careful treatment it deserves. It was remastered at ColorSound Studio in Paris and features a four-page insert with liners by Paul Bowler.

Real Gone Music

The real overachiever this week is Real Gone, who are dropping a whopping seven new reissues or represses this July 3, in an array of genres that is darn near stupefying. First up, they’ve got the debut recording from modern classical composer Morton Feldman. New Direction in Music 2 was released by Columbia in 1959, introducing Feldman’s style of indeterminncy—also championed by John Cage and other New York composers—via free rhythms, notes untied to chromatic scales, and the exploration of the space around the music; this first-ever vinyl reissue of the LP was pressed at Gotta Groove. If that’s not your jam, they’ve also got Tevin Campbell’s 1993 album I’m Ready, a big R&B seller with the 16-year-old Campbell’s youthful voice piping above the very digital-sounding ’90s production, courtesy of Babyface, Prince, and others. Either of those too mild for your ears? Real Gone’s also got Death Angel’s 1987 debut The Ultra-Violence, which was recorded while the Daly City, California, thrash-metallers were still teenagers. And if none of those float your boat, they’re also repressing some older titles: Henry Franklin’s The Skipper and The Skipper at Home (both originally part of their definitive reissue campaign of the Black Jazz Records catalog from a few years back), the soundtrack to the Dexter TV show, and Doc Watson’s self-titled 1964 album, a collection of folk, bluegrass, and blues.

Jazz Alley

Two new Blue Note Tone Poets are here: Big John Patton’s Got a Good Thing Goin’ is a groovy 1966 session of organ-driven soul jazz, with Patton joined by guitarist Grant Green. And Michel Petrucciani’s 1986 live recording Power of Three finds the French-born pianist joined by saxophonist Wayne Shorter and bassist Jim Hall. The other major jazz reissue this week comes from the terrific Strut Records, who are reissuing Sun Ra’s 1977 album Somewhere Over the Rainbow, a live recording from Bloomington, Indiana. They’ve expanded the album threefold, so it’s now a triple LP featuring more of the complete performance, with the tracks reordered to match the concert’s actual setlist. It was remastered by Technology Works from the original tapes and comes with new liner notes by Chris Cutler.

OTHER REISSUES OF NOTE:
(*star denotes inclusion in this week’s paid-subscriber playlist)

Aborym: With No Human Intervention [Subsound]
Paul Anka: This Is… [Vinyl Passion]
Robbie Basho: The Voice of an Eagle [Life Goes On]
Kenny Barron Trio: Landscape [Music on Vinyl]
Chuck Berry: This Is… [Vinyl Passion]
Art Blakey: Chippin’ In [Music on Vinyl]
*Bronski Beat: Truthdare Doubledare [London]
Carpenters: A Song for You [Universal Import]
Cascada: Everytime We Touch [Back on Wax]
Cheap Trick: Cheap Trick; In Color [Music on Vinyl]
John Coltrane: Birdland 1962 [Vinyl Passion]
The Crystal Method: Tweekend [Interscope Vinyl Collective]
Devo: Nitrous Nightmare Halloween Live ’75 [Futurismo]
*Dragon: Universal Radio [Eminent]
The Fabulous Thunderbirds: Painted On [Friday Music]
Mark Farner: Wake Up…; Some Kind of Wonderful [Roxx]
*Fidlar: Almost Free [Mom & Pop]
The Fizzbombs: Janice Long Session 01.07.87 10-inch [Precious Recordings of London]
*Four Tops: Reach Out [Universal Import]
Ryo Fukui: Live at Vidro 1977; My Favorite Tune; In New York; A Letter from Slowboat; At the Slowboat [Deep Jazz Reality]
Gammacide: Victims of Science [NoLifeTilMetal/Gammacide]
*Gloria Mundi: I, Individual [Antenna]
Golden Earring: Bloody Buccaneers [Music on Vinyl]
*The Gun Club: Miami [Blixa]
*Hildur Guðnadóttir: Mount A; Without Sinking; Saman [Deutsche Grammophon]
Hekate: Sonnentanz [Prophecy]
High Priest of Saturn: Son of Earth and Sky [Svart]
*Joseph Kamaru: Further Combinations EP [Disciples]
Eric Kloss & Barry Miles: Kloss Encounters (Live in Bremen ’78) [Music in Vinyl]
Kottonmouth Kings: Royal Highness [Capitol]
Laserdance: Laserdance Orchestra Vol. 1 [ZYX]
L.S. Underground: This Is the Healing [Retroactive]
Yo-Yo Ma: Sing Me Home [Music on Vinyl]
*The Mamas and the Papas: If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears [Universal Import]
Marchello: Destiny [High Roller]
Delbert McClinton: Live from Austin, TX [New West]
Miss Caffeina: Detroit [Warner Music Spain]
Mark Morrison: Return of the Mack [Warner Bros UK]
Gary Moore: Wild Frontier [Universal Japan]
Motörhead: Kiss of Death [BMG]
Neoboris: Helas [Nashaphone]
Nest: Trail of the Unwary [Avantgarde Music]
New Model Army: Ghost of Cain [Warner Bros UK]
Paradise Lost: Lost Paradise [Peaceville]
Pitbull: Greatest Hits [Sony UK]
Platero y Tú: Vamos Tirando [WEA Spain]
*The Raveonettes: Pretty in Black [Music on Vinyl]
*Chris Rea: On the Beach [Warner Bros UK]
Rudimentary Peni: The E.P.s of R.P. [Sealed]
*Santana: III [Music on Vinyl]
Saxon: The Eagle Has Landed Part III [Music on Vinyl]
Shirley Scott & Clark Terry: Soul Duo [Verve Record Club Subscription Series]
Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols (Japanese pressing) [Universal Japan]
Theodore Shapiro: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty soundtrack [Music on Vinyl]
Nina Simone: Sings Duke Ellington [Vinyl Passion]
Six Feet Under: Graveyard Classics; Classics IV [Brutal Planet]
*Startled Insects: The Antenna Years [WRWTFWW]
*Sugarcult: Palm Trees and Powerlines [Artist Friendly Co.]
The Supremes: Meet the Supremes [Universal Import]
Sweet: Live at the Capitol [Metalville]
*Talk Talk: The Colour of Spring [Parlophone]
*Tank: War Machine [High Roller]
Torture Killer: Swarm! [Brutal Planet]
Utada: Exodus; This Is the One [Universal Japan]
The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground and Nico (Japanese edition) [Universal Japan]
Barney Wilen with the Mal Waldron Trio: French Story: Movie Themes from France [Music on Vinyl]
*Zu: Igneo [Subsound]
Various Artists: Can You Feel It? Vol. 5: Modern Soul, Disco & Boogie 1977–88 [Tramp]
Various Artists: Sowas Von Egal. 3: German Synth Wave Underground 1981–1986 [Bureau B]