VIRGIN PRUNES – A New Form of Beauty 1-4 (2024 Deluxe Edition) – 3LP – Vinyl

3LP -Black Vinyl. Remastered from original tape and housed in a Tri-fold reverse board sleeve deluxe package with a 16-page 11-inch deluxe artbook containing brand new sleevenotes by Jon Wood and original Guggi drawings.

The Virgin Prunes were masters of the uncanny, juxtaposing nightmares with lullabies, beauty with cruelty, combining gentle vocals and the spoken word with anguished wailing from purgatory itself. This first album powerfully laid out this terrain. Its themes ranged from mournful tales of unrequited love, frustrated sexuality, morbid eroticism and wasted youth, to yearnings for distant dreamlands which were juxtaposed with macabre visions of dystopian societies, overpowered by dark forces and where demons run amok. Guggis art work for A New Form of Beauty, which intimates a heartless transaction within a domestic setting, is in keeping with this sensibility.

A New Form of Beauty (1981) was recorded and produced by the band itself. It includes the tracks of the first four parts of what was a five-part, mixed-format project with Rough Trade Records. Part 1 was a 7 record, Part 2 was a 10, Part 3 was a 12: these were recorded between July and October 1981. Part 4 was Din Glorious, released as an audio cassette, was a recording of extracts of a live event on 8th November 1981 at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin. Part 5 was to be a film of Performance, Exhibition, Event staged at the Douglas Hyde Gallery on 7th and 8th November 1981.

This deluxe edition features all four parts .

Tracklist:

Disc 1 – Side A
1. Sandpaper Lullabye
2. Sleep Fantasy Dreams
3. Sad World

Disc 1 – Side B
1. Come to Daddy
2. Sweethome Under White Clouds

Disc 2 – Side A
1. Beast (Seven Bastard Suck)

Disc 2 – Side B
1. Abbgall
2. Brain Damage
3. No Birds to Fly

Disc 3 – Side A
1. Din Glorious, Pt. 1

Disc 3 – Side B
1. Din Glorious, Pt. 2