Sold Date:
June 7, 2018
Start Date:
March 25, 2018
Final Price:
$29.30
(USD)
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First ever inner sleeve with new artwork Bonus 7" with 2 previously unreleased tracks (also remastered from original master tapes by Pete Kember) Housed in newly expanded heavyweight gatefold GZ tip-on sleeve with new artwork featuring lyrics Remastered by Pete Kember of Spacemen 3 from original master tapes. First ever official reissue & fully endorsed by the band
This seminal album of quintessential English psychedelia is one of the most highly prized artifacts that define the psychedelic genre and like some of the most highly collected and prized albums from that time, mint copies can now go for way in excess of £1000.
Thus given the record`s rarity & collectability, matched to the recent explosive interest in all things psyche, garage & underground, you would be excused for thinking that this slice of perfect late 60’s progressive underground pop would have been given the full reissue and remastering treatment already. Surprisingly though, you would very much be mistaken. But to those of you who know the checkered history of Kaleidoscope this will perhaps come as no surprise!?!!
Thankfully after 3 years of painstaking detective work, chance encounters with Universal archivists, heavy negotiations with major label legal executives and some good fortune, we are delighted to announce that this record will finally not only get its first proper official reissue in over 5 decades, but thanks to a lot of pure persistence it can now be presented to its listeners in the manner in which it was supposed to have been heard, following the discovery of a batch of the original master tapes that were languishing in the vaults of Universal that have laid largely unheard for 50 years!
Furthermore following a couple of shared festival billings at Austin and Copenhagen Psyche Festival, with another legend of the scene, Mr Pete Kember aka SONIC BOOM of SPACEMEN 3 fame, Sonic has been holed up in his Lisbon studio, painstakingly remastering the album from the original ¼” tapes.
The remastering of these ¼” tapes though is only part of the story, as along with the discovery of these a significant number of ½” tapes and other material was also discovered which is penned for a future release when the band`s entire works will be presented in a definitive boxset of all four of their studio albums (including all their Fairfield Parlour recordings) plus BBC Sessions, live recordings, alternative takes, new mixes, unreleased tracks and material from the band`s own archive including pre-Kaleidoscope demos when they were known as both The Sidekicks andThe Key.
For now though, this 50th Anniversary release comes with a flavor of what is to come, with the inclusion of two unreleased out-takes tracks from 1967 on a bonus 7” housed in a replica original paper thin Fontana sleeve which, includes an early version of the track that gave the band their name, the suitably titled: ‘Kaleidoscope’. Whilst the flip presents an alternative earliest known recorded version of the album’s follow-up single: “Dream For Julie’.
The album itself, has been cut onto 180g heavyweight vinyl, housed in a deluxe high-end gatefold tip-on sleeve with the lyrics printed and new artwork.