...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's "Source Tags & Codes" Expanded 15th Anniversary Vinyl Reissue Out On August 11

… AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD’S MODERN CLASSIC, SOURCE TAGS & CODES,RECEIVING EXPANDED 15TH ANNIVERARY VINYL REISSUE ON AUGUST 11

ALBUM TO BE RELEASED AS DOUBLE LP WITH GATEFOLD JACKET, 3 RARE TRACKS, ALTERNATE LP ART AND UNIQUE ETCHING

… And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’s landmark album, Source Tags & Codes, will be released as an expanded vinyl edition on August 11 via Interscope/UMe to commemorate its 15th anniversary. Housed in a gatefold sleeve, the album, which will also be available digitally, will be pressed on black vinyl as a double LP for the first time ever and include three tracks previously only available on various rare and international releases (“Invocation,” “Life Is Elsewhere,” and “Blood Rites”). The back cover will be a replica of the Japanese version which features a drawing of a teenage boy while the iconic image of a cackling Henry Miller from the compact disc and North American back cover will be represented with a unique etching on Side D of the second LP. A very limited amount of 500 copies will be available on midnight navy vinyl exclusively via The Sound of Vinyl. The album is available for pre-order here: https://UMe.lnk.to/TODsource

 

Few albums in 2002 were as highly anticipated as Trail of Dead’s major label debut, Source Tags & Codes, which saw the band making the leap from venerable indie Merge Records to Interscope. Having already amassed a rabid fanbase off the strength of two acclaimed albums and their legendary, nihilistic live shows, the Austin, Texas-based band – fronted by dual vocal powerhouses and multi-instrumentalists Conrad Keely and Jason Reece and rounded out with Neil Busch and Kevin Allen – had many waiting with baited breath to see what their move to the majors would produce. Armed with the biggest recording budget of their career, the band teamed back up with producer Mike McCarthy who helmed their sophomore album, Madonna, and secluded themselves at Prairie Sun Recording Studio, in Cotati, Calif., a sleepy town located north of San Francisco in Sonoma County wine country. Free from financial and time constraints and the distractions of home they were able to focus, experiment and fully realize their distinctive sound.

 

“Source Tags & Codes was our moment to take a stab at creating a timeless album,” says founding member Reece. “We had the chance to have that freedom to experiment with new sonic possibilities while messing with the major label paradigm. It was truly a chaotic, strange and beautiful time in our young lives.”

 

Upon release on February 26, 2002, Source Tags & Codes thrust the band into the mainstream spotlight as it was met with glowing reviews from critics and fans alike who hailed the album as a masterpiece, lauding the band’s uncanny ability to create something at once beautiful and brutal, raw and refined. Pitchfork awarded the album a perfect 10 rating, putting it the rarefied company of such classic records as Radiohead’s OK Computer and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Writer Matt LeMay proclaimed: “Dense, beautiful, intricate, haunting, explosive, and dangerous, this is everything rock music aspires to be: intense, incredible songs arranged perfectly and performed with skill and passion. Source Tags & Codes will take you in, rip you to shreds, piece you together, lick your wounds clean, and send you back into the world with a concurrent sense of loss and hope. And you will never, ever be the same.” Entertainment Weekly declared, “Hardcore punk outbursts alternate with art-rock feedback flights and dreamy bits of melody that somehow fuse into a coherent, often spectacular album,” while NME remarked, “Accordingly, Source Tags & Codes comes with an albatross-like weight of expectation round its skinny neck – yet happily, it’s supported by a band who have grown to match it,” adding, “their smash-and-grab dynamic manages the neat trick of sounding simultaneously untutored and highly focused, following new twisted threads out from the early-90s underground labyrinth.” In its “A” review, The Onion’s AV Club wrote, “When …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead wraps the project with the clanging title track, with its images of ‘the ruined landscapes that I once called home,’ it’s concluded more than just a collection of songs. It’s provided an experience.”

 

The 15th anniversary vinyl edition provides fans an opportunity to hear the album with the addition of 3 tracks previously not included on the US release. The plaintive piano piece “Invocation” gently begins the LP before shifting into the driving “It Was There That I Saw You,” providing a unique alternate beginning. The sparse instrumental “Life Is Elsewhere” serves as an intermission to the first act and evokes feudal Japan with its sound effects and Japanese dialog. The pummeling “Blood Rites” follows the title track and closes things out with orchestral strings that give way to a piercing guitar, Keely’s blood curdling scream and the band’s controlled sonic chaos. 

 

A decade and a half later Source Tags & Codes has stood the test of time and sounds as urgent, challenging, enthralling and explosive as Trail Of Dead’s influential opus did when first released. In recent years, retrospective reviews have continued to heap on the praise with Pitchfork including it in their “Top 200 Albums Of The 2000s,” the BBC calling it “one of the finest rock albums of recent history,” and XPN hailing it as “an unparalleled masterpiece of its time, an unbloated orchestral record during a time when punk bands weren’t supposed to be so worldly or indulgent.”

 

TRACKLISTING

 

LP1

[A]

1. Invocation

2. It Was There That I Saw You

3. Another Morning Stoner

4. Baudelaire

5. Homage

 

[B]

1. How Near, How Far

2. Life Is Elsewhere

3. Heart In The Hand Of The Matter

4. Monsoon

5. Days Of Being Wild

 

LP2

[C]

1. Relative Ways

2. After The Laughter

3. Source Tags & Codes

4. Blood Rites

 

[D]

Etching

UMe TO RELEASE LIMITED EDITION SIX-DOUBLE-LP VINYL BOX SET, THE BLACK EYED PEAS -- THE COMPLETE VINYL COLLECTION, WITH ALL SIX INTERSCOPE TITLES ALSO AVAILABLE AS INDIVIDUAL LPs

Originally formed in Los Angeles in the late ‘80s by rap partners will.i.am and apl.de.ap., The Black Eyed Peas were signed to Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records, then joined Jimmy Iovine’s Interscope in 1998 for their critically acclaimed major label debut album, Behind the Front.  Since then, The Black Eyed Peas have gone on to sell more than 35 million albums around the world, emerging from the West Coast rap underground to become Grammy-winning, multi-platinum superstars who have stormed the pop charts after adding pop diva Fergie to their ranks for 2003’s breakthrough album, Elephunk, which produced their first hit single, “Where Is the Love,” “Shut Up,” “Hey Mama” and “Let’s Get It Started.”  Monkey Business, which followed in 2005, produced the hit singles, “Don’t Phunk with My Heart,” “My Humps” and “Pump It,” going triple-platinum in the U.S. and around the world, establishing the band as global pop icons.  The E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies), released in 2009, was nominated for six Grammy Awards, winning Best Pop Vocal Album, spawning the hit singles, “Boom Boom Pow” and the David Guetta-produced “I Gotta Feeling,” the latter two topping the Billboard Hot 100 back-to-back for a record-breaking 26 consecutive weeks.

UMe will now bring all six Interscope studio albums in The Black Eyed Peas’ hit-packed catalog together for the first time in The Complete Vinyl Collection, a limited edition vinyl box set that includes 180-gram double-LPs of each (for a total of 12 discs) in a black rigid lift top box, with gold foil band logo, to be released September 30. All six individual vinyl LPs will also be released separately in a limited edition run.

The band’s 1998 Interscope bow, Behind the Front, found Black Eyed Peas joined by new member Taboo.  The song, “Joints & Jam,” the album’s first official single, originally appeared on the soundtrack of the Warren Beatty movie, Bulworth, while “Be Free” appeared in the film, She’s All That.  The album’s second single was “Karma,” which was one of five music videos included on the DVD Behind the Bridge to Elephunk. Macy Gray guested on the track, “Love Won’t Wait.”

Bridging The Gap, which came out in 2000, is the last album recorded as Black Eyed Peas before the band added a “The” to their name.  There were three singles released, “BEP Empire/Get Original,” “Weekends” and “Request + Line,” the last once again featuring Macy Gray. Other cameos on the album included Esthero (“Weekends”), Chali2na (“Get Original”), Kim Hill (“Hot”), De La Soul (“Cali to New York”), Les Nubians and Mos Def (“On My Own”) and Wyclef Jean (“Rap Song”). The album peaked at #67 on the Billboard 200, while “Request + Line” climbed to #2 on the Billboard U.S. Rap chart.

Fergie joined The Black-Eyed Peas for their 2003 breakthrough, Elephunk, on will.i.am Music Group/A&M Records, which scored the band’s first crossover hit single “Where Is the Love?” which spent seven weeks at #1 in the U.K.  The album charted at #14 on the Billboard 200, was certified double-platinum by the RIAA and has since sold 3.2 million in the U.S. and 9 million copies worldwide. Allmusic praised Elephunk for “[possessing] some of the most boundary-pushing productions in contemporary (mostly) uncommercial hip-hop.”  The band later changed the lyrics to “Let’s Get Retarded,” to “Let’s Get It Started.”

Monkey Business, the 2005 follow-up, also on will.i.am Music Group/A&M, continued the group’s momentum, earning four Grammy nominations and an award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for “Don’t Punk with My Heart,” which became the group’s first Top 5 single, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.  “My Humps” came out as the album’s third single – after “Don’t Lie,” which peaked at #14 – turning into one of the year’s top-selling songs. The album hit #3 on the Billboard 200, and sold more than 4 million in the U.S. Justin Timberlake and Timbaland guested on “My Style,” while Q-Tip, Talib Kweli, Cee Lo Green and John Legend contributed to “Like That.” Other cameos were made by Jack Johnson (“Gone Going”), James Brown (“They Don’t Want Music”) and Sting (“Union”).

The Black Eyed Peas’ fifth studio album, The E.N.D. (which stands for The Energy Never Dies), came out in June, 2009, with three promotional singles, “Imma Be,” “Alive” and “Meet Me Halfway,” released through the iTunes store in the weeks before the album’s release. The album completed the transition from hip-hop to pop and gave the group its first three chart-topping singles in “Boom Boom Pow,” “I Gotta Feeling” and “Imma Be,” topping the Billboard Hot 100 for 12, 14 and two weeks, respectively. The E.N.D. has sold more than 14.5 million copies worldwide and was nominated for six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year (losing to Taylor Swift’s Fearless) and Record of the Year (“I Gotta Feeling”), winning for Best Pop Vocal Album.  Entertainment Weekly described it as “pure Top 40 nirvana.”

Released in November, 2010, The Beginning is The Black Eyed Peas’ sixth and most recent studio album, described as a “prequel” to The E.N.D. The singles included “The Time (Dirty Bit),” “Just Can’t Get Enough” and “Don’t Stop The Party.” The album debuted on the Billboard 200 at #6. The group followed up the album release with “The Beginning Massive Stadium Tour,” which began in June 2011 in France and ended in November after a total of 20 shows. Entertainment Weekly praised the album’s “heavier electronic beats… Every song is piled high with sticky pop melodies, slick hip-hop rhythms, bright synth parts, and vocals that have been diced and processed to high heaven, all furthering the goal of maximum catchiness.”

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