Sound System, the epic 12 cd retrospective, includes the band's five studio albums in their original eight disc format; three bonus discs containing rarities, demos, and b-sides; and a DVD with promo videos, live footage, and previously unseen footage by both Don Letts and Julien Temple. A collection of other items such as reprints of Clash fanzines, posters, stickers, and pins are also included, plus the release comes with an owner's manual, aka a 24 page case-bound book. The tracklisting for the release is available to view on iTunes (takes a few moments to load).
Mick Jones was recently interviewed by Rolling Stone and revealed that fans already familiar with the previous remasters might hear some new things this time around. Jones explained that the band actually baked the original tapes as part of the remastering process which helped restore the material:
"We did it all from the original tapes. It's really close to when it first came out of the recording studio. It's the closest we got to that...
But you have to bake the tapes before you play them. You can only play them once, because the oxide on the tapes will fall off if you don't do that.
Also, they found that since the last time they were remastered, there's actually a bigger playback head now. So we might have missed music on the edges of the tape. Now we're getting all of it. If you're familiar with the music, you're getting stuff you didn't get before."
Read the full interview over at Rolling Stone. Check out the contents of Sound System below and pre-order the release through Amazon.
Published on September 4th, 2013 @ 2:26 PM