Blackest Ever Black is releasing the first ever vinyl edition of Gareth Williams and Mary Currie’s Flaming Tunes. This remarkable album was recorded at DDM and Cold Storage in London after Williams had left This Heat and returned from the first of several trips to India. It was officially released on cassette in 1985, before being bootlegged on CD more than a decade later. The bootleg in question, the Japan-issued After The Heat, described the Flaming Tunes pieces as ”This Heat’s final demo recordings”, much to Gareth’s understandable dismay – after all, the album marked a conscious attempt to create a music with a different mood and texture to that of This Heat, one which would allow the full expression of his eclectic and distinctive tastes. In 2009, twenty-four years after the original cassette release and eight after Williams’ death, aged 48, from cancer, Life & Living Records – an independent label operated by his close friends – released the first and definitive CD edition of Flaming Tunes. Where possible, L&L went back to the original master tapes to achieve the best possible sound quality. The album – is one of the most unique, poignant and poetic ever to emerge from the British underground, its visionary power matched only by its playfulness and intimacy – has never had a life on vinyl.

vinyl / CD