Colin Newman – Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish (2CD)
Colin Newman’s 3 classic early 80’s solo albums A-Z, provisionally entitled the singing fish & Not To originally released on Beggars Banquet / 4AD re-released on his own new imprint Sentient Sonics.
CD – the 3 remastered original albums each accompanied by a companion CD of extra tracks, b-sides & demos – quite a lot of which have never been released – released as 3 double digipacks.
The Original 3 albums
These albums were recorded and released between 1980 & 1982 in a “post 154” rush of activity. While all the albums bear the name Colin Newman they differ in that A-Z & Not To were recorded as “band” albums with Colin being joined by Wire’s Robert Grey, Mike Thorne (who also produced, as he had the first 3 Wire albums) & Desmond Simmons on A-Z and Robert, Desmond & Simon Gillham on Not To. provisionally entitled the singing fish was more an “actual” solo album in that everything was played by himself. Colin produced the latter 2 albums with Steve Parker engineering.
provisionally entitled the singing fish (disc 2), tracks 1–4 were ‘fish with vocals,’ originally included on a free disc called CN1 that came with the CD re-release of provisionally entitled the singing fish / Not To. The vocals were added retrospectively (in 1984) and recorded by John Fryer in Blackwing. Track 5 prefaced the recording of provisionally entitled the singing fish and was recorded ‘solo’ in the same way as the album; it was the B-side to the single “Inventory”. The remaining tracks, with the exception of track 10, were recorded solo in Colin’s flat in West Norwood. Track 11 features a drum loop of Robert. We have no idea what the circumstance was for the recording of track 10, but it has been titled for what it is: a rare example of Soft Option (the band that played on Not To) just playing.