Flashback! With Teardrop Explodes box Culture Bunker.
2023 THE ESSENTIAL PREVIEW REISSUES
Explosive material: The Teardrop Explodes (Julian Cope, front), pictured here in 1980, get the deluxe box treatment.
AS WELL AS self-releasing new music – most recently, England Expectorates – Julian Cope is keen to curate his legacy via such output as his Cope’s Notes CD/book hybrids and Cold War Psychedelia, an archive trawl of his post-punk vehicle The Teardrop Explodes. With his cooperation, the band get the box set treatment next spring with seven-album set Culture Bunker 1978-82. Released on Universal, it sees two discs of singles A- and B-sides joined by no less than five albums of unreleased material.
Original Teardrops PR Mick Houghton has spent years distilling the idea. His and Cope’s pooled cassette archives yielded early and late live recordings, believed-lost studio sessions and other fascinating shards of revelatory, acid-marinated inspiration. Part of the plan, says Houghton, is to illuminate just how dynamic the band were outside their regular recorded form. “The Teardrops would never allow themselves to be tied down,” he says. “If you go that far out on a limb you’re bound to fall sometimes, but when they did, it was always with as much gusto as when they were triumphant. You get the best of both those worlds on Culture Bunker.”