MANSUN to reissue ‘Six’ on 22nd March

MANSUN to reissue 'Six' on 22nd March

Mansun has announced details of a super-deluxe reissue of their hugely ambitious second album, SIXReleased little over a year after their No. 1 debut album, Mansun’s SIX was nothing less than a revelation. Arriving at the tail end of the Britpop era, SIX was a hugely ambitious spiralling, sprawling record that charted in the Top 10 on release and spawned four Top 40 singles. 

Concept driven and spanning myriad genres, SIX was a record out of time made by a band at the peak of their creative powers – a collection of songs that fizzed with ideas and inspirations and fused elements of pop, electronica and progressive rock to Tchaikovsky sample, electronic drums and spooky synth lines. Lyrically, the songs referenced religious scepticism, gender dysphoria, Winnie the Pooh, L. Ron Hubbard, Stanley Kubrick, Orwell, Marxism and that most iconic TV show, the Prisoner. On top of all of that, the record featured a spoken word section from the legendary fourth Doctor Who – Tom Baker. The end result is a 70 minute, twelve-track brain warp, a record that would set Mansun apart from their peers forever. 

SIX has been fully remastered from the original master tapes by Jon Astley (Van Morrison, The Who, George Harrison, Norah Jones, Rolling Stones). The standard CD comes with a bonus track of outtakes from the Tom Baker recording sessions. The deluxe version of SIX comes with a treasure trove of bonus material including one disc of outtakes, demos and rarities and a disc featuring The Dead Flowers Reject – a fan-generated bootleg album featuring favourite B sides from the SIX era.

Mansun were Paul Draper (vocals, guitars, studio), Dominic Chad (guitars, piano, harpsichord), Stove King (bass) and Andie Rathbone (drums). One of the most iconic and innovative British bands of the late 90s, they signed to the legendary record label Parlophone (home to The Beatles, Radiohead and Sigur Ros) in 1996. They released three albums – Attack of the Grey Lantern (1997), SIX (1998) and Little Kix (2000) and one posthumous compilation, Kleptomania. Kscope acquired the band’s catalogue in 2017 and are running a thorough reissue series that delves into a treasure trove of previously unreleased audio and visual material. Kscope released Mansun frontman Paul Draper’s acclaimed solo debut Spooky Action in 2017; Draper is currently working on the follow-up, due for release later this year. 

SIX formats and tracklisting:

CD – 21st-anniversary CD edition with a 12-page booklet with extra track: Tom Baker isolated vocal session

Vinyl – limited 2×12” 180g heavyweight coloured vinyl edition in a gatefold sleeve.

Deluxe 4-Disc book – three CDs featuring the remastered album in full, a disc of demos, rarities & outtakes, and the b-side album The Dead Flowers Reject. Also contains a DVD featuring SIX mixed in 5.1 surround sound mix (DTS 96/24 5.1 and Dolby Digital AC3 5.1) by long-time collaborator P-Dub; a hi-resolution stereo audio (24bit/48kHz Linear PCM) and all of the album’s original promotional videos. It also comes with a 48-page hardback book featuring  sleeve notes by journalist and long-time fan Paul Lester alongside notes on the album from the band’s Paul Draper (including foreword, analysis of the cover art, track-by-track descriptions for the CD extras and an album overview of The Dead Flowers Reject).  

Disc 1 – SIX (remastered album) 

SIX

Negative

Shotgun

Inverse Midas

Anti Everything

Fall Out

Serotonin

Cancer

Witness to a Murder Part 2

Television

Special/Blown It

Legacy

Being A Girl

Disc 2 – Outtakes, rarities and demos

Disc 3 – The Dead Flowers Reject

What It’s Like To Be Hated 

GSOH

Been Here Before 

When The Wind Blows 

Can’t Afford To Die 

Church Of The Drive Thru Elvis 

I Care 

King Of Beauty 

But The Trains Run On Time 

Check Under The Bed 

I Deserve What I Get 

Railings

Disc 4 – 5.1 surround sound; a hi-resolution stereo audio and all of the album’s original promotional videos

 
 

Xsnoize Author
Mark Millar is the founder of XS Noize and looks after the daily running of the website as well as hosting interviews for the weekly XS Noize Podcast. Mark's favourite album is Achtung Baby by U2.

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