The 2016 Steven Wilson mix of XTC's 1986 masterpiece Skylarking released on (200g) vinyl for the first time.

 

Presented in a gatefold sleeve, with lyrics appearing in the inner gatefold. 

 

Cut by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering.

 

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An album unlike anything else in the band's back catalogue, dense orchestrations and a more organic soundscape were deployed in servicing some of the band's most melodically rich and sophisticated songs.

 

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Skylarking: XTC’s most commercially successful album was, for many years, also its most mythical with tales of “lost” multi-track tapes (sadly true of other XTC albums but not this one), a song originally dropped from the album only to be replaced when it inadvertently became a hit single in the USA, a perfect match, on paper, between the ideal Britpop band a decade before the term was invented and an Anglophile super-producer that turned rather imperfect in personality terms but still resulted in a classic album.