CD: 429402
RELEASED: 2006
LABEL: London

01. Love In A Void
02. Mirage
03. Metal Postcard
04. Suburban Relapse
05. Hong Kong Garden
06. Overground
07. Cracass
08. Helter Skelter
09. Placebo Effect
10. Playground Twist
11. Regal Zone
12. Poppy Day
13. Halloween
14. Voodoo Dolly
15. But Not Them
16. Into The Light
17. Candyman
18. Cannons
19. Lands End

This disc collects together all the sessions the Siouxsie and the Banshees recorded for John Peel's radioprogram, spanning nine years ( late 1977 to early 1986), and begins with eight gloriously strident tracks recorded in 1977 and 1978 which predate the band's record deal with Polydor - again Peely was way ahead of the pack! These include an archetypal Sioux jackboot-pogo through Love In A Void, and spitting nascent versions of Metal Postcard, Mirage and Carcass, not to mention a gutsy take on that first 45, Hong Kong Garden. While the Banshees' cover of Helter Skelter sounded welcomingly iconoclastic, even a tad irreverent. Just over a year later, the Peel show premi?red Playground Twist, and showed just how far the definitive swirling new-psychedelic Banshees sound had matured beyond the punkoid thrash-metal of their contemporaries and mutated into something wondrous, chic and satisfyingly doomy. Moving on into 1981, Halloween and Voodoo Dolly provided glimpses of goth greatness while But Not Them kickstarted the experimental Creatures' vox-and-heavy-percussion sound-world and the beginning of the end for the band's creativity. The CD's final three tracks, from five years later almost to the week, show the band in Tinderbox mode on what many fans viewed as a state of almost caricature of their former glories on Candyman and weaker, altogether more derivative material which however had its own charms and was nevertheless markedly superior to much of the music emanating from that era.

Influences / Similar Artists:
Joy Division, The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Lowlife