Altered Images – Happy Birthday

Is tere a way to be sure these images weren't altered?

Think A.Images were listening to U2 LP Boy which was out a year earlier. Guitar, drums, bass together in places similar.

What a real classic album from the 1981 . I'm pretty sure some New Orders influence is from this band . As in listen to the gurtering. From this total Scottish female vocallest and singer. I have wanted to have this in my collection for years now I have finally have and blessed to have it. Bless Brother G Beats England's and Bristol's finest and very own.

A nice debut album with The Banshees bass player Steven Severin producing the album.

As the first of three 2LP reissues for the band's output this starts a trend that continues throughout the series which is a mixture of pros and cons. On the plus side, it sounds good (although I don't have an original of the album to compare with) and includes a good selection of bonus tracks. On the negative side the label decided to omit tracks that would have fit on the bonus disc as part of a double dipping strategy. In this case, both sides of the band's first single were released as a bonus 7" in the previous issue.

The physical production of the album is not ideal: the sleeve almost appears to be printed inside out in that the sleeve image is on the rough side of the card and gives a home printed look, whereas the inside of the sleeve is very smooth. Also, the inner sleeves cling with static to the records on first removal and there was lots of paper debris in with the record. Mine was damaged and clicky on one of the tracks, but it wasn't worth a replacement as all three albums in this series have this problem and I didn't want to end up with one that was worse! Due to the album being reissued on a different label the original Epic labels could not be reproduced and have been replaced with some really nice custom designs. My copy did not have the printing error shown in the current gallery and shows the full title for the first track. There's a custom inner sleeve for the bonus album as well which is also a nice touch.

In short:
+ve: sounds nice, attractive label designs, lots of bonus tracks
-ve: outer sleeve image quality, debris on vinyl and danger of damage, overtight shrink leading to possible sleeve damage, willfully incomplete.

Strange how at the bottom of the inner sleeve, there are songwriting credits to Stephen Lironi. Given that he ed the band two years later!