NEW RELEASE: World Of Twist

“World Of Twist were the Roxy Music of their time. I can’t think, or give a better compliment than that” Jeremy Deller

3 Loop Music hare proud to announce the re-release of World Of Twist’s sole album, Quality Street.

The 2-CD package includes the original album, an extra CD of B-sides and radio sessions for John Peel and Mark Goodier and a 24-page booklet featuring extensive sleeve notes by band member Gordon King and rare photos and memorabilia from the World of Twist archive.
The limited edition LP is on heavyweight vinyl and includes an MP3 download of the album.

Originally released in October 1991 on Circa, it included the singles The Storm, Sons Of The Stage and a cover of The Rolling Stones’ She’s A Rainbow.

The band was formed in Sheffield in 1983 by Gordon King and Jamie Fry (who would later make up the core of Earl Brutus with fellow ex-World of Twist-er Nick Sanderson) where their frivolous brand of post modernism, an amalgam of Barry Gray, Roxy Music and Wigan’s Chosen Few, felt woefully out of place next to the likes of ABC and The Human League.

Following a third place behind a Madness tribute act and an early incarnation of Mumford & Sons at a battle-of-the-bands contest at the Sheffield Top Rank, Jamie Fry called it a day and the band returned to their native Manchester where band members Gordon, Tony and Andy decided to continue.

Soon joined by drummer Nick Sanderson, World Of Twist soon became something of a ‘live sensation’ in Manchester, in part a consequence of their Heath Robinson stage sets which involved a lot of things which went round and round, including a hypnotists wheel, revolving mirrored barbers poles and spinning cut-out heads of band members.

Selling out the 1500 capacity Manchester Ritz on December 23rd 1990 (a gig fondly remembered by the Gallagher brothers of Oasis) they would begin recording their debut album in the summer of 1991. Having mixed the record at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Wiltshire, where Nick would ask a bemused Gabriel to borrow his old Genesis masks for a photo shoot, the band would later spend a day in Tunbridge Wells trying to recreate the illustration on the front of the Quality Street tin for the album sleeve.

Their time following the album release was short lived and it wasn’t long before the band drifted apart, as Tony Ogden remarked; “We spent £250,000 making an album with the smallest bollocks in pop history. The band just fell apart. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast and that led to communication problems. I didn’t want to sing, the guitarist didn’t want to play. When the company didn’t get a hit they threw us in the bin. I was devastated – I spent four years on smack watching Third Reich movies because the good guys always win. I’m really sorry for letting our fans down. But I’d ask anyone to play that World of Twist album 20 times with every dial full on. If it doesn’t rock, come and smash it over my head.”

Praise for the Quality Street re-issue
“World Of Twist’s timeless music is ripe for rediscovery… this remastered album at last gives Quality Street the cojones Ogden wanted” The Guardian
“Quality Street quickens the pulse with agitating songs” Q
“Madchester’s answer to Roxy Music” The Telegraph
“In Quality Street’s junkshop glamour and playful retro-futurism you can hear a blueprint for Britpop and beyond” Uncut
“an essential artefact of when big ideas and vision collided beyond the remit of its day. We’ve yet to see, and sadly are very unlikely to now, witness anything as wonderful as them again” The Quietus

Order your copy of Quality Street on 2CD Expanded Edition and LP at our shop

EXPLORE THE WORLD OF TWIST!

Watch World Of Twist on The New Sessions

Read an in-detph interview with Gordon and Jim

QUALITY STREET – THE RE-ISSUE

Order Quality Street Expanded Edition

QUALITY STREET EXPANDED EDITION CD1

ORIGINAL ALBUM
1. Lose My Way
2. Sons Of The Stage
3. This Too Shall Pass Away
4. Jelly Baby
5. Speed Wine
6. The Lights
7. On The Scene
8. Sweets
9. The Spring
10. The Storm
11. She’s A Rainbow
12. Life And Death (extended mix)

QUALITY STREET EXPANDED EDITION CD2

1. Blackpool Tower Suite
2. This Too Shall Pass (chat)
3. She’s A Rainbow (12” version)
4. Sons Of The Stage (12” version)
5. Sweets (Barrett 200 mix)
6. Lose My Way (John Peel Session 25/6/91) *
7. St Bruno (John Peel Session 25/6/91) *
8. Kick Out The Jams (John Peel Session 25/6/91) *
9. Blackpool Tower (John Peel Session 25/6/91) *
10. I’m A Teardrop (Mark Goodier Session 22/9/90)*
11. Fire (Mark Goodier Session 22/9/90)*
12. Jelly Baby (Mark Goodier Session 22/9/90)*
13. Sons Of the Stage (Mark Goodier Session 22/9/90)*
14. She’s A Rainbow (Live at St Andrew’s University 21/10/91) *
15. Kick Out The Jams (Live at St Andrew’s University 21/10/91) *

* previously unreleased