Ari Up & Adrian Sherwood’s New Age Steppers catalog reissued on vinyl
New Age Steppers were a dub collective formed by producer Adrian Sherwood and The Slits' singer Ari Up that also included, over the years, contributions from members of The Pop Group, The Raincoats, Flying Lizards, Roots Radics, Aswad, Creation Rebel and more. The group, who existed from 1980 through 2012 (Ari Up died in 2010), are getting their back catalog reissued this year via Sherwood's On-U Sound on March 19.
The three '80s New Age Steppers studio albums — 1980's New Age Steppers, 1981's Action Battlefield and 1983's Foundation Steppers — are getting new vinyl pressings and 2012's Love Forever (which features sleeve design by Chris Bigg of v23) will get its first-ever vinyl pressing. The reissues all include new liner notes by Oli Warwick, featuring interviews with Adrian Sherwood and other key players.
Additionally, there's a new album of outtakes and rarities, Avant Gardening, featuring "version excursions and unreleased tracks from the vault 1980 – 1983," including tracks from a thought-lost 1983 John Peel session (a cover of Atlantic Starr’s “Send For Me”), tracks that have only appeared on Japanese imports, and two versions of Chaka Khan’s “Some Love." You can listen to a previously unreleased dub version of "Some Love" below.
There's also CD box set, Stepping Into A New Age 1980 – 2012, that collects all of the above with a 32-page book. (You can get bundles of the five vinyl albums as well.) Pre-orders are available for all of it, and you can listen to the four original albums below.