The Wedding Present will be releasing their much-anticipated eighth studio album, ‘Valentina’, in March. It was recorded in France, California and England during 2011 and mixed by Andrew Scheps [whose past credits include Metallica, Iggy Pop and Johnny Cash].

Valentina comes four years after 2008’s ‘El Rey’ and is performed by David Gedge [singing, guitars & percussion], Graeme Ramsay [guitars, piano, harmonium & co-writer with Gedge of all but one of the songs], Pepe le Moko [bass & backing vocals] and Charles Layton [drums & percussion].

Following an album launch event at the ‘South By Southwest’ music festival in Austin, Texas, the band will be embarking on a tour of North America. This tour will be extra special because, as well as celebrating the release of Valentina, the band will be playing their classic album ‘Seamonsters’ live, in its entirety. Following the North American dates the band will be moving on to Australia, Japan and Continental Europe before bringing the whole event home with an extensive tour of The United Kingdom and Ireland in the autumn.

The Valentina track listing is: You’re Dead / You Jane / Meet Cute / Back A Bit… Stop / Stop Thief! / The Girl From The DDR / Deer Caught In The Headlights / 524 Fidelio / End Credits / Mystery Date

Valentina will be released on CD by:
Stickman Records in Germany, Benelux, Scandinavia, Austria, Switzerland & Italy
‘&’ Records in Japan
Lost And Lonesome Records in Oceania
and Scopitones [the band's own label] throughout the rest of the world.

A 12″ vinyl LP version of the album will also be released by Stickman for Europe and This Will Be Our Summer Records of Athens, Georgia for North America.

Valentina will also be available for download from all the usual digital outlets. If you don’t find us on your preferred site, please let us know by emailing Jessica at : info@scopitones.co.uk

Confirmed Valentina release dates:

UK : 19.03.12
North America : 20.03.12
Japan : 21.03.12
Oceania : 23.03.12

For up to date information about the band’s 2012 touring schedule please click here.

Scopitones, in association with Raw Shark Comics, has just published a fascinating graphic novel compiling stories inspired by David Gedge song titles.

The NME called Gedge ‘one of the most consistently brilliant songwriters in Britain’, his songs slicing through the messy business of love, loss, and longing like a cut throat blade. ‘Snapshots’ shows what happened when various writers teamed up with renowned illustrator, Lee Thacker ['One for Sorrow', 'The Festive Fifty Illustrated'] to produce a comic-book collection of vignettes, tales and short stories inspired by twenty five years of his evocative song titles.

This 108-page paperback [which is in black & white with a full colour sleeve] can be purchased here [the Raw Shark Comics page at Lulu.com] for £7 plus postage and packaging. It will not be available for sale by mail order from this web site, though we may bring some along to sell at concerts.

Scopitones will release a double album of live Wedding Present recordings from 1990 on 09 January 2012 [in the UK] and on 17 January 2012 [in North America]. This release will be available on CD and by download. ‘LIVE 1990′ collects the seventh and eighth of The Wedding Present’s infamous ‘live tapes’; cassettes that the band sold at shows and through their fanzine in the late 1980s. The recordings were unavailable anywhere else. Fans eagerly collected them and they became very rare.

This is the fourth in the series of these much-demanded, re-mastered recordings. ‘Live 1990′ is especially interesting because it includes a recording of The Wedding Present’s first ever concert in North America. The live set at this time drew heavily from the band’s recently released major label debut album, ‘Bizarro’ but there are also early versions of tracks that were to end up on Bizarro’s critically acclaimed successor, ‘Seamonsters.’

The CD will be available for purchase from this web site shortly.

‘Live 1990′ – Track-listing :

Disc 1 ‘Live at Hoboken, New Jersey, Maxwell’s’ : Don’t Talk, Just Kiss / Make Me Smile [Come Up And See Me] / Corduroy / Kennedy / I’m Not Always So Stupid / Heather / Brassneck / Bewitched / Take Me! / Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft / Crawl / What Have I Said Now?

Disc 2 : ‘Live at London Kilburn National Ballroom’ : Dalliance / Don’t Talk, Just Kiss / Kennedy / Crawl / Heather / Brassneck / Corduroy / Take Me! / Bewitched / Dare / What Have I Said Now? / I’m Not Always So Stupid / Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft / Niagara

Scopitones audio releases are theoretically available for download from : iTunes, Amazon, Bell Mobility, eMusic, Gracenote, Hot Topic / Shockhound, Lala, Limewire, Groove Mobile, MediaNet Digital, Mondomix, MySpace Music, Napster, Neurotic Media, Rhapsody, Rogers Wireless, SecuryCast and Spotify. If you don’t find us on your preferred site, please let us know by emailing Jessica at : info@scopitones.co.uk

The very best of wishes to all of our readers from everyone here at Scopitones, the home of Cinerama and The Wedding Present.

To read Scopitones news stories from 2011 [or, indeed, any other year since 2002] just visit our ‘archived news’ section. Simply click on the appropriate year in the ‘Previous Years’ column at the top and right hand side of this page.

In his ‘New Year Address’ [ha, ha...] David Gedge said: “2012 is going to be a very exciting year for us. As well as releasing our new LP in March we will be celebrating the 21st anniversary of our Seamonsters album by playing it live all year long, including in North America and Japan and at my own mini-festivals which are returning to England this August. And… if that wasn’t enough… it also looks like we’ll be playing in Australia for the first time ever.’

For further details of all The Wedding Present’s forthcoming live appearances please visit the concerts page of our web site by clicking here.