Belle & Sebastian BBC Radio Sessions Album Available Now
Added on 17th November 2008

Available now on CD, Ltd Double CD (featuring live bonus disc), 2LP and to download
• Tracks from five sessions recorded for Mark Radcliffe, Steve Lamacq and John Peel covering 1996 – 2001
• Alternative versions of ‘The Wrong Girl’ and ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’
• Four unreleased songs
• Initial copies with bonus live disc of Christmas show in Belfast 2001

Belle and Sebastian release a compilation of BBC recordings spanning the years 1996 – 2001 on Jeepster Recordings on 17th November 2008.

The album tracks the group’s development from their first live radio recordings for Mark Radcliffe’s show in July 1996, shortly after the release of their ‘Tigermilk’ album, through to a batch of four, much bootlegged songs recorded for John Peel in 2001, none of which have previously appeared on CD or vinyl.

After the initial support on Radcliffe’s ‘Graveyard Shift’ show – when the band twice travelled to Manchester in 1996 and played live into the show at Manchester’s Oxford Road studios – Belle and Sebastian moved to the earlier evening schedules in 1998, playing new songs, including an alternative version of the single, ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’ and a definitive version of ‘Slow Graffiti’ for Steve Lamacq’s Evening Session. A subsequent Lamacq appearance was recorded in the less austere surrounding of a Radio 1 tour bus outside Barrowlands in Glasgow.

Despite featuring in John Peel’s Festive Fifty every year during the period and being played regularly on his show, the band’s first Maida Vale Peel session did not take place until 2001 – the first of four subsequent Peel appearances which included a visit to Peel Acres and a legendary, sixteen song Christmas gig at Maida Vale, both in 2002.

The four songs from 2001 – ‘The Magic of a Kind Word,’ ‘Nothing In The Silence,’ ‘Shoot The Sexual Athlete’ and ‘(My Girl’s Got) Miraculous Technique’ – never made it on to subsequent albums, and are the last studio recordings to feature Isobel Campbell. They capture the band on the precipice – at the end of one part of their history and at the start of another.

By the time of the recording of the Christmas show some six months later on 21st December 2001 in Belfast (which accompanies initial copies of the sessions album as a bonus disc), things had changed. Bob Kildea had joined on bass and guitar, and playing live had moved much further up the group’s agenda.

The Belfast show is full of relaxed seasonal cheer, with requests, guest vocalists from the audience with three cover versions – The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes The Sun,’ Thin Lizzy’s ‘Boys Are Back In Town’ and the Velvets’ ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ – sitting alongside perennial live favourites like ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap,’ ‘The Wrong Girl’ and ‘The Model.’

It’s twenty-five years since The Boy With The Arab Strap was released on 7th September 1998, and to celebrate this musical milestone Jeepster and B&S have worked together to produce a one-off limited version of the album. It will be … [cont…]

We are excited to announce that Belle and Sebastian’s album ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ has been included in the 2020 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time. Check it out here The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time – … [cont…]

Originally released on 18th November 1996, and considered by critics to be Belle and Sebastian’s seminal album, ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ is now celebrating its 25th Anniversary. Recorded in Glasgow at CaVa Studios in August 1996 over just 10 days, … [cont…]

Twenty-one years after the original release of ‘It’s A Cool Cool Christmas’ in November 2000 which was only available to buy on CD for a limited 3 month period at the time, the album is finally available to stream, download … [cont…]

‘What to Look For in Summer’ arrives on December the 11th. [cont…]

Confirmed details of our special Love Record Stores Day limited edition. [cont…]

Belle and Sebastian’s ‘Tigermilk’ is one of the ‘Sounds of Scotland’ that feature in the National Album Day exhibition. [cont…]

Belle and Sebastian’s soundtrack album for Simon Bird’s film ‘Days Of The Bagnold Summer‘ is now available. [cont…]