New releases round-up - 13th June 2011

Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns +

An exciting re-release of the band's stellar A Thousand Suns album. This multi-disc version features a live CD recorded at the band's Madrid tour date where tracks from the current album are mixed in with old favourites. Classics like Numb and In The End make an appearance, ensuring you can rock to your heart's content.

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Nerina Pallot - Year of the Wolf

Classy, immensely soulful retro-pop from this lovely lady - you may remember her from 2006 single Everybody's Gone To War, but this new record sees her striking out in new, bold directions. Lead single Put Your Hands Up is one of the best pop records of the year, without a doubt, and makes for a punchy intro to the album.

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Take That - Progressed

In another 2 CD re-release this week, Take That pump their multi-million selling Progress album with eight new tracks and change the cover from Yellow to Red. Includes the magnificent electro-stomp of Love Love, taken from the soundtrack of the new X Men movie. Oh, and all nicely timed to tie in with the TT boys' massive stadium tour currently zipping up and down the UK.

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Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Make A Scene

Like Nerina, Sophie is an incredibly experienced hand in the pop game now, and the shiny, glistening hooks of Make A Scene make for a welcome return. It's been four years since her last album and in that time we've seen her collaborate with the Freemasons on the fantastic Heartbreak (Make Me A Dancer), a track sure to have you partying long into the night. New single Starlight is a real treat too.

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Hunting for the edit...

In these days of party playlists and iPod mix-tapes, sometimes all we want is a radio edit. As artists seem to every-frequently pack their albums with four-minute-plus long tracks and lengthy instrumental segways between songs, we're often left with little bits and pieces that while perfectly fine in the context of the album, just don't fit when we're listening to the track individually.

Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem, but in an age of declining 'proper' single releases - where there will be no official CD release, or in some cases no digital release either. Instead an album campaign will just see a stream of 'promo singles' and the artist will just leave the public to download the lengthy album versions, forcing fans who want the edited versions to track down expensive radio promo's on Ebay or wait til the edit surfaces on some random compilation CD months later.

When we hear a song on the radio, that is the version of the song we want; yet still these versions never seem to surface with anything approaching regularity on the regular download services.

Maybe it's just the completist in me but sometimes all I want is a nice three-and-a-half minute long version of a song, all the awesomeness packed into a bite-size chunk I can comfortably fit into my daily commute.