You can never win them all!

One of the joys of running a printed magazine - okay, perhaps 'joy' is the wrong word - is that there will inevitably be an extra bit of news that appears just after you go to press, even after sneaking in a few very last minute extra items before hitting the deadline to go to print. Such was the case, in as many issues, with the latest edition of re:VOX. Only two days after the first issues were printed came additional details about the vinyl release of Ultravox's new Brilliant album, which is to be released in clear vinyl and with early copies also including an exclusive poster.

Clear vinyl releases were first adopted by Ultravox in 1980, after being signed to Chrysalis, when they realised that clear vinyl was always pure vinyl, and so the highest quality, whereas the tradition black vinyl would inevitably contain recycled elements. For Ultravox using clear vinyl for the first pressings of a single was another way of maintaining the high quality threshold that they set themselves, but strangely although their twelve inch releases were also later pressed up on clear vinyl too, this practice was never extended to their albums.

Their Lament picture disc was the exception, though. This, very unusually, used two seperate clear vinyl sides with a double-sided picture sandwiched between them. At the time picture discs were generally created using a much harder vinyl, with a markedly inferior playing quality, and so they were only ever really suitable for display rather than play. This made the picture disc for Lament an unusually high quality item.

This makes the vinyl edition of Brilliant a doubly special one, and its a really nice touch from the band, and one that will be cherished for years to come. It's only going to be available from Townsend Records, so do check out their website when you get a moment.

I'm very pleased with the latest issue of re:VOX. I was worried that it was going to seem a little disjointed, but Issue 17 has come together far better than I hoped, not least because of some excellent photos from a wide variety of contributors - some regulars and some new to our pages - but also thanks to Chris Cross for taking the time to talk to us about the new album, and Vladimar Kruglov for allowing us to run a compilation of the reams of chart data he spent several years collecting and posting up on the forum over at the official Ultravox website at: ultravox.org.uk

Look out for more Brilliant-themed content in re:VOX over the next few issues, alongside various other items being hatched up. It almost doesn't seem possible, but we've been going for almost twelve years now and yet there's still more to cover in the future. I can't wait.

And if you've booked tickets for the tour, which started in Bristol tonight, I hope you have a great time - the two-gig-in-one format should be a phenomenal spectacle in terms of the material they can play, both old and new.