Rose McDowall - Dont Fear The Reaper LP

Rose McDowall’s trajectory from punk provocateur to chart-subverting pop star to underground neo-folk legend has been one fraught with strain and adventure. In 2015, Night School Records is attempting to tell the story of this wayward daughter of Glasgow through a schedule of reissues and unreleased material. Record Store Day 2015 sees the first fruit of this collaboration, an official release of the unapproved 12” single of Don’t Fear The Reaper, originally waxed by McDowall in

Don’t Fear The Reaper has been remastered and re-edited by legendary engineer and selector Sean Pennycook for 2015. McDowall’s clear-as-crystal vocal performance sails above a latin-flavoured disco beat with the original’s doomy chord changes revitalized into a shiny, gloriously hedonistic brew. Accompanying is the original “Crystal Days,” a track that featured on McDowall’s self-released “Cut With The Cake Knife” demos, a set lost, until now, to history. On the flip Sean P cuts up the original Reaper into an Italo-ized disco re-edit before the instrumental plays out.

McDowall’s treatment of Don’t Fear The Reaper speaks volumes of where her head was at in 1988. It was the singer’s first solo release after the break up of Strawberry Switchblade and even then it was unapproved. Rush-released by a collaborator and without her consent, “Reaper” quickly vanished and has become the stuff of legend for pop, disco and Strawberry Switchblade fanatics alike. Now fully approved and with new, minimal artwork by Russell Elder, Rose invites us to take her hand.
600 copies only world wide.

Tracks:

1. Don?t Fear The Reaper
2. Crystal Days
3. Don?t Fear The Reaper (Sean P Re-Edit)
4. Don?t Fear The Reaper (Instrumental)