A number of people have asked why the Wild Swans album, The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years, wasn't available on vinyl. The answer is that it was delivered to us when we were least expecting it. We couldn't wait to get it out, but it was as much as we could do to find the cash for a small first pressing of CDs plus the limited edition Tracks In Snow EP.
Things've changed at Occultation since then with a series of successful releases and the forging of new partnerships - to cut a long story short, we're now planning an expanded Coldest Winter reissue. It'll be a while yet: we've obviously got other releases to focus on, there are a couple of issues to be resolved and these things need planning properly, but we'd like to know what fans think. We can't promise we'll be able to take all ideas on board but we will listen.
Current thinking is a 2x180g LP+expanded CD. The first LP would be the original album, the second would feature all the non-album WS tracks released on Occultation to date. Ideally we'd like to remaster the tracks that've not previously been on vinyl (i.e. most of them) for that format but this'll add to the cost. Then there are sleeve options: would you rather we kept the price down or are you happy for us to go for broke and pay a bit more? We'd like a heavy-duty sleeve, as with previous Occultation LPs (e.g. Enter Castle Perilous and The End Of The Pier)
It'd be really helpful if we knew how many of you would be interested in buying this deluxe reissue so we can cost the whole thing out. We've not yet decided whether it'd be a limited edition offered only on our website (and our partners' sites) or a full retail release - again, this'd depend largely on demand.
Anyway, for now we just want to announce that this will be happening. We'll be setting up a page allowing you to register your interest fairly soon. We must stress that although this reissue is being planned, we're in the early stages and no release date has been set. We just thought that as so many of you have already bought the album on CD it'd only be fair to consult you on the idea of a reissue. There'll be more on this soon and we will take your ideas into consideration, we promise.
