Rema Rema - Fond Reflections

Rema-Rema featured former members of The Models and Siouxsie and The Banshees, and their much-loved Wheel in the Roses EP (1980) was among the first records to be released on 4AD.  Their only contribution to the label, they split-up just before its release, going on to form or join bands as diverse as Renegade Soundwave, The Wolfgang Press, Mass, and Adam and the Ants.

The debut album that never was, Fond Reflections, comes almost forty years after their debut EP and has been culled from the band’s rich archive of reel-to-reel and cassette recordings, with member Gary Asquith and mixing engineer Takatsuna Mukai painstakingly working on them to make this collection as cohesive as possible. 

The resultant ten tracks that make up Fond Reflections pretty much reflect the band’s live set and is the closest to what their debut album could have sounded like. Worth noting too that although all their 1980 EP tracks are present on the album, they all come from different recordings.

The album will be available from the 1st of March on both Double CD and LP, as well as most digital platforms.  In addition to the new album, the CD edition also comes with a second disc entitled Extended Wheel in the Roses.  As its title suggests, it’s the four EP tracks as they were plus ‘Entry’ (taken from the same studio session as the EP’s A-side of ‘Feedback Song’ and ‘Rema- Rema’) and ‘No Applause’ and ‘Murdermuzic’, two more tracks recorded at the same Albany Empire, London show in 1979 as the EP’s B-side, ‘Instrumental’ and ‘Fond Affections’.