New Model Army – one of the most influential bands in late 20th Century British rock music – have never been bound by musical genres. Formed in 1980, the band from Bradford were initially influenced by punk rock and northern soul, but over time drew from folk, metal, R&B, hip-hop and classical music to make something totally unique and unclassifiable. Carnival was originally released in September 2005, 25 years into New Model Army’s career, and it had been their first studio album in more than five years.

“We always felt that this was the one album where the recording, mixing and mastering didn’t bring the end result close to what we had originally intended,” says Justin Sullivan. “So, when earMUSIC declared their interest in licensing and reissuing the album, we discovered four associated tracks (B-sides and unreleased songs) to add to it we saw an opportunity to ‘reimagine’ the album as a whole.” The band found all the original recordings and gave them to Lee Smith, co-producer and mixer of their recent albums, including last year’s From Here (their highest charting album ever, in both Germany and the UK) and Carnival has been reborn with a sound that is far sharper and more powerful and cohesive than the original.

“We are aware that it is very dangerous for a band to ‘go back'”, adds Sullivan, “so we made one absolute rule, that we wouldn’t re-record anything and we’d ask Lee to remix it using only the original multi-tracks, without too much involvement from us. Some songs have changed very little, others quite a lot. And to our minds, this has worked well and has enhanced the album’s principle qualities, particularly the wealth of original musical ideas, at last arranged in a sonically satisfying way. We hope you enjoy it.”