12 track Vinyl LP with download card & bonus tracks. ‘12 O’ Clock Stereo’ is Wreckless Eric’s town and country album, a strange and at times uneasy mix of garage, pop, country and old time rhythm ‘n’ blues. Urban songs set in a grim, concrete world where the beer is flowing like piss, and abandoned lovers cry themselves to sleep between nylon bed sheets, Kilburn Lane, Camden Girl, Murder In My Mind, Palace Of Tears. Tales of ne’er do wells and country hicks, The Guitar-Shaped Swimming Pool, Friends On The Floor, a ramshackle and nightmarish world, the village band play on raggedy and tuneless as the residents of a local retirement home zone out on valium (The Twilight Home). The album was recorded at Eric’s home, a dilapidated village dance hall seventy miles west of Paris, in the heart of rural France. Since his last album ‘Donovan Of Trash’, Eric had upgraded his studio with the addition of a 1” Studer eight track tape machine. The stereo possibilities were limited by the further addition of an all-valve Telfunken one track 1/4” mono mastering machine which had apparently previously been used in a jungle expedition, as borne out by the carcasses of large and weird looking insects reclining in the machinery. On its release in 1996, ‘12 o’clock Stereo’ was championed by the few, including John Peel and Mark Radcliffe who both played tracks. The title fooled some of Eric’s detractors into thinking he’d finally caught up with the modern world and made a stereo record. The clues were all there – the word STEREO flanked by inward facing arrows…a lino cut illustration of a mixing desk with all the pan controls in the centre position… that’s right: MONO – the title, 12 o’clock Stereo, means mono. Containing 5 extra tracks, including 3 radio session, Lawrence Of Arabia On Ice, a b-side from ‘The Girl With The Wandering Eye’ CD single, and ‘Ugly & Old’, the first track ever recorded by The Hitsville Houseband, specifically for a Love Song Compilation.