Twelve-disc Fairport Convention box set to be released in July

(Image credit: Dave Peabody)

A new twelve-disc box set celebrating Fairport Convention between 1982 and 1990 is to be released in July.

It All Came Around Again: Onstage and On Air 1982-90 will be released through box et specialists Madfish Records (who have released similar sets for Gentle Giant, Al Stewart, Caravan and Horslips in recent years) on July 26.

The new box set features 11 CDs and one DVD which covers the band's second golden age with 134 audio tracks, 57 of them previously unreleased as well as over 100 minutes of BBC DVD content including three bonus sessions from 1972–76, featuring Cropredy Festival sets from1982–84 and 1986–87 as well as BBC concerts and studio sessions.

Fairport Convention initially split up in 1979 following the previous year's Tippler's Tales album. However the final line-up of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg and Bruce Rowland, reunited for a day in a farmer’s field in Cropredy, Oxfordshire, establishing the iconic Cropredy Convention festival in the process. In 1985 the band released a new album, Gladys' Leap, and a new line-up would be buot around Nicol and Pegg.

It All Came Around Again: Onstage and On Air 1982-90 also features a 60-page book with an essay by Kate Bush/John Martyn biographer Graeme Thomson, new appreciations by Fairport biographers Patrick Humphries and Nigel Schofield, vintage interview features by Colin Irwin and Mat Snow and photography from Dave Peabody.

It also contains reproduction memorabilia signed by four members of the legendary 1970 Full House line-up: Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg, Dave Mattacks.

Pre-order It All Came Around Again: Onstage and On Air 1982-90.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.