Fra Lippo Lippi - Fra Lippo Lippi

All of Fra Lippo Lippi´s six studio albums had been out of print for up to 22 years when we re-released ”In Silence” and ”Small Mercies” as ”The Early Years” back in 2003 and even longer by today. ”Songs” was released as a limited edition CD in 2005, but ”Light and Shade”, ”The Colour Album” and ”Dreams” have all been unavailable since the mid 90s.The 4CD box collects the four last studio albums, ”Songs” (1985), ”Light and Shade” (1987), ”The Colour Album” (1989) and ”Dreams” (1992). This comes as a limited edition of 1000.The 6LP box collects the above 4 albums as well as the first two studio albums, ”in Silence” (1981) and ”Small Mercies” (1983). None of these albums have been avaiilable on vinyl since they were new releases and ”Dreams” has never been on vinyl. It comes in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies. We have decided not to scrape barrels for bonus tracks, basically because there aren´t any that can be said to belong to each album. Fra Lippo Lippi never recorded tracks that didn´t make it onto the albums. There are the odd singles-between-albums and their b-sides, but we wanted to present the albums as they originally were.Both box sets come with personal liner notes from Rune Kristoffersen on each album. Both box sets also come with stunning design by internationally acclaimed designer Magnus Voll Mathiassen and has already been presented in UK design magazine Grafik. After having released their two first albums ”In Silence” and ”Small Mercies” on the Norwegian indie label Uniton, Fra Lippo Lippi decided to finance and release their next album, ”Songs”, themselves.If the development from the Joy Division influenced ”In Silence” to the piano based ”Small Mercies” was a big step, the same can be said about the further development leading up to ”Songs”, the most obvious aspect being a stronger focus on more structured songs. Although the acoustic piano was a key part of ”Small Mercies”, it was even more evident on ”Songs”, especially as the original recording of ”Songs” was completely without guitars (which were added on the international Virgin release). This gave the album a very personal and unique sound in the middle of a period that championed drum machines and the newly developed digital synths and sequencers. ”Songs” was released on Easter Productions in 1985 and sold a very respectable 5000 copies in Norway alone without the aid of marketing or singles. It did however receive great critcal acclaim and ended up in most papers album of the year polls. And in later years it has frequented various ”Best Norwegian Albums” polls. Next from Fra Lippo Lippi would be ”Light and Shade”, recorded in Hollywood, produced by Walter Becker from Steely Dan and featuring a bunch of top LA session musicians. After parting company with Virgin, they released the studio albums ”The Colour Album” and ”Dreams”.

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