Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Mute have announced the next installment in a series of releases that will ultimately see the band’s entire studio catalogue digitally remastered, and remixed for 5.1 Surround Sound. TENDER PREY, THE GOOD SON and HENRY’S DREAM (their fifth, sixth and seventh albums) will be released on the 5th April 2010, each available also as a deluxe double-desc collector’s edition (with DVD).

Each deluxe edition contains the re-mastered stereo album, the new surround mix, a specially commissioned short film by UK artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, plus b-sides, videos and exclusive sleeve notes.

Last year, the band’s first four consecutive albums in the remastered deluxe edition series (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE FIRSTBORN IS DEAD, KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS, and YOUR FUNERAL…MY TRIAL), were met with critical acclaim, and excitement.

Biography - The Early Years

Nicholas Edward Cave was born in Warracknabeal, Australia on 22/09/1957. His mother’s name is Dawn, a librarian; his father Colin was an English teacher. He has two older brothers, Tim (1952) and Peter (1954) and a sister, Julie (1959). He was raised an Anglican, which explains the apparent influence of The Bible in his work..

His education: Caulfield Grammar School, Melbourne and an Art School (Art department of Caulfield Institute of Technology, now Monash University) which he attended only two years. An example of Nick’s art is on the back of the Birthday Party’s “Prayers On Fire” album,signed “Nicholas Cave”. At Caulfield Nick met Mick Harvey, with whom he founded a high-school band that would become The Boys Next Door. The first recording released by Nick was “These Boots Are Made For Walking” in 1978, a single that was soon followed by the album “Door Door” the next year. The band consisted of Nick, Mick Harvey, Tracy Pew, Phillip Calvert and Rowland S. Howard (from 1979 on).

The Boys Next Door slowly dissolved into “The Birthday Party” in 1980 when the album of the same name came out: some copies stated “The Birthday Party by The Boys Next Door”, others only “The Birthday Party”. When they changed their name, the band moved from Australia to London. Renegade outsiders, The Birthday Party hit London from Melbourne with a force that still resounds today. Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Rowland S. Howard, Tracy Pew and Phil Calvert blazed through incendiary live shows and a string of albums and EPs of swaggering, raw-boned blues that were at odds with the plastic pop of the early ’80s. The Birthday Party had a huge impact on the British rock scene of that time, especially because of the expression of “raw emotion, wit and essential dumbness” (Mute Records’ opinion) in their music, though it took some time for them to really break through. The LP “Prayers on Fire” was released in 1981, “Junkyard” in 1982. The band moved to West-Berlin and fell apart in 1983 after releasing 3 studio albums and 2 EP’s. Their last EP, “Mutiny”, was the ultimate manifestation of the extremity of The Birthday Party’s art.

Following the group’s breakup in 1983, Cave briefly sojourned in Los Angeles, writing a film script that would later manifest itself as the prison movie Ghosts … Of The Civil Dead, made with director John Hillcoat and director Evan English. He also assembled the first incarnation of The Bad Seeds. Mick Harvey remained from Birthday Party days. Blixa Bargeld, of Einsturzende Neubauten infamy, had appeared as guest guitarist on The Birthday Party track “Mutiny In Heaven,” from their final Mutiny EP. Barry Adamson, who had guested on “Kiss Me Black” from The Birthday Party’s seminal Junkyard LP, came from revered Manchester post-punks Magazine. Joined by Anita Lane, Edward Clayton Jones and Hugo Race, they released From Her To Eternity in 1984. This fusion of diverse talent was, if anything, more resourceful in constructing vivid musical backdrops to Cave’s song narratives.

Part of the Birthday Party members continued to form The Bad Seeds, recording the first Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album in 1984: “From Her To Eternity”. The line-up at this time was: Nick Cave, Blixa Bargeld (guitar), Mick Harvey (drums), Barry Adamson (guitar and piano), Hugo Race (guitar), Tracy Pew (bass, only during the Australian tour), with cooperation of Anita Lane. The name “Bad Seeds” come from the film “Bad Seed” by Mervin LeRoy, 1956, based on a play by Maxwell Anderson and a novel by William March.