Tom Waits has reissued five of his albums that were released under Island Records from 1983-1993. These “mid-period” projects have been remastered, and are now available on streaming services. In addition, these five remastered albums will be released on CD and vinyl.
Packaged as “The Island Years” on Waits’ website, the five albums in question are Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), Frank’s Wild Years (1987), Bone Machine (1992), and The Black Rider (1993). The remastering was overseen by Waits and his spouse Kathleen Brennan, and utilized original master tapes. According to Consequence of Sound, mastering engineers Chris Bellman and Bernie Grundman worked under Karl Derfler, who mastered Waits’ most recent album Bad as Me (2011).
Each album is available in three formats on Waits’s web store: a Digipak-style CD, a black 180 gram vinyl, and a special colored 180 gram vinyl. For Bone Machine and The Black Rider, this will be the first time these albums were released on vinyl outside of Europe. These two albums are expected to ship out on or before Oct. 6th, whereas the earlier three projects are expected to ship on or before Sept. 1st.
All five remastered albums are available for pre-order here, and available to stream on all platforms now.