Freewill

This post was a long time coming.

Last year (2016), New Age Records announced from out of nowhere that the long, lost 'Sun Return' LP by Freewill was going to be released properly for the first time. Having been originally recorded back in 1988, and scheduled to be released by Wishingwell Records, for some reason the record only made it as far as test pressing stage. The official release never happened, and to this day I have no idea why. At some point Lost & Found records in Germany put it out as a CD with a really shit cover. A few years later it was re-recorded and released as a self-titled album by the (re-named) band Stone Telling, although a lot of people dislike this version and like to pretend it doesn't exist. And that was that... until 2016.

So I've always loved this record, and despite owning one of the original Wishingwell test press copies, I was up for owning another few copies. So when New Age put the record up for sale, I bought both colour vinyl options and a test press. But somehow I missed out on the limited 77 pressing. Bummed. I was even more bummed when all three copies got lost in my missing box. Then after a few weeks the label found an extra couple of test pressings and put them in their store. It was like a sign. I was going to buy them all again...

The test press comes with a sheet that also contains the track list, cover art and label art. I guess in theory this is everything that would have been submitted to the pressing plant.

The 'regular' pressing comes on two colours of vinyl. Firstly, purple vinyl out of 200 copies:

Second, the green vinyl out of 300 copies:

For various reasons, it took months for the records to reach me. And then, around the time I received them, I won a copy of the 77 pressing on eBay for a really good price. So I decided to wait for that copy to roll in before I put anything on the blog. Which means I'm getting round to putting this post up about a year and half after I was initially supposed to.

So after a long and painful wait, I figured it would be worth the effort to take a phot of every version of this record that I own. This one shows the four 2016 copies alongside with the original Wishingwell test press and the test press for the Stone Telling LP: