..We are pleased to announce the release of the long awaited compilation of BBC recordings spanning the years 1996 – 2001.

The BBC Sessions is released on Jeepster Records, week commencing 17th November in Europe and on Matador Records in the USA.

It is initially available in three formats: as a limited edition double CD which includes a live recording of the Christmas show in Belfast from 2001 as bonus content, and with all the tracks as a download. In addition, the session tracks are also available as a double vinyl edition.

As well as different versions of songs from the first three albums and associated EPs, the album contains four much bootlegged songs recorded for John Peel in 2001, none of which have previously appeared on CD or vinyl.

Among the highlights of the fourteen session tracks are five songs from the two 1996 sessions for The Graveyard Shift (presented by Mark Radcliffe), an alternative version of the single, Lazy Line Painter Jane and a definitive version of Slow Graffiti recorded for The Evening Session, presented by Steve Lamacq. The next appearance on the show yielded an early version of The Wrong Girl when it was still known as Wrong Love.

Despite featuring in John Peel's Festive Fifty every year during the period and being played regularly on his show, the first Maida Vale Peel session did not take place until 2001 – the first of four subsequent Peel appearances which included a visit to Peel Acres and a legendary, sixteen song Christmas gig at Maida Vale, both in 2002.

The four songs from 2001 – The Magic of a Kind Word, Nothing In The Silence, Shoot The Sexual Athlete and (My Girl's Got) Miraculous Technique – never made it on to subsequent albums, and are the last recordings to feature Isobel Campbell. They capture the band at the end of one part of their history and at the start of another.

By the time of the recording of the Christmas show some six months later on 21st December 2001 in Belfast, Bob Kildea had joined on bass and guitar, and playing live had moved much further up the agenda.

The gig is full of relaxed seasonal cheer, with requests, guest vocalists from the crowd, old favourites and three cover versions – Here Comes The Sun (The Beatles), Boys Are Back In Town (Thin Lizzy) and Waiting For The Man (Velvet Underground).

The full track listing is as follows:
Disc 1 – Radio Sessions: The State I Am In, Like Dylan In The Movies, Judy and the Dream of Horses, The Stars of Track and Field, I Could Be Dreaming, Seymour Stein, Lazy Jane, Sleep The Clock Around, Slow Graffiti, Wrong Love, Shoot The Sexual Athlete, The Magic of a Kind Word, (My Girls Got) Miraculous Technique

Disc 2 – Live in Belfast: Here Comes The Sun, Theres Too Much Love, The Magic of a Kind Word, Me and the Major, Wandering Alone, The Model, Im Waiting For The Man, The Boy With the Arab Strap, The Wrong Girl, Dirty Dream 2, Boys Are Back in Town, Legal Man