The Heads Relaxing With The Heads

Relaxing With... is The Heads' debut album, first released in 1996. This reissue, remastered and boosted with extras, has been a long time coming.

Amidst a world suffocating in Britpop smarm, The Heads' debut cut a timely swath of unkempt psychedelic rock into the face of the English underground. Featuring ten tracks of guitar-driven, amp-destroying jams, Relaxing With... takes its cues from the US--Stooges, MC5, Mudhoney, Pussy Galore, early Monster Magnet--but adds a distinctly British stamp with the drone and fuzz of Loop / Spacemen 3, the attitude of The Fall, Pink Fairies and Walking Seeds and the spaced rock of early Hawkwind. It is obvious that the four members of The Heads are music obsessives.

The first disc on this double-CD reissue features the album in its entirety. Originally recorded at Foel Studios (owned by Dave Anderson from Hawkwind), it has been remastered by Shawn Joseph and Simon Price. The bonus disc includes unreleased tracks (including "Spliff Riff" from 1991), all the early singles, a selection of their Radcliffe / Radio One Rock Show material, and their complete first Peel session. The artwork has been retooled and expanded by longtime art collaborator Johnny O, collating an appreciation penned by a former tour manager / dogsbody and dozens of fliers, unseen photos, clippings and more.

This 27-track release on the band's own Rooster imprint confirms The Heads' status as a "national treasure." Keep an eye out for a limited vinyl pressing as well as a deluxe reissue of their second album Everybody Knows We Got Nowhere, coming later in the year.


"If that's not a freakout, then I'm a Dutchman."

--John Peel, after airing the first session