Movietone Pulls Day And Night Straight From the Tapes
Movietone Bring Day And Night Back Into Circulation After 29 Years
Twenty-nine years is long enough for a record to turn into hearsay. Copies get scarce, credits get flattened, and music that mattered to a small circle becomes something new listeners are told about instead of something they can actually hear and hold.
On October 16, Domino will bring Movietone's second album, Day And Night, back into circulation for what the label describes as its first reissue since the record originally appeared in 1997.
The Bristol group's album will return as a limited-edition LP, standard LP, CD and digital download, giving a record that has spent nearly three decades becoming increasingly difficult to encounter physically another life outside the collectors' market.
But this isn't simply an old record receiving a new pressing.
Putting the History Back Beside the Music
The physical editions of Day And Night include a new booklet designed by Movietone member Kate Wright. Archival images are accompanied by captions, while Stephen McRobbie contributes new liner notes.
That context matters for a record with nearly three decades of history behind it. Reissues can put music back into circulation, but the strongest archival releases can also restore some of the people, places and circumstances surrounding the original recording.
Movietone emerged from Bristol's fertile independent-music community of the 1990s, developing music that resisted easy classification. The group's work could be sparse and intimate one moment and expansive or experimental the next, drawing acoustic instrumentation, improvisation, field-like textures and unconventional arrangements into songs that rarely behaved as straightforward rock records.
Day And Night arrived in 1997 as the band's second full-length album, following Movietone's self-titled debut. Its return places another piece of that Bristol period back within reach of listeners discovering the group years after the original releases disappeared from ordinary record-store shelves.
“Phonograph Space” Emerges From the Original Sessions
The reissue also brings something previously unheard out of the original recording period.
“Phonograph Space,” released alongside the September 15 reissue announcement, was recorded during the original Day And Night sessions but remained unreleased. Domino says the recording was transferred directly from the original session tapes.
That distinction gives the track a different character from a contemporary remix or newly recorded addition. “Phonograph Space” belongs to the period in which Day And Night itself was being created — a piece of the original working sessions that remained outside the finished album for almost three decades.
Its appearance also highlights one of the most valuable possibilities of archival releases. Returning to original tapes can uncover more than a cleaner route to an existing record. It can reveal material left behind when the original album was assembled.
Back to Bristol
The story returns to the band's home city two days after the reissue arrives.
Strange Brew in Bristol will host a Day And Night playback event on Sunday, October 18, from 7 to 10 p.m., bringing members of Movietone together with writer Richard King for an evening that includes a playback, Q&A, DJ set and signing.
The gathering gives the reissue something particularly appropriate: a physical return to the community surrounding the music.
Listeners can hear the record, encounter the people connected to its creation and discuss its history in Bristol rather than experiencing the reissue solely as another title appearing on a digital storefront.
Why Reissues Still Matter
The work behind an archival release is easy to overlook once the finished record reaches a shelf.
Original materials have to be located. Recordings and credits have to be identified. Rights have to be addressed. Photographs and other archival material need context. New packaging has to be designed, physical editions manufactured and the history presented accurately enough that a reissue adds to the record rather than rewriting it.
For independent music, that work is part of the same ecosystem that produces new records.
Without it, important albums can slowly become inaccessible — surviving in private collections, secondhand listings and the memories of listeners who were there the first time around.
With Day And Night, Movietone and Domino are putting one of those records back into circulation while bringing a previously unreleased piece of its original sessions along with it.
Twenty-nine years later, listeners won't simply have to hear about the record anymore.
Movietone's Day And Night will be reissued October 16, 2026 through Domino on limited LP, standard LP, CD and digital formats. Previously unreleased session track “Phonograph Space” is available now.
