THIS IS A PRE-ORDER: We expect this to ship on or around JULY 3, 2026. Any items ordered with this will be held until they can ship together. If you need other items faster please place a separate order for those items.

“Dressed In Black” was curated and annotated by Cathi Unsworth, author of the book Season Of The Witch: The Book of Goth – a woman who considers herself fortunate to have had Siouxsie Sioux, Lydia Lunch and Diamanda Gals for role models while she was growing up. For further illumination in Cathi’s own words, read on. “The music gathered here is an aural manifestation of turbulent times, made by women possessed of supernatural abilities. The music I fell in love with emerged from the dark end of the 1970s: The Winter of Discontent of 1978-79, when intractable industrial action left the dead unburied and mountains of rubbish in the streets. All the promise of punk came to a brutal end with the deaths of Sid and Nancy in New York; IRA bombs exploded in central London and a seemingly uncatchable ripper roamed West Yorkshire with 13 murders under his belt. Ill omens that augured badly for the events of 3 May 1979, when Margaret Thatcher became our first woman prime minister. Dressed in blue and ready to whip the country to her heel. But at night, malcontent youth were united by forces of opposition, whose dissenting voices were aired across the land on John Peel’s Radio 1 show, set to the sound of slasher guitars, swirling fairground keyboards, loping basslines and percussion that recalled the echo of jackhammers or the march of insect feet. Here, punk’s unruly offspring distilled the dissonance of the times into a new kind of music. Flirting with the fetishist and taboo, drawing upon horror and science fiction imagery, they were the outlaw leaders of the greatest style tribe of the decade: the goths. Dressed in black, these kohl-eyed women voiced the alienation of their generation during the decade of the Cold War, the Miners’ Strike, privatisation and AIDS.

Track List:

– Disc 1 –
1 Do You Take This Man? – Diamanda Gals with John Paul Jones
2 Night Shift – Siouxsie & the Banshees
3 Cat -House – Danielle Dax
4 Subterranean World (How Long…?) – Anita Lane with Die Haut
5 Cisco Sunset – Lydia Lunch with Rowland S Howard
6 Wasting Time – Annie Hogan
7 Garbageman – the Cramps
8 Road to Nowhere – Judy Henske
9 Ode to Billie Joe – Bobbie Gentry
– Disc 2 –
1 Season of the Witch – Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity
2 Ain’t No Grave – Anna Calvi
3 Death and the Lady – Shirley Collins
4 Idiot Milk – M U M M Y
5 Iceblink Luck – Cocteau Twins
6 All Tomorrow’s Parties – the Velvet Underground & Nico
7 Dressed in Black – the Shangri -Las
8 Gloomy Sunday – Billie Holiday
9 Katie Cruel – Karen Dalton
10 I Put a Spell on You – Nina Simone
11 a Va “Le Diable” – Juliette Greco

street date 7/3/2026