James Acaster’s ‘Hecklers Welcome’ show to be released on vinyl
Decca Records has announced that it will be releasing one of James Acaster’s stand-up shows exclusively on vinyl.
The gig in question is from the comedian’s Hecklers Welcome tour, which he took on the road between 2023 and 2024, and the recorded set comes from his stop at the KLV in Kettering.
Set to arrive next month, the vinyl is limited to 1,000 copies – a portion of which will come with signed inserts.
Hecklers Welcome came as a return for James Acaster to stand-up, and included his recount of the formative experiences in his childhood which marked the beginning of his love-hate relationship with performance. As the name suggests, it also saw him embrace the unexpected turns from the audience – incorporating the interruptions into the show.
“It’s an honour and a privilege to release this show on wax with Decca, especially because we recorded it in Kettering in a venue I’ve been going to since I was seven,” Acaster said. “I’m also delighted because we managed to capture one of the more chaotic gigs of the tour, full of moments that never happened before or since.”
James Acaster: ‘Hecklers Welcome’ (Live at the KLV, Kettering) is set to arrive on November 1, and you can pre-order it here.
In pairing up with Acaster, Decca is continuing its longstanding association with comedy – with the collaborations dating back to the label’s foundations in the 1930s.
The releases started in 1931 with Jack Hylton’s ‘Rhymes’ and continued throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s from the likes of Ivor Cutler, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Frankie Howard and more.
Alongside the Live at the KLV show, Decca is also set to remaster performances from Spike Milligan, Frankie Howard and Marty Feldman, making them available to stream for the first time.
In his time away from stand-up, the Kettering comedian has become a Sunday Times bestselling author, the co-host of the Off Menu podcast, and embarked on some acting roles too.
He has also launched a music project called Temps. Created and produced by Acaster himself, the project is the result of a failed mockumentary funded by Louis Theroux, and includes Shamir, Quelle Chris, Deerhoof‘s John Dieterich and more.
Around the time of the collective’s announcement, Acaster spoke to NME as part of our ‘In Conversation’ interview series, and explained how the venture arose.
“I was doing bands when I was a teenager into my early 20s, and I was like, ‘This is gonna be my entire life, all I’m gonna do is music,’” Acaster said. “When the band split up I started doing stand-up as a placeholder, and then I fell in love with stand-up and got really obsessed with that.
“I’d never made an album from scratch that didn’t exist yet – recording it and writing it at the same time – and I’d never produced anything before, or mixed something as intensely as this one. There’s a lot of new things – if I had been doing it on my own, I don’t know how long I would have lasted.”
You can check out the full interview above.
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Liberty Dunworth
NME
