Level 42 press the early Brit-funk years onto vinyl

One thousand black-and-yellow copies, Abbey Road transfers and first-hand notes from Mark King, Wally Badarou, Phil Gould and Mike Lindup: the 1980–1982 instrumental cuts now stand as a single document on Coalface Records.

Level 42 issued Forty Two on 25 September 2026, a limited-edition double LP devoted to the band’s early Brit-funk instrumental work from 1980 to 1982. The set is out on Coalface Records, a new label working with the band’s full cooperation, and the run is capped at 1,000 copies. The finished package makes plain what has been gathered, how it was cut and who has spoken for it.

The gatefold edition draws from the first three albums and four 12-inch B-sides, presenting that material together on vinyl for the first time. It is pressed on black and yellow vinyl and was mastered at Abbey Road by Geoff Pesche from 24-bit transfers of the original analogue tapes. The packaging carries an OBI-strip, matt lamination and printed inner sleeves. Gilles Peterson supplies the sleeve notes; new commentary comes from Mark King, Wally Badarou, Phil Gould and Mike Lindup.

The Isle of Wight opening

Level 42 formed on the Isle of Wight in 1979 as an English jazz-funk band and went on to a run of UK and worldwide hits through the 1980s and 1990s. The early studio stretch took in Sensational Level 42 and The Early Tapes in 1981 and The Pursuit of Accidents in 1982, before Standing In the Light in 1983. The commercial peak that followed — World Machine in 1985 and Running In the Family in 1987 among them — carried the group far beyond the instrumental circuit on which they had started. Later catalogue work, including live sets and the 2022 clusters of 12-inch singles and mixes, alongside 7-inch singles, B-sides and bonus tracks, has kept the wider archive in view; Forty Two turns specifically to the opening instrumental phase and treats it as a body of work in its own right.

The release follows the band’s earlier Thousand Club series reissue of the debut album. That series revisited a single record; Forty Two stitches albums and 12-inch B-sides from the first years into one dedicated package, so the instrumental side of 1980 to 1982 no longer has to be chased across original pressings.

A finite document, not a mass reissue

Before the chart singles and the larger tours, Level 42 were a tight instrumental unit working the jazz-funk and Brit-funk circuit. Collecting those sides on a single limited vinyl set gives that phase a clear discographical home. Abbey Road’s analogue-sourced mastering and the first-hand notes from King, Badarou, Gould and Lindup underline the band’s own stake in how the period is heard now. Peterson’s sleeve notes place the music in the club and radio culture that first carried it.

Forty Two is already in circulation. With only 1,000 copies pressed, the run is finite; Coalface and the band have framed it as a catalogue document rather than a mass-market reissue. No further titles from the same corner of the archive have been announced. The wider reissue strand, including the Thousand Club series, continues alongside the live diary already set out beyond this release.