The Fall

The Infotainment Scan is the fifteenth studio album by The Fall, released in April 1993 on Permanent Records. It entered the UK albums chart at number 9, the only week it spent in the top ten. In the United States it came out the same year on Matador. This 6CD box sets it beside its singles, outtakes, radio sessions and three concerts from the same year.

The line-up was one of the most settled the group ever had: Mark E. Smith on vocals, Craig Scanlon on guitar, Steve Hanley on bass, Simon Wolstencroft on drums and Dave Bush on keyboards. Most of the songs are credited to Smith with one or more of the band, and Bush shares the writing of Ladybird (Green Grass) and A Past Gone Mad. Rex Sargeant produced most of the album, while Smith himself produced Lost in Music and the closing Light/Fireworks.

Two covers set the tone: Lost in Music, the disco song by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, and I'm Going to Spain, written by Steve Bent. Around them sit Glam Racket, It's a Curse, Paranoia Man in Cheap Shit Room and The League of Bald-Headed Men. Disc two gathers the single Why Are People Grudgeful?, the League Moon Monkey Mix, the Permanent single versions, an alternate A Past Gone Mad, instrumental demos and three mixes of Lost in Music. Disc three pairs a Peel session from March 1993 and a Mark Goodier session from May, with Strychnine and War among the extras, and a concert at Hallam University in Sheffield on 7 April 1993. Disc four is a show at the Batschkapp in Frankfurt on 11 October 1993, and the last two discs a complete set at Liberty Lunch in Austin, Texas, on 11 September.

After its first week at number 9 the album fell to 31 and then 63, three weeks in all on the Official Charts. It has been reissued several times since, by Artful in 1999, by Castle in 2006 and on vinyl by Demon in 2021, when it reached number 18 on the UK vinyl albums chart. All the live material in this box had appeared before, and the Austin show had already been issued in 2022 within Take America, a box of eleven live recordings on Cog Sinister.

6CD box set on Cherry Red (CRCD4BOX163), released in October 2024, compiled with Conway Paton, with notes by Daryl Easlea, mastering by Andy Pearce and art by Becky Stewart.