New Wax Wednesday

Welcome to our new weekly New Wax Wednesday column, in which we will highlight upcoming new LP releases and/or important vinyl reissues worthy of preordering and spinning again and again once they arrive in prime, direct from doorstep to turntable fashion.

What better way to start off this new series than by commencing with a calling out to transit, as the saying goes — as in, sharing the news that R.E.M.’s Radio Free Europe 2025 five-track benefit EP is set for release via Craft Recordings on September 12, 2025. This limited-edition 10-inch orange-vinyl EP features a never-before-released 2025 remix of the forever iconic title track by longtime R.E.M. collaborator Jacknife Lee — and you can preview that new mix in the official YouTube clip below.

R.E.M.’s Radio Free Europe 2025 EP celebrates the 75th anniversary of the OG Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). The EP’s SRP is $23, and it can be pre-ordered directly from R.E.M.’s official store here, and/or select independent record stores here. Proceeds from all of the RFE2025 EP’s sales will go to RFE/RL, an editorially independent nonpartisan and nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation.

More stats now. The Radio Free Europe 2025 EP was overseen by original producer Mitch Easter, who first captured R.E.M. at his Drive-In Studio in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, during the Athens, Georgia four-piece band’s inaugural road trip to a professional studio in April 1981. That quite seminal April 15 recording session yielded the band’s earliest recordings of “Radio Free Europe,” “Sitting Still,” and the instrumental “Wh. Tornado” (a.k.a. “White Tornado”), which were initially cut for a promo cassette, and all of which are now collected here.

The EP opens with the aforementioned “Radio Free Europe 2025” remix by Jacknife Lee, who also produced R.E.M.’s final two studio albums on Warner Bros., March 2008 Accelerate and March 2011’s Collapse Into Now. (Footnote 1) “RFE2025” opens the new EP’s first side, which has been dubbed (in typical R.E.M. fashion) as “Radio Side.” Completing the EP’s other four offerings are Mitch Easter’s original 1981 recordings starting with Track 2 on the Radio Side — Easter’s long-rumored and never-before-released 1981 remix of the title song, “Radio Free Dub.”

The three tracks that comprise Side 2, which is duly dubbed the “Liberty Side,” include the sought-after Hib-Tone single mix of “Radio Free Europe” as Track 1, the original Hib-Tone single’s flipside “Sitting Still” as Track 2, and the “Wh. Tornado” demo as Track 3.

As a longtime R.E.M. fan and completist who bought the band’s Chronic Town EP on I.R.S. upon its initial August 1982 release — ditto with their full-length April 1983 I.R.S. debut album Murmur, wherein the re-recorded version of “Radio Free Europe” opens the proceedings — I’ve already preordered my copy of the new EP. I did eventually track down a 1981 repress copy of the “Radio Free Europe” Hib-Tone single (HT 0001) for my collection — which, incidentally, Craft saw fit to reissue as an RSD 45 to recognize its 40th anniversary in 2021 (CR00312) — so I quite welcome the chance to spin all five of these key R.E.M. tracks anew on fresh wax come September.

More “RFE2025”-related background data for you. In an official press statement earmarked to coincide with World Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2025, members of R.E.M. said the mission of promoting free expression has always resonated with the band. “Whether it’s music or a free press — censorship anywhere is a threat to the truth everywhere. On World Press Freedom Day, I’m sending a shout-out to the brave journalists at Radio Free Europe,” offered R.E.M. lead singer and founding member Michael Stipe.

“Radio Free Europe’s journalists have been pissing off dictators for 75 years. You know you’re doing your job when you make the right enemies. Happy World Press Freedom Day to the ‘OG’ Radio Free Europe,” added R.E.M. bassist and founding member Mike Mills.

For his part, RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus observed, “To me, R.E.M.’s music has always embodied a celebration of freedom — freedom of expression, lyrics that make us think, and melodies that inspire action. Those are the very aims of our journalists at Radio Free Europe — to inform, inspire, and uphold freedoms often elusive to our audiences. We hold dictators accountable. They go to great lengths to silence us — blocking our websites, jamming our signals, and even imprisoning our colleagues.”

In 2009, “Radio Free Europe” was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry for, quote, “setting the pattern for later indie-rock releases.” There’s no doubt this opening-gambit, gamechanging R.E.M. song helped usher in the shifting tides of what was then starting to be called college rock, or indie rock — genre synonyms for the soon-to-bloom 1980s alternative scene — so if you haven’t experienced the still-fresh mumble-jangle of “Radio Free Europe” on vinyl, now’s the time to place your preorder.

R.E.M.
RADIO FREE EUROPE 2025
10-inch EP (Craft Recordings)

Radio Side
1. Radio Free Europe 2025 (Jacknife Lee Remix)*
2. Radio Free Dub (Mitch Easter 1981 Remix)*

Liberty Side
1. Radio Free Europe (Original Hib-Tone Single)
2. Sitting Still (Original Hib-Tone B-Side)
3. Wh. Tornado (From Cassette Set) **

* Never before released
** First time on vinyl

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Footnote 1: For our July 2023 combo review of Craft’s reissues of R.E.M.’s Around the Sun and Collapse Into Now, go here.

For our September 2023 combo review of Craft’s reissues of R.E.M.’s Reveal and Accelerate, go here.