In 1986, Pet Shop Boys released Disco, a budget-priced collection
featuring extended mixes of their four hits up to that point plus a couple of
B-sides. Though now a commonplace practice, at the time it was quite an
innovative move. Eight years later Disco 2 repeated the trick, but it wasn't
as successful in either commercial or artistic terms. Disco 3 differs
slightly to its predecessors by having no fewer than five unreleased songs
among its ten club-oriented tracks, and the
presence of just two A-sides (in remixed form, naturally) actually positions
Disco 3 closer to the duo's 1988 album Introspective.
Unfortunately, EMI have royally messed up on the manufacturing front. Much
to the annoyance of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, not to mention their loyal
fanbase, initial UK copies not only included a fault 2 minutes and 17 seconds
into the opening track but the barcode proved troublesome with many stores
unable to register a sale. The result was a disappointing #36 entry on the
chart, and a lot of extra work for EMI's customer service department who, to
their credit, have acted quickly to offer replacement discs free of charge. If
your copy is affected, send an email to
customer.services@emimusic.com
Next up for the Boys looks likely to be a Greatest Hits collection, sometime
in late 2003 or early 2004. Whether it will pick up where 1991's Discography
left off, or reprises many of their earliest (and biggest) singles in its
tracklisting, is unclear at the moment.
WORD UP
Just when it seemed there was no respite from the music press' inexorable
decline into sensationalist, arrogant, and loutish irrelevance, along comes
Word. Hardly the most arresting of names, perhaps, but delve a little deeper
and all becomes clear.
Brought to us by the people who originally changed the face of music
publishing when they launched Q in September 1986, namely Mark Ellen and
David Hepworth (of Whistle Test fame), Word is a much-needed breath of sanity
and decency in a depressing, homogenised market. For those disillusioned and
ostracised by Q's steady repositioning as a cross between the NME and a lad's
mag, Word harks back to that tome's refreshingly literate, honest and
open-minded early years.
Discerning but not po-faced, contemporary without needing to compete for
dubious "exclusives" and get in first with news of tomorrow's big thing
before yesterday has even happened, this is a magazine worth its salt. Many
names familiar to erstwhile Q readers, such as Paul Du Noyer, Andrew Collins
and Miranda Sawyer to name just three, are reunited, begging the question of
where these people have been for the last few years, and how long messrs
Ellen and Hepworth might have been trying to get Word off the ground.
Ellen, in his inspirational opening mission statement (itself a far cry from
the hyperbolic, self-serving bullshit of most Editorials), alludes to the
difficulties in launching an uncompromising, old-fashioned magazine in terms
of limited advertising and funding potential. One can only hope that
nefarious market forces don't force Word to abandon its unique approach. Word
magazine is published on the first Thursday of each month, with Issue #1 now
on the shelves.
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
Reduced to one founding member, Robert Del Naja aka 3D, Massive Attack have
laboured over their fourth studio album for what seems an eternity. Finally,
it's here. 100th Window is a claustrophobic, sonically intense record, light
on genuine tunes or hooks but heavy on atmosphere and multi-layered rhythms.
Exotic, eastern-tinged sounds dominate, especially on the first single
Special Cases (out next week) which features a mesmerising guest vocal from
Sinead O'Connor.
Nine songs clocking in at an average of more than 7 minutes
each is perhaps excessive, with a "hidden" track contributing to the
71-minute running time. Reviews have been mixed, but as their first new
material in almost five years 100th Window unsurprisingly debuted at #1 in
the UK.
R.E.M.EMBER US
The forthcoming Greatest Hits from R.E.M. meanwhile, due this autumn, will
definitely concern itself with the band's Warner Brothers catalogue. So that's
everything from Green (1988) through to Reveal
(2001), taking in the albums that sent their stock into the stratosphere,
namely 1991's Out Of Time and the following year's multi-million selling
Automatic For The People. A brand new album - possibly even two, according to
guitarist Peter Buck - will follow, tentatively scheduled for 2004.
HAIL MARY
The Smashing Pumpkins called it a day in 2001, signing off with the Rotten
Apples compilation. Mercurial mainman Billy Corgan has now resurfaced with a
new band, Zwan, on a new label, Reprise. Their album Mary Star Of The Sea is
just out, full of lovely alternative rock often reminiscent of Corgan's
former group at their most persuasive. A single, Honestly, is officially
released in the UK next Monday, although import copies have already been
filtering through in enough quantities to score a chart position in the lower
reaches of the Top 200.
WE LOVE THE 80S, PART DEUX
The last column highlighted a current trend for Eurotrance makeovers of songs
from the 1980s. In fact, the full extent of this onslaught is greater than I
previously mentioned, with three other recent cover versions in an identical
vein also doing the rounds. Flip & Fill's I Wanna Dance With Somebody causes
minimal damage to the Whitney Houston classic (all things being relative, of
course), but the less said about Soda Club's Heaven Is A Place On Earth the
better. There ought to be a law against these things. Likewise Shake B4 Use's
ruination of Addicted To Love and Novaspace's completely unnecessary update
of Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time, which has already been covered
pathetically in the last 12 months.
FUTURE SOUNDS
The best music on the horizon:
TURIN BRAKES - ETHER SONG:
Second set from Olly Knights and Gale
Paridjanian, following on from 2001's slow burner The Optimist.
DANIEL LANOIS - SHINE:
First solo album in 10 years from the enigmatic
French-Canadian known mainly for his work as producer for U2, Bob Dylan,
Peter Gabriel and Robbie Robertson.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
