Mixcloud

Tuesday 6 August 2013

Endless Heaven 17

I was never a big fan of cassettes - I probably never had a good enough cassette player to do them justice, so all I experienced was relatively low quality sound, which either had too much hiss or was muffled (courtesy of the Dolby button).

Oh, and there was no getting away from the fact that SOME TAPE PLAYERS PLAYED AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS - I got a shock when I first heard Sgt Pepper at the correct speed after a decade of hearing it being played slightly too fast.

Having said that, I still owned a few.

But there are probably only three albums that I have fond memories of on cassette - The Cure's Standing on a Beach (the singles on one side and their b-sides filling up 45 minutes on side 2), New Order's Substance (a whole extra tape of b-sides!) and this from 1986, Endless by Heaven 17.

Housed in a Factory Records style box, this 'best of' album didn't follow the traditional format of including the 7" version of the singles. H17 have always had one eye on the dancefloor ('special fortified dance mixes' and 'remixed to enhance its danceability' their 12”s proclaimed) and so it was  only right that they instead sequenced together an almost continuous mix of the 12" versions of their singles (plus the occasional b-side).  Containing an extra 4 tracks than the CD version - Play To Win, At The Height Of The Fighting, I'm Your Money and Song With No Name - this was the format to get.

The only downside, presumably because it was too slow, was the omission of Come Live With Me.

This was also, allegedly, the first non-vinyl album to chart in the UK, although I can't find any evidence to back this up - just summat I read somewhere.

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