February 18, 1999

Strange Behaviour

The new romantics made 'remix' a dirty word....

1 / 10 The new romantics made 'remix' a dirty word. Driven to cobbling together 12" releases to pay for more yachts, they employed the scoundrel's tactic of the 'extended version' for vinyl ballast. These usually involved the musical director from Miami Vice padding out the intro to nigh-on five minutes, playing the original song in full and calling it 'Gold (Todgemaster Mikey's Steaming Pile Of Old Knackers Mix)'. And no-one - not fan, not band, not Miami Vice representative - would ever, ever listen to it.

Such is CD1 of this two-hour chronological compilation of Duran Duran's add-on toss - the sound of very rich men screaming, "WILL THIS DO?" in your face for a week. 'Planet Earth (Night Mix)', 'Rio (Carnival Mix)', 'Wild Boys (Wilder Than Wild Boys Extended Mix)' (eight minutes of additional shouting and bashing plastic pots! That wild!) - it's as if their recent 'Greatest' compo has mated with a copy of 'Interminable Slap Bass Moods'. Christ, it's not as if 'The Reflex' didn't sound like it'd been produced by Fatboy Slim in the first place...

By the end of CD2 they're post-wilderness and can afford some 'name' collaborators (Definition Of Sound! Jellybean! Um, D:Ream!). But by now they're so utterly inconsequential that you're wading through months of squelchy tinky-tonk piano and robotic bongo nonsense to reach remnants of songs that should, by rights, have been 'remixed' with a large hammer.

'Strange Behaviour', y'say? Well it should certainly come with a free strait-jacket.