With two retro (see what etc) threads I'd be interested in your opinions on the WORST remix. It'd have to be one of London's shameless cash-ins for me... Probably the 5 identical Shite 'n' Robbie RIADs (does ANYONE like them?), though Hawtwin's BM always sent me to sleep and the World dubs were filler spin-offs too.
Then there were the ones that had sweet Fairground Attracition with the original except a token line (sometimes not even that): Tartman's BLT, CJBollock's Temptation, Lioncock's three totally-and-utterly-unlike-1963 1963s.
It winds me up to think how much beer and porn money I wasted back then in the name of completion. So I don't do it.
I can't comment on the MC mixes as my obsessive phase was well and truly over, and I don't thnk the tracks needed mixing.
PS And how could I forget Razormaid? Just chop the songs up and repeat buts so they lose structure. Actually, don't.

Edited by user 30 November 2017 05:51:12(UTC)  | Reason: Specified

the razormaid remixes of subculture (well the ones without the extra female vocalist) are better than the official mixes, and i like the official mixes.

later
-1

I liked the Record Mirror take because it was an extended version with lotsa Hooky as opposed to an overpaid DJ's ego trip à la Rest Of.
The first time I heard Razormaid it was the 586 mix on https://www.discogs.com/...Decadence/release/581280 . There was bugger all (my priest's hobby) Internet or new stuff so I was quite chuffed to get a new mix. When I actually heard it I thought it was balls and anyone could do that with time and equipment. Same goes for all the other ones I've heard (Getting Away with Shit, Perfect kiss etc). No wonder I stopped being a collector.

Looks like someone does... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPTv6kdfjlI

It doesn't really work like that, remixers tend to be asked to deliver variations, such as dubs and instrumentals and maybe a radio edit or a 'TV' version with main vocal dropped out.

I'm sure Sly and Robbie didn't intend for London to use most of what they delivered.

The bad ones...
RIAD Bogle mixes, getting Sly and Robbie in 1981 to remix NO would have been special, but what were they thinking in 1993?
BLT Armand Van Helden mix - this has to be a phoned in AVH cast-off with Barney's voice spliced in
1963 mixes (Lionrock and Joe T. Vanelli), although Vanelli's mix is quite funny at least - "johnny"!
60MPH who's idea was it to get the superman lovers? laughable mix
the krafty mixes are hookless and boring

But worst of all has to be the cash grab Complete Music set, I didn't bother buying it. New order never stooped to pointlessly extended mixes in their prime. Even R&R, which has an extended intro, is a complete rerecording and not extended for the sake of it. It's the sort of thing every other 80s band got up to to milk the fans. At least with a remix by an outsider you can take or leave their take on it.

In defence of...
TBTHOG (Biff & Memphis Remix) from Rest Of... is good fun with that BM-style intro
the Someone Like You mixes work for me.
Jetstream is an odd one, because the original is so bad that nearly all the remixes are improvements

Edited by user 04 December 2017 11:01:43(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Seems to be a theme here, and this was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title, so you can add me to the list. I seem to recall other people offering similar opinions on these mixes in older posts too. I'm guessing if we were to run a Best to Worst NO Remixes poll (a bit like the Slicing Up Eyeballs thingy) Sly & Robbie would rank pretty highly as one of the worst.




I agree with Monkhouse (!). I think this may even fit into "Remixes Better Than The Original" territory. Although I would probably agree with Mr D that it (the full length version) goes on a bit. So the K Klass radio edit is the one.



Dont forget those Lionrock "The Excellence of Dance" remixes. They bore even less ralation to 1963 than Vanelli's Dubby mix. I actually quite like this Lionrock remix in terms of being a banging tech-house track with a nod to Kraftwerk. But I don't think there's any New Order in there. Maybe they did an "Aphex Twin" and went: oh shit we forgot to remix new order, let's just hand the courrier something we made earlier.



I only ever bought CD1 of 1963, partly because I was pissed off that they were re-hashing (and not improving) one of my fave B-sides, and partly because purchasing CD2 and the vinyl along with CD1 made the whole thing kinda expensive. So I'm actually listening to Joe T Vanelli's Light Mix for the first time ever, right now. It makes a little bit more (new order-y) sense to me than the dubby mix that I'm familiar with.
Ooh Saxophone! Is that meant to be a synthetic tuba sound farting it's way through the track? Also the percussion overdub (1.30-ish) sounds like it might have been sampled from TBTHOG.

So, after the kerfuffle above, I listened to it again for the first time in God knows how many years, and yep, its still shite - a bit of subpar 'Balearic guitar' noodling, like something off Now Thats What I Call Cafe Del Mar vol. 73 and some shit, 'will this do?' drum programming, had to switch it off after 30 or seconds.

This opinion might be rare, but I thought Sly and Robbie did a good job on the Ruined in a Day remix and I enjoy the Bogle mix. Never-the-less, I thought it was a terrible idea to fill a CD with 5 nearly identical versions (no pun intended) of the same remix and I think that affected many people's opinion of that mix. I also thought the Hawtin remix of Blue Monday was pretty good too; it would have been great to have it included on the 12" for the 1995 re-release instead of the '88 version.

I'm not sure what New Order's worst remix was, but I thought there were WAY too many remixes of Spooky. The Fluke edit, 12" and dub versions were good, but they went way overboard with the remixes on the limited edition CD and only one or two of them are decent. I prefer quality over quantity and liked the way singles were marketed in the 1980s where you had just a 7" with edits of the a and b sides, a 12" with extended versions and maybe a 2nd 12" with an outside remixer.

Can't believe that the Martin Buttrich remix of EGG hasn't been made commercially available. Well, actually I can believe it. I think it's one of their best remixes in years. It sounds like Barney re-recorded the vocal too.

From the above comments (especially Alexey Fyodorovich's), I'd say the real issue with Shite and Bobbie is how London milked 'em. People in this digital free-for-all age forget, but back in 1993 there was a real sense of commitment and excitement in being a completist: traipse around record stores, track down rarities, lovingly unsheathe the produce and place it on the machine: in the case of RIAD CD 2, it just wasn't worth it! Maybe if they'd just had 'Dance Hall Groove' on the 12" B-side, the fans would be more kindly disposed: it's no one's favourite, but no worse than most of the bollocks London were churning out in 1995 either. At least it's a radical reworking (unlike the 94 swindles) and has the full vocal (95's)...

*scurries off to youtube*

*scurries back, smiling*

This is another fine example of why these boards cannot be allowed to die.

I'd never picked up on this brilliant old remix & had also missed out on the Richard X BLT until they put it in the live set, as I'd neither the money to buy nor facility to play 12x12 back in the day.

I'm definitely going to be listening to this new EGG for the next few days - thanks for the tip.

Post deleted - damn, my faulty memories! :)

Edited by user 04 January 2018 08:52:37(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified