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Post by trussy74 on May 18, 2006 10:29:37 GMT -5
Anyone going to the launch at The Cock tomorrow night?
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xolondon
Punter
I grew up to the sound of the synthesizer.
Posts: 1,052
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Post by xolondon on May 18, 2006 11:10:17 GMT -5
No, but I am launching my cock tomorrow night.
Sorry, could not resist. You left it ... wide open.
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Post by silverspirit on May 18, 2006 15:35:52 GMT -5
Get you.
I can't wait until Monday.
I'll have to, obviously, but it's gonna kill me.
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CitrusGuy
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Anybody... No? Dust!
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Post by CitrusGuy on May 18, 2006 17:05:12 GMT -5
I have now listened to 'In Private'
Dusty must be rolling over in her grave... it is pure shite for the following reasons:
1) Elton.
2) That awful 90's trance backing.
An embarrassment I think, but of course its the Pet Shop Boys so all is forgiven and forgotten!
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Post by Lemon Fresh Rob on May 19, 2006 7:13:26 GMT -5
Actually I rather like "In Private". It's great on the crosstrainer at the gym.
That said, I'm sure the original's better but I've not heard that one somehow...
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Post by trussy74 on May 19, 2006 8:55:22 GMT -5
You've never heard Dusty's version of In Private?? How is that possible?
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Post by silverspirit on May 19, 2006 8:56:52 GMT -5
Heresy.
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Post by Wicked Witch of W12 on May 19, 2006 9:37:04 GMT -5
How strange.... they've just played "Minimal" on Radio 1.
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SpinDerellum
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Hippy chicks are sad and supermodels suck
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Post by SpinDerellum on May 19, 2006 9:38:54 GMT -5
Well it is the next single.
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Post by silverspirit on May 19, 2006 9:41:31 GMT -5
I think it was the Radio 1 thing that was more unusual...
[glow=red,2,300]Pet Shop Boys will appear on Radio 1's 'The Colin and Edith Show' on Friday 19th May 2006. The exact time of the interview will be between 3-4pm[/glow]
I quite like that effect.
Anyway, that's from the official PSB website.
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Post by trussy74 on May 19, 2006 11:56:59 GMT -5
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Post by Kubla Khan on May 19, 2006 16:28:49 GMT -5
The one song I still cannot get is "Luna Park" - I know that it has a fan base here, but I feel like it goes nowhere and I don't like the melody. reminds me of my issues with Release. Luna Park is a crepuscular masterpiece; it's the come-down companion piece to The Sodom and Gomorrah show. So PSB write a concept album about the post-9/11 world but aren't relevant enough for Radio 1. Oh, the irony. HERE'S SNOW PATROL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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CitrusGuy
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Anybody... No? Dust!
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Post by CitrusGuy on May 20, 2006 1:34:23 GMT -5
Agreed.
"Luna Park" is incredible.
One of my favourites off the new album.
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xolondon
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I grew up to the sound of the synthesizer.
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Post by xolondon on May 20, 2006 6:44:50 GMT -5
Did they produce all of the Dusty album?
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Post by Lemon Fresh Rob on May 20, 2006 6:47:39 GMT -5
You've never heard Dusty's version of In Private?? How is that possible? There was nothing sinister or intended about it. It just never happened. However, I downloaded it from iTunes last night and I fear I may well be lynched for this... but... Sorry. I prefer the new version. I think it's down to the fact I much prefer Neil's voice to Dusty's any day (well, at least on the stuff they collaborated on - she was fabulous in the early days natch) and the remix just has more kick. I apologise for this heresy but - frankly - cope.
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Pierre
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Post by Pierre on May 20, 2006 6:51:58 GMT -5
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Post by joeletaxi on May 20, 2006 7:45:34 GMT -5
No, but I am launching my cock tomorrow night. Can I go? PLEEEEASE!
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Post by Mr Crabby Appleton on May 20, 2006 15:07:37 GMT -5
In Private is the only horrible song on the bonus disk....and not just because it features Elton.
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Post by Lemon Fresh Rob on May 20, 2006 15:21:24 GMT -5
Apart from Fugitive, Minimal and In Private I'm largely unimpressed by the remix album.
The rest embody precisely what I hate about remixes: too much limp repetitive crap, not enough song.
I'm bitterly disappointed by the alter ego mix of Psychological considering how much I normally like their stuff.
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CitrusGuy
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Anybody... No? Dust!
Posts: 19
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Post by CitrusGuy on May 20, 2006 17:09:01 GMT -5
I'm bitterly disappointed by the alter ego mix of Psychological considering how much I normally like their stuff. Try not to be too bitter!
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moogaboo
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Baby Can't You Understand That I Need More?
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Post by moogaboo on May 20, 2006 17:51:03 GMT -5
Anyone have further info on this new In Private? Was it recorded for some discarded project?
As much as I love Dusty and several of her PSB tracks, I never thought her voice sounded right on In Private. She seems to be struggling with it. I actually prefer the stronger vocals of the Almighty remake. Of course, I still adore Nothing Has Been Proved, which should have been a huge smash hit.
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Post by flopped on May 21, 2006 8:40:12 GMT -5
The record is dedicated to Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, the two Iranian men who were put to death in 2005, reportedly just for being gay. It's a wonderful and poignant tribute, but certainly adds to the record's darkness.
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SpinDerellum
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Post by SpinDerellum on May 21, 2006 8:57:09 GMT -5
Pet Shop Boys, Fundamental (Parlophone)
Alexis Petridis Friday May 19, 2006 The Guardian Earlier this week, BBC2's Dead Ringers compared Tony Blair to the bunker-bound Hitler. Another symbol of the PM's decline in popularity may therefore seem otiose, but that is what the Pet Shop Boys' ninth album turns out to be. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe spent election night 1997 not only attending the Royal Festival Hall bash, but also an aftershow party at a Park Lane hotel, where, Tennant remembered, champagne flowed and entertainment was provided by MPs "forming the government". Until recently, Tennant could be relied upon to support the government - initially, he backed the Iraq war - but with Fundamental, things take a disagreeable turn.
It touches on regime change, immigration, ID cards and the politics of fear. It features, the PM will doubtless be overjoyed to learn, another in what appears to be a series of Pet Shop Boys songs depicting him as a hapless lover in thrall to a hopeless partner. On 2002's I Get Along, he was fretting by the phone, waiting for perfidious Peter Mandelson to ring. This time, he's trying to conduct a transatlantic relationship with a man everyone else thinks is a moron, on the splendidly titled I'm with Stupid.
In fact, there is every chance Blair will miss the song. For one thing, he has rather more to worry about than the Pet Shop Boys implying he's having it off with George Bush. In addition - surprisingly for a Pet Shop Boys single - I'm with Stupid seems to have mislaid its chorus amid the electronic pyrotechnics provided by Trevor Horn, still best known as Frankie Goes to Hollywood's producer. It's one of two moments when Fundamental misfires. The other is Numb, the work of songwriter Diane Warren. You can see the conceptual, camp appeal of the perennially poker-faced Pet Shop Boys working with the queen of the blockbusting power ballad, but the result sounds strangely wan.
That may be less a reflection on the song itself than the company it keeps. The album's title seems appropriate: focusing on New Labour's trials has reconnected the Pet Shop Boys with something of their essence. Their image as pop's arch-ironists has obscured their abilities as incisive social commentators, but they would dominate any top 10 of Great Songs Inspired by Thatcherism: Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money), Shopping, Rent, King's Cross. Furthermore, their music had an unnerving ability to find favour with the very people it attacked. You didn't hear Robert Wyatt's Shipbuilding blaring from a yuppie's GTi very often, but you did hear the Pet Shop Boys, possibly because their outrage and scorn was carefully, delicately applied.
And so it proves here. Indefinite Leave to Remain is an aching love song conducted in the official language of the asylum seeker. Twentieth Century concerns Iraq, yet it's really about second thoughts. "I bought a ticket to the revolution and cheered when the statues fell," concedes Tennant. "Everyone came to destroy what was rotten but they killed off what was good as well." On Integral, the poker face slips slightly: as he protests against ID cards, you catch the faintest tremor of rage in Neil Tennant's voice. He sounds angry, a bracing new sensation almost 25 years into the Pet Shop Boys' career.
The reunion with Horn - their first since 1988's glorious Left to My Own Devices - proves similarly inspired. Opener Psychological sounds subdued: quite an achievement, given that it features an orchestra, a harp and "a sample from the recording of the Song of the Most Holy Theotokos for Tatiana Melentieva from the album Svete Tikhiy (O Gladsome Light)". Its understatement fits the song's theme of nameless dread, but you have to wait until The Sodom and Gomorrah Show before Horn pulls out what you might call the Full Frankie: timpani, thwacking hi-NRG bass, cascading synth lines, jagged guitar chords and, as was once mandatory on his productions, a booming voiceover that breaks into puny-earthlings-I'll-destroy-them-all cackling. Employ Paul Morley to write some dada-influenced cobblers for the sleeve and the image would be complete. But it's a perfect fit, the apocalyptic hedonism of Two Tribes or Welcome to the Pleasuredome updated for a different, but equally paranoid era.
Elsewhere, its gaze shifts away from current events. Minimal sounds pleasingly like Kraftwerk mounting a defence of the Turner prize. Casanova in Hell concerns a man who mysteriously can't get it up in the presence of a lady ("it's queer," Tennant winks, "that here he can't cast his spell") but rewrites his life-story to cast him as a perpetually tumescent lothario: "His erection," the song divertingly claims, "will live in history." Cue gag about Neil Tennant getting his mouth around an erection, but instead, a more elevated thought comes to mind. Not for the first time during Fundamental, you listen wondering who else in pop music would do something like this. And not for the first time, the answer comes back: nobody.
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