I’ve a dozen or so Associates singles on 12″ as well as a handful released by Billy Mackenzie under his own name. There’s only one that I really don’t enjoy listening to and when any of its four tracks happen to come up on the i-pod or i-phone, then the FF button is reached for as quickly as possible.
It’s all down to the tracks being remixes of songs whose original versions I’m very fond of. They can be found on the Poperetta EP, released in 1990 on EastWest Records as part of the promotional activities around Popera, a then newly compiled singles collection (10 on vinyl, 17 on CD).
The EP took two songs and handed them to Thomas Fehlmann and Marathon, two German-based producers whose expertise centred around creating music and sounds for the club scene in which they were heavily involved. I can sort of get the thinking behind the idea of trying to expand the market/audience for Associates. But it doesn’t seem to me that it worked.
Now it might well be that, given I’m not easily disposed to music which is made purely for the club scene, I’m not the best person to judge their takes on the songs. It does feel, however, that the remixes have sucked out all that made the originals feel special/unique (especially Club Country) and replaced them with sounds that could be attributed to almost any act making a particular kind of dance music in 1990.
mp3: Associates – Waiting For The Loveboat (extended voyage)
mp3: Associates – Club Country Club
mp3: Associates – Club Country Club (time unlimited)
mp3: Associates – Waiting For The Loveboat (slight return)
Feel free to disagree.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
I think I understand a need to broaden a musical market but this is the kind of thing that has cold, uneasy, tingly shivers running down my spine.
My main reason for my harsh words… I don’t regard anything beyond Sulk as Associates. I do like some of what I regard as Billy MacKenzie but the quirkiness of the previous band had gone and pop/jazz diva had taken its place.
To be fully transparent – I also disregard the remix album of The Affectionate Punch. Maybe if I had heard those versions first… maybe, just maybe I could thole it. But, I didn’t and I can’t.
Poperetta, is to my mind, a good idea, in principle. By 1990 Billy had been on the edges of pop’s firmament for just over a decade. Despite sterling collaborations (some I liked more than others) he never did seem entirely comfortable with his pop credentials or his jazz/chanson forays.
I think in some ways while he certainly had the voice for the latter it didn’t particularly assist his pop career.
Poperetta – to me (like JC I have no connection with ‘club’ music as such) sounds dated, even for 1990. Whether the remixers involved are noteworthy in their field of music or not, I can’t comment upon, but I get no sense of either understanding the music of the Associates (Club Country), or Billy’s voice. Each song seems very much like a missed opportunity. Instead of being at the ‘cutting edge’ of dance music they sound as they they’re loitering at the margins of the dancefloor, looking at their shoes, desperate for attention.
I believe artists should always try new ideas and, on that basis, there is some merit in the EP. It’s just a pity that the remixes – such as they are – do nothing for the artist involved.
Flimflamfan
It seems to me the unique sound of The Associates was a bad fit for club oriented remixes. I have a bunch of other attempts, a remix of Club Country provided as a part of the DMC January 1989 remix LP and a Hot Tracks remix of Just Can’t Say Goodbye from 1987 (together with tracks by Sinitta, Kim Appleby and Kylie Minogue…).
Also later techno-ish remixes of said Just Can’t Say Goodbye, and the US released 12″ with 7 different house remixes of Fire To Ice failed to do any thing good for the songs.
Let me be the one to say that I felt that Marathon’s involvement in the production of “Outernational” following this experiment by several years was marked by utterly breathtaking stacks like “Opal Krusch.” Which were steeped in Eurohouse vibes which were far from my usual haunts. The smooth “Slight Return” mix of “Waiting For The Loveboat” on “Popera” was fine for me. I liked all the versions of that song, but the Rankine Peel session was the best, it must be said. But it was as smooth as the Marathon version! I cite it primarily because of Billy’s electric “boom boom boom” hook. It took me decades to finally get 7”/12” copies of “Poperetta” and I’ll have to spin them and get back to you, but I did like the 7” mix of “Loveboat” that I’ve been listening to for decades.
Tend to agree with most of what Flimflamfan says. Most of these house remixes are all about the mixer and not the mixee, so hardly any of them are genuinely worthwhile. The first one I ever came across was Yellow Magic Orchestra dicked about by various techno acts and most of it is shecht. It’s a bit better when it’s remixes of contemporary stuff and the new pieces can be perfectly adequate dance tracks in their own right, but it’s all a symptom of the sampling era, technology substituting for creative originality. Artificial Intelligence avant la lettre.
I tend to disagree about the remix of Affectionate Punch, perhaps because I did in fact hear it before the original! Don’t know why I didn’t get the first version at the time but when I finally went to find it, it wasn’t there, but the Fiction version was. I wouldn’t put it at all in the same bracket as these techno remixes and TBH I don’t think it’s a radical departure from the original. Several of the tracks barely sound much different, and overall I’d say it’s worth having both.