A guest posting by Martin Elliot (Our Swedish Correspondent)
Hi Jim,
I hope all is well at the Villain Towers!
When I today read your piece on the Francois K remix of This Charming Man an idea for an ICA flashed by since I’ve have this affection for him remixing European indie/alternative artists. Over the years, I have collected (quite) a few 12″ singles with such FK remixes. A quick look through my music library ended up with 20+ different songs remixed by Francois, not counting several versions (normally at least one dub version too) of the same track or the remixes of (mostly) black American disco/funk tracks.
Looking up the Wiki page over Francois reveals a French-born drummer who moved to New York in 1975, lack of success as a drummer moved him into DJing (I’m grateful for all the better drummers out there forcing this move to happen!) where he started fiddling with tape editing. Creating some buzz with his edits he was recruited to Prelude Records (a great dance music label by the way) where he did several successful remixes for US disco/funk artists.
For some reason unknown to me, he quickly became the go-to remixer for European artists wanting a club remix of their songs primarily for the US market, making remixes for just about everyone between The Cure and Kraftwerk. Some of the tracks included here were only released on the US version of the 12″, where the UK/European 12″ had a different remix. I omitted The Smiths as JC recently had it here on the blog, I also omitted Situation by Yazoo as I guess there are few living not aware of it.
Since it is a bit of a mixed bag of goodies it’s been a challenge to get a good album flow, but I hope you can enjoy this ICA as a showcase for a great remixer more than a consistent album.
Francois Kevorkian – The Indie 12 inch Dance Remix ICA
A1 Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – My Bag (US 12″ dancing remix)
A2 Echo & The Bunnymen – Lips Like Sugar (US 12″)
A3 Associates – Heart Of Glass (temperament mix)
A4 The Cure – Hot Hot Hot !!! (12″)
A5 Scritti Politti – Perfect Way (12″)
B1 Set The Tone – Dance Sucker (12″)
B2 The The – Gravitate To Me (dance mix)
B3 Yello – Call It Love (US 12″)
B4 Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus (holier than thou approach 12″)
B5 Kraftwerk – Radioactivity (1991 12″ remix)
Dance on!
Martin
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Personal Jesus ftw