Gillingham, Kent, UK (By Mikey) - Each week I preview an album which I think deserves a listen to and if it's worth to buy, I will cater for all tastes of music from R'n'B to Rock, Hip hop and Pop. At the end of the page, you will find all future album releases.
The Human League - The Very Best of�
Release Date: 15 September, 2003
Back in 1981, The Human League, armed with little but banks of synthesisers, achieved Full Spectrum Dominance over the Top 40, much to the alarm of the army of "rockists" who believed that the electric guitar carried it with it an eternal certificate of meaningful authenticity. Phil Oakey became the kind of singer whose name was to be found scrawled on young girls' schoolbags.
It was not always thus. The Human League appeared from the art-house left field as The Future, before releasing their initial public offering: a dark, futurist dancefloor classic, to cacophonous silence in 1978. Being Boiled, still famously the only hit single about the breeding of silkworms, was all paranoid synths and proto hip-hop beats, informed as much by the robo-funk of Kraftwerk as it was by disco-pioneer Giorgio Moroder.
Despite this epiphany, it was commercial death in 1978. Two albums' worth of similar material followed, before band members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh left to re-launch Tina Turner's career (they're to blame) and become Heaven 17.
Left alone with nothing but his synths and Doctor Who repeats for company, Oakey ditched the songs about crows, babies, and growing "tall, tall, big as a wall". He recruited two girl singers who specialised in the kind of arm-dancing that then passed for choreography, and began to write serious pop songs in the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-grows-hair-down-one-side-of-his-head mould.
With this surety of purpose, Oakey and his premiership Human League released three hit singles, steadily getting closer to that precious numero uno. Then, on the eve of the album Dare, they let Don't You Want Me out of the traps, a simple hymn of lost love and cocktail bars in Sheffield that would have got to the top spot with or without a bullet. Dare followed, shifting the level of units that were still just a pre-programmed twinkle in Duran Duran's eye.
All the hits are here. Don't You Want Me kicks off the collection, but is outshone by the perfect shiny prism of Open Your Heart. Love Action and Sound Of The Crowd sound as oddly immediate as they did then.
There was life post-Dare. Mirror Man acknowledges the Motown beat that was thrilling the kids of the day. The Lebanon suffers from some desperate sub-Big Country guitar, while Together in Electric Dreams (recorded with Moroder) has lasted the course better than the film it was written for. The Jam & Lewis-produced Human ranks amongst the best that the band ever recorded while the pretty recent All I Ever Wanted features the kind of squelchy bass-line that Peaches might envy.
The second CD is a set of remixes, and not the heinous desecration of source material you might expect. After all, recording as The League Unlimited Orchestra, producer Martin Rushent and the band were amongst the first to offer fully realised dancefloor / dub versions of their records as a commercial proposition.
The scary tech-house of Trisco's PopClash Sound Of The Crowd works well, and the two-step approach of the Riton Re-Dub is pleasingly off-the-wall. Keeping the vocal central (this is Phil talking after all), the rumbling mix of Love Action offers a new perspective without dismantling the polish of the original. Bizarrely though, the simple, clean synth lines of original prime-time League actually sound more contemporary than most of the mixes.
But do they really need updating? If you were looking for immortality back in '81, all you needed was your legend ascribed in thick black marker on the bag of a schoolgirl.
8/10
Virgin are also expected to release a Human League DVD featuring the band's videos to coincide with the release of the album. The trio are currently in the middle of a world tour, which saw them play at Hackney's Ocean and Ascot Racecourse earlier this month.
They will return to the UK for further dates in December, beginning at Rock City, Nottingham on Dec 1.
The full dates are:
Dec 1 - Rock City, Nottingham
Dec 2 - Civic Hall, Wolverhampton
Dec 3 - The Anvil, Basingstoke
Dec 4 - Academy, Liverpool
Dec 6 - Auditorium, Grimsby
Dec 7 - Barrowlands, Glasgow
Dec 9 - City Hall, Sheffield
Dec 10 - UEA, Norwich
Dec 11 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge
Dec 12 - Fairfield Hall, Croydon
Dec 14 - Carling Academy, Bristol
Dec 15 - Colosseum, Watford
Dec 17 - Apollo, Manchester
Dec 18 - Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Dec 19 - Dome, Brighton.
Tracklisting
CD 1:
1. Don't You Want Me
2. Love Action (I Believe In Love)
3. Open Your Heart
4. The Sound Of The Crowd
5. Mirror Man
6. (Keep Feeling) Fascination
7. The Lebanon
8. Life On Your Own
9. Together In Electric Dreams
10. Louise
11. Human
12. Heart Like A Wheel
13. Tell Me When
14. One Man In My Heart
15. All I Ever Wanted (Dave Bascome Mix)
16. Being Boiled (Fast Version)
17. Empire State Human
CD 2:
1. Don't You Want Me (Majik J Original Booty Vocal Mix)
2. Open Your Heart (Laid Remix)
3. Sound Of The Crowd (Trisco's Popclash Mix)
4. Love Action (Brooks Red Line Vocal Mix)
5. Keep Feeling Fascination (Groove Collision TMC Mix)
6. Empire State Human (Chamber's Reproduced Mix)
7. Things That Dreams Are Made Of (Jimmy 19 The A509 PWC Remix)
8. Sound Of The crowd (Freaksblamredo)
9. Open Your Heart (The Strand Remix)
10. Sound Of The Crowd (Riton Re-Dub)
11. Love Action (Fluke's Dub Action Remix)
NEXT REVIEW: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club / David Bowie - Reality
ALBUM RELEASE SCHEDULE
29 September
Dido - 'Life For Rent'
Doves - 'Lost Sides'
Jamelia - 'Thank You'
Lene Marlin - 'Another Day'
Rachel Stevens - 'Funkydory'
Wheatus - 'Hand Over Your Loved Ones'
Robbie Williams - 'Live At Knebworth'
06 October
Blondie - 'The Curse Of Blondie'
Clea - 'Identity Crisis'
Siobhan Donaghy - 'Revolution In Me'
Elvis Presley - '2nd To None'
Lemonescent - 'Unconditional Love'
Soft Cell - 'Soft Cell Live'
13 October
Sheryl Crow - 'The Very Best of Sheryl Crow'
Funeral For A Friend - 'Casually Dressed And Deep In Conversation'
Travis - '12 Memories'
20 October
Chingy - 'Jackpot'
Erasure - 'Hits! The Very Best Of'
Myleene Klass - 'Moving On'
Texas - 'Careful What You Wish For'
The Strokes - 'Room On Fire'
Suede - 'Singles'
27 October
The Beautiful South - 'Gaze'
Sophie Ellis Bextor - 'Shoot From The Hip'
Emma - 'Simply Me'
Stacie Orrico - 'Stacie Orrico'
REM - 'In Time: The Greatest Hits'
03 November
Liberty X - 'Being Somebody'
Primal Scream - 'Dirty Hits'
Underworld - 'Anthology: 1992-2002'
10 November
Coldplay - Coldplay Live 2003
Mark Owen - In Your Own Time
Pet Shop Boys - PopArt (1985-2003)
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Greatest Hits
Triple Eight - Heavy W8
17 November
Various Artists - Now That's What I Call Music! 56
Michael Jackson - #1s
Pink - Try This
Cliff Richard - Cliff At Christmas
Britney Spears - In The Zone
24 November
Busted - A Present For Everyone
Lemar - Dedicated
