Pseudo Echo – Long Plays ’83-’87
Ah, the heady days of junior high. That’s when I first encountered Australian pop group Pseudo Echo, as they carved an unlikely swath through the U.S. charts with their Euro-synth-ified remake of Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown”. These days I file Pseudo Echo – and Love An Adventure, the album which spunoff the aforementioned single – under the heading of “guilty pleasures that, if I’m to be honest, I still like quite a lot.” And I do.
Which brings us to this album of remixes. The late 80s were a haven for extended mixes, some of them beautiful examples of the art of editing, others more like the result of sticking fifteen chimpanzees in a room with two tape decks and a big friendly pause button. One of my favorite such mixes, however, was the extended version of “Funkytown”, with its phasing drum solos and a kind of logical pacing that didn’t completely destroy the progression of the song. I had the 12″ inch single of that mix, back when buying vinyl was still an option in most cases, but wound up giving it away to someone later, so it’s good to have it back.
The real prize for me here, however, is the extended remix of “Destination Unknown”, another tune from Love An Adventure, that just about blew my mind. The original had such a cool backing track that I’d always wished I could hear it without vocals – I thought it’d make someone, somewhere, a dandy TV theme song. That teenage wish has finally been fulfilled by a mix that runs through one full verse and one full chorus with no vocals at all, and so help me, it’s still a cool song.
The rest of the tracks here – reworking tracks from both Love An Adventure and its follow-up Race – run the gamut from unremarkable dance floor fodder to remixes which actually reveal some depth to the original songs, which I’ve always felt was the best thing a remix can really hope to do. As few and far between as Pseudo Echo fans may be outside of Australia, I can at least recommend this to them. It’s a decent new take on some old favorites.
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- Listening (5:35)
- A Beat For You (7:26)
- Stranger In Me (6:04)
- Don’t Go (6:40)
- Love An Adventure (6:21)
- Living In A Dream (5:39)
- Destination Unknown (5:48)
- Funky Town (6:35)
Released by: EMI Australia
Release date: 1990
Total running time: 49:54
I’m embarassed to confess what got me to get this album on tape years ago. One word: “Funkytown”. Yes, this is the Australian group that did a cover of “Funkytown” around 1987 that went over fairly well. The rest of the album, though it’s thick with drum machine and synth sounds, is better than that song; truth be told, that song is now practically my least favorite. I was lucky to get a CD of this out-of-print album second-hand, so it may be very hard to get a hold of. The other single that I recall from this album