The gods honest truth of the matter is we can’t get enough the eighties, can we? And with the exception of exhuming Falco, Baltimora, Michael Hutchence, Paula Yates, Divine and Stuart Adamson and putting them in a supergroup of dead 80s icons fronted by Holly Johnson we can’t do much more than we are doing in dragging it kicking and screaming into the new millennium. Why do we do it? Why do bears shit and moonwalk in woods? It’s part of the human condition. When we’ve exhausted our own energy reserves we go back and find another stock to plunder. When Brit Pop of the mid-nineties raided the tomb of 60s London, it came back with a ready-made plan and vision replete with blazers and muttonchops. It’s only natural in an era of instant messaging, instant coffee, instant passports, instant translations, instant wealth and instant meals that we seek an instant solution to a no less instant loss of direction. And short of being able to whack it in the microwave and put it on full for 30 seconds this is what the eighties provides: a clearer vision – a workplan. And this autumn sees the release of the latest workplan for work-shy listeners: the Human League’s ‘Original Remixes and Rarities’ – a blissfully enjoyable rifle through the underwear of 80s synth-pop featuring a full 75 minutes of bleeping, blooping, buzzing mayhem. 12” extended remixes of ‘The Sound Of The Crowd’, ‘Don’t You Want Me’, ‘Mirror Man’, ‘(Keep Feeling) Fascination’, ‘Electric Dreams’, ‘The Lebanon’ plus bright and eager b-sides like ‘Hard Times’, ‘Total Panic’ and’ Non-Stop’.
In an era when the 12”extended remix largely consisted of a smidgen of stuttering, acapella and a series of interminable instrumental passages Human League were a rarity, providing genuinely alternative listenings of ideas cut ordinarily to the brief demanded by the charts. This is the Human League divested of the pop gloss and anticipating the sophisticated New York clubsound of Madonna and Benitez by years.
Standout moment: ‘Don’t You Want Me’ Extended Dance Mix. Proof that Oakey and Co scored ‘Holiday’ and ‘Borderline’ as far back as 1981.