What Power Do You Bring Here?

Side 2 of a cassette compilation recorded circa March-April 1991. 

 

The mixtape was a gift from my brother, posted to me whilst I was roughly halfway through a year working and travelling in Australia. My brother was at university in Bournemouth and this is a guide to what he was listening to... and what I was missing, half a world away. 

 

Looking at the track listing across both sides, two favourite albums at the time appear to have been the compilations New Beat, Made In Belgium (1989) and The Third Mind (1990). This selection kicks off with the opening track of the former by The Brotherhood Of Sleep, who don't seem to have released anything other than New Beat, A Musical Phenomenon. I've swapped the compilation edit for the full length 12" version here as the original cassette ran well short of the 45 minute space allowed.

 

Next up is one-hit wonder Guru Josh with Infinity, with a horribly synthetic sax sound. My brother had the album and one other track/single made it onto another mixtape, but I can honestly say I never listened to the album in full and feel even less inclined to do so now.

 

This compilation was the first time I'd properly (and repeatedly) listened to Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Saint Etienne, though I'm sure I would have heard it before I left the UK. This is the single/album version of the Neil Young classic. At this point, I'd definitely not heard the phenomenal Andrew Weatherall remix and whilst that swiftly became the definitive version for me, there's no denying that Saint Etienne's original version is pretty spectacular.

 

This segues neatly into Bryan 'Chuck' New's remix of Pictures Of You by The Cure, undoubtedly the best thing he's ever done. The original limited edition 12" single calls this the "Strange Remix", a nod to how different it was to the album or standard 12" versions. By the time of the Mixed Up compilation, which is where my brother got it, it was renamed the "Extended Dub Remix", which is an on-the-nose title if nothing else. What a wonderful six minutes and forty-five seconds, though.

 

Wonderful is not a word I'd use to describe Lords Of Acid. Their biog on Discogs describes them as a "sex-obsessed Belgian-American post-industrial/techno band" and they're the third of three artists lifted from the New Beat, Made In Belgium compilation. Kicking off with LInda Blair's "Darling, come here..." sample from The Exorcist and with front person Nikkie Van Lierop's repeated refrain of "Sit on your face / I want to sit on your face", you may be glad I stuck with the edit and didn't swap it out for the 12" version. 

 

The KLF follow up with the album version of Last Train To Trancentral, preceded by Church Of The KLF. By my brother's own admission, he had run out of steam at the point and tacked on two long songs to finish off the compilation. For all that, I love this version of Last Train and it feels somewhat incomplete without Church Of The KLF as the lead-in.

 

Closing the cassette was an at-the-time relatively new song by Orbital, released in January 1991 on the III EP, but which has since become a signature classic. This tape was my first exposure to the song Belfast and it was like nothing I'd ever heard and a huge contrast to Chime, the only other song of theirs that I knew of at the time. It still sends a shiver down my spine and, despite the hurried approach to finishing the compilation, I think my brother was spot on in his choice of song to wrap things up.

 

I played the tape a lot whilst I was travelling as it provided a connection to life back home but also a hint of the future. I returned to it less frequently as the years passed but it provides a snapshot of another time and place, with lots of happy memories. 

1) New Beat, A Musical Phenomenon (12" Version): The Brotherhood Of Sleep (1989)

2) Infinity (1990's: Time For The Guru) (7"): Guru Josh (1990)

3) Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Album Version) (Cover of Neil Young): Saint Etienne ft. Moira Lambert (1990)

4) Pictures Of You (Strange Remix aka Extended Dub Remix): The Cure (1990)

5) Cccan't You See... (French Extended Mix): Vicious Pink (1984)

6) I Sit On Acid (Edit): Lords Of Acid (1988)

7) Church Of The KLF / Last Train To Trancentral (Album Version): The KLF (1991)

8) Belfast (Album Version): Orbital (1991)

 

Side Two (46:20) (KF) (Mega)