The 12″ single redefined music and the way we move to it, something that’s celebrated on the fantastic new four-CD collection from Cherry Red Records, Extended Stimulation: 12″ Pop Adventures on the Dancefloor 1983 – 1988. While 12″ vinyl is generally associated with disco, electronic, and hip-hop, this box set explores just how revolutionary it could be for traditional pop music, featuring tracks from the likes of New Order, Simply Red, the Human League, Duran Duran, Talk Talk, Pet Shop Boys, and many others.
However, these may not be the songs as most people remember them. That’s because everything here is either a remix (or extended mix) of some kind, originally released on 12″ vinyl. A little history lesson may be in order. Before the 12″ record, DJs would use 7″ singles, which of course were smaller and only held three or four minutes of music to them. The 12″ single allowed for more music at louder volumes, revolutionizing the night club.
That was also the catalyst for remixes, with 12″ singles often containing remixed versions of the original song, using breaks (short, looped samples, often of only percussion) to extend and play with the original recording. Incredibly, Tom Moulton was the man behind all of these innovations (the 12″, breaks, remixes), during a flurry of creativity in the mid-1970s, making him one of the most intuitively brilliant sound artists since Berliner and Edison.
Pop bands caught onto the 12″ trend, getting their songs extended or remixed in more danceable ways. Thus, Extended Stimulation is less like a standard Now That’s What I Call Music than it is four DJ sets, with each disc lasting well over an hour. That is evident from the very start of the collection, with the great Francois Kevorkian’s remix of Thompson Twins‘ “You Take Me Up”. Deconstructed stereophonic percussion teases out the melody, sounding more experimentally funky than pat pop. It’s nearly nine minutes of cool club bliss.
Simply Red’s “Money’s Too Tight” follows, remixed by Steve Thompson and Mike Barbiero into “The Cutback Mix”, and it’s even better. Anyone turned off by the admittedly sad prospect of an 1980s best-of should already be relieved by this point in Extended Stimulation. That is radically reworked (and overlooked) pop for audiophiles—and, boy, does it sound phenomenal.
Many of these tracks hadn’t been transferred before, as Jan Burnett of Cherry Red observes in the liner notes for the record. Burnett, who compiled and sequenced Extended Stimulation, writes that many of the songs were sourced directly from tape just for this compilation. Comparing their quality here to anything readily available on YouTube, at least for those remixes which are online, makes for whiplash, so astounding is the quality.
The quantity is remarkable as well, with roughly five hours of varied styles, from some of the best alternative songs of the 1980s to its cheesiest moments. It’s probably the only collection that has both Nitzer Ebb’s “Join in the Chant (Burn!)” and Culture Club‘s “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya”.
Extended Stimulation is a bit top-heavy, if that’s possible for a collection. The first two CDs are sublime, while the third feels a bit like bubblegum popping beneath roller skates at the rink; it’s nostalgia with beaucoup fromage, lacking the variety of the first two. Granted, the remixes are still good, especially the “U.S. Edit” of Laid Back’s “White Horse”, which sounds like the exact moment Kraftwerk gave birth to Hot Chip. Then there’s the dub version of Jermaine Stewart’s “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off”, which is spine-chillingly transcendent.
The fourth disc is similarly poppy but has some better original artists (ABC, Wet Wet Wet, the Human League, A-ha). It’s also the most sensual, slowing things down just a tad for a funkier, sexier party thanks to songs like the “French Extended Mix” of Vicious Pink’s “Ccccan’t You See” and the “That’s Entertainment” version of Act’s “Snobbery and Decay”.
Despite the lulls in the later half of the collection, Extended Stimulation is sure to be revelatory for anyone unfamiliar with these kinds of remixes. It’s a definite treat for any fan of 1980s music, especially from the United Kingdom, and a treasure trove for audiophiles. Just try to resist playing this as loud as possible.