The VeryPSB Muxtape, which has nothing supremely rare, but should be enjoyable enough.

I wonder what the story behind this is.

First of all, my most sincere apologies. I’ve got notes and stuff here, but as I said in my last post, it’s been hellacious around VeryPSB headquarters. Here’s some bullet points.

• Pet Shop Boys , as I typed this, are doing the Battleship Potemkin thingwith the BBC Radio Orchestra at the Barbican. A text from a reader who attended stated just this: “Beautiful. Tears. This movie, this music.” I really hope we see a proper release of the film with their score, as the CD release has been truncated and it doesn’t fit the film properly. Here’s a link to the program for the event and another link to the Time Out interview with Tennant that, once the chestnuts about pop irony are shoved aside, offers a few new anecdotes about the Potemkin events.

• There are some new demos available for your perusal on the official site. I can’t link directly, but if you go to the Product section and click on “Exclusive Tracks,” you’re all set.

• Beloved (at least by me) cover act West End Girls have a second album on the way according to the wags at Pop Justice. One of the singles released before Shoplifters streets will be a version of “Little Black Dress,” a song best known as “One of the ones that didn’t get into the musical that nobody saw.”

• You need to buy the headphones pictured below and listen to Concrete. Trust me.
  

Neil Tennant is interviewed by The Irish Independent in conjunction with the upcoming Some Days Never End event:

“We had quite a teenage girl following; we still have to an extent. And I had thought it was more interesting not to comment on my sexuality. Another reason was that I sort of balked at what I saw as ‘gay’. I’d go to Heaven [a big gay nightclub near Trafalgar Square] and I had a girlfriend at the time and I’d see these muscle clones and just not really feel a part of it. It seemed like another kind of conformity. Gay has become sort of banal and it’s used to marginalise you.”

Music design blog Sleevage takes a look at the Fundamental-period artwork and design created by Mark Farrow for Pet Shop Boys. Since packing everything onto my iPod, I’ve found I rarely look at these sleeves and interiors as much as I could or probably should, especially when it’s a Farrow design.

The folks at Creative Review have taken a look at Mark Farrow’s packaging for Disco 4. It looks like the usual high-quality work from Farrow and his design team.

Clike here to view it. (Quicktime. When a copy shows up on YouTube or DailyMotion I’ll place it here as well.)

Thanks, as usual, to PopJustice.com, who get the press releases, post the links, and report on the whole “secret hidden barcode” thing.

…to remake “Suburbia” or “Love comes quickly,” Failed Muso has a lead on a Fairlight for you. Writes the blogger: “This is a CMI III Revision 9.34 with the MFX2 functionality (revision 11.39) added. MFX2 is basically a 24 track “Direct To Disk” HD audio recorder/editor,” which is certain to be spectacularly impressive. As far as the sounds installed on this unit, here’s the rundown:

Complete Fairlight library, Prosonus Strings, Brass, Percussion, Sound Genesis strings, plus many libraries collected over the last 20 years dealing with top producers and musicians. These include libraries from: Pet Shop Boys, Trevor Horn, Hans Zimmer, Frankie goes to Hollywood, Art of Noise and many, many others. The complete Fairlight IIX library is also included.

There’s more details on eBay Australia, where the starting bid is a mere AUS$12,490.

Albarn blocks Pet Shop Boys remix.

Gorillaz founder Damon Albarn has blocked the Pet Shop Boys from releasing a remix of the Blur single ‘Girls and Boys’, say reports.

The ‘West End Girls’ duo are releasing new album Disco 4, which will feature songs by The Killers, Madonna and David Bowie and wanted to include a reworking of the popular Blur track.

However, Albarn has apparently placed a ban on the song’s release, claiming that the remixed version was too good.

A source told The Sun: “Damon complained that they had made the song sound like their own.

They added: “He was also annoyed when he heard Neil Tennant supported Oasis in their 90s chart battle with Blur. Neil said Damon was pretentious.”

Ah, The Sun.

This thread on the PopJustice forums, wherein “fans” sound off on the release of Disco 4 has me bemused, saddened, and a bit ticked off. I’m pretty familiar with this pattern from my other major hobby’s online contingent, but the presumptuous nature of the response is galling. Here are my talking points in this matter, posted on the internet as all good talking points should be:

1. If you have all of the remixes, then you don’t have to buy the record.
   
2. If you don’t want the remixes, you don’t have to buy the record.
   
3. It’s not the job of Pet Shop Boys to do exactly what you want. If you want different mixes of existing tracks, then you’ll have to commission them yourself.
   
4. You’re going to buy it anyway, so shut up.

The way people were complaining about Disco 4, you’d think it cost $50 and was a required purchase in order to maintain their “fan” status. Myself, I think it’s a neat idea that probably won’t sell shedloads, but it’ll be worth a look for casual fans for both the duo and the artists they’ve remixed. I certainly don’t think it indicates “contractual problems” (as one fan in that thread pulled out of their rear) or a lack of interest in what they’re doing.