Chorus Erasure

Erasure‘s fifth studio album Chorus will be reissued as a three-CD deluxe edition next month. The 1991 long-player reached number one in the UK album charts and features the hit singles ‘Chorus’, ‘Love to Hate You’, ‘Am I Right?’ and ‘Breath of Life’. The audio has been remastered and this triple-disc set features two additional CDs; the first contains B-sides, remixes and rarities while the second bonus disc is a live CD from the Phantasmagorical Entertainment tour.

30 years after the release of their debut album, ERASURE (Andy Bell and Vince Clarke) celebrate their incredible career and friendship with a 13 disc anthology box set charting their award-winning songwriting partnership. Mute / BMG are delighted to announce From Moscow To Mars – An Erasure Anthology. Curated by Vince and Andy it is a sumptuous box of memories of Erasure’s intergalactic journey through the pop and glitter and love that has defined their story so far. The BRIT and Ivor Novello winning pop duo have released a staggering number of albums, including 5 UK Number 1’s and 17 top 10 singles (35 singles charted in the UK Top 40) and their recent best of, Always, saw the band entering the Top 10 album charts once again. From Moscow To Mars is a 13-disc box set that includes all of the band’s 50 singles, a CD from both Vince and Andy compiling their favourite tracks, CDs of remixes (from Martyn Ware, William Orbit, Little Boots, Youth, Shep Pettibone, Chris & Cosey, to name but a few), b-sides, live material and rarities PLUS a radio documentary about the band and the Wild! concert, available on DVD for the first time.

An early track record of releasing one glistening single after another made Erasure's first compilation, Erasure Pop!: The First 20 Hits, a no-brainer to compile, but what to do with the duo's spotty later years? Hits! The Very Best of Erasure puts the old hits with the new ones, adds some rarities and remixes, and keeps with Pop!'s chronological structure. The first 13 tracks on Hits! The Very Best of Erasure cover the same, more successful, time Pop! did, and after that it's all moody epilogue. Later tracks like "Always," "Freedom," and "In My Arms" don't have the name recognition of "Chains of Love," but they do show a more mature Erasure in both delivery and composition…

Am I Right? [EP] (1991) [Limited Edition]. Separate from the actual Am I Right? EP itself, this pleasant release collects new mixes and alternate versions of tracks from Chorus, often with great results. Noted techno act the Grid gets its hands into "Am I Right?" itself for the leadoff track, adding some extra atmospheric synth lines and harder-edged electronic crunch; it's not a notable revision from the original otherwise, but still has a certain something. Mark Saunders, a regular studio compatriot of the band's, handles the LFO Modulated Filter mix of "Love to Hate You." The name's a touch misleading in that neither of the LFO duo actually appear on the track, but as a further pumping up of the arena-synth atmosphere of the original, it's a winner…

Released three years after Chorus, I Say I Say I Say found Erasure for the first time fully interested in essentially staying in place. The album as a whole is at base an attractively redressed version of what the duo had already done, the occasional slight surprise notwithstanding. While Clarke in particular shows some virtuosity with his performances, helped by Human League/Heaven 17 veteran Martyn Ware's production, I Say lacks any real novelty (certainly Bell's singing isn't going to change any earlier perceptions, positive or negative). It's not as experimentally indulgent as the self-titled album or unfortunately unmemorable as Cowboy, but it's still not quite the group at its sharp pop finest track for track.

The most gloriously trashy and campy moment from Chorus, "Love to Hate You" - bizarrely enough, originally written but never used for Warren Beatty's film version of Dick Tracy - arguably almost says it with just its title. The rest of the track does the business very well, though, with a fake audience chant adding effective ambience, Clarke coming up with a winning, building melody (especially the step-by-step charge of the chorus), and Bell shooting off the one-liners just so. Thus: "The lovers that you sent for me/didn't come with any satisfaction guaranteed." Besides its familiar album version, on the EP release two further mixes crop up. Bruce Forest's retake makes the most of a great beginning, a bit of light piano jazz calmness sliding into the smooth rhythms added to the main song…

Released three years after Chorus, I Say I Say I Say found Erasure for the first time fully interested in essentially staying in place. The album as a whole is at base an attractively redressed version of what the duo had already done, the occasional slight surprise notwithstanding. While Clarke in particular shows some virtuosity with his performances, helped by Human League/Heaven 17 veteran Martyn Ware's production, I Say lacks any real novelty (certainly Bell's singing isn't going to change any earlier perceptions, positive or negative). It's not as experimentally indulgent as the self-titled album or unfortunately unmemorable as Cowboy, but it's still not quite the group at its sharp pop finest track for track. When it does succeed, though, it has plenty of the flash and verve of old…

The calmer inner meditations of Erasure behind them, the duo found themselves on Madonna's label in America and released the notably more upbeat Cowboy in 1997. The zeitgeist that the duo perfectly encapsulated in the late '80s had long been left behind, resulting in an album that sounds like it wants to keep the party going when all the guests had long gone home. While Erasure itself could drag here and there, it was still an honestly intriguing combination of new and old for the band, something the pleasant (but little more than that) Cowboy can't claim. At base, the problem is that while the basic Erasure knack of hummable hooks and fine singing remains unchanged, something seems missing - what made songs like "A Little Respect," "Stop!," and "Chorus" more than enjoyably catchy pop isn't there…