The Associates - The Affectionate Punch Remix Album

A couple of years after the initial release of the Associates 'The Affectionate Punch' album, a new "remixed" version album arrived in the shops. Apparently the band's new record company, Warner Bros., was dissatisfied with the original mix and wanted it beefed up a bit for re-release. All of the tracks were kept but more of an 80s production model was demanded by WB. New sythesizers and re-recorded vocals by Billy McKenzie were thrown in to boost the original recording. Some record company executive probably thought this was necessary but McKenzie and Rankine's viewpoint somewhat differed. Both are said to have been unhappy and more than annoyed with the result. Frankly, I don't see the point in re-recording this album at all. The original album is fine.

Also, the artwork was completely different from the original (See previous post). This time the cover features portraits by Alan MacDonald of Rankine (front) and McKenzie (back) shot and lit up by some porn-district red light effect -supposedly to give them some sort of seedy appearance, I imagine. The portraits take up 2/3rds of the cover on each side. The band name and album title appearing on the large black horizontal band that covers the top tier of the side with Rankine. Flipside this black band is placed vertically to the right of McKenzie; the album title remains horizontal, stopping short of the singer's face. Boths pics are rather fetching; McKenzie with a sullen, bored-to-tears look whereas Rankine has what appears to be the onset of a wry smile.
The back sleeve is also upside down. Both sides might have been intended as the front cover though I've really no idea if this was indeed the case. Besides this, the album cover has no track listing; this is printed on the inner sleeve along with the production, sleeve design, and photography credits. For the anecdote; the insert lists the tracks in the correct order but on the wrong sides.

Original recording, Morgan Studios, London 1980.
Re-recording and Remixing: Basing Street & Odyssey Studios, London 1982
Remixed and Produced by Associates / Mark Arthurworrey
Sleeve is credited to Billy McKenzie, Alan MacDonald and Baillie Walsh.

Fiction Records FIXD5
Fiction Records 2383 585

A third version: a mix of the original and the remix version, with about half the tracks from the original album and the rest from the remix one, was also released in 1983.
Reissued as a mid-price album with the same cover as the remix version but with tracks listed on the back sleeve. Once again the tracks are in the correct order but on the wrong sides.

Fiction SPELP 33

Remixed versions of "A Matter of Gender" and "A" were also released as singles in 1982.

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