Billy MacKenzie and Steve Aungle - Return to Love

  by John Clarkson

published: 26 / 7 / 2010

Label: Destination Pop
Format: 7"

intro

Celestial-sounding and previously unreleased 1995 demo by former Associates singer Billy MacKenzie from new Berlin-based vinyl only label Destination Pop

In 1994 Gilbert Blecken, a German music writer and journalist, flew from Berlin to Scotland to interview the former Associates singer Billy MacKenzie. It was a revealing interview in which the outwardly flamboyant Mackenzie for one of the first times in public openly showed signs of the depression, which would contribute towards his suicide a few weeks short of his fortieth birthday in January 1997. Blecken retired from music writing at the end of the last year and there is a karmic symmetry that the first concurrent release of his new vinyl only Destination Pop label (along with Action Biker’s ‘Hesperian Puisto’), should now be an unreleased demo of a 1995 MacKenzie number, ‘Return To Love’. A fuller and somewhat different version of ‘Return To Love’ has appeared on 2001’s ‘Eurocentric’, one of the five MacKenzie solo collections and albums that have been mastered and appeared posthumously since his death. On this original version, MacKenzie’s celestial vocals are both swooning and delicate. He is backed by shimmering waves of Giorgio Moroder-style electronic beats from Steve Aungle, his main musical partner of the 90’s. The B side, ‘The Soul That Sighs’, the same version of which appeared on ‘Eurocentric’, is darker and more forlorn, dealing in comparison to ‘Return To Love’ with the aftermath of a relationship rather than its beginning. It has again a similar sense of glistening beauty. The packaging of ‘Return To Love’ is splendid. It has been pressed on heavy vinyl and features a meticulously designed and obviously loving created cover from German artist Klaus Callas which appears on thick card. One gets the impression that former fashion designer MacKenzie, who always put emphasis on aesthetic values, would have liked this release a lot. For Billy MacKenzie fans this is an essential purchase. Copies of ‘Return To Love’ are limited to just five hundred and should sell fast. More information can be found at www.destinationpop.wordpress.com

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