Factory Benelux Greatest Hits Review

BENELUX INTERIORS

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Factory Benelux Greatest Hits 

(Factory Benelux)

I'M TRYING not to condemn this package out of hand, but it’s hard to be happy with it. It’s intended as a bargain bucket for the year’s six Benelux singles and seems an honest gift, a reasonable set, a lively parcel. But as an album it lacks either intrigue and diversity (it takes no chances) or a solid, fluent consistency; neither full of theme or following fun: the worst of both worlds. We can expect (DEMAND!) more from all of these (Quando Quango, 52nd Street, ACR, Cabaret Voltaire, The Wake and Stockholm Monsters).

The hottest ‘hit' here is 52nd Street with the sleek, fleet class of ‘Cool As Ice’. With a crystal-sharp grace and crisp precision, ‘Cool As Ice’ shows Quando, ACR and Voltaire the door in no uncertain terms. It shifts and shimmers, glides off with the prize, twice as nice as the others.

Against such breezy ease and swiftness, Quando’s ’Love Tempo’ is a mild, mundane, unforgivably plain pleasure. ACR’s ’Guess Who’ is clumsy, cumbersome, careless and the Scabs’ ’Yashar' a polite, perfunctory affair. Quando should never allow the gorgeous Connie Rietveld to be absent again. ACR get caught shifting from terse tactlessness toward their recent slick shit. A new version, should you care, sounding weary and decidedly heavy-footed, there was a day when ACR meant something. I would say: buy ‘Sextet’. Typically too, the once-heralded, long-awaited Robie remix of ' ‘Yashar’ is crying out for dramatic impact, bold affront, some mixing tricks. It gets touched up, teased toward life but falls to seize each moment and make it of vital excitement.

Just as the mood and pace are set, The Wake & Monsters pop up like the inevitable party poopers. Any idiot can blandly tag the Wake as second-Division doom-sters. But whilst they can’t be blamed for finding life miserable (who wouldn’t!), ‘Something Outside’ is half-hearted rather than vulnerable. Finally, the Stockholm Monsters kills off any chance this had of being a party piece. As ever, a torrid, rambling harsh hurt, ’Miss Moonlight’ is lost under appalling production. James would laugh at them.

The fact, or fault it: most of these suffer from a strangely stilted European clinicism. The clap-trap traps the heart of the tune, snuffing out any dark edges. In its way, it’s ‘Interesting’, ‘adequate', very ‘reasonable’ (dull things like that), but it’s grudging praise. We have the right to be disappointed: Benelux should be worth much more than this. ‘Greatest Hits' should be put in its place: No-one here is daring to be DARING.

Jim Shelley