Zance review in Melody Maker (28/05/94)

ZANCE
A DECADE OF DANCE FROM ZTT
ZTT 4509-96055-2
11 tks/76 mins/FP
DO you Rally give a flying A&R man what lavel a band is signed to?  Me neither.
But ZTT - like Factory, Postcard, 4AD, Warp and very few others - are the 
exception that prove the rule.
  Or at least they were.  ZTT was set up in 1983 by one extravagantly ambitious
pop journalist (Paul Morley), one ambitiously extravagant producer (Trevor
Horn) and a sharp administrator (Jill Sinclair).  By 1984, they had a brilliant
weird-normal German foursome called Propaganda ("Abba on acid"), they could 
boast the biggest pop sensation since The Beatles - Frankie Goes To Hollywood -
and they were Number One in the US dance charts with "Beatbox" by The Art Of
Noise.
  "Zance" features dance remixes of some of ZTT's finest moments, but this 
isn't dance music as Morley and Horn perceived it.  This is a collection of 
once-breathtakingly inventive pieced of music subjected to a miserably 
uninspired series of extensions and extrapolations - take an embarrassed bow,
Ollie J, Brothers In Rhythm, Fluke and Richard Lowe - who understand the term
"Remix" to mean "smooth away every lovely idiosyncratic curlicue and pad out
with relentlessly banal drum patterns".  But but but!  Those smashing people
at Warner Brothers have this week seen fit to re-issue on CD the best ZTT LPs
in all their original glory.  And so, may I present, in no particular order -
ta daaa! - ZTT's real greatest hits: "Everything Could Be So Perfect..." by
Anne Pigalle, the post punk John Cage; Frankie's "Welcome To The Pleasure Dome"
and "Liverpool", the first and last words in pop techno bombast; the garish 
gorgeous collision between Kraftwerk and Buck's Fizz that is Propaganda's "A
Secret Wish", (an MM Album of the Year in 1985); and The Art Of Noise's "Daft",
one hour of Fairlight bleeps, squiggles, beats, thunder, clatter, bells, 
chatter, screams, drones, loops, samples, headaches (the still painful "Flesh
in Armour" and heartache (the still perfect "Moments in Love").
  Of course, ZTT lost its dazzling sense of adventure the day Paul Morley 
walked out, hence Seal, Honky and Shades Of Rhythm.  Shoulda-been ZTT acts?
Bjork, Pulp, The Shamen.
  Oh well. Maybe in the next life.
PAUL LESTER