Love and a Million Other Things - Claudia Brücken Album Review

Claudia Brücken

Album Review

I suppose the 90s won't be remembered for much, certainly not past the middle of the decade, but the first five years saw 'Baggy', 'jungle', 'rave', 'Britpop' and 'drum n bass' whizz past a few marketing moguls at major-labels with mixed results.

Those artists that were caught in the middle, the ones that didn't bow to public, peer or PR pressure, soldiered on in their own little world. Reps dumped their singles on chart-return shop-counters like unwanted kittens and, I have to say, Propaganda's ex-singer Claudia Brucken fell foul of that practice on several occasions. For example, I managed to buy every format of the single "Kiss Like Ether" for the total sum of £2 - that's about 30p a format. How times have changed?

Cherry Red, rather than ZTT or Island (the original label), has gleaned the rights to Brucken's debut, and subsequently only, solo album-project and, on the whole, has achieved a decent reissue without too many surprises.

Oddly, this album sounds more dated than the recent reissue of Propaganda's "A Secret Wish" (curated by the same man, Ian Peel), yet there are many jewels within its box and much of it is worthy of a revisit.

The singles "Kiss Like Ether" and "Absolut(E)" are all present and correct in numerous versions (disc 2 is basically B-sides and reworks), mixes that wander through the interpretive minds of chuggy-beatmeister Pascal Gabriel and Mark Saunders without adding a great deal. Only the rather sparkly extended 'Earth Mood Magic In A Present Tense' refix of "...Ether" works beyond predictability.

The real winners across the two discs are the relatively unfamiliar songs - "I Dream" is quite simply one of Brucken's best songs that, in its previous incarnation, never deserved to be relegated to a b-side (of "Ether") and should have been a single (with the odd tweak or two). Whatever, both the extended and radio mixes are present here, as well as the other half-decent flip-track, "Whisper".

The main album itself is a mixed bag of pretentious yet engaging lyrics, chilled-out ambi-beats, wiggly synths and earnest pop melancholia that drew from Brucken's legacy with Propaganda and her future collaborator Paul Humphreys (OMD). "Surprise" is easily the best track across the double-set, a fact that her then-record label overlooked for that elusive third single that might have been 'the hit'.

Overall, this is a thoroughly worthy reissue that succeeds in piecing together the chequered past of one of ZTT's enigmatic and often berated artists, previously and cruelly resigned to the markdown bins in record stores.

Paul Pledger