‘Twice As Nice’ is the follow-up companion to last year’s ‘Cool As Ice’ and carries more or less the same roster of artists who collectively favoured the attentions of Be Music: New Order’s publishing company/production and mixing team. As crucial in the long-term development of dance music per se, the disc includes additional production numbers from Dojo (Donald Johnson from A Certain Ratio), Mark Kamins (from Madonna to The Beastie Boys) and Arthur Baker Productions.
It’s a genuine curate’s egg, but even the odd duffer can‘t detract from the overall quality and downright necessity of ‘Twice As Nice’. The accompanying sleeve-notes are superbly compiled and add to the belief that something extraordinary was being cooked up in Manchester between 1982 and 1986. The personnel who appear and the musical links they forged – both at the time and subsequently – are enough to fill about half a dozen of Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees. For example, Thick Pigeon included Carter Burwell who has gone on to write over 50 film scores including all of the Coen Brothers’ films. Or how about the fact that Madonna was going to give ‘Into The Groove’ to Cheyne as a follow up to ‘Call Me Mr Telephone’ until she decided to keep it for herself.
The advent of the sequencer is one of the main aural interests of this collection and its use in diverting the dance-floor’s attention away from disco and funk to electro-pop and eventually onto Acid to full House. With New Order’s early 1982 ‘Video 5-8-6’ you hear a definitive forerunner to ‘Blue Monday and on ‘Sakura’ the sequencer driven production by Bernard Sumner shows Blackpool’s Section 25 to be instrumental in the progression of Joy Division’s agitated post-punk to New Order’s smooth electronica.
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Quando Quango’s 1985 ‘Genius (Part2)’ is like a cross-over hit that never was between Art of Noise and Orbital. 52nd Street’s 1982 cut ‘Look Into My Eyes’ starts like a lost Oakenfold remix of some Happy Mondays track, sharing that laconic but hypnotic beat they used to great effect; the song quickly devolves into a disco-funk work-out but the initial influence is perceptible. Musically, Marcel King’s 1985 track ‘Keep On Dancing’ has some of the Euro-pop sensibilities of early Pet Shop Boys. And so on.
Not sure Anna Domino’s ‘Summer’ is a necessary resurrection other than to highlight the links being forged between the UK, US and European underground dance scene by virtue of its Arthur Baker production and release in the UK on Factory and in Belgian on Les Disques Du Crepescule. More significant as a snapshot in time of the melting pot is 52nd Street’s ‘Cool As Ice (Twice As Nice)’: recorded at Revolution Studios, Cheadle Hulme; produced by Dojo; synth programming by Bernard Sumner; saxophone by Mike Pickering; restructured by Jellybean; released on 12” by Factory Benelux. All in all, a fair summary of the musical cross-fertilization and restless experimentation of that time.
If you’re remotely interested in tracking the birth of House Music, Madchester and the importance of the punk ethic in Independent Music across all genres then ‘Twice As Nice’ is essential.
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