Comments: Michael Thomas
The DM guru at a local store said that he had a hard time finding it. Judging by the quality of it (actually, it has no quality. It's so bad that you can't mention it in the same sentence as the word "quality") I would hope that it continues to be hard to find and nobody buys it. God, it's awful.
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I found the SOFAD remix album a couple of days ago, and heedless of all warnings, I bought it. In retrospect, I should have listened to the warnings. It really is bad. The crapiness isn't in the sound quality, though, it's in the remix quality. The sound quality is actually not all that bad.
In most cases they just took a tape loop with some music on it (either their own drum beat or something from the song) and played random lyrics from the song at various times. Often, the tape loop goes on and you sit there hoping for something different.
In all, the whole thing is repetitive, generic, very poorly done, and painful to the ears. These aren't even amusingly bad remixes, as Love in Itself 4 and the It's Called a Heart (slow mix) are. They are just plain rotten. My advice is that unless you're a die-hard must-have everything collector, don't get it. If, however, you do need to have everything then you'll ignore this warning anyway and do what you want. (like I did.
Songs of Faith And Devotion -- Remix
I Feel You
There's a small voice that keeps repeating either Depeche Mode or Fishbone in the beginning. Then it cuts into the normal beat of IFY (the part just after the car squealing in the original) and a sample of Dave
singing "Babylon" is repeated. Every now and then another line from the song is put in. The normal beat is repeated throughout the song. It ends with the little voice repeating its phrase. Very generic.
Walking In My Shoes
Again, they took one part of the music and repeated it throughout the song. Samples of the lyrics are played throughout the mix. Again, very generic.
Condemnation
This time they took a different approach to remixing the song. It sounds as if they just took the song and added a simple repetitive drum beat to it. That's it. Note that the length of both the remix and original song are the same.
Mercy In You
This is another one of the IFY put-the-music-on-a-tape-loop-and-sample-the- lyrics type remixes. One note: On this type of remix they don't just sample the lyrics, but the music that is in the background of the lyrics, too. Apparently, they just used a tape loop and a sampler, and didn't bother trying to separate the music from the vocals when they sampled it. The result is a very bad sounding combination. Again, the remix and original song have the same length.
Judas
The beat repeated in this mix is the beat to Get Right With Me. There's also what sounds like the uilleann pipes part of the beginning of Judas put on the tape loop. I'm not positive on that one, though. The lyric are again sampled and played at random points throughout the mix.
In Your Room
The vocals on this mix are awful. They go from quiet to normal as if the tape that it was being played from was worn out. For this mix, they replace the drum beat with a different-sounding drum and added a clicking sound that is very similar to a clock ticking quickly. The setup of the mix is similar to the original song, though, in that they didn't just sample the lyrics. As far as I can tell, they used the original song, but just replaced/altered the drum beat. The length of the remix and original song are almost identical.
Get Right With Me
What do you get when you pass a great song through a high pass filter and add your own drum beat? Crap. I'm not joking when I say that it sounds like they did just this. The result is that Dave's voice sounds very tinny, as do the choir singers and music. At least they had the sense to add their own drum beat, I guess.
Rush
There is a simple drum beat (and more of the fast clock ticking) in this one. It's basically the loop-and-sampled-lyrics type of mix. They tend to overplay the part where Dave sings "open your sensitive mouth, hold out your delicate arms". The mix will have about 5 seconds of the tape loop, then about 5 seconds of the loop+lyrics. This is repeated throughout the song.
One Caress
I have absolutely no idea where they got the music(?) for this one. It definitely did _not_ come from DM. Einsturzende Neubauten, maybe, but not DM. As usual, they take samples of the vocals and play them a random times throughout the song(?).
Higher Love
The drum beat is on a tape loop, and they alternate between playing a random Higher Love (DM) lyric and a Higher Love (Steve Winwood) lyric. The Steve Winwood lyrics is just the part in the song that goes "bring me a higher love". Occasionally they will combine two Dave vocals: either "higher love" with another line from the song, or "Oooooh" and another line from the song.