Frankie Goes to Hollywood Album: “Relax: Remixes, Pt. 2 [CD]”

Right on schedule, somebody remixed "Relax" yet again and the results are pretty damn sexy, which is appropriate given the song's subject matter. The track listing is as follows:

1. Peter Rauhofer's Doomsday Radio Mix. Rauhofer is a world class DJ who used to do a lot of remixing under the moniker Club 69. This mix is an edit of the club mix and just distills the basic elements of that down to a radio-friendly 4.5 minutes.

2. Peter Rauhofer's Doomsday Club Mix. This is around 10 minutes of throbbing, banging, club-ready Frankie. Rauhofer uses a great many of the lyrics from the original mix and the effect of the entire mix is fantastically dark and sexy. To make it club compatible for 2001, things are speeded up a bit but not obnoxiously so. The production is spare but isn't lacking at all.

3. Saeed & Palash Addictive Journey. This mix is a little more straight-ahead dance. Lyrical use is minimal and there are elements of trance. Clocks in at nearly eleven minutes

4. Cold Cut Remix. This mix is amusing because it embellishes the original lyrics with snippets of spoken word type stuff that pertains to not relaxing. There's scratching, vocoder robot stuff and big bombastic drum noise. It definitely has the feel of an eighties era production. Not blatantly danceable.

5. Peter Rauhofer's Doomsday Dub. You know what a dub is, right? Rauhofer strips out most of the vocals and leaves you with the dark, subversive beats of the club mix (track 2). There's enough of the original in the song that you'll know what you're listening to.

6. Original New York 12" Mix. Score! Anytime a remix CD is created for an old song like this it only makes sense that the best known original remix be included and that's what this is. This one is just like the original single but has been stretched out to a more dance friendly length which is what eighties mixes are all about. If nothing else, it will let you see how far the art of the remix has travelled.

7. Original Radio Mix. Bless the record company for this inclusion. Here you have the original 3.5 minutes of Trevor Horn -produced eighties era pop, a song that spawned a sizable degree of hysteria in the UK and had new wavers and the like in America dancing along as well. Frankie say relax.

Come!