List | P | Paul Hardcastle | 'The Definitive Paul Hardcastle' CD 1993

Track:	Name:	Time:
1.	You're The One For Me / A.M. / Daybreak	6:32
2.	Guilty	6:30
3.	King Tut	3:59
4.	Soundchaser	3:08
5.	Rainforest	4:22
6.	Eat Your Heart Out	5:53
7.	19	5:15
8.	Don't Waste My Time	5:37
9.	Foolin' Yourself	6:24
10.	The Wizard	4:48
11.	Walk In The Night	5:10
12.	40 Years	5:01
13.	Dark Star	4:24
14.	Rainforest '93	4:58
	Total	72:01

Comments:

If you remember Paul Hardcastle, you can probably figure out why I bought this album. I bought it for one song only: '19'. It's based around a hard drum machine beat (808?), with a newscaster type voice reading facts about the Vietnam war; "In world war two the average age of the combat soldier was twenty six. In Vietnam he was nineteen. I-I-I-I-In Vietnam he was nineteen. N-n-n-n-nineteen." Basically, it's a sample frenzy of these newscast type sound snippets, with some added female vocals singing key phrases and melodic synth pop-ish passes in between. It gives the track a rather sharp angle against the Vietnam war, with the mechanically stuttering voice and equally mechanical beat. Now, this may seem like an old idea today, but it hadn't been done before this. (And not very well since.)

Apart from this outstanding track, there's not really much on this album I particularly enjoy; it's mostly very American sounding 80:s funky synthpop, rather boring as such. Some instrumental parts remind me of Harold Faltermeyer at his worst (not counting his excellent pieces 'Axel F' or 'Fletch Theme', of course). By that I don't mean it's bad, just that I'm not too fond of it.

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