We’ve reached the end of 1992 in our look back at Clubscene Records releases. ’92 was the first full year of official releases from the label and there are a couple of very notable tracks from one particular band I haven’t mentioned yet.
The Time Frequency were, I believe, at one point signed to Clubscene and part of Bill Grainger Management, eg he would represent them for live event bookings. I’ve no inside knowledge of the business and no wish to mislead or upset anyone so please correct me if anything I say here is incorrect.
I think, ‘Real Love’ was recorded while TTF were signed to Clubscene but quickly licensed to another label and released UK (and perhaps worldwide) on Jive Records. This explains why it does not feature a Clubscene catalogue number but has the Clubscene logo on it. And so my educated guess is that ‘Real Love’ would have been Clubscene catalogue number CSRT002 and the follow up EP which featured ‘New Emotion’ as the lead track would have been CSRT007.
I’ve decided to include both songs in my reviews here because they are so iconic and I like them so much I feel it would be wrong not to. And although they don’t seem to carry Clubscene catalogue numbers the CD singles I have for both releases do carry the Clubscene logo.
I think it’s fair to say the success of these tracks helped support the early years of the label. ‘Real Love’ is just a magnificent dance track. It finally achieved the wider recognition it deserved with the ’93 re-release would go on to reach Number 8 in the UK wide Official Charts. It was – and still is – a monster track that had a huge impact in Scotland. TTF became the first real stars of the rave scene here and were a must book at every major event or club night. Mary Kiani’s vocals and Jon Campbell’s vision and production, as well as the elements of design, costumes; everything just worked to perfection. I’d also like to mention the 2002 remix which strikes me as a really good update of the track and perhaps what would have been produced originally had bigger budgets bene available and technology permitted.
There would of course be an inevitable backlash with cynics sniping about ‘commercialisation’ etc but I’m not going to get into that here. This blog is about the music and ‘Real Love’ is a stunner. The Marc Smith remix which featured on this 92 original release is one of my all time favourite dance tracks. ‘Schizoid – Recorded Live at Awesome 101’ is a slice of brilliance and a perfect response to anyone who might suggest TTF were too ‘pop’.
The standards of the production are incredibly high and ‘Real Love’ holds its own among any dance track, from any artists, from any era. It was a landmark moment for the scene and well over 30 years on remains, I think, a real benchmark that other tracks are judged against.
There’s a purity and an energy to this music and like the other 2 tracks in the ‘Big 3’ from this first year of Clubscene Records (Obsession and Energy Rush), ‘Real Love’ perfectly captures what these days and nights were all about. Give it a listen today – it hasn’t aged a bit.