Pet Shop Boys – Left To My Own Devices

The orange/yellow jackets were Mark Farrow's response the cover photo which he apparently hated, lol!

PSB + Trevor Horn = pure genius. Fantastic mastering, pressing & artwork. One of the many high-points of PSB’s career.

Quality is a bit low.
I wonder if this was recorded from a cassette or some other lossy source.
A pity Parlophone has not released a boxset with all 12" and 12" promos on CD.

Excellent and fantastic work done by the dj and producer Brazilian DJ Marcello Mansur, better known as DJ Meme.

This is a new bootleg CD, you can find these on eBay, usually coming from the Russian Federation. Worthless.

Why Do The Pet Shop Boys always go back to "West End Girls"???? Play This at any Party """Left To My Own Devices [The Disco Mix]""" and Watch The Dance Floor... A PSB Classic. All I can Say is Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Grass Main Dance Floor (RHI) 1998 This Track went off like a "Frog in a Sock".

Size matters…

Pet Shop Boys wanted big. Trevor Horn, a man with a reputation for taking his time, had a big idea; to program the electronics quickly, and then hire an orchestra to play along to the sequencers, live. This big idea would mean that the big sound could be recorded in only a few days. Of course, the track took six months to complete.

Horn rented arranger Richard Niles to orchestrate the track. Niles knew all about big.

How big should the string section be?, queried Horn.
Oh, 20 strings should suffice for this orchestra, came the reply.
Horn retorted; doesn't 40 strings sound better?
No, answered Niles, 20 is good for this size of orchestra.
But, insisted Horn, doesn't it sound better to say "I have 40 strings in the studio", than only 20 strings?

Niles's flamboyant arrangement is heavily evident in both mixes on this CD. The seven inch mix is edited from the eight minute Introspective version. Although shorter, the sound is bigger than the album version, with bonus Bruce Woolley backing vocals and guitar by Stephen Lipson.

Horn's twelve incher stretches the whole out over 11 and a half minutes, and is an object lesson in how to make a hell of a lot go a hell of a lot further. The three minute intro is quite sublime; ricocheting beats, looping strings, swooping sequencers, with horns heralding the bassline. Somewhere around seven and a half minutes in, there's a 40 second breakdown that seemingly encomes a jet, a tractor engine, an army of snare drums and a racing car. Genius.

Left To My Own Devices includes the memorable line: "Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat". Horn had a big desire; to record Claude Debussy to a disco beat (something he eventually achieved with the Art Of Noise's 1999 album). So, the Pet Shop Boys decided to play along and record an acid house interlude for the track, based around Debussy-esque chords. A 40 minute jam was recorded live, with Neil, Chris and Trevor on keyboards and Lipson playing the mix desk. This experiment was not used on the a-side but, after editing and vocalizing, became The Sound Of The Atom Splitting instead. One of the oddest in the PSB catalogue, the track is very divisive.

When it comes to fusing brilliant compositions with satirical lyrics into an electronic combustion for dancefloor consumption, nobody tops the Pet Shop Boys. During their still-going 20 year career as the foremost in commercial electronica, the duo's status as the best of the best has never been rivalled. Like many of the greatest artists in history, they possess an immeditately recognisable sound but with the twist that they always manage to sound completely up-to-date with their current projects. The seemingly simple choice of adopting the asistance of the hottest contemporary producers enhances their status as extremely astute musicians with great ears for innovative sounds.

'Left to My Own Devices' is a track worthy of reference. This gem from 1988 utilised the studio wizadry of legendary producer Trevor Horne. Horne is notorious for spending months (and money) to complete a single record. His techniques were unorthodox, to say the least. For the string section of 'Devices', he opted to use a real orchestra to construct the piece then, in turn, used that piece as a base to construct the same notes on a synthesiser. Whether or not the final result is of greater effect really depends on your technical knowledge and your tolerance for infamous perfectionists. Overall, the entire track is a wonderful piece of "symphonic disco". It contains all the drama, energy and wit any typical PSB track should have.