B-Movie - The Platinum Collection (Warner) By Steve Rudd

Cast your hazy minds back to the glory days of the Eighties, and the Synth-Pop Brit bands that were scaling the charts, and does the band name B-Movie ring any bells? It might do for a few people, but this band isn't as much of a household name as it deserves to be, given the quality of the music. This 15-track retrospective is comprised of ten of the band's best tunes, along with a previously unreleased version of the Polar Opposites song, plus four epic remixes.

The band actually hailed from Mansfield, and was fronted by Steve Hovington, with the songs being Synth-dependent numbers that couldn't really have been produced in any other decade than the Eighties, when this type of music was all the rage in the wake of far more famous and commercially successful bands such as the Human League, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode.

As with the majority of the tunes presented in this collection, all of which are from 1984 or '85, lead on from the example set by the opening track in Letter From Afar, which is euphorically upbeat and brimming with awesome melodies set to Steve's distinctive crooning. Forever Running is another classic anthem, before the acoustic guitar-propelled splendour of their Heart Of Gold hits the right note.

Just An Echo is one of the most haunting cuts, given the tender piano and guitar melodies that play off one another to emotion-rousing effect, while some people might just be able to hear the echoes of the influence that Ultravox had on Synth-based Pop music in the early Eighties come the uber-cool Switch On Switch Off.

Fans of Gary Numan might also be partial to the music of this band, especially when some of the songs are deliciously dark and entrancing, as Arctic Summer proves to be, coming complete with the ominous lyric 'Like malaria she flows through me. ' So, while B-Movie aren't exactly one of the best known bands to have been making music back in the Eighties, this A-rated collection of their songs at least ensures that their tragically under-rated music does indeed live on - to hopefully prosper in the long run.

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