The band started in '79 as a punk band and went through various changes until 1981 when they reformed again with members being John Mulligan, Dave (De) Harris, Dik Davis and Martin Recchi.
This period was a complete change of direction musically and led to the album known as 'Fabrique'. The band signed an international recording contract with Arista Records in 1982 and decided on Zeus B Held to be their producer, a well known Kraut Rock musician / underground dance producer famed at the time for his work with Gina X. The album became a European product being written and recorded in Koln, Paris and London over a six month period.
On release it went straight in at No. 10 in the British charts, by this time Fashion had started touring the album in Europe and gigs in the USA. On return to the UK Dave Harris left the band and Fabrique became a collectors item.
Only through social media did we realise that there was a large fan base out there, still playing the album and cassette. The cassette had the full album on the A side and dance mixes of tracks on the B side. This was pretty well a first.
So this 2019 release 'Fabrique Deluxe' will be a one-off, every single track and version that was recorded for the Fabrique album has been digitized and split over 3 CDs, the 4th CD being the tracks from Dave and Zeus's Birmingham gig on September 24th, 2019. These are 7 of the original Fabrique tracks re-edited into extended Dance mixes, all containing new overdubs and a taste into what Fabrique Global might sound like.
Hopefully, this will be the end of Fabrique as far as releases go, the is no more...
Face 01:
These are the 10 major tracks that made up the album such as 01.’Move On’ 02.’Love Shadow’ 03.’Streetplayer’. These were rough demos when we started recording. We had played them on a couple of gigs along with 3 or 4 other tracks that didn’t make the final cut, in fact they didn’t even get the 24 track treatment, ‘Rio’, ‘Don’t Touch My T.bird’, ‘Midnight in Tokyo’. They wouldn’t have stood the test of time…Too New Romantic (we didn’t want any of that). The album was recorded in various studios in different locations, being London, Köln (first demoing of tracks) then on to Versailles Paris, (where we spent the most time getting the tracks into shape) and I took some time to write some new numbers… Probably the best studio I have ever been locked in to. 04. ‘Dressed to Kill’, Lyrically very typical for the 80’s - guys going out to a club.. 05. ‘You Only Left Your Picture’, was the last dance of the night - a bump and grind with your partner track. 06. ‘Something In Your picture’. A beautiful love song, the difference being with this track and ‘You Only Left Your Picture’ was it wasn’t just a guitar band ballad, and with Zeus’s help, we managed to create a distinctive sound using the desk as an instrument. This was one of the 1st times I worked with Tim Palmer - I wanted to do a large multi-track vocal that we could fly into the track so the two of us went into Studio One ‘Utopia’ and spent a few good hours creating it whilst Zeus worked on in the re-mix room. 07. ‘It's Alright’. I don’t really remember what inspired this number apart from my love for 70’s funk, but listening to it I can hear a great battle between myself on Bass Gtr and Zeus on Clavinet. I guess we both had a feeling for that style of music, and it worked. 08. ‘White Stuff’. This number and ‘Something In Your picture’ was co-written between myself and Zeus. ‘White Stuff’ was written totally in Utopia which was the final part of the recording/ mixing sessions, so It was one of those, “lets go into studio one and put something down.” A lot of things happened that way, we were very lucky that we had a little extra budget to use the studio.. 09. ‘Do You Wanna Make Love’. Was created as a sexy slow groove, to balance out slow numbers against fast so we had a nice balance. 10. ‘Slow Blue’ When I joined Fashion, my father was already quite ill, and at that time had convinced me to join the band, ”don’t ever look back and think, I wish I had done that”. I took his advice, he passed away soon afterward. So ‘Slow Blue’ is dedicated to my Father, who taught me a lot in life and will always be remembered.
Face 02: and Face 03: These tracks are basically extended mixes from the Album, and the 7” and 12” records that were released afterwards.
We started doing extended mixes, by splicing various takes from the original tracks and playing extra instruments and making most use of the mixing desk for FX. Zeus had a good feel for this and soon they became tunes in their own right as opposed to just splicing end choruses on etc. to make a longer Dance Mix. This gave people a great interest in the cassette version of ‘Fabrique’ as the record company agreed to put the album on the A-side and the Extended mixes (called the dub mixes) on the B side. In the time since the original release, Face 03: 08. ‘Let's Play Dirty’ has been added. This was written as a B Side to ‘Love Shadow’. other lesser know recordings are: Face: 03: 09 ‘Love Shadow (US 12” Promo Mix)’ Face: 03 10 ‘Something In Your Picture (Test Pressing Mix)’
The 4th CD is the tracks from Dave and Zeus's Birmingham gig on September 24th, 2019. These are 7 of the original Fabrique tracks re-edited into extended Dance mixes, all containing new overdubs and a taste into what Fabrique Global might sound like.
Hopefully, this will be the end of Fabrique as far as releases go, the is no more...
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