This 1988 CD EP release is something of a curio as it contains two mixes by Visage that have for whatever reason been rather forgotten about in the digital age. Not that you would know from the sleeve design, as it doesn’t provide any details on the specific mixes included. But these two mixes of interest are the original extended 12” mix of ‘Fade To Grey’ and the ‘Dance Dub’ mix of ‘Beat Boy’.
This original 12” mix of ‘Fade To Grey’ first emerged not on the 1980 UK 12” single but on the West German 12” single release. (The UK 12” single featured the same single edit as the 7” mix). The West German 12” release (Polydor 2141 318) – see discos.com entry – featured an extended mix of ‘Fade To Grey’, though its fair to say that this 12” extended mix has since been eclipsed and replaced as seemingly the ‘definitive’ 12” mix of the song by the later ‘Dance Mix’ version that first appeared on the US ‘Visage’ Mini-Album (Polydor, PX-1-501) released in July 1981, as featured in a previous post. For example, on many various artists compilation CDs in recent decades whenever there is a 12″ or extended mix of ‘Fade To Grey’ it is almost always the ‘Dance Mix’, or, even more confusingly, a slightly shorter edit of this ‘Dance Mix’. (See ‘Postscript’ below for more detail on this.) The most recent example of this is from Rusty Egan’s 4-disc ‘Rusty Egan Presents Blitzed!’ collection (view the discogs.com entry), which features the full-length ‘Dance Mix’ version of ‘Fade To Grey’ in all its glory – it truly is a superb mix.
Meantime, the ‘original’ 12″ mix as featured on this CD single is quite a different affair. It lacks the downright irresistible straight-ahead funkiness of the Dance Mix and has in the past come in for the occasional comment that its basically just the single mix repeated twice.
