Altered Images - Bite ...Plus [Expanded Reissue] (2004)

2004 reissue of the Scottish new wavers' 1983 album produced by Tony Visconti, features 14 tracks including 6 bonus tracks, 'Surprise Me', 'I Don't Want To Know', 'Last Goodbye', 'Bring Me Closer' (Dance Mix), 'Don't Talk To Me About Love' (Extended Version), & 'Love To Stay' (Dance Mix). Includes 12-page booklet with extensive updated liner notes & photos.

Bite originally released in 1983 saw Altered Images progress from their usual bubblegum pop into a more sophisticated realm of adult orientated orch-pop incorporating strings and diverse stylistic nuances. Not that this meant they still were,nt fun to listen to or lost their instinctive knack for a good melody, indeed Bite includes the most sumptuous pop moments of their career.

Which makes it a tremendous shame that this expanded version is,nt re-mastered like the Japanese release and more importantly takes gratuitous liberties with the versions off the original vinyl version. "Another Lost Look" is the live version originally on the B-side of "Love To Stay". Now i would,nt mind that as an extra track but to include at the exclusion of the original album version is just folly. Not that that's the end of it either. "Change Of Heart" is edited by a man with a chainsaw and ADS. The "Don,t Talk To me About Love" 12" mix is also truncated which makes you wonder why they bothered including it at all and the "Love To Stay" "Dance mix" is in fact the original LP version so why not just put it there like it was in the first place?

All in all a complete arse of a job has been made of this CD version. What is in no dispute however bad a job has been made is that this is a magnificent pop album. However bad the production , however bad the master tapes ( And on "I Don,t Want To Know"it,s truly appalling, like the engineer took the title literally ) every song on here is an effulgent outbreak of pop mastery with the divine Clare Grogan( A pop star who knocks spots of every contemporary pop performer)The keyboards on "Change of Heart" may sound like they were bought from a pound shop and the melody remind me of the Chuckle Brothers theme but the song , especially the chorus , is just the essence of pop bottled in ultra-concentrated form . "Don,t Talk To Me About Love" is a sultry gem and "Thinking About You" is just lugubriously magnificent. "Bring Me Closer" has an infectious dance floor groove and to call "Now That You,re Here" and "Stand So Quiet" as "simply dreadful" as a fellow reviewer has on this very page makes me question his sanity.

The truth is, Bite is one of the great pop albums of the much maligned 80,s and one of the best British pop albums ever. A consummate continuous masterpiece of pristine mellifluous magnificence. It deserves better than this re-issue though.....much better and it,s for that reason that this gets only four stars rather than the resounding five the music deserves