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Believe You Me | 
| Artist: Blancmange
Label: Edsel
Category: Music
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £7.98
You Save: £1.01 (11%)
New (20) Used (4) from £4.50
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 20022
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 740155102739
EAN: 0740155102739
ASIN: B001CKZTDA
Release Date: September 1, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Tracks:
| • | Lose Your Love | | • | What's Your Problem | | • | Paradise Is | | • | Why Don't They Leave Things Alone? | | • | 22339 | | • | Don't You Love It All | | • | Believe | | • | Lorraine's My Nurse | | • | Other Animals | | • | No Wonder They Never Made It Back! | | • | John | | • | Side Two | | • | Mixing On The Ceiling (Megamix) | | • | I Can See It (Why Don't They Leave Things Alone) (Extended) | | • | Scream Down The House |
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| Customer Reviews:
 Blancmange - Believe you me Remaster 2008 October 6, 2008
Blancmange - Believe you me (remaster)
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the third and final album from them (so far)...
this was a rather underappreciated album,
and rightly so... at times its brilliant,
'lose your love' is my favorite song from them, period.
and then you have sparse instrumentals, and forgetten
tracks...the whole second part of this album is
typical of that..
the first 7 tracks, including '22339', 'dont you love
it all', and 'believe' all show the quirky side of
blancmange...
unfortunately, this album has dated itself also..
So lets talk about specifics: for the album
I'm listening through altec-lansing speakers, and also through headphones
====================================================
1) well, the original cd was pretty well done, so its hard
to improve on that sound, but in most cases it is an
adequate job of remastering them..
2) listen to 'whats your problem', and you'll hear a lot
of high and lows reproduced well
3) there's a lot of quiet tracks for the album,
'john', 'lorraines my nurse', no distortion, clear
and clean sounding..
4) overall tracks are mostly major click free/no skips with
a few variations in tracks .. 22339 is longer, and lose your
love is a single version and not the album track though..
The bonus tracks:
===================================================
1) this is where the remaster fails, by misnaming a track
(mixing on the ceiling), and not including the main remix
from 'lose your love'....
2) side 2 (extended) is basically 22339 with 30 more secondsa
added to it...and the wrong time is printed on the back cover
3) mixing on the ceiling is actually another techno
remix of 'living on the ceiling', not sure of its origins
4)i can see it, is the one excellent track that they did
include
5) scream down the house is a b-side that concludes
these disappoint track selections..
===================================================
once again, i'm disappointed in the bonus track
selections, with major errors of omissions, wrong
tracks, mislabelling ..
the sound quality for all the tracks are fine though,
as a small consolation..
again, i'm not sure of the appeal of this to non-blancmange
fans....some new wave,80's collectors would be interested
to..
if you have all the b-sides, and pick up the excellent
'lose your love' 12" (along with the 10min version, there
exists a 6min edit)....you will be better off.
overall, the album is not that strong, and the bonus
tracks don't add much value to them either..
later
-1
 Different versions to the original CD? September 20, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
There's not much to add to the previous excellent review by 'Eric Generic "enigma"', apart from some details that may be of interest to anyone who has the original CD and is in two minds about whether to get this version. As Eric said, the somewhat dismissive sleeve notes also fail anywhere to mention the differences or reasons why some of these tracks are different to the original album and CD release. So, I shall tell you what they are.
First up, 'Lose Your Love' has a slightly different extended intro. '22339' was 5"23 on the original CD, here it's in it's full 7"01 version. 'Other Animals' also has a longer, different intro (the original coming in at 4"19, this version at 4"33). And finally, 'John' has a longer fade out.
And yes, the original 7" remix of 'I Can See It' should have been included. As it is, it's only so far available on the Connoisseur Collection 'Best Of' (the one with the yellow sleeve). Like the dodgy excuse for not including 'Running Thin' and 'I Would' on 'Happy Families', Edsel really should have taken a little bit more time and got both the 'Happy Families' and 'Believe You Me' re-releases to the same standard as 'Mange Tout' (which has everything). Hence 4 stars and not 5.
No Wonder They Never Made It Back September 8, 2008
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
Blame "Live Aid". Synthesizer pop took a huge fall in the aftermath of July 1985's Global Jukebox; some managed to cling on by appropriating their sounds for an American audience (Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, OMD, Tears For Fears), some reinvented themselves as straight rock propositions and promptly imploded (Ultravox), while Blancmange....well, whatever DID happen to them?
Having reached the giddy heights of #8 with their 1984 album Mange Tout, along with a succession of Top 40 entries that saw them become shoe-in chart regulars with every release, by the start of 1986 they'd have split amid commercial failure of quite dramatic proportions with this October 1985 long-player.
The typically extensive sleevenotes for this Edsel release (one in a simultaneously-issued series of three that includes the duo's other two albums) are rather down on Blancmange's third opus. There's a continual suggestion that everything had run its course, the natural order of pop had decreed their time was over. Perhaps.
There's a lot to be said that the timing of its release played a part in its downfall; Blancmange were simply men out of time in the landscape of late 1985, an era when the U2s, Dire Straits, and Queens had rearranged the furniture and paved the way for the Top 40 to be populated by Steve Winwoods, Peter Gabriels and Robert Palmers, rather than the floppy haired and quirky keyboard acts of just a year or two earlier.
Regardless of all this, Believe You Me is an excellent album that very nearly stands up to the quality of its two predecessors. There is no tailing off in quality, as with some career-stalling efforts by their peers of the time. "22339" and "John" may sound like the B-sides they actually were, but elsewhere the standard is uniformly high. Maybe the biggest problem with "What's Your Problem" (chosen as the lead single, and a relative flop) is it sounded too much like "Don't Tell Me" from Mange Tout, and raised the suspicion - unfounded - that the band were becoming formulaic. "Don't You Love It All" does seem like a deliberate attempt to write a Blancmange hit single, but it was never given the chance. Instead, "Lose Your Love" got the nod, and lost Blancmange their 100% record of reaching the UK Top 75 with each single release. Unfairly so, of course.
Strangely, the next (and, sadly, last) we would hear of them would be in early 1986 courtesy of a single called "I Can See It". This was a nicely beefed up re-recording of the Believe You Me track "Why Don't They Leave Things Alone". Most compilations of Blancmange's career - and there have been many (more than their total studio ouptut in fact) - omit this track, either in its original or 7" incarnation. So, this Edsel reissue would have been the perfect opportunity to include the single mix of "I Can See It". But it's not here. Only the extended 12" remix makes the CD; a very odd decision, but perhaps due to legal reasons?
Overall, there's not quite the same sense of affection and care towards Believe You Me as the other Edsel packages. In addition to the slightly dismissive tone of the sleevenotes, there are a couple of careless factual errors (the album peaked at #54, not #52, while the Luscombe offshoot West India Company dated back to 1984, not 1987). The design is starker, too, and the whole thing just feels less extensively realised than Happy Families or Mange Tout's treatment.
Five stars for the music, four stars for the packaging, three stars for the sleevenotes.
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