Propaganda ‎– Wishful Thinking

A mostly instrumental, completely unnecessary collection of "hard" remixes and meandering reprises for the die-hard fans of Propaganda. I do appreciate ZTT's then-radical impulse to keep reworking as much of their catalog as possible, but nothing here is memorable on its own; it's all just "reminders" of the better versions on the album A Secret Wish. Unintentionally, it's also a reminder that Propaganda only really had enough material for 3 high-quality singles, and there were already quite enough versions of those songs to choose from.

Remix albums can be hit or miss affairs, more often miss than hit. The original release of this album in 1985 was a commercial miss, although in the true ZTT style of contradiction, the material contained within was a hit with the fans of it’s authors. Paul Morley & Bob Kraushaar deconstructed Propaganda’s debut parent album “A Secret Wish”, then reconstructed, remixed, re-edited and reshaped it into the rebellious, all dancing “Wishful Thinking”. At the time the group were one the first acts to put out an entire remix album, and perhaps the first to release one with all exclusive mixes.

For almost 27 years Action Series number 20 has remained untouched, until now. With a new running time of 74 minutes and 30 seconds, this new expanded edition becomes number 23 in the ZTT/Salvo Element Series and features no less than 5 previously unreleased tracks from the archives. This latest addition to the series does not disappoint the listener as a lot of thought, effort and time have been put into making the additional “Deviations” tracks blend perfectly with the original “Disturbdances”.

Including additional tracks to any album can be tricky at the best of times as quite often they become nothing more than fillers, however this is a fine example of getting it right and actually improving a release rather than reducing the impact of a well loved classic. Thankfully only one disc is included, a second would have alienated the listener and disrupted the perfect balance of the material. However well intentioned the 2002 “Outside World” remix compilation album may have been, it never had the same impact, elegance or perfection that “Wishful Thinking” has, and now all of those qualities have been given a new lease of life.