Album

Personnel: Mike DiScala (vocals); Darren Styles (keyboards).
Recording information: Mick's House, England.
Ultrabeat's The Album finally arrived over four years after the single "Pretty Green Eyes" had been a hit. The reason given for the delay was that bandmembers Mike DiScala, Ian Redman, and Chris Henry, all well-known remixers, DJs, and house music producers in the Liverpool area, wanted to write and record new tracks before the album came out. As for the music itself, well, once one had heard "Pretty Green Eyes," much of the album was just more of the same. Three more singles had been released in the interim -- "Feelin' Fine," "Elysium (I Go Crazy)," and "Better Than Life" -- house music tracks that all began as trance/chillout numbers straining to get started with electronic swirling sounds and repeated vocal refrains, until finally the beat crashed in and continued driving throughout. The All Around the World record label specialized in this type of Eurodisco/pop, and one wonders whether the album would have fared better had it not been subject to such a delay and instead had been released at the time of the big hit single. One of the tracks, "I'm Not in Love," was indeed the 10cc classic given a Hi-NRG treatment. ~ Sharon Mawer