ELECTRIC CAFE (United Arab Emirates, 1986?)
Thomsun Original, EN-1249


Back to the Emirates again for this, a surprisingly garish unofficial edition of Electric Cafe!


As seen before, I don't actually know anything about Thomsun Original, but it appears to be a pirate label, what with the general disregard for details such as the original track listing and design features. For The Mix, they left off "Metal on Metal", and moved Music Non Stop to the end of Side A; design-wise, they used some fonts that I doubt Ralf Hütter would have approved of, and not least, they put the "Thomsun" logo across the original LP design. Thomsun's version of Electric Cafe is also quite different to other editions.


Let's talk colour scheme first. Not only do we get a white background, where a black one was generally regarded as the only possibility, but they have re-touched the album logo - it is now purple and green in a red frame, set against the white background. Well it's certainly jolly. 


Turning to the track listing, I suppose a track title like "Sex Object" was going to be hard to get through state censorship, even if the morals of the song are beyond reproach; at any rate, the song is gone. The good news is they added not just one but two remixes of Musique Non Stop in its place - the tracklisting just lists "Musique Non Stop - Remix", but we get the 7" A-side, followed by the 12" version, although the latter fades out a minute early. 


J-card is a simple 1-panel affair, printed on one side only. Thomsun used Maxell UD-I cassettes, this one is supposedly a C-46, so why there was not enough room for the whole 12" mix I don't know. A fine item none the less and a real 'oddity'!







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