Wishful Thinking

Album Review

In the '80s, remix records were usually either solipsistic synth noodling with very little appeal for the average listener or, worse still, crass commercial attempts to eek a few additional dollars from die hard fans. Propaganda was apparently prepared to answer accusations of that sort. The record jacket for Wishful Thinking, their 1985 collection of remixed "disturbdances" of songs from their debut, A Secret Wish, defends the remix concept with a quotation from Goethe: "and refashioning the fashioned/ lest it stiffen into iron/ is a work of endless vital activity." Somehow Wishful Thinking seems deserving of Goethe's defense. These remixes are vital and original creations in their own right. At times they even seem to surpass the quality of the original poppier versions. The driving dance beats, mesmerizing gothic chords, and swirling ambient guitars create a melancholic ethos of considerable artistic merit. Perhaps the key is the reduction in emphasis on the sometimes grating sing/shout vocals by Claudia Brucken and Susan Freytag. And though some mixes do begin to get dull when they are reduced to thumping bass and grinding drums, the vast majority of this project is more dynamic than that.