a-ha
Hunting High and Low (30th Anniversary Super Deluxe)
Released: September 18, 2015
The
average American music fan knows a-ha for Take On Me. The average UK fan might
even know more. It’s been 30 years since the album that made a-ha pretty much a
household name was released, even if they’ve been almost forgotten except for
Take On Me. To celebrate, our friends at Rhino made a super duper deluxe
edition of Hunting High and Low. Because that’s what Rhino does.
God I want to work
at Rhino.
First off, may I
say that Rhino may finally be getting the price right for these box sets. At
times, they’d try to charge over $100 for these things, such as some of the
Monkees box sets. Hunting High and Low, however, is just $38.51, or 64 cents a
song, and it even includes the DVD. That, Rhino, is a great price. Keep at it.
Love ya.
Second, the
content. You get the entire album remastered, of course. It sounds good, no surprises
there.
CD two contains
the meat. Demos. Tons of demos. I mean, ungodly amounts of demos. And you get
it all. I’m a man that loves content, so obviously I am drawn to this. You get
a nice evolution of Take On Me, which changes quite a bit since its original
recording as “Lesson One.” You also get my new favorite from a-ha, “What's That
You're Doing to Yourself in the Pouring Rain”. That’s the title, and it’s
great.
CD three is your
mixes (And B-sides, which is just more mixes), which, if you were a band in the
1980’s, you had tons of these to throw around. You’ve got your remixes, you’re 12” mixes, your 7”
mixes: terms that 80s people might just love or want to run away from immediately because how are they going to collect all of it Jesus Christ. The real treat is the 1984
version of Take On Me (Two versions!), yet another early version of the song
that actually had a music video of its own. Also right in the middle is Driftwood,
the B-side that’s actually not a remix of another song. Yes, you even get a Dub
mix. Dub Mixes are always strange. Look at David Gilmour’s newest Dub mix. It’s…
er.
CD four is what
happens when Cd 3 and 2 have a baby. Early and alternate mixes (and the very slightly different Take on Me used
in the music video). It’s close to the original, but there’s more than enough
differences to entertain you. That’s the magic of having so much going on in
your songs. You can add, move and remove instruments.
Finally, your DVD
has the music videos. Preserving music videos is an art. And even better, there’s
an unreleased version of Take On Me in here. It’s pretty much as self-explanatory
as the first CD.
So there you have
it. Everything. If there’s anything else left in the vaults (except for
outtakes, which wasn’t covered in here. Outtakes for this kind of music would
be really weird, though) I’d be surprised. And even if there was, I don’t think
it would matter too much. What you have here is a collector’s dream. No more
scrambling around for your alternate mixes like most fans have to do for other
artists.
Even if you don’t
care, you should appreciate the effort to collect everything. Rhino is a busy
company. So should you care, it’s a great price and a great piece to have. No
complains here.
Look at the album on a-ha's website. Look at that juicy track list.
Buy it. It's a great price. Support a-ha. Love a-ha. Never capitalize a-ha because that's how its meant to be. I didn't make the rules I'm just telling you to buy it.
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