How to re-appreciate the maligned CD single with four remixes and a b-side

I had a nice ‘re-discovery’ moment recently when I was unexpectedly reminded of how excellent electro-industrial and EBM music can be. As is so often the case with such things, it occurred by chance after I came across this 2010 Hocico single, Dog Eat Dog, that I’d purchased some years previously.

I love physical media but I still copy all my legitimate music purchases onto my hard drive in lossless format. So, when a track from this release got played at random from my playlist, I ensured that it in turn it in turn led to the rest of the release getting played, which in turn led to more of the Hocico discography getting played.

It was one of those moments where I could genuinely say that “I’d forgotten how good they were”. Yet for all the quality and brilliantly sinister depths in Hocico’s dark and nasty EBM electro-industrial, I was confronted with an ancient dilemma faced by people who still accumulate physical media: how does one enjoy and derive the most out of a single?

All these tracks are, individually, quite good.

Played back-to-back in this original format, though, they get a bit samey. Pic: Discogs.

The CD single in the digital streaming age

The single is an anachronism in the streaming age. It’s been that way for years, ever since the advent of digital music. Indeed, I recall how the biggest physical media music chain in my home country of Australia announced almost 10 years ago that it would cease stocking CD singles.

Yet for those of us who still love physical media, or are artist or label completists, the single represents a nice break from innumerable full-length albums.

This particular single is the CD version of Hocico’s Dog Eat Dog release from 2010. A ‘lead track’ (or rather, a fairly decent track) from the Tiempos De Furia album, it was released in two versions: the six-track version here in a digipak; and a two-track seven-inch, limited to 666 copies (of course). Incidentally, both are in formats that the label and distributor can conveniently refer to as limited edition.

As I said, the single in its traditional form is an anachronism.

Dog Eat Dog

Dog Eat Dog has six tracks: the lead track, four remixes, and what would in old-parlance be referred to as the b-side.

All the tracks on Dog Eat Dog are reasonable on their own merits. Since Hocico remain a high-profile electro-industrial harsh EBM act, it’s not surprising that comparable high-profile names contributed remixes: Solitary Experiments, Aesthetic Perfection and Arsch Dolls (the latter I know nothing about other than that they seem to be a Tamtrum-related project).

Of the remixes, the most interesting is by mysterious Japanese act Diabolic Art. While the remix itself is okay-ish, its most intriguing element is the way it is indicative of Diabolic Arts’ wider style. What original material I’ve heard of this artist — and there is extraordinarily little original material out there — is an incredibly dark and Satanic-sounding mix of dancey industrial and psy-trance. Maybe you’re best to check it out yourself…

As stated, all the tracks on this release are on their own merits quite decent. Yet one lead track, four remixes and a b-side easily makes one’s attention waver.

Singles are a throwback to radio airplay days, when proper exposure for an artist meant attempting to capture as many ears as possible to lock onto one track via a medium controlled by third-parties.
Selling more singles was one way to achieve that aim. Consequently, not only did a CD single contain a track that was already available on the more expensive full-length, but it was often the only ‘good’ item on the release, with the ‘filler’ on singles notorious for consisting of forgettable remixes, acapellas, instrumentals, live versions and dubious b-sides.

Naturally that wasn’t always the case and this release is a good example of where that hadn’t occurred. However, the fact that it was such a routine occurrence goes a long way to explaining why the CD single was so maligned.

Getting the most out of the old CD single

So how do you get the most ‘satisfaction’ out of five variants of the same track and one probably-not-their-best-work b-side?

What works for me is this: get a single that isn’t inherently crap. I suggest that the best way to go about this is to embrace a simple solution. Namely, listen to good music.

No seriously, by not listening to rubbish music you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how rarely you encounter this problem.

So, assuming you are in possession of a decent release, how do you then beat the repetition while still retaining the enjoyment?

If you’re still into music the old way and have a multi-disc CD player, or if you’re actually a normal person and just streamed it or ripped it onto your device, take the single, then select an album from the same artist. Ideally, it’s not the same album from which the single originated.
For best results, pick an album with which you’re not super-familiar, or that you feel has been relegated to the not-their-best-work bin.

Then play them on shuffle.

You can now kick back and get more out of both the album and the single. The sum of their parts will be greater than their whole.

It works for me and it could work for you

There are some people who cannot abide by shuffling full albums. That’s perfectly fine. All I would say is: the combination of both, shuffled and mixed at random, spreads out the repetition of the single, while potentially providing a new perspective on a full-length album you might have otherwise dismissed.

I’ve mentioned how one of the greatest things about being into awesome music is how it’s possible to ‘rediscover’ a band that you otherwise thought you knew well enough to have dismissed.

The method of listening to singles described here does exactly that. We all have or know (or thought we know) albums that aren’t necessarily among our greatest and most beloved, but which we still know. It might be a lesser-known item from a long discography or it could be a newer album that didn’t meet expectations the first time round. Inevitably, said album does not get listened to for months or years because it presumably got dismissed long ago as not warranting further investigation.

Then a track from the second half of the album one day pops up in your playlist. In my experience, when this happens, I’ll often hear new elements and subtle things that I might have tuned out previously. At its most rewarding, when a track comes on unseen at random (because it’s hidden behind another window) my response will be “wow, that sounds amazing, what is it?” — followed by the realisation that it was an artist I’d dismissed long ago.

I could go on endlessly about why randomness and unexpectedness is such an effective way to re-appreciate music (at its most molecular, I believe it has a lot to do with deciding what our expectations will be). In practical terms, not having the half-hour block from the first half of the album to ‘desensitise’ or distract us from the second half can very much lead to a new-found appreciation for a track that I thought I knew.

That can in turn (hopefully!) lead to new-found appreciation for the previously-dismissed album as a whole and, if you’re really up for it, even further appreciation for the artist and their discography.
Personally, my ideal mix (where applicable) is a full album, a live album, and a single, all played at random and mixed in at unpredictable intervals.

Incidentally, this is one reason while I love EPs. Whereas singles are inherently short, EPs can be repeated far more often. Enough has elapsed — not just in terms of measurable, chronological time (the best kind of time), but also variety — for the first and final track on the attention-meter to reset.
An EP can be re-listened to multiple times throughout the day and it doesn’t feel like your brain is leaking out of your head from repetition.

Plus there’s a subtle kind of satisfaction to be had from completing an EP. Sort of.

Isn’t there?

As for that other much-maligned release, the full-length remix album. Well, the potential for both glory and failure is so much more pronounced there. That may require a different approach.