"Gone and blown it all..."

After months of ignominious banishment to the nether regions of my hard drive's music folder, I unearthed the Wire remix of Erasure's "Fingers & Thumbs (Cold Summer's Day," renamed "Fingers & Crumbs" – appropriate, since this isn't so much a revision as a reinvention. Colin Newman casts Andy Bell's wounded tenor adrift on a sea of arctic-blue electric guitar strums, worthy of Wire's It's Beginning to & Back Again; it's 9:30 of lovelorn trance, and much the most powerful music Bell's put his name on. "Gone and blown it all" he repeats, growing more desolate with each gradation, until – in a neat reversal of Newman's own vocal at the beginning of Wire's "Heartbeat" – he disappears into the ether.

If anyone wants a copy, let me know.