Dr Calculus MDMA – Designer Beatnik (Virgin)

With five rare bonus tracks and an album that was never released on CD, it’s bizarre that Virgin didn’t make any fanfare around the digital re-release of this lost classic. Not long after Kiss Me went global, Stephen Duffy got off his face on ecstasy and studio gimmickry and came up with the appropriate moniker of Dr Calculus MDMA to record this psychedelic early blast of trip-hop. It sank without trace, of course, and became the stuff of legend. Across the next twenty years you could pay a high price for it on the collectors market, or just as easily find it in a bargain bin in the High Street. But Virgin has reassembled the album along with all of the 7” and 12” remixes and B-sides, to make a great 16-track set, the only omission remaining the brilliant artwork that was as much a part of the original prank as the music. Annoyingly, Straight To Stereo (12” Mix) is the only piece of the set not available as a single-track download on iTunes, so your best buy is from TuneTribe. But at £7.99 for the full thing from all online platforms, it’s a bargain.