Dubstar: Stars 'Acoustic' Version 2022 Restoration

This is my favourite version of Stars by far, it captures the moment when Dubstar was at its height, right at the end of 1995 and about to break through on radio and TV.

At that point we were known as a synth act, so why do acoustic versions of three songs from our debut album? Often when artists record acoustic versions of their hits it’s nothing but a marketing ploy, a way of redeploying songs their audience already knows to entice them into buying a new single, album, even a t-shirt. But that wasn’t the case with us. Like almost everything that happened with Dubstar, the acoustic versions emerged by way of a mad idea combining with a happy coincidence.

I wanted to position us a song led act rather than an electronic act. Despite Dubstar being all about the keyboards, I felt focussing on the songs would be better for our longevity. When Disgraceful was released the music press had repeatedly discussed my lyrics in ‘Stars’, ‘Day I See You Again’, ‘Disgraceful’, Sarah’s words in ‘Just A Girl She Said’ and of course our cover of Brick Supply’s ‘Not So Manic Now’. Maybe there was something to build on here? Rather than being another indie-dance act, we could aim a little higher? Stripping the songs right back could reveal a hidden depth to the act that was missing from so many of our contemporaries.

Also, we’d just completed our move into the Arts Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne. By end of November 1995 we’d completed the first wave of B-Sides for the release of Manic in January 1996, and we’re emboldened by the success of our version of Astrud Gilberto’s ‘A Certain Sadness’. I was listening to a lot of 1960s Brazilian and French music at the time and loved the sparse nature of the arrangements on these records, maybe we could do something like that with Dubstar as bonus tracks, a surprise for everyone who thought we were cute and electronic and 90s? The label said ‘go for it’, I distinctly remember Andy Ross telling me ‘if there’s ever a choice between recording or not recording, choose recording’. So we did.

A version of Stars that owed as much to Dead Can Dance as King Tubby was a left turn that I don’t think anyone saw coming. I loved the sound of their ‘Within the Realms of a Dying Sun’ album, it had been a big influence on our early recordings (as the currently unavailable demo of Danilo Moscardini’s song ‘She’s Still Sad’ evidences). Maybe Stars could thrive with a dark orchestral approach. I had a sampler full of samples, it wouldn’t cost us anything…choose recording.

So the acoustic versions were completed in the freezing cold room at the Art’s Centre in late 1995 and early 1996 and were released eighteen months later as the B-Sides with No More Talk. They became the most treasured B-sides of that era.

THE TECHNICAL STUFF

This version of Stars isn’t strictly acoustic. All the string and choir sounds came from a CD-ROM and my trusty Roland S-760 sampler. I’d bought a sample library called Gigapack from BestService and loved it…it provides the monks you can hear throughout this version (it also features on The View From Here). The violin is from Roland’s superb sample library CD-ROM. Chris plays his guitar too, there are some great ebow moments and I think that’s an acoustic you can hear in the choruses and first verse.

However, unlike the other two acoustic versions, Sarah didn’t re-sing the vocal. For some reason Sarah wasn’t around to come into the studio, I’d already recorded all the samples and guitars onto ADAT and realised too late that this version ran at 83BPM, whereas the original was at 87BPM. So I used the take from the Stephen Hague version and time stretched it in the sampler, which is why on the original acoustic version the vocal sounds a little sleepy and manipulated.

On this renovation I had the opportunity to use the Hague vocal again but on this occasion I retimed it by hand just as I did on the Glitterball remix. This means the vocal is exactly as Sarah sang it in RAK studios and so retains all of its original sparkle. I think it makes a big difference, finally the voice comes to life.

Also, the mixing desk on the original was a Yamaha Promix01, wonderful and cheap but crunchy and unfriendly sounding, even in 1995. Combine that with the grainy feel of the ADAT cassette machines (they used VHS tape!) you have a sound that’s so digital it would horrify an engineer in 2022 in a similar way as it amused the mastering engineers in 1997. All of the Disgraceful B-Sides were recorded this way, and I think you can tell.

Those ADAT cassettes are long gone, but today’s technology enables me to separate the original components of the song and remove or hide much of that crunch, replacing it with a delightful analogue warmth. Or at least digitally simulated analogue warmth, a big improvement on the sound of 1995.

In this voyage through the archives I have been regularly surprised by reactions to the tracks I’ve discovered, and this song is no different. With so many people loving the Stephen Hague version of Stars, the Way Out West version and of course Steve Rodway’s Motiv8 version, I assumed this acoustic version had been ignored. But I ‘m delighted to have discovered this is not the case: among a vocal minority of fans this is their favourite. Twenty six years on it remains my favourite too.

Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

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