Despite being approached by various artists during their career So Hard (The KLF vs Pet Shop Boys) is one of the very few remixes Bill and Jimmy did of other people’s tracks.
The Pet Shop Boys just phoned us up, and said they admired our stuff and wanted to know if we’d be interested in working with them.
We did a re-mix of So Hard. They sent us as Mitsubishi 48-track digital machine but we only had our 12-track so we told them we had 48-track recording and charged them for it! When the Mitsubishi mixer arrived we said that for various artistic reasons we’d have to start again. Jimmy got one look from the DAT of their mix and we just completely recorded the whole thing again. Neil Tennant came down and did his vocals, whatever bits and pieces we were going to use. It was a complete remake, re-model, re-mix.
The story behind the single’s B-side, the ambient UFO remix of It Must Be Obvious, is just as strange, as Chris Heath recalled in Details in 1991.
Tracks & Formats
12rx 6269
| 12″ Single / Sep 1990 | ||
| A | So Hard (The KLF vs Pet Shop Boys) | 5:27 |
| B | It Must Be Obvious (UFO Mix) | 9:22 |
The original UK release of So Hard (KLF vs PSB) was issued as 12″ single only. A CD5 version was released in Germany the same year.
An image shared by @petshopboysstudio on Instagram in November 2022 suggests that addditional versions had been commissioned but remain unreleased, including an extended version and dub mix (all reportedly similar to the commercial version).
Love this record! I have the 12” in perfect condition, one of The KLF’s rare remixes
The first CD I knowingly bought, HMV import section Leeds, so it retains a special place in my head, I would sell one of the kids to get a listen to these reference mixes, set them free someone 🙂
Fingers crossed this is a teaser, these mixes might end up being released as part of the Samplecity Through Trancentral series?
Not sure either of those things are likely