"Gecko"
by Rex the Dog
(Hundehaus)

British dance producer Jake Williams started putting out singles under the once-secret alias Rex the Dog four years ago, but he's just now gotten around to releasing an album, much of which is older tracks edited down to pop length. The standout is this track, which sounds as precisely circa-'83 electro-pop as he's capable of making it. The only vocal is a dreamy-sounding woman cooing, "Baby, ba-ba-baby, don't you know I live for your touch?" The bass line is Lee Press-On Nails stiff, as is the beat, and the keyboards are so effortlessly melodramatic (Yaz! New Order! Chaka!) that you might wonder from where he sampled it all.

"Boyfriend (Pete Hammond Mix)"
by Alphabeat
(Copenhagen/EMI, UK)

Speaking of '80s throwbacks, Alphabeat make a repeat appearance in this column, after their astoundingly giddy "Fascination." This track will make anyone with even a trace of fondness for jelly shoes positively froth. The song is your standard UK-pop pep rally—"He's not your boyfriend, he's mine," goes the chorus—but choosing Hammond to rework it is a stroke of genius.

Hammond was one of the main mixers for the late-'80s production giants Stock Aitken Waterman (Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue's "Loco-Motion," etc). This remix sounds exactly, absolutely like that stuff, but here, for some reason, the chintzy synth FX, the canned house beat with Latinesque electrofiligrees, the chopped-up vocals played with a slight stutter ("C-C-C-C-Crazy! In love! Crazy! In love!") all sound not like cheese or a retread but like a love letter to an earlier, more innocent era. I know, I know—everything sounds that way when that's when you grew up. But the vocal is what sells it. The singing on vintage SAW tends to the chirpy, the stagy; the songs were pop with an ear to its own future status as camp, with vocals to match. But Alphabeat's Stine Bramsen sings with more real yearning than did SAW's young androids (Donna Summer is another thing), and the tension between her and the pings and whistles makes this a treasure.