So what has Simon Dunmore been doing with himself over the past year and a half? Since handing over the reigns of Defected to Wez Saunders during the summer of 2022, and leaving entirely in March of this year, it’s something of a mystery – and Dunmore doesn’t seem like a pipe and slippers kind of man to us.
But one thing he does occasionally do is reminisce about his past. There’s certainly a lot of it – Dunmore has been in the record industry since 1989, although his time in the music world goes back further than that. In 1994, he joined AM:PM – a British house music label attached to Polygram Records.
When Universal announced they were acquiring Polygram in 1998, Dunmore announced that he was leaving – taking up Ministry of Sound’s offer of a £250,000 loan to set up Defected. And whilst AM:PM released a lot of material in its own right, it was also used as a vessel to put out new remixes of older records.
One of those was “Voices Inside My Head” by The Police. Originally released in 1980, the song was remixed in 1995 by what was an all-star cast at the time – involving Roger Sanchez, E-Smoove and Ashley Beedle. Dunmore himself referred to the release – which he would have been involved with as well – as “a garage classic”…
Unfortunately, it turns out that wasn’t everyone else’s opinion – and certainly even less so at the time. When the long-defunct Muzik Magazine decided to review it in their January 1996 issue, they stuck the release in an unflattering section called “Ashtray of the Month”. And as for the review itself, it said this…
“How many more dreadful remixes of sad old records by The Police or Sting can A&M drag out? It really is getting beyond a joke. It’s getting tiring. This time, the fantastically-banal Roger S is employed to turn one steaming pile of s***e into another. What’s the f***ing point? Avoid this mundane monstrosity at all costs. As if you needed telling anyway.”
Our verdict? All those underground releases have to be paid for somehow – and we remember far, far worse from thar era…
Wednesday Whisper returns in the New Year…
