Although your reviewer would still plump for "The Warp Of Pure Fun" as the pinnacle of PAUL HAIG'S solo career to date, it's undeniable that his 1990 album "Coincidence vs.Fate" closely pursues it in terms of artistic achievement.
Having said that, while "...Warp" retains both the energy and guitar input of Haig's seminal early work with Josef K (not to mention the input of Malcolm Ross, Alan Rankine and Barney Sumner) alongside sequencers and an increasingly danceable orientation, those coming cold to this re-issue may find the glossy sophistication of Haig's sound here a little hard to stomach.
Indeed, "Coincidence vs.Fate" is a beast of a largely very different stripe. The second abum Haig made with Circa/ Virgin (after the underachieving "Chain" from 1989), it found him working with producers Curtis Mantronik in New York and Li'l Louis in Chicago and both producers stamp their danceable, largely machine-based credentials on the proceedings.
However, give the album a good few spins and Haig's class soon tells, even in this alien environment. Mantronik's computer skills nail down the hardline dance attitude on tracks like "Out Of Mind", the robo-vocoder starring "Flight X" and "Right On Line" where Haig's wonderfully aloof vocal is gloriously intact. "Born Innocence," by comparison, is more typical of Haig, with nagging, burrowing guitar offsetting the sequencers, but Mantronik treats it with respect and brings the best out of the track.
The songs recorded with Li'l Louis at the helm, meanwhile, are a little more organic in execution and both "My Kind" (featuring, ahem, Santana-style guitar from Peter Black) and "Si Senorita" are distinctly Latin in flavour. Perhaps more successful is "Stop And Stare" which is framed by chiming guitar, drenched in noir-ish intrigue and topped and tailed by Haig's delicious croon. Louis sensibly avoids tampering with it too much and just lets it breathe its' own rarefied air.
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Yet the album's absolute crowning glory is surely Haig's unbelieveable Spector-meets-David-Lynch treatment of Suicide's already magnificent "Surrender". Produced by Haig himself and featuring a gorgeous velvety vocal and swoony girl backing vox, it's the very essence of sophisticated, filmic sadness and sounds utterly timeless.
As ever, LTM lead us into temptation with a brace of relevant non-LP tracks including the hard-edged dance crossover 12" single Haig released under the Dub Organiser moniker on Manchester indie label Play Hard during 1988. Reminiscent of the Virgin-related material Cabaret Voltaire recorded it's another intriguing departure and is followed by two interesting tracks recorded by Haig in Edinburgh: the weird, whispery electronica of "The Originator" and the New Order-ish "1959."
In typical Haig circumstances, "Coincidence vs.Fate" failed to break through commercially, despite a warm reception from the critics at the time. Haig, though, has never desired to play the promotional game and is notoriously reclusive in terms of playing live to this day. It's a shame as he remains one of the most intelligent songwriters/ performers around: a fact made only too apparent by his collaborations with the late Billy McKenzie on the "Memory Palace" collection from 1999.
Still, instead of bemoaning the "what if...?"s, instead concentrate on both this and LTM'S re-issue of "The Warp Of Pure Fun": two very different, but creatively buzzing re-issues documenting the life and times of Paul Haig: a man who's oeuvre has remained uncelebrated for far too long.
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