Endgames, "First, Last, For Everything"

For my first real entry, I thought I'd talk about the song I've been obsessed with recently: Endgames' "First, Last, For Everything". Now Endgames is the labor of love project that bassist/Glaswegian David Rudden undertook when he left the darkwave group Berlin Blondes. At first their music was a little on the arty side, but then they got down to funky synthdance business with their album Love Building Beauty. John Peel was a champion of theirs, getting them into the BBC studios to record two Peel sessions. And they had two associations/connections with one of Glasgow's most famous groups, Simple Minds: drummer Brian McGee was a founding member of the Simple Minds from the Johnny & the Self Abusers era, and Paul Wishart played sax on some of the Simple Minds' live dates at around the time of Reel To Real Cacophony (someone feel free to correct me on that).

So hey, big history for a group with so little fanfare or attention outside of Scotland, huh? Well, they definitely deserved a lot more attention and affection. Their music was urgent, romantic, sometimes even anthemic, and funky, with lyrics that verged on the edge of poetry. "First, Last, For Everything" was an early single for the group and a great example of their musical strengths. At the same time that the listener is being swept away by the understated (but lovely) singing, the music swirls around the ears and the brain and hooks the listener in. The synths are tasteful and timeless, Rudden showcases his proficiency with the bass by playing clean, simple, yet strong lines, the drumming is bold without being in your face, and the instrumentation overall is tight. It is, for all intents and purposes, the perfect synthpop song.

I've been obsessed with this track recently, having found on Slsk numerous mixes of it. It could easily be rereleased today on CD as an EP (akin to Duran Duran's Girls On Film EP from 1999) featuring the original track and five remixes. There's the single version, the extended version, the Disconet edit, the club version, and a remixed version incorrectly labeled as being an instrumental mix. I've been especially taken by the club version of the track, which deconstructs the track enough to make it a separate entity but without losing any of the original song's charm. I know that Davids Rudden and Murdoch are currently working on some new Endgames material, so they could very well do the "First, Last, For Everything" EP. How about it, boys?