Brilliant album way ahead of its time,every track makes your hair stand on end.Die in the west so relevant today and as a bonus superb production on an expensive record player.So sad the band were rubbish later when they became commercial reminding me of Ultravox contrast John Foxx and Midge Manure,U2 and Simple Minds who were great early on.I saw Fashion at JBs,the legendary club in Dudley and will never forget it.? Luke 6ft 8in an imposing presence.So sad he left the band.This album will never seem dated unlike rubbish bands like the Lurkers or Vibrators still collectible for some astounding reason.

I agree with all the above comment. I would have liked to have seen Fashion at JB's in Dudley. I have to be content with seeing them at Digbeth Civic Hall supporting the B-52's.I spent most of that evening avoiding skin heads as I was wearing a Devo boiler suit and plastic kids sunglasses with tights on my head. Those were the days. I don't agree that the Vibrators are rubbish though or the Lurkers for that matter. Check out Stairway to nowhere with Luke released 2009 and a fantastic album and should have been the immediate follow up to Product Perfect.

I was lucky enought to witness Fashion playing live twice in their early days. The first time supporting The Skids in the grubby Midlands town of Nuneaton. The Skids had just released their "Wide Open" ep, and a teenage Me lapped up their show. Jobson cavorting like an epileptic berzerker, showering the audience in sweat - an explosion of human energy. The band burned up the stage, raw, intelligent Punk, not yet having discovered the E-Bow, synthesizers, Bill Nelson or the sweet-tasting exchange of bland Electro-pop mainstream success for lasting credability. As impressive as they were, they struggled not to have been blown off the stage by their support band who all but stole the evening from them, leaving an indelible impression on the minds of all there. The second time I saw them, playing the same, sticky-floored venue, they were supporting some Irish band named after a spy plane or something. There were a few dozen people at the gig, but if you were to ask around the town, you would meet several thousand who claimed to be there. They only ones who actually were in attendence were there to see Fashion. By this time they had a couple of singles and "Product Perfect" under their glittery belts. No one in the audience could scry the future from the beer-lacquered shadows that night - the almost-too-tall-for-such-a-squalid-room Luke Sky leaving for pastures new, followed by a brief spell of chart success with the slick and somewhat unique electro-dance album "Fabrique" - finally reaching the wider audience with "Move On", sacrificing their earlier charm for dark pop disco®dance. "Product Perfect" followed a good time after the wonderful suicide single "Steady Eddie Steady" with its warm-dark-grooved B side "Killing Time". The album cover - a model posing as if between glossy-mag shots - had the by-now familiar Fashion font - itself somehow suggesting a walk into future potential. Eleven songs, three of which formed a kind of tumbling medley. The first and third tracks - "Product Perfect" and "Red, Green and Gold" were White Boy Reggae plasticized by the clean, spartan mix. Luke Sky's voice seemed just right for these songs - rich, rolling vibrato tones somehow more Rastafarian than most Black singers. "Dont Touch Me" formed a strange hybrid between Rock and Reggae - a chimera which sounded like neither style. "Die In The West", "Burning Down" and "Bike Boys" were faster tracks, taking the energy of Punk and giving it a shiny chrome dazzle. "Bike Boys" in particular stands out - changing style and tempo with schizophrenic ease. Domestic violence has never sounded so sweet! They released "Citinite" as a single, and a weird track it is too. The voices - treated with fx to put further spin on the already odd, Surrealist-Thought-Bubble delivery, is probably one of the strangest lead vocal sounds I have ever heard, and the music itself has a dark clamminess which matches the title. Perhaps the bastard child of Magazine's "Permafrost" and The Stranglers "Peasant In The Big Shitty", if this world could allow such a crazy hybrid. The world was yet to hear "O Superman" and "Ghosts" high in the charts, and would have been unprepared for this, had it pushed its way into Transistor-Radio-Land. But the highlight of the album must be "Big John" / "Hanoi Annoys" / "Innocent". This is the only point where the album hints at how they sounded live. Maybe it was the pressure of running these three together, but they failed to lose the drive and velocity of this medley in the mix. "Big John" wallows in its dream-like listing of (presumably) fictional characters, the chap in the title raising Cows (cows, cows, cows, cows!). "Hanoi Annoys" 'has a go' at various places around the globe, not unlike Python's "Never Be Rude To An Arab". The singer sounds both angry and crazy-mad-funny. Then, after a spangling piece of guitar, they dive into "Innocent" - perhaps their only nod towards Punk here. A fast, joyful number. The surge is a welcome slap in the face, concluding the first side, urging the listener to play the flip. A great album? Great songs indeed, but somewhere between their inspired live set and the pressing plant, someone decided to produce this material in a lean, stripped-down, spartan way, so only the strength of the songs keep it alive. Something was left out, or more likely some non-Fashion member added input this album didn't need. I'd compare it with The Slits first album - genius, wonderful, again fantastic songs, but where did the energy & life go? The difference between the two is that I would happily listen to "Product Perfect" again & again, whereas "Cut" I would have to force myself to listen to, and would want to quit listening just a handful of tracks in. So alas I feel a flawed masterpiece. But a masterpiece nevertheless. Get hold of a video of their early performances (and if you wish hard enough, one might exist), lose yourself in the atmosphere and energy, and you might just feel your life is a little more empty without this album. Luke has breathed life back into the project - a new album out in 2009, which nods strongly back to this earlier period. Both can be checked out on iTunes - see what you think. (This review has been somewhat edited to fit to Discogs 1000 word limit)