Chart entered : 7 April 1984
Chart peak : 41
Number of hits : 13 ( including one as "Silent Underdog" and one as "the DTI" )
Paul Hardcastle is certainly a proficient keyboard player and not just a producer but in his facelessness and the fact that he broke through without any support from Radio One he is the harbinger of much to come.
Paul was born in London in 1957. He first came to prominence as the keyboard player in the jazz-funk group Direct Drive . Their first single in 1982 "Don't Depend On Me " is a solid enough work out in the same area as Freeez and Beggar & Co, The second single "Time's Running Out" is an anti-nuclear ditty with more prominent synth work but it's bland and unfocussed. Paul then decided to work as a duo with singer Derek Green called First Light. The first single under this name was a terrible version of America's "Horse With No Name ", attempting to turn it into a bland soul ditty over the backing track to Change's Searching. Their second single was a 12 inch EP "16 Minutes of First Light" with the lead track, "A.M." a moody synth pop instrumental composed by Paul with echoes of the theme from the theme tune to doomy 70s kids TV series The Changes .
The duo were then signed to London Records. Their third single in May 1983 was "Explain The Reasons" which sounds very like Imagination with added synth work. It reached number 63. Their eponymous debut album didn't chart. They released one more single at the beginning of 1984 , "Wish You Were Here", a more languid throbber which sounds a bit like The Chi-Lites with an updated production. It reached number 71. After that Paul had a financial argument with Green and started to record as a solo artist.
"You're The One For Me / Daybreak / AM" is a medley of the D Train hit from two years earlier with two of Paul's instrumental compositions from the First Light era, the aforementioned "A.M." and "daybreak" which first appeared on their album. Kevin Henry supplied the vocals on the cover. Most of its sales were on 12 inch which had the full six and a half minute version. The D Train song doesn't sound all that different from the original although Henry has a lighter voice than James Williams and the meld with his own Kraftwerk -influenced tunes is pretty seamless. It's a good club record which got to the brink of the Top 40 despite national radio's indifference. D Train themselves must have liked the record as they invited Paul to remix the original the following year and it got higher in the charts second time around.
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