Before its release as a single in April 1985, Moments In Love was released four times over a nineteen month period on the following records: Into Battle With The Art Of Noise; Beat Box; Closely Closely (Enough’s Enough) and the album (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise! To a large number of people, that amount of exposure made the track sound tired and only die-hard Art of Noise & ZTT fans/collectors embraced it as a single in its own right.As the follow-up to the group’s first UK top ten hit, Close (To The Edit), it was issued on 7”, 12”, cassette and shaped picture disc. With largely negative and mocking reviews by music journalists, non of those formats could place it into the UK top forty and it was very apparent that the single was in trouble. The lacklustre video and religious iconography artwork for the 7” & 12” editions didn’t really help it either and the single soon disappeared, never to be heard of again, or so everyone thought…In August 1985 something unexpected happened, Madonna and Sean Penn replaced the Wedding March with Moments In Love at their wedding, giving the track some notoriety. It soon began to appear on various artists compilations, TV commercials, background music and whatever medium it could lend itself to. Following the success of Brylcream’s 1986-1987 advertising campaign that used LoveBeat in their commercial it was reissued in Europe, reaching the top ten in the Netherlands. ZTT then re-issued the single in the UK with improved artwork and a new video. Since then no less than four remixes have appeared on a couple of ZTT compilation albums, but never issued as singles. One that almost got issued as a single was Rob Searle’s Anthem Mix thankfully it was withdrawn from shops before its official release date. Twenty seven years after Moments In Love first appeared it was released as a digital download, peaking at #27 on Billboard’s Jazz Digital Songs in the USA and spent at least eighty seven weeks on that music chart.For the first time in thirty years and as part of Record Store Day 2017, Moments In Love is being officially released as a vinyl single by ZTT/Salvo/BMG as a newly redesigned limited edition 10” shaped picture disc. Side A retains the 1985 7” version that also appeared on the 1987 reissue and is the only edit that actually works due to the complex structure of the track. A Time To Fear (JJ’s 12” Remix), released on vinyl for the first time, is the third track to appear on side B, following Beat Box (Diversion Ten) in 1985 and LoveBeat in 1987. Listening to it on this single makes the track stand out as it was originally intended to be, as an individual track to be enjoyed for what it is, bring a new dimension to the piece, rather than becoming lost to a certain degree on a full length compilation album.As a general rule vinyl picture discs can be hit & miss regarding sound quality, but having listened to this a couple of times I can say that it is one of the better ones that have been issued over the years. The sound has depth to it and is not drowned out by surface noise that can make these kind of records seem rather flat, spoiling the listening experience.The artwork was designed by Philip Marshall with Oscar H. Scott, assisted by Julia Schiller and is a new take on Paul Morley’s “the tortoise and the hare” theme that replaces the original tortoise shaped picture disc with a hare shaped one derived from XLZTT’s original masks. This brand new design is faithful to those from the 1980s, keeping the humour of Art of Noise by giving a nod to the Edited 12” picture disc, at the same time looking different and original enough to become as iconic as the classic 1985 edition.*****

it sounds pretty good to me. it's slightly warped but despite both these things why should anyone care. it looks fantastic- surely thats at least 90% what matters