One record at a time: 377. Pet Shop Boys - Abbey Road Demos

This is a terrible bootleg that gathers together a seemingly random selection of unfinished mixes and demos. Not only is the sound quality pretty poor but the record needs to be played with the pitch down by about -6 to sound anything like it should. The source for these recordings is clearly a cassette that has been duplicated repeatedly and the muffled sound reproduction has absolutely no dynamics. 

Of the music itself we hear a slightly different mix of hit single "It's A Sin" and early mixes of "Rent", "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" and "You Know Where You Went Wrong". Despite being tagged as demos, I think these are actually alternate mixes created as part of the recording process for the finished product - we know that there were initial attempts at mixing both "It's A Sin" and "What Have I Done To Deserve This" that were rejected, so these could be those first versions.

Also featured is the "Breakdown Mix" of "I Want To Wake Up" and the short version of "One More Chance" that would go on to be officially released on the "Further Listening" disc that accompanied the remastered version of "Actually" in 2001.

To my mind the only genuine demos on this disc are "It Couldn't Happen Here" and "James Bond #1" (the latter being an early version of "This must be the place I waited years to leave"). Whilst it is possible that these two demos were made at Abbey Road, I think most of the material on this record was created as part of recording sessions at Advision or Sarm West studios and the title is misleading. 1/5