First off, the manufacturing quality of this record is awesome. It's a beefy little 7" and everything fits perfect and it has one of those ridges in the middle that keep the record from making a lot of noise when you're busy typing up a review and don't want to get up to flip it to the other side yet. The internet says it's a German release, so maybe that has something to do with it? Probably not.

Anyways, this is a keyboard solo project. "Young Shields" has one of those tap tap tapitty drum beats and the same keyboard sound as Phantasy Star 2 for the Sega Genesis. Sorry for the specific reference that no one will get, but that sound is indelibly etched in my youth and the music is pretty badass. But anyways, there's a song going on that I'm supposed to be paying attention to, but it sounds a lot like the struggles of a kid asking their parents for money and I'm sure there's more to it to that but I just don't really care and oh, it's over now.

"When You Were Mine" is a Prince song. The internet has this listed as one of the top 6 covers of this song, but the breathy and disaffected vocals over the 8-bit keyboards makes me kind of hate it. The Cyndi Lauper version is far superior, obviously. I mean, it's just like Mr. Casiotone put so much effort into making it seem like he couldn't be trying at all to do a good job. You know when you put something out there that you really like but you preface it with "Well this is terrible but hopefully you'll like it"? This is exactly the kind of thing that makes people not care at all about it. Put some heart into your songs, guy!

If you like this review, you can buy me a coffee.