This strange sampler CD was issued by The Chain With No Name, a sub label of Vital, the Divine Comedy’s UK distributor from the Setanta years.

We don’t really know how the samplers were distributed, but it’s likely to a large audience as tasters for new albums from the large catalogue of the many labels distributed by Vital. The back cover tells us that four Taster samplers were actually issued aimed to be collected, and each of them featuring a plate that doesn’t really look tasty to be honest. Though they were not actually meant to include exclusive or rare songs, they finally did with The Divine Comedy.



Indeed, this compilation actually includes the original version of ‘The Certainty Of Chance’ which features samples from La Dolce Vita. Since the Fellini foundation asked the record company to not use samples from the film, the song was re-edited with a recording of Neil’s voice instead which features the album Fin de Siècle. Then, the promo copies of the album featuring the samples were meant to be destroyed.

So, this Taster CD was probably produced before this happened, and used the first version of the song. A same thing happened with the original version of ‘Generation Sex’ which can also be found on a sampler given away with Les Inrockuptibles.