New Miami Vice music package offers several treats

Jan Hammer's Miami Vice: Special Edition, a repackaging of Miami Vice soundtrack selections, quietly surfaced in May, and it brings a good bit of Vice synth-pop music to Spotify for the first time while also adding a couple of remixes and two tracks that did not appear on Miami Vice: The Complete Collection, which spans more than 40 tracks of dramatic chords and sunny synths. 

First, the new offerings: "Little Havana" is the better of the two; a pleasant, moody, salsa-ish number. "The Kick" is more of a driving rocker that sounds like it could serve as background for a guns-blazing chase through the Miami streets at night.

Special Edition opens with a new remix of the theme music, the XL Mix, which is largely faithful to the original but about a minute longer and with some additional guitar parts. The intro is also tweaked. It sounds like a new recording and, thus, cleaner than the original, which could stand a good remaster. 

"Crockett's Theme," which got a big boost in the '90s from its inclusion on the popular Pure Moods album, is not labeled as a remix or a remaster, but it is clearly a different mix than the original. In some regards, it sounds better (cleaner, like the theme), though there's a new little repeating electronic chirp that I don't love.

About 16 tracks of Hammer's Vice music were already on Spotify via previous collections Escape from Television and Snapshots 1.2. Some of the better Vice tracks joining them now are the likes of "Clues" and "Voodoo Dance." But this new collection curiously omits a few old favorites like "Chase" and "Evan," which were on the original soundtrack release in the '80s alongside the hits by Tina Turner, Phil Collins and Glenn Frey. They are, however, available for purchase through Hammer's website, along with all of The Complete Collection.