Andy Bell's GLOK side project released a new album last week, eight versions of previously available songs played live in session for Electronic Sound. The album, Gateway Mechanics, is out at Bandcamp digitally and on bright yellow vinyl. He's on tour as GLOK at the moment. The versions on the live album are superb, the synths and guitars flying off over pre- recorded drums, Andy's cosmische/ motorik influences in full flow. This version of Dissident (from the first GLOK album of the same name, released in 2019) is twelve minutes of Michael Rother- esque guitars and pulsing sequencer lines, the fuzzbox seeing some action in the final few minutes.
As a bonus, a few weeks ago Andy and Masal put out a cover of Neu!'s Hallogallo, recorded at The Social in May this year, nine minutes of West German by way of Oxford bliss.
Today's boarded up pub is The Seagull, Crimdon Dene, on the outskirts of Hartlepool. We had a few days in a caravan up there in April- the pub sits at the entrance of the caravan site. When I posted this on a social media platform a friend (of a friend) commented that it was the pub he and his friends used to drink in when they were teenagers. There were a few pubs in the area that were open but The Seagull was by no means the only abandoned one.
Author and film- maker Michael Smith is a son of Hartlepool. His books The Giro Playboy and Unreal City are highly recommended. In 2013 he recorded sections of Unreal City with Andrew Weatherall, his East Yorkshire tones perfect over Andrew and Nina Walsh's ambient backdrops. More recently he recorded an EP with Steve Queralt, bassist from Ride. The EP, Sun Moon Town, had four tracks, Steve's music ranging from swelling post rock to glitchy electronics to psychedelic dub. In July Steve and Michael released a further version of Sun Moon Town, eight new takes on the songs with remixes from GLOK, Nina Walsh, Flug 8 and Nandele together with four instrumentals. Sun Moon Town Versions is at Bandcamp.
Much of Michael's writing and spoken word material deals with a resigned bewilderment at the nature of 21st century capitalism and the effect it has on our cities. Michael is a flaneur, one who wanders the city observing, a stroller who meanders, something the tracks on Sun Moon Town demonstrate brilliantly.
The Flug 8 remix of Glitches is a throbbing, pulsing electronic monster, nine minutes long with Michael talking about finding himself in a a new part of the city, a re-developed hyper- capitalist shopping centre (Westfield) surrounded by shops, flats and skyscrapers, glass and steel, cardboard cut out policemen in shop windows to ward off shoplifters. As the drums kick away and synths swell, Michael sees the city mutating into a megacity with million pound customers, where the windows of shops selling suits promise that you are 'living the dream of a beautiful tomorrow', leading Michael to ask, 'What kind of a cunt's dream is this?' before speculating about the end of the world, the euphoric techno coupled with/ playing against Michael's prose. Dance while the world ends.
On In A Wonderland he describes a return to London and his memories of his old life there. Nina Walsh takes the original and fills it out for twelve minutes, a wash of ambient sound, strings and synths. Unfolding gradually the Wonk On The Gnosis Mix, Michaels' voice wanders flaneur style, ending up with the tale of mushroom picking with a chef as Nina's soundscape rising and falling.
Steve's bandmate Andy Bell records as GLOK and contributes a remix. The GLOK remix of Chaldean Oracle is chiming, propulsive cosmische, synths and drum machines gliding away into an infinite distance, bassline pumping and as a child/ robot voice intones in German.
On the Nandele remix of Vespertine warm synths and keys and pattering electronic drums form a glittering backdrop to Michael's ever compelling words, prose describing a moment of blissed out contentment and some 'strange magic'.
My latest hour long mix for Tak Tent Radio went live at the weekend. Tak Tent have been broadcasting out of Scotland on the internet since June 2020, with a range of contributors including the legendary Richard Youngs. The latest Bagging Area mix is my ninth for Tak Tent and contains solely music from this year. You can listen to it here or directly at Mixcloud. Don't let them tell you there's no good new music any more.
Alex Kassian: Lifestream
Marshall Watson: High Desert (Seahawks High Sky Remix)
Whitelands: Setting Sun (AR Kane Initiation Dub)
Dot Allison: Unchanged (GLOK Remix)
Dickie Continental: Simon Says (Congagong rework)
African Head Charge: Passing Clouds
Coyote: After All These Years
Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Chaldean Oracle (GLOK Remix)
Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
Dot Alison's new album, Consciousology, is out at the end of July and to date the only song available to listen to from it has been Unchanged. Andy Bell in Glok mode has remixed that song, a deeply mashed up, weirded out and dubby take on Unchanged, a sort of fractured folk/ dub/ psychedelia that makes everything feel like its happening very slowly but speeding up too with echo, dub bass, cymbal crashes, stuttering drums and Dot's voice floating in and around. It has a similar feel to Brendan Lynch's epic 1993 remix of Paul Weller's Kosmos and some of Adrian Sherwood's productions.
The original version of Unchanged has Andy playing guitar alongside Dot, a song that manages to take in British folk music and The Velvet Underground.
Two disclaimers before getting into the body of this blog.
1. I had been trying to put together an Andy Bell mix for some time and couldn't get it right until I separated the Andy Bell material from the GLOK stuff. I'm still not sure that I've got it right but it's better than the earlier attempts.
2. Between putting this GLOK mix together and writing this post I spent several hours in local pubs with predictable effects and then came home and wrote this.
Andy Bell's music outside Ride has been a revelation to me in recent years. His connections with Andrew Weatherall and the tracks they recorded together, his initially anonymous, house and kraut influenced tracks as GLOK and then his solo albums have been some of my most played music. GLOK's cosmische, pulsing, never-ending waves of synths and guitars music have hit the spot in all sorts of ways. This is a selection not a Best Of, some GLOK tracks that hopefully work together as one piece.
Pulsing and Kolokol are both from the intended to be anonymous debut GLOK album, released in July 2019. Pulsing later saw the light of day as an EP called The Citadel. Andrew Weatherall's urban ambient remix, harking back to Two Lone Swordsmen in some ways, came out on there an the subsequent album of remixes, Dissident Remixed.
Somaside was sent out to everyone who bought the follow up album, 2021's Pattern recognition, which suffered from endless delays due to pressing problems and vinyl backlogs. Pattern Recognition is a superb album. The only reason that more of its tracks don't appear on this mix is that so may of them are so long that they'd use up so much time of my self- allocated thirty to forty minutes.
Memorial Device is from Pattern Recognition and also the name of an imaginary Airdrie post punk group/ 21st century novel by David Keenan.
Indica was on Andy's solo album The View From Half Way Down, the Bagging Area album of the year in 2020. Pye Corner Audio remixed the entire album superbly. The GLOK remix is Andy remixing a remix of himself.
If you ever find yourself in the car park hell of Asda in Stockport, a car park split over two multi- storey sites linked by bridges and with different walkways to enter the supermarket, take some comfort from the fact that even in these unpromising conditions a moment of joy can still arrive- someone painted this little devil on the wall in a corner. This has nothing to do with the post that will follow, it's just a disconnected intro.
As is traditional here is my end of year list, twenty two musical artefacts 2022 in list form, a list combining singles, albums and EPs into one countdown- you'll notice I've cheated, there are many more than twenty two releases contained within. In a year shot through with all kinds of personal difficulties caused by grief and bereavement following Isaac's death at the end of last year, music has been an area of solace and distraction for me and I have listened to and enjoyed a huge amount of new music this year. I know as well there are albums I haven't heard and should have- Working Men's Club and Fontaines DC come to mind- and hopefully I'll get to them eventually. So, with no further ado...
Number Twenty Two
Some albums that have made the year tick, in no particular order:
Coyote: Everything Moves Nothing Rests
Sheer Taft: And Then There Were Four
Société Étrange: Chance
Gabe Gurnsey: Diablo
Timothy J. Fairplay: Free Andromeda
Half Man Half Biscuit: The Voltarol Years
Rich Ruth: I Survived, It's Over
Wet Leg: Wet Leg
Red Snapper: Everybody Is Somebody
Tigerbalm: International Love Affair
Panda Bear and Sonic Boom: Reset
The Order Of The 12: Lore Of The Land
Spiritualized: Everything Was Beautiful
Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan: Districts, Roads, Open Space
Jon Hopkins: Music For Psychedelic Therapy
Number Twenty One
Some singles and EPs that have been on rotation at the Bagging Area this year, again, in no particular order:
Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s and Brix Smith: Brix Goes Tubular
Sault: 10
Phil Kieran and Green Velvet: Enjoy The Day Hardway Bros Meets Monkton
BTCOP: Just A Disco especially the Lights On A Hill Mix
Matt Gunn: Disko Drohne EP and the massive remix package
The Vendetta Stone remixes 12"
Peak High: Was That All It Was Hardway Bros remixes
Perry Granville: Lumux and Cleveland Sundays
Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery remix)
Cantoma: Alive Remixes EP
Unknown Genre: Elevator Ride
Dirt Bogarde: Triumphe De Liebe and So Far Away
Curses: Gina Lollobrigida
Orbital and Sleaford Mods: Dirty Rat
Hifi Sean and David McAlmont: All In The World (and just wait for the album that gets a full release next year, a stunning record- the title track alone is one of next year's best songs)
Number Twenty
Various albums by Various Artists
There have been a slew of great compilation albums this year, multi- artist releases containing umpteen gems and treasure- The Chill Out Tent Volume 1, a compilation from Warm titled Home complete with animal and bird sounds between the tracks, Spun Out's Oompty Boompty Music compilation, the Shelter Me compilation from Leeds based Paisley Dark label and the cream of this crop, Higher Love Volume 2 (from the Brighton label of the same name).
Number Nineteen
Fontan: Iriz
A 7" single released on Hoga Nord at the start of the year, a gorgeous spaced out, instrumental warm bath with slowly building drums.
Number Eighteen
Boxheater Jackson: We Are One
Exeter's Mighty Force label has had quite a year. Boxheater Jackson's ten track album We Are One is a sublime set of chugging, optimistic, cosmic acid house. Also worth checking out on Mighty Force are Golden Donna's The Truth About Love, lovely washes of ambient techno, and the funky acid house/ indie- dance crossover Pro- Oxidant by Long Range Desert Group.
Number Seventeen
Mark Peters with Dot Allison: Sundowning/ Richard Norris ambient remix
Mark's latest album, Red Sunset Dreams, is pointing away from Wigan and towards the wide open landscapes of the US. With Dot Allison on vocals Switch On The Sky was a highlight- and then Sundowning came out, shimmering instrumental floaty ambience with a superb pair of Richard Norris remixes. Dot also had a solo EP out with the final remix from Lee 'Scratch' Perry, a lovely dubby version of Love Died In Our Arms.
Number Sixteen
The Orielles: Tableau
Tableau is one of the year's most unexpected treats, a double album spanning spoken word, dream pop, 60s jazz, indie and whatever else the trio decided they could turn their hands to. The recent Eyes Of Others' remix of Darkened Corners was superb spun out psychedelia and The Orielles own remix of Unknown Genre's Elevator Ride an unexpected visit to early 90s ambient techno.
Number Fifteen
Anatolian Weapons: Selected Acid Tracks
Strong acid from Greece, 808s set to stun, seven tracks of mind bending stuff. Acid Research 63, Acid Research 20 and Desert Track 66 are the picks and so much more than their functional titles suggest.
Number Fourteen
Rude Audio: Big Heat
A five track EP with typically brilliant tracks and remixes. Big Heat is a low slung, throbbing, dub techno groover, straight outta South London.
Number Thirteen
Pye Corner Audio: Let's Emerge
The latest Pye Corner Audio album left the dystopic sounds of last year's Entangled Routes and looked towards the summer, as typified on the glorious Warmth Of The Sun single with Andy Bell adding guitar to the analogue synth ambience. Sonic Boom remixed three tracks from the album, released as an excellent EP, Let's Remerge. A PCA remix of Principles Of Geometry's First I Heard Color is in the same area.
Number Twelve
Rhenizand: Atlantis Atlantis
More brilliant Belgian dance pop/ Balearic pop, an album that lights up any room it's played in. They can do no wrong for me.
Number Eleven
Unloved: Turn Of The Screw/ Turn Of The Screw (Erol Alkan Rework)
The new Unloved album, The Pink Album, found David Holmes, Keefus Ciancia and Jade Vincent and their 60s Now! sound extended over four sides of vinyl, twenty two songs (with Raven Violet, Etienne Daho and Jarvis Cocker along for the ride). On songs like Mother's Been A Bad Girl the woozy, disturbed, reverb drenched sound hit the spot and on Turn Of The Screw they nailed it, a driving, urgent, psychedelic pop song with Raven Violet on vocals and in charge. The remixes were bang on too, Erol Alkan's remix of Turn Of The Screw especially (and it sounded huge when David spun it at the Golden Lion in October). There's' an exhibition of Julian House's sleeve art at The Social in London too if you're in that neck of the woods.
Number Ten
10:40: three EPs
Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 has one of 2022's ongoing delights, a slew of tracks and remixes from the start of the year to it's recent advent calendar end. Kissed Again, a gorgeous piece of emotional slow motion Balearic dance first came out in 2021 but was released this year by Brighton's Higher Love as an EP with the equally lovely Fin and Coat Check. Thickener (both versions) and The Knack (three versions) were both wonky dancefloor oriented thumpers.
Number Nine
The Summerisle Six: This Is Something/ This Is Something (Rico Conning Remix)
Sean Johnston's Wicker Man/ Todmorden inspired psyche folk/ indie dance side project grew from a trio to a sextet for this release (Andy Bell, Jo Bartlett, Duncan Gray, Kev Sharkey and Mick Somerset Ward all on board) for one of the year's best 12", an indie dance floor filler. Rico Conning's remix, a ten minute blissed out sunset journey, is the remix of the year.
Number Eight
Jazxing: Pearls Of The Baltic Sea
An album of Polish Balearica that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Start with the sax led Fala and go from there.
Number Seven
Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band: Dear Scott.
Mick Head's latest wonderfully crafted and written set of songs, tales of life lived and lives observed, with typically lovely melodies.
Number Six
Daniel Avery: Chaos Energy
A double vinyl ambient/ industrial/ techno album- emotive and hard hitting human/ machine music.
Number Five
Jezebell: Jezebellearica
A nine minute tribute to DJ Alfredo, the White Isle and an open minded approach to music, Jezebellearica was the song of the summer round here. Jezebell's The Knack, Dancing Not Fighting, Et Moi and Concurrence were all worth mentioning here too.
Number Four
Decius: Vol 1
Decius's album is twelve tracks of heady, sleazy, minimal, techno, inspired by the proto- house of Ron Hardy, with it's tongue firmly in its cheek, single entrendres rubbing up against distorted synths and banging beats. I reviewed it for Ban Ban Ton Ton back in November. In a turn of events I wasn't expecting some of my review has been pulled out for the press release, where my words are directly below a quote from Iggy Pop. As a year end treat Decius have made an end of year mix available, a pay what you want deal, with many of the tracks from the album included in it. You can get it here.
Number Three: EP |Of The Year
Andy Bell: Untitled Film Stills and I Am A Strange Loop
Andy Bell's Flicker came out at the start of the year, a beautiful and fully realised solo album with songs spanning the range of his influences- backwards tracks, guitar songs reprising the chord sequences from the earliest Ride records, cosmic instrumentals and straight ahead guitar pop. During the course of the year cover versions and remixes appeared, compiled in the autumn onto two four track 10" vinyl EPs (with a third of acoustic versions) and extras available digitally. Untitled Film Stills is a beautiful way to spend twenty minutes, his covers of Pentangle's Light Fight, Yoko Ono's Listen, The Snow Is Falling and The Kinks' The Way Love Used To Be all right up there and the small hours, quiet devastation of his cover of Arthur Russell's Our Last Night Together capable of bringing tears. The remixes EP is superb too with David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix of The Sky Without You and Richard Norris' lovely slowed down, string laden version of Something Like Love the standouts.
Number Two: Album Of The Year
A Mountain Of One: Stars Planets Dust Me
Existential Balearica, yacht rock, symphonic dark pop- however I slice it this album has been the one I'v enjoyed and played more than any other in 2022. Bubbling synth basslines, FXed vocals, acoustic guitars, piano, tom tom drums, cosmic hippy questions with no answers, spaced out and widescreen sun baked music with Rolo from The Woodentops on board for good measure. The remixes of Star in the summer stretched things further still, the Glok remix linking this with Andy Bell (at number three).
It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love was released on Valentine's Day and has been there throughout the year for me, played daily at times. David's tribute to the youth movements of our youths- the mods, rockers, rastas, punks, soul boys, teds, ravers and clubbers- sung by Raven Violet is a triumph, its two note keyboard blast and boom- tish drums capable of lifting the spirits on the lowest of days and the lyrics- 'I remember back when we were young/ They said the people's day would surely come/ It's over now if we run out of love'- don't really need picking through. It's the best single/ song I've heard this year and hopefully at some point will, along with last year's Hope Is The Last Thing To Die, form the centrepieces of an album. But if not, on its own, it's more than enough.
There was a remix a little while later, the song being toughened up and stretched out for late night revelry- Darren Emerson's Huffa Remix and the Hardway Bros one were the pick of the bunch for me. Holmes has had quite a year, his DJ gigs in small venues have been on fire- the Golden Lion in Todmorden was particularly memorable not least because I was on the turntables that evening and handed over to him, a chain of events a younger me would struggle to comprehend. Friends who went to his gig at the Social in London in February raved about it as did friends who saw him in Glasgow more recently. A few months ago David released a 7" on Hoga Nord, the motorik/ Joy Division glide of No One Is Smarter Than History another highlight of 2022 and his remix of The Vendetta Suite's Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise is another 2022 peak as is his remix of Orbital's Belfast, thirty years after the original. You'll notice David appears elsewhere in this list as Unloved and with a remix of Andy Bell too. When you're on a roll, just keep on rolling.
The pair of albums Ride have made since they reformed- Weather Diaries from 2017 and 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place plus the four track Tomorrow's Shore EP from 2018- show a band who haven't reformed just to play the heritage rock circuit, hawking their three decades old back catalogue round to crowds who want a night of nostalgia (though they do that too, and one of the best gigs I've been to this year was the band's 30th anniversary of Nowhere tour at the Ritz back in April so please don't imagine I'm being a bit sneery about heritage rock although I appreciate I was a tad critical of Primal Scream's Screamadelica gig in July so maybe don't come here expecting consistency).
Ride's re- union has produced a slew of good songs that stand alongside the older ones. At The Ritz six months ago after they'd played Nowhere, the second half as a mix of old and new, three re- union songs played alongside Twisterella, OX4 and Leave Them All Behind, and they all blended in perfectly, played by a band more than up for it, old tensions resolved and new sounds and kit allowing them to stretch out. The mix below is eight songs made since they reformed, three of which they played at The Ritz (Kill Switch, All I Want and Lannoy Point).
Pulsar was the lead track on Tomorrow's Shore, a soaring piece of melodic space rock, as good as anything they've done. The EP was closed by Catch You Dreaming. All the reunion records have been produced by Erol Alkan and mixed by Alan Moulder
Lannoy Point opens Weather Diaries. All I Want is from that album too, here in GLOK remix form, Andy Bell remixing his own band. Cali is for me the album's highlight and their finest reunion song, six and a half minutes of blissed out, post- shoegaze guitar rock. It was a big part of the soundtrack to our summer holiday on the Atlantic coast of France that year too and always reminds me of the sand dunes, beaches and sunsets around Messanges, Bayonne and Biaritz.
R.I.D.E., Kill Switch and Future Love are all from 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place album, Future Love in particular sounding like The Byrds reborn for the 21st century.
This is a lovely dubby treat for Friday, the sort of thing that allows the mind to drift while it's playing, that eats up miles when driving, and feels like an imaginary soundtrack when walking with headphones on. Eight minutes of beautiful bass, looped and repeated, swirling FX and the ghost of a vocal layered somewhere in the middle.
Becoming Strangers is by C.A.R., the musical outlet for Chloe Raunet, a French Canadian living in London. Previously she was the singer in Battant, a London based synth post punk band from the 00s, with Timothy J. Fairplay on guitar. Battant broke up in 2011 after the tragically young death of multi- instrumentalist Joel Dever. Battant fell into Weatherall's world, initially from Lone Swordsman Keith Tenniswood who produced some early demos and then via Weatherall to Ivan Smagghe and the Kill The DJ label. Battant's first album is available at Bandcamp.
Battant's single Kevin (1989) came out in 2007, a spiky, electric and lyrically hard hitting song about someone called Kevin.
Weatherall's remix slows it down, stretches it out, adds acres of space and kind of krautrock crossed with dub feel that he was working on back then- see also his remix of Doves from 2009.
Tim Fairplay went on to become Weatherall's in house engineer at Scrutton Street and together they made The Asphodells' Ruled By Passion, Destroyed By Lust album, released in 2013, and a hatful of remixes including one of Glock'd by C.A.R. but given there are three songs and an album here today that's probably enough to be going on with.
Tak Tent is an internet radio station broadcasting out of Scotland. Last year The Wire magazine included them in a round up of radio stations worth listening to. A couple of years ago I was asked if I'd like to submit an hours' worth of songs for transmission and since then have been back several times. Last week Tak Tent put out my sixth Bagging Area mix, one that is made up almost exclusively of songs from this year and all from artists that are very familiar to this blog. You can listen to it here.
Tracklist
Pye Corner Audio: Let’s Emerge Pt. 1
Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Caluwaerts: They Do Not Care
Sheer Taft: Requiem For Pablo
Mark Peters and Dot Allison: Switched On
10:40: Coat Check
A Mountain of One: Star (Glok Starlight Dub)
Perry Granville: Dexter In Dub (Bedford Falls Players Remix)
Unknown Genre: Elevator Ride (The Orielles Ambient Remix)
Coyote: Home Grown
The Summerisle Six: This Is Something (Rico Conning Mix)
I've already written about A Mountain Of One's Stars Planets Dust Me, one of 2022's album highlights, a sun- baked, existential fever dream, Balearic cosmic dance spliced with prog and tripped out yacht rock. Some of it feels like the music you hear when you've nodded off on a sun-lounger and are just waking up, not quite sure where or when you are. The song Stars- all of this with a sunset bound guitar solo running through the middle of it- has been remixed and was released as a single at the end of July.
The pick of the three remixes is from Glok. Regular readers here will know that Glok is Ride's Andy Bell, a man currently responsible for two of this year's other best albums (his solo album Flicker and Glok's Pattern Recognition) and who has toured the UK and Europe twice already, once playing his solo Space Station set and once with Ride playing Nowhere. The Glok Starlight Dub is a delight, all echo laden vocals, chuggy drum machine rhythm and lots of space, stripped back Mediterranean dub.
The Yo Miro remix is faster, smoother and sleeker, a poolside disco version. The Arveene Remix shuffles in, piano to the fore with hints of the Hill Street Blues theme and then the synth bassline starts to bubble away, a lush laidback groove.
My Easter weekend gig bonanza ended on Sunday night with Andy Bell's Space Station, upstairs at Gulliver's on Oldham Street. The venue is a first floor room above a pub, small stage at one end and at 9pm Andy Bell with his Telecaster, pedal board and twin decks for drums and other sounds (one of the decks fails throughout the hour but it really doesn't matter too much). Andy's recent records as himself and as GLOK are full of psychedelic, trippy electronics and guitars. The idea of Space Station is Andy plays for an hour, no gaps between the songs, a seamless mix of solo songs and GLOK tracks. Late 80s/ early 90s indie dance with the progressive sounds of the cosmische and the motorik and dance music influences underpinning it (especially the GLOK material), sometimes picking up where the trippier Stone Roses songs (Don't Stop say) left off but if John Squire had been a massive fan of Michael Rother rather than Jimi Hendrix or Spacemen 3 but if they'd been into acid house instead of heavy opiates. Andy flits between the decks, setting the drum tracks off and triggering other sounds including vocals and then playing guitar over the top, various pedals getting stomped on and off and at times on his knees twiddling the knobs on the pedals, distorting and stretching the guitar. Debut solo album highlight Skywalker is played, the vocals coming through the PA while Andy's guitar spirals on top and the set finishes with two GLOK tracks, the 1970s West German sounds coming through loud, filling the small room above a pub on Easter Sunday night, the music both intimate and expansive. It's a lovely way to spend an hour.
Back when the GLOK album was repeatedly delayed by the queue at the pressing plant and then an unsatisfactory pressing Andy gave this track away to those who had bought the album, six minutes of the Space Station sounds.
Andy Bell's new solo album, Flicker, is already proving itself to be one of the year's best (and his GLOK album Pattern Recognition, out digitally last year has finally arrived on vinyl after a six month hold up at the pressing plant). Flicker is more reflective and guitar based with some wistful songs that deal with looking back, conversations with his teenage self and some that seem to reference the last few years- Trump, Brexit, the pandemic. There are two backwards songs that open its two halves (a la Stone Roses B-sides such Guernica and Simone) and a forwards looking, hoping for better days finale called Holiday In the Sun (not a cover of the Sex Pistols song). It works as a full album, paced and sequenced properly, eighteen songs that come together as a whole. Coming on the back of The View From Halfway Down (and the superb Pye Corner Audio remix EP) and two GLOK albums plus a full double vinyl remix album (not to mention Ride's re- union records) Andy Bell is on a creative roll. I can't recommend either Flicker or Pattern Recognition enough.
Pattern Recognition closes with a fifteen minute epic called Invocation. I won't try to describe it other than to say it's a cosmische marvel.
World Of Echo has been released as a single from Flicker and with it a new cover as the B-side (I'm not sure it's getting a physical release so don't think technically this counts as a B-side but it's a new song to go with a single so that's a B-side in my books). Our Last Night Together is a cover of an Arthur Russell song and is beautiful, a woozy, FX and atmospherics six minutes forty one seconds of late night music with a reverb laden heartbeat drum underpinning it and some gorgeous guitar/ synth parts. Very forlorn but warm too.
I've done an end of year list at the end of every year since starting the blog in 2010. I started to pull a list of albums and songs together back in November and thought I should at least try to finish it off. Everything I've listened to since the end of November has been coloured by Isaac's death so I'm not sure if this is how the lists would have turned out if things had been different but we are where we are, as people say.
Albums of 2021
I've heard loads of good albums this year. My initial list ran to over twenty albums (and that was before the Pye Corner Audio album turned up) and there are several I've not heard yet that would surely be contenders had I got round to listening to them (I'm thinking of Carnage by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and this year's releases from LoneLady, WH Lung and Low). Floating around somewhere outside my top ten are these albums (in no particular order): Andres Y Xavi's Sounds From The Secret Bar; Stinky Jim's It's Not What It Sounds Like; The Vendetta Suite's Kempe Stone Portal; Steve Cobby's Shanty Bivouac (which has a close to perfect side 2); Richard Fearless's unsettling ambient techno masterpiece Future Rave Memory; Roisin Murphy's remixed Crooked Machine; Bicep's Isles; Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Caluwaerts' Souvenir Des Bon Gout; Sons Of Slough's Bring Me Sunshine; Sonic Boom's remix album Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough; Cheval Sombre's pair of albums Days Go By and Time Waits For No One; Dry Cleaning's New Long Leg; Cerulean by Nashville Ambient Ensemble; The Liminanas and Laurent Garnier's De Pelicula; The Grid and Robert Fripp's Leviathan; Rose City Band's Earth Trip. The Bagging Area top ten looks like this-
10. Pye Corner Audio 'Entangled Routes'
9. Mogwai 'As The Love Continues'
8. Richard Norris 'Hypnotic Response'
7. Dean Wareham 'I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A.'
6. Sedibus 'The Heavens'
5. Daniel Avery 'Together In Static'
4. GLOK 'Pattern Recognition'
3. Coyote 'The Mystery Light'
2. Circe Sky 'Dream Colour'
1. Saint Etienne 'I've Been Trying To Tell You'
I wasn't expecting Saint Etienne to make an album as good as this, at this stage of things- made in isolation but sounding like the work of three people in a room together, I've Been Trying To Tell You is a woozy, reflective album digging away at late 90s nostalgia (but not sounding itself nostalgic), built around samples from that period and with a strong undertow of bass and a warm wash of effects. On top of this Sarah Cracknell's voice is used almost like a sample library, cut up phrases and snatches of dialogue.
EP of 2021
5. Rich Lane 'Camo'
4. Three EPs of outstanding new music from A Certain Ratio, 'EPA', 'EPC' and 'EPR'. I couldn't separate them so have bunched them together.
3. SUSS 'Night Suite'
2. Hugo Nicolson 'Lost And Found'
1. Andy Bell and Pye Corner Audio 'The Indica Gallery EP'
No question here, the single piece of vinyl/ mp3s I've probably played as much as any other this year since it came out in April, six wondrous remixes of Andy Bell's 2020 album The View From Halfway Down. Pye Corner Audio's sunshine dreamscape remixes were the sound of this year for me in lots of ways, especially the analogue cosmische of Skywalker, Indica and Cherry Cola.
So many good songs/ tracks/ remixes, I could easily list a top fifty. Someone wrote recently a top ten should be enough and I kind of agree- but all of these have been essential listening in 2021 (again, in no particular order); AMOR 'Unravel' from Lemur; Daniel Avery's Lone Swordsman as remixed by Chris Carter; Craig Bratley and Amy Douglas' No In Between; 10:40's Sleepwalker; a pair of remixes of Fontaines DC, one of A Hero's Death by Soulwax, the other Televised Mind by Dave Clarke; A Mountain Of One's Stars Planets Dust Me; Perry Granville's Dexter In Dub; Mat Ducasse's Bunny's Lullaby; Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio's Early Morning; Future Beat Alliance's Primordial Sky; Daniel Avery's remix of Winter In The Woods by Leaving Laurel; Coyote's remix of Original Cell by Projections and Coyote's two track 12" Will We Ever Dance Again; Cheval Sombre's Althea; various Pye Corner Audio one offs (Fictional Drilling and Eyes Open stand out); and last but not least Woodleigh Research Facility's All Is Not Lost and Vernal Invocation releases.
As well as all of those Sean Johnston has been responsible for a steady stream of remixes in his Hardway Bros guise, any one of which could/ should be in the list below but they can have their own sublist here-
Hardway Bros Sublist
10. Martyn Walsh and Simon Lyon 'Afterglow' Hardway Bros Dub
9. Shadowlark 'Come Around Here' Hardway Bros Remix
8. Cold Beat 'Double Sided Mirror' Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Noch Einmal Remix
This song, a tour de force from Mr Holmes with vocals by Raven Violet, provided a glimmer of light in a year that has been bleak as fuck for all kinds of reasons, personal and political, macro and micro. The song is political, a call to arms, a lyric about not putting up with it any more,a demand to say enough is enough, but it works on a variety of levels for me. Hopefully 2022 will see it get a vinyl release.
More Glok- I make no apologies for revisiting Glok so quickly after a post less than a week ago. Andy Bell (as Glok) released Pattern Recognition digitally on Friday with the vinyl to follow in January. You've got to be feeling pretty confident and riding the crest of a wave to open your album with a twenty minute long, entirely instrumental track. Dirty Hugs, three seconds shy of twenty minutes, is a sublime piece of kosmische music, synths and drum machines locked in, a guitar line surfing on top, perfectly capturing a feeling of escape. It's all very blissed out and cosmic until at nine minutes in there's a pause and then a skronked out, overdriven Spacemen 3 guitar riff bursts in to take the reins for the second half of the song. The layered, driving, pulsing, distorted beauty of the next ten minutes is a trip in itself. Genuinely breathtaking and jaw dropping stuff. Buy Dirty Hugs and the rest of the album at Bandcamp.
On Sunday I posted David Holmes' set for Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures, a radio station beaming delights out of Glasgow. October's show opened with a ninety minute mix from Glok (Andy Bell, guitarist and singer from Ride and more recently a solo artist responsible for some of the best songs of the last couple of years). Glok is a sleek, kosmische, synth based outlet for Andy's music. The first Glok album- Dissident- came out in 2019 and the follow up called Pattern Recognition is due this year (currently another victim of the crisis affecting vinyl pressing plants). Andy's mix for Sonic Treasures is a perfect way into the Glok world, gliding between several Glok tracks (Day Three, Invocation, Kolokol, Closer, Pulsing), Andy's Indica (remixed by Pye Corner Audio and then remixed by Glok- yes, Andy remixing a remix of himself), his Glok remix of Hermann Kristofersson from earlier this year, an unreleased Andy Bell song called Drone, some sublime ambient techno courtesy of The Primitive Painter, Freur's Doot- Doot (proto- Underworld from 1983), Roisin Murphy, Sensate Focus and Porter Ricks. It's a lovely trip, chilled and hypnotic. Find it at Soundcloud.
Glok's return with Pattern Recognition was led back in March with the release of That Time Of Night, a warm, throbbing synths and electronic shimmer, the voice of Shiarra celebrating the collective experience of losing yourself in the crowd and on the floor- 'in the heat and the light and the flashing/ Being a small part of the whole crowd of people'. The version below is an edit, the full length one is nine minutes long and together with a Darren Emerson remix can be gotten here.
The entire six hour broadcast of Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures for October- Glok, Joseph, Stephen Haldane and David Holmes- can be found at Soundcloud, handily chunked into seven sections.
GLOK, the alter ego Andy Bell uses for his dance/ electronic output, have a new album out in October an album called Pattern Recognition. That's the Andy Bell out of Ride not the one out of Erasure (though surely it can only be a matter of time before they collaborate). Ahead of the album comes song number two, following Maintaining The Machine a few weeks ago, a lovely, long cosmic thing with Irish poet Sinead O'Brien on vocals. The new one is called Closer and is further away from his day job with for Ride than ever, pure late 80s acid house with the influence of people like Mr Fingers and A Guy Called Gerald all over it. This version is Closer (To The Edit), written and recorded using nothing but a Roland SH 101, is a shorter version than the one which will eventually come out on the album. Lovely stuff it is too.
Glok (Andy Bell in dance/ electronic/ cosmische modes) has just announced a new album, out in September called Pattern Recognition. It feels a little depressing to be making plans for September by which point summer will be over and the new school year and autumn kicking in but that's how release schedules work. The first fruits of it are a wonderful new song, Maintaining The Machine, with Sinead O'Brien on vocals and Primal Scream's Simone Butler on bass. Synths washing back and forth, bubbling sounds, a lazy beat, double tracked vox, bathing in hypnotic and dreamy sonics.
Sinead O'Brien is a Limerick based poet and musician. This is her last year on a poem set to song from an EP called Drowning In Blessings, called Most Modern Painting- a quick fire spoken word/ post- punk/ art rock face off that is 'a dialogue between the conscious and the unconscious, through dream recall, memory, the individual and the ego'. We're up for all of that aren't we?
I think it was The Swede who determined that for a song to be considered long it should be over six minutes in length. This new one from Herrmann Kristoferson is six minutes and seven seconds so sneaks in but regardless of length it is a moody and elegiac piece of music. Gone Gold is the title track from an album due out in April, beautifully put together, all subtle rhythms, pulsing synths and serene strings. It's very good indeed.
Herrmann Kristoferson are an ambient techno duo from Germany and Denmark, Daniel Herrmann and Kristina Kristoferson. They made the album remotely during Covid restrictions, inspired by computer games of the past, Nintendo Gameboys and Multi User Dungeons. The limited edition cassette of the album has sold out (I 'm not sure music like this is best served by that format) but the digital release is at Bandcamp. Three minutes and thirty seconds longer than Gone Gold is a remix by GLOK (Andy Bell, a repeat postee here in recent times), yet another piece of evidence that Andy Bell is in a musical purple patch. Bass and hissing synths and more of those strings pulling at the heartstrings. The GLOK remix is only available on the digital version of the album. Find it here.
Pye Corner Audio has been drip feeding releases into the ether over the recent months and in the not too distant future his remixes of all eight songs from Andy Bell's The View From Halfway Down will come out physically (PCA's remix of Cherry Cola back in November was a sublime reworking of the song). Andy's song Indica, a tribute to the backwards lyric writing process of The Stone Roses' Don't Stop, and named after an art gallery/ book shop in Swinging Sixties London and a strain of marijuana, has been remixed by Pye Corner Audio and then re- edited by GLOK (Andy Bell's other solo project), a majestic, slow building, euphoric hymn, synths burbling away.
Pye Corner Audio's own releases cast a similar spell, all constructed with drum machines, analogue synths and vintage sounding FX units, and have recently shifted away from the ghostly sci fi soundtracks scene and towards something earthier and based at an imaginary lockdown dancefloor. These two are at Bandcamp and are free downloads. Mono Three is a dark gritty monster, squelchy bass and bleeps, insistently building over six minutes. Quarry Rave- and I cannot resist a track called Quarry Rave- came out last week, setting sail on a modular synth pattern and a slightly lopsided rhythm before a lovely warm wobbly synth joins in. Add percussion, repeat, oscillate.
Social Dissonance was recorded live in 2019, twenty one minutes of cosmic, radiophonic synth on Side A and more, the same length, on Side B.
An hour and four minutes of music for lockdown. This lockdown hasn't been any fun at all. The novelty of the first lockdown has been absent and in the two darkest months of the year, it's been difficult. There are at least some glimmers of light now, the vaccines, the numbers starting to come down but I don't have much confidence Johnson will make the right call on Monday and fear that he is in thrall to the voices on the right wing who want to unlock everything as soon as possible. No one wants to stay in lockdown any longer than necessary but I think many of us would rather soldier on for another month or two with a very gradual loosening than open up quickly, chuck away all the gains and end up with another surge in cases and lockdown four in April.
It's easy to be overwhelmed when faced with all this, all these problems and issues that are beyond our control. As Richard Norris said recently, 'music is the answer'. This is a mix I put together recently, starting out with some street sounds from the BBC's extensive online archive and a bit of Blade Runner, some drones and spoken word, something from Luke Schneider's astonishing steel pedal ambient album, more ambient music with guitars and pianos and synths and then a second half that opens up and lets the light in, a bit of optimism before the strings and drama of Two Lone Swordsmen remixed by In The Nursery. It's at Mixcloud.
Romanian street sounds (morning in Bucharest)/ Leon’s Voight Kampf Test
Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: Estuary Embers
Luke Schneider: Anteludium
Mark Peters: Ashurst’s Beacon (ambient version)
Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini: Illusion Of Time
(Teodor Wolgers Rework)
Smoke Test: Regress
Ganser: Bags For Life (GLOK Remix)
The Primitive Painter: Invisible Landscapes
Underground System: Bella Ciao (Laguna Mix by Gigi Masin)
Seahawks: Sky Is You (Pye Corner Audio Head Tek Remix)
Two Lone Swordsmen: In The Nursery Visit Glenn Street
