In 1987 a friend made me a compilation tape which included two songs by Mancunian band A Certain Ratio- Shack Up and Do The Du. I've been listening to ACR ever since. They released their latest album, 1982, last Friday and it's fair to say the group have been re- energised in recent years, the result partly of a deal with Mute to re- issue all their albums. I'd been thinking of an ACR Sunday mix for some time and just as I ended up doing a pair of One Dove mixes a while back, I think I may need to come back to ACR for a second go. The mix here contains none of the punk- funk sound of their releases on Factory, the nervous, minimal, scratchy, demob suits and army shorts songs that made their reputation. Instead I've gone for a mix of dancefloor oriented songs spanning three decades. The core trio of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson have regrouped several times since 1979, not least following the deaths of Rob Gretton in 1999 and singer Denise Johnson in 2020, but they're still creating and producing new music and are getting stronger and stronger. If they're playing near you, go and see them. ACR are a good night out guaranteed.
Dirty Boy came out in 2018 ahead of the group's acr:set compilation, with vocals from Barry Adamson and the sampled voice of one- time mentor, manager and label boss Tony Wilson.
Music Control was a collaboration between ACR's alter ego Sir Horatio and Chris Massey, DJ, producer and promoter from Stretford, a squelchy collision of punk- funk, acid house and mutant disco.
Mello came out in 1992 on Rob Gretton's new label Rob's Records, a slice of loved up Mancunian house.
Be What You Wanna Be is from 1990's acr: mcr, a renewal of the group's sound and fortunes. They left Factory for A&M but 1989's Good Together failed to shift many copies (a shame as it's an album with much going for it). acr: mcr is wall to wall brilliance, from Spirit Dance to Good Together to Tribecca, rhythms and pianos inspired by the records playing in the Hacienda. Personnel changes at A&M saw them leave not long after for Rob's Records. I saw them at Manchester Academy in autumn 1991, a gig packed to the rafters and with a crowd up for it from the moment ACR appeared on stage. A few songs in my then girlfriend decided this was the ideal opportunity to have an argument and walk out of the venue.
Night People was on one of three EPs ACR released in 2021, thirteen tracks, with no filler, following the comeback album Loco, on Mute, from the year before. Night People was on the third of the three, ACR: EPR, and has a swampy Bowie/ Iggy in Berlin groove.
Wedge is by Number, Ali Friend and Rich Thair's spin off from Red Snapper, a 2020 punk funk trip. The two bands swapped remixes, this being ACR's remix of Number. Number's Binary album came out in April 2020 and probably got a little overlooked with everything else that was going on in spring 2020.
Emperor Machine was a collaboration between ACR and Emperor Machine (Andy Meacham, who found fame first time around in Bizarre Inc). The self- titled track was on EPC in 2021 and is supercharged mutant disco/ punk funk.
Taxi Guy is the closing song on 2020's Loco album, an album that showed they were right back on it and fired up. Jazzy, samba grooves and a mass drumming finale. Their vie gigs over the last decade have sometimes finished with the group ending up leaving the stage and walking into the audience, drumming and blowing whistles, as happened at Gorilla in early 2020.
Won't Stop Loving You is a remix of a song from acr: mcr by Bernard Sumner from 1990. Sumner stripped the song back to Jez and Denise's vocals, whipcrack 808 drums and house piano. Something of a desert island disc for me.
A Stretford (Manchester)- Stravanger (Norway) remix crossover to start the week with Chris Massey reworking Lindstrom's Blinded By The LEDs. Massey gets straight to business with a kick drum and hi- hats, wobbly synth topline and then some increasingly intense buzzing and fizzing sounds. Seven minutes of rising and falling synths, drop outs and re- entries and enough energy to send you flying into Monday. At the very least you might turn up at work pretending you want to be there.
If you go to Bandcamp there's a second shorter remix (the Balearic Trance Rework) available too, both free. Blinded BY The LEDs was released in 2019, Massey's reworks were a product of lockdown- the pair DJed together only a few weeks before the world shut down in March 2020- and came out last year.
I don't know how many times I've mentioned A Certain Ratio here recently but they seem to be popping up with a welcome regularity- the Sir Horatio v Chris Massey Music Control single from earlier this year, the recent ACR remix of Number both stand out (not to mention the still unbelievably sad death of Denise Johnson). The band are gearing up for the release of a new album in September, an ten track record called Loco, and last week put this out ahead of it...
It comes out of the speakers like an updated 2020 version of one of the highlights of 1990's ACR: MCR, Spirit Dance specifically, bassline, acid squiggles, a ton of cowbell and some serious rhythms.
If you didn't get the Sir Horatio single here's a reminder, funky as you like and a video collage to push the buttons of your memory.
Manchester DJ and producer Chris Massey remixed A Certain Ratio's Dirty Boy single last year, a delirious blend of biting acid house, northern funk and the voices of Tony Wilson and Barry Adamson. Now comes this, Chris Massey with a one off single with Sir Horatio (I'm sure you can figure out who that is) plus some remixes from Sink Ya Teeth and See Thru Hands, three hundred vinyl copies available through Piccadilly Records (out today assuming mail order is still a going concern- it was yesterday).
The song, Music Control, is an intoxicating dance floor monster, acid bassline and growly vox, ACR:MCR updated for 2020. The video is spliced together footage of dancers, TV show titles, drugs, Manchester, robots and marchers, technology and rave graphics, models and nightclubs, a social history of the last three decades in four minutes forty. I'm hitting replay quite frequently.
I read an article recently that claimed that making end of year lists was merely an attempt to forestall death, that ranking and ordering things is for people who have an unnatural fear of death and who must be constantly trying to leave things in order before they go. A bit dark perhaps. A similar argument says that making lists is an attempt to place order on a chaotic and uncontrollable world- and one glimpse at the news will confirm that the world is both those things and getting more so- and people (men mainly) feel that if they can rank their albums/books/films then they have at least controlled a part of that world. So, with all those things being as they are, here's my end of year list. It doesn't seem to have much in common with the end of year lists I've read in the 'proper' music press or websites- so I must be out of step with what's really the best of the 2019. All I can offer you is what I've loved the most this year and some examples to sample.
Singles/songs/remixes/e.p.
There's a lot of chuggy, cosmic, Balearic, ALFOS style releases in this list, a top 30 for 2019, a golden year for music that evokes outer space, Mediterranean beaches and/or basement clubs thick with dry ice.
1. Silver Apples Edge Of Wonder (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
Released for Record Shop Day in April this remix is nine minutes of total joy, a dream turned into sound- the pitter patter drum machine giving gentle propulsion, the bouncy keyboard riff and metallic sounds echoing round and round and the softly sung vocal- 'waves, waves, Neptune's metronomes... relentless heartbeat of the sea'.
2. A close second was this three track release from Pines In The Sun, Albanian Balearica via Brighton. I know next to nothing about them but the wordless, sunshine shimmer of Sun and the gorgeous sprawl of Zig Zag Sea (plus Duncan Gray's remix of the latter) soundtracked much of my summer.
3. Apiento's single Things We Do For Love came out back at the start of the year, a slow motion dance floor shaped ode with synth bass and whispered vocals. My main regret is not being quick enough to get a copy of the limited run of 7"s.
4 and 5. A Certain Ratio have spent the year celebrating their fortieth anniversary and released this pair of superb songs, one a previously unreleased cover version from 1980 that was intended to be voiced by Grace Jones, the dark funk of House In Motion and the other a very Mancunian remix of their Dirty Boy single (featuring Barry Adamson and the voice of Tony Wilson), remixed by Chris Massey. The Dirty Boy remix in particular has floated my boat.
From this point onward there are a slew of singles, remixes and e.p.s that I've enjoyed this year, loads of brilliant music showing that 2019 has been a really good year. The next dozen or so especially have all been on heavy rotation.
6. Moon Duo Lost Heads 7. Meatraffle Meatraffle On The Moon (Andrew Weatherall Remix) 8. Four Tet Teenage Birdsong 9. A Mountain Of Rimowa A.M.O.R. e.p. 10. Plaid Maru (Orbital Remix) 11. Hardway Bros Chateau Comtal 12. Scott Fraser and Louise Quinn Together More 13. Four Tet Anna Painting 14. GLOK Dissident 15.Roisin Murphy Incapable (plus the pair of incredible Crooked Man remixes/dubs) 16. Craig Bratley Message To The Outpost e.p. 17. Field Of Dreams No 303 18. Fjordfunk Exile (including the Hardway Bros remix) 19. The Comet Is Coming Summon The Fire 20. Ride Future Love 21. A Man Called Adam Paul Valery St The Disco (Prins Thomas Remix) 22. KH Only Human 23. Shape Of Space Manifesto 24. Warriors Of The Dystotheque Things In The Shadows (Tronik Youth Remix) 25. ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ e.p. 26. Shunt Voltage Link Up/ See It In Your Eyes 27. Boy Division Hot Pants 28. Dan Wainwright Keep Me Hangin' On (with Hardway Bros dub remix) 29. Duncan Gray Much Much Worse/ Where Clock Goes 30. Terr Tales Of Devotion (including the Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
Four Tet/Kieran Hebden has had a particularly good 2019, always innovative and entrancing and producing some of the best moments in a variety of guises and across a series of releases, including a live album recorded at Ally Pally in the summer that I've only just started listening to.
Edit: just realised I forgot San Pedro whose e.p. in June was a blast and should be in the list above somewhere.
Albums
I've bought and listened to what seems like an enormous amount of albums this year. The internet and streaming has made individual songs the focus again, a return to the halcyon days of the 7" and 12" single and their B-sides, and occasionally people write about the death of the album and the forty/seventy minute format (depending on whether its a vinyl album or CD). Looking through my pile of records and CDs and lists of downloads the album looks in really good health to me. There's more breadth to my album list, a wider variety of sounds and styles. I've fallen into an ambient/drone wormhole many times this year, a wonderful place to stay for extended periods. Psychedelia and cosmic psych rock has been at the front of the pile a lot. These are in no particular order, the first eight I genuinely couldn't pick between in terms of a favourite or a ranking, they're all the albums of the year.
Glok Dissident
Andy Bell (the guitarist from Ride) released the surprise of the year, a rich, gorgeous flotation through cosmic psychedelia, motorik drums and West German sounds, awash with floaty, dreamy synths and guitars. From the Tron-esque sleeve to the luminous green vinyl to the grooves contained within everything about this album was spot on.
Richard Norris Abstractions Vol. 1
Richard Norris has been exploring ambient music throughout 2019 (and before). This year he has released a pair of albums, Abstractions Vol. 1 and 2, filled with extended repetitive sounds, loops of melody, chimes and washes, drones, ambient noise, waves of reassuring sounds- deep listening. This year has been a car crash in many ways. The whole Brexit debacle, the constant noise and feelings of loss of control over our politics and culture, the sense of loss and the feeling that we're being driven over the edge by fanatics. This album has helped me switch off from it. I can put this on and it works in a calming way that nothing else does. If there's an N.H.S. left in five years time, this pair of albums should be available on prescription.
Meatraffle Bastard Music
Bastard Music is a strange record, surreal, bold and in places very funny. A vision of dystopia set to a ramshackle beat and some memorable melodies. Lyrically it deals with everything- nationalism, the exploitation of workers, Brexit, living in London versus living in the country, immigration, the price of renting, sexism, science fiction, activism, everything... but it's never overbearing or humourless and the lyrics and vocals force you to listen to it rather than just have it on. Musically it's lo fi synthy disco, horns and Pulp Fiction guitars, home made rhythms, reggae and post punk. In some ways Bastard Music makes no sense and in others it makes more sense than any other album released in 2019. It's an amazing record in lots of ways not least in the the song Meatraffle On The Moon, one of the very best things I've heard this year- a song that really should be up at the top of the singles list with Silver Apples and Pines In The Sun- a dub pop exploration of human workers enslaved and working on the moon, their comradeship and valiant attempts to survive with only the meatraffle to look forward to. Semi- stoned drums, a snaking horn, dub bass and the ace vocals.
Moon Duo Stars Are The Light
My favourite guitar/synth/drums psych- rock explorers put out their latest album in September, Stars Are The Light, and have found a new love of disco and dance music and ecstatic grooves. It's still clearly the work of the band who made the darker, heavier Occult Architecture albums but now with their faces turned to the sun. The synths and drums dance around, the rhythms are aimed at the feet and lighter than before and the twin vocals are airy and optimistic. Their live show in October was an immersive psychedelic experience. I don't think there's an album I've bought this year that I've listened to more than this one.
Steve Cobby Sweet Jesus
One man cottage industry from Hull, Steve Cobby dropped Sweet Jesus onto the internet live back in the summer, twelve songs recorded in his shed, taking in cool Balearic vibes, lush instrumentals, downtempo funk and synths and lots of acoustic guitars. The opening song, As Good As Gold, inspired by Led Zep's third album acoustic guitar picking folkiness in mid- Wales with added mellotron, has been one of my favourite tunes of 2019 and one that I keep going back to. There's something about it that really hits the spot in a way I can't quite put my finger on.
Rich Ruth Calming Signals
This album from Nashville resident Rich Ruth is often described as ambient but it's not ambient in the rain- falling- while- lying- in- bed- with- the- volume- slightly- too- low Brian Eno sense. It's an instrumental album, nine songs that take in minimalism, repetition and drones, a beautiful soaring, squawking saxophone, built around synths and guitars. On first listen you're never quite sure where it's going to go next and in places it is utterly gorgeous.
Richard Fearless Deep Rave Memory
This only came out recently so I'm still getting to know it but it is a perfectly paced and sequenced, intricately constructed techno journey. Completely absorbing and in places edge- of- your- seat tense, taut techno but with some beautiful melodic passages and some pulsing, calming tracks too.
Underworld Drift Series 1 Sampler
I've mentioned this project and album twice recently so don't intend to say much else. The best Underworld album for ages. Try this one...
These eighteen too, roughly in the order that they're listed in below. A bumper year for the long player round here.
L'epee Diabolique Steve Mason About The Light A Man Called Adam Farmarama Bob Mould Sunshine Rock Private Mountain Blue Mountain Mark Peters Ambient Innerland Stiletti Ana Ab Ovo WH Lung Incidental Music Rude Audio Street Light Interference Kungens Män Chef Acid Arab Jdid Solange When I Get Home Plaid Polymers Rose City Band Rose City Band Jane Weaver Loops In The Secret Society Joe Morris Exotic Language Lana del Rey Norman Fucking Rockwell Mythologen Antisocial Background Music 2017- 2019
A Certain Ratio have been having a new lease of life since singing to Mute with new singles, old songs excavated from the vaults, re-issues, box sets and gigs. Last year's single Dirty Boy, featuring guest voices from the living (Barry Adamson) and the dead (Tony Wilson) has been remixed by Chris Massey, a Manchester based DJ, producer and promoter. The remix is if anything better than the original version, Jez Kerr's bass in the foreground and a thudding house beat putting ACR back at the heart of the dancefloor. The video is a time shifting delight, intercutting footage of Manchester and it's people from the last forty years, the Hacienda of the late 80s, dancers at a 70s discotheque, ravers at an outdoor festival, Jez and the band live on stage in '89 and recently, the Mancunian Way then and now, our orange buses and a 60s motorcyclist speeding through the city centre- the old and the new.
