Forty Minutes Of Spiritualized

I've been going back through some of this year's albums and playing them again. Spiritualized's Everything Was Beautiful is one of them, the second part of Jason's double offering to go with 2018's And Nothing Hurt. Both still sound like a real return to form, the guitars, horns and rhythms all exactly as they should be and Jason's spaceman voice more wracked than ever. Today's mix is a bunch of Spiritualized songs and remixes, not quite chosen randomly from my hard rive but definitely not intended as a best of, more of a set of songs that flow together. The back catalogue is so deep and wide that I have a feeling I could compile multiple Spiritualized mixes and not get near a definitive one- so it is just what it is, a set of songs that sound good together. 

Forty Minutes Of Spiritualized

• Goldfrapp: Monster Love (Goldfrapp Vs Spiritualized)
• Spiritualized: I Think I'm In Love (Chemical Brothers Vocal Remix)
• Spiritualized: Come Together (Live At the Royal Albert Hall)
• Spiritualized: The Mainline Song
• Cut Copy: Free Your Mind (Spiritualized Version)
• LFO: Tied Up (Spiritualized Electric Mainline Remix)
• Spiritualized: Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space (Original Unreleased Mix)

Goldfrapp v Spiritualized was one of the B-sides from a Goldfrapp CD single, Happiness, in 2008. 

The Chemical Brothers remix of I Think I'm In Love came out in 1997, one of the Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space singles. Spiritualized Live At The Royal Albert Hall is from the same year, a full on space rock extravaganza

The Mainline Song is from this year's Everything Is Beautiful. 

Jason's remix of the Cut Copy song came out in 2013, with a new vocal from Jason and guitars, organ, noise and repetition combining to produce what is essentially a new Spiritualized song.  

The remix of LFO, nine minutes of soundwaves, drones and oscillating ambient techno bliss is from 1994. 

The unreleased original mix of the title track of Ladies and Gentlemen... dates from 1997 and fell foul of the Elvis Presley estate who didn't like the borrowing of a line from Can't Help Falling In Love With You. More fool them. 

Isolation Mix Four

A bit of a change again for this week's hour long isolation mix, this time a trip into more psychedelic and psyche areas, some guitars, a couple of cover versions, some remixes and a re-edit of an 80s alt- classic with an eye, a third eye maybe, on the cosmic and the blissed out. One of the segues is a little bit clumsy but I can live with it. I've had to move the host over to Mixcloud as I'd used up all my available space at Soundcloud without going to the paid for service.



Tracklist-
The Durutti Column: Otis

Wixel: Expressway To Yr Skull (Long Champs Bonus Beats)

Moon Duo: Stars Are The Light

Curses: This Is The Day

Le Volume Courbe: Rusty

Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End

Mogwai: Party In The Dark

The Liminanas: The Gift (Anton Mix)

Goldfrapp v Spiritualized: Monster Love

Julian Cope: Heed Of Penetration and the City Dweller Head Remix by Hugo Nicholson

Edit Service 8 by It’s A Fine Line: The Story Of The Blues (Talkin’ Blues)

The Early Years: Complicity

Monday's Long Song

This song isn't particularly long, not by the standards of some songs in this series, but it feels long- and not in a bad way. In 2008 Goldfrapp released a second single, Happiness, from their Seventh Tree album. J Spaceman's remix/version came out on the CD #2 (back when record companies got you to buy two CD singles by spreading the remixes and B-sides out). There is a very good Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation too, a very 60s European sounding re-working, boulevards and the Champs Elysee, but the Goldfrapp v Spiritualized song, Monster Love, is something else. Strings, drone, bells, a lazy tambourine, a wheezy organ and Jason's numbed out vocal just drifting, sighing 'everything comes around', repetition and seemingly endless. It's only five and a half minutes long but feels like an eternity.

Monster Love

Andromeda And The Moon

There's lots of new stuff around at the moment. To continue yesterday's theme, it's not 'new' new stuff, but new stuff from older bands. There must be an analysis that says that April and May are good times to release music. Last week Gorillaz put out four new songs. I was going to type 'dropped four new singles' but I gagged a little bit at typing 'dropped' and I don't think an internet only song counts as a single (or if singles even exist anymore. I know that 7" singles still exist but when one artist releases an album and all the songs off it enter the top twenty, the single is pretty much a dead form I think).

The four new Gorillaz songs are a mixed bunch, and I suspect the album to follow will be too (which like all Gorillaz albums carries a long list of guest stars and collaborators from Grace Jones to De La Soul to Johnny Beth to Mavis Staples to Jamie Principle and so on). The best one and the only one I've so far wanted to listen to several times is Andromeda, which is a skip away from dance music, with a house beat and synths and a Damon vocal that isn't just that listless one he usually does. It sounds like it was fun to make and is fun to listen to.



A bit less upfront, more subtle and more interested in texture and mood is this new song from Goldfrapp. I haven't heard the whole album yet but this song, Moon In Your Mouth, is a lovely thing. The synths are moody, immersive and spacious, building, and Alison's vocal matches them, soaring where it needs to. Goldfrapp flit from synth stomp albums to folky albums. This song takes parts from both and adds some science fiction.

You Call Glastonbury Glasto...

...You'd like to go there someday
When they've put up the gun towers
To keep the hippies away.

So said Half Man Half Biscuit's Nigel Blackwell and judging by the bits I've seen on the telly this weekend it looks like it's happened. Most of the footage made Glastonbury look like a gap year training camp.

I saw a couple of highlights along with some shockers (Metallica- how much could you stand? I managed 93 seconds). I think the girls won.

M.I.A. resplendent in gold and with a whole forward line of rappers and singers blowing it up on Friday night. That sample from Straight To Hell and those gunshots and cash registers clanging out over rural Somerset are hard to beat.



Edit: This video, uploaded by the BBC onto their own Youtube channel, has now been removed by themselves. Apparently someone was wearing a t-shirt with a political slogan they don't like. No to censorship, yeah? Last night there was still 20 minutes worth of her set at their own website- confusing huh? Paper Planes starts around  13 minutes in.

The day after Warpaint brought their dreamy, bass led groove to the fields. Their album is sounding good again after a month or two away from it. You have to stop looking for the songs and let their sound wash over you.



Goldfrapp, strobe-lit and black clad, a sexy electro-glam stomp.




I also watched Blondie doing Atomic at some point while reading the paper on Saturday morning. I am sorry to report it was dreadful.

Direct from the beeb...

Clay

Goldfrapp's new album, Tales Of Us, is a bit of a grower. It is largely folk crossed with baroque with Alison's breathy vocals, ten songs all named after people. At times I'm finding it a bit one paced but the sumptuousness of the songs carries it through. Most of them leave you feeling a little sadder than when you started. This one is the album's closer and is as good as any of the rest. It starts off low key with picked guitar and voice and then builds, adding some strings and a little drama before coming to sudden stop.

Clay

Little Bird

I've got three Goldfrapp albums- two bought in charity shops (Supernature, Seventh Tree), one in an HMV sale (Black Cherry). I don't know whether this tells you more about me or them. I've been meaning to get Felt Mountain for ages but haven't got round to it. There's a lot to be said for the electro-glam stomp of songs like Ooh La La or Strict Machine, the sexiness of Twist, the live shows with Alison and backing dancers wearing horses tails.... maybe I'll stop there.

The best one though, the most lasting one out of the three I've got, is 2008's Seventh Tree, where they moved away from the dance sound and towards something more subtle, more psychedelic, more baroque- more adult maybe (not that necessarily means more boring, just less instant and requiring a bit more concentration). As it is it seems like the forthcoming one may be down similar lines- go see Davy's post from a few weeks back for proof. Little Bird, the second song on Seventh Tree is a stunner- it wraps its way around you and digs into your soul. This live version in Bristol in 2010 is nerve tinglingly good.



Little Bird (Live in Bristol 2010)