Still Waters

I've got a lot of time for for dance music veterans A Man Called Adam and it's not just due to us sharing a name. In the summer of 1990 their laid back Balearic house song Barefoot In The Head stuck a chord with me as did their album a year later, The Apple (rhyming slang I think, the apple corps = the score, as in 'do you know the score?'). In the last few years they've had a bit of renaissance with last year's Farmarama album and a slew of remixes. Sally and Steve have now followed this with a twenty track release, fresh out now on Bandcamp, a round up of rarities and oddities from the duo's whole career taking in demo versions, mixes, edits, a commission for the British Museum and collaborations with people such as the recently departed Jose Padilla, The Idjut Boys and Sensory Productions. There's so much going on across the twenty songs that it's difficult to take in in one sitting but there's a freshness and a flow in the music, ambient sounds, early 90s Ibizan rhythms and a very Balearic state of mind. Right now, this one with Jose Padilla is hitting the spot...

The album, Love Forgotten, is here. Their calling card, the endlessly giving Barefoot In The Head is present on it in a remixed form. There's a sample on Barefoot In The Head, some lines from a 1967 poem by Rod McKuen, where he 'puts a seashell to my ear and it all comes back'. Rod and Anita Kerr recorded the album The Sea with the San Sebastian Strings, a dreamlike slice of 1967, hippy spoken word and easy listening strings. This is where the sample comes from...

It's the sort of album you always expect to turn up in a charity shop or at a car boot sale. I'm sure the thrift stores and flea markets of the USA are full of copies of The Sea, dumped in the 1990s. As it is, over here, I'm still looking. 

Babylonian Beaches

Something to take the edge off November and add some warmth to your week via Denmark and South London. Babylonian Beaches is a track by Michael son Of Michael, a Dane, and is remixed here by Rude Audio, based somewhere in the Crystal Palace area. Very nice gently throbbing, cosmic Scandi- disco. Find it at Soundcloud here. 

Michael son Of Michael's album Going Coastal, just out and including the original mix of Babylonian Beaches, is here. Behind the cool, laid back, downtempo, Scandi- ambient electronica is a commentary on 'the improbability of alien lifeforms being technologically inferior to us, dreams of travelling to the Red Planet, the handling of Brexit by the Tories and the Labour Party, life by the beach, the imposter syndrome and the virtues of humans dancing robotically / robots doing their best to dance like humans.'  So plenty there to counter the view that electronic music isn't about anything. 

Rude Audio's back catalogue, dubby, Balearic chug with Arabic sounds and influences can be found at Bandcamp and is worth investing in. This track, Repeat Offender is a sweet and shiny way to spend six minutes, repeating descending synth parts and some New Order- esque melodies. 

This dub of Rumble On Arab Street by Valtow is also top notch, light and shade with little vocal snatches coming out of mix. 

Golden Waves And Unmuddied Lakes

The sheer quantity and at times the torrent of new music this year have been one of the things that have helped to deal with all the shit that has been thrown our way. Regardless of your political persuasion or your thoughts on how the pandemic has been handled, it's been almost unremittingly grim. Music helps. Richard Norris' Music For Healing series in the spring was a guaranteed aural balm, longform pieces of ambient/ deep listening designed to help and bring some form of ease. In September Richard followed these with an album called Elements, five lengthy instrumentals, using analogue synthesisers to make hypnotic and uplifting music. 

Now Richard has added a four track EP to his 2020 catalogue, Golden Waves, four chilled, ambient works, all rippling synth lines, pulses and soothing drones. Lead track Golden Waves has some beautiful little melodies dripping over it. Cloud Surfing is lighter than air, padding drum sounds and warmth. Blue Star Gold harks back to the Music For Healing tracks, patterns of single notes and reverb. Signal To Power sets out with long chords and synth sounds, washes of tone and a celestial choir, a distinct lack of hurry to go anywhere, just a lovely, long drift. Buy it at Bandcamp. 

Back in the 90s Richard was one half of The Grid along with Dave Ball (formerly of Soft Cell). Their 1993 single Crystal Clear was remixed by The Orb in majestic fashion, Clear Like An Unmuddied Lake, an absolute highpoint of 20th century ambient acid house, a track still revealing its pleasures twenty- seven years after its release (which unfortunately I can't find on mp3 and I'm sure I had it digitally at some point. Probably on an old hard drive). 

Monday's Long Song

Isolation day eight, over half way through now. 

Rheinzand released one of 2020's best albums back in the spring, a delicious blend of Balearic, disco, house and pop from Ghent, Belgium. The song Obey has been remixed and Hardway Bros manage to improve on something that was already close to perfect. Long, deep, sultry, dancing grooves. Lifts the gloom a bit I have to say. Buy the whole remix package at Bandcamp. 

The Live At The SSL Dub is even further out there, messy and murky.

New Day Rising

What a relief it was when the call was made yesterday and the news channels started to show the line reached and then the crowds dancing in the streets of America's cities. Even over here, thousands of miles away in another country, there was a profound sense of elation that for once, the first time in the past decade pretty much, a political result has gone the right way, that a push back against the reactionary right wing has been made. These things matter. 

New Day Rising

Unwillingly Mine

A Bunnymen bonus for Saturday, a cover of The Killing Moon by Australian band Something For Kate, remixed by fellow Melbourne man T- Rek. Something For Kate released it as the third song on a 2006 CD single and T- Rek added the dub disco groove having already mixed the band's cover. Nine minutes of slinky, slow motion Bunnygroove, pushed ever onwards by a post- punk bassline, lovely synth stabs, plenty of echo, all deliciously full of icy gloom. One for spinning round the kitchen to as lockdown kicks in. 

The Killing Moon (T- Rek's Desert Disco Dub Mix)

I Chop And I Change And The Mystery Thickens

There's a lot of back story to Echo And The Bunnymen's 1984 album Ocean Rain, famously declared by the adverts in the music press and by Mac as 'the greatest album ever made'. We'll come back to that opinion.

After the difficulties they encountered writing and recording Porcupine- internal strife, record company rejection and press reviews- the Bunnymen retreated a bit and then came out fighting with the standalone single Never Stop, a majestic, anti- Thatcher post punk/ dance record with a superb 12" mix. Significantly it featured an expanded sound with violins, cellos and marimbas. Strings had been a feature of Porcupine and its pair of hit singles and on Ocean Rain sweeping orchestral strings would come to dominate the sound. They'd also been using acoustic guitars more and more, as seen in the Channel 4 documentary Play At Home (Life At Brian's) performances. For some Bunnymen fans these steps further away from the urgent guitar led sound of their earlier albums was a misstep. For others, it was anything but. The group once again used a Peel Session at Maida Vale to test out some new songs- all four songs played for John Peel would end up on Ocean Rain (Nocturnal Me, the eventual title track, My Kingdom and Watch Out Below, which became The Yo Yo Man). They played four of Ocean Rain's songs on a live edition of The Tube, the title track now an acoustic ballad. All this road-testing of the songs, working versions up, developing them, changing lyrics and arrangements, meant that the songs were fully realised by the time they came to record them, in Montmartre, Paris, with a 35 piece orchestra in tow. Ocean Rain is supposed to be big, lush and grand, four men standing in the face of the storm. The gloom of Porcupines and the night terrors of Heaven Up Here have been replaced by something lighter. On the sleeve Brian Griffin shot them in a boat, on a lake, in a cavern, the crystalline blues and silvers forming a dramatic but lit up backdrop. Les and Pete stand with the oars, Will sits in the middle and Ian stares into the blue, his hand dipping into the water. They decamped to Paris to record it but most of the vocals were re- done back in Liverpool, Ian unhappy with his voice (although The Killing Moon was recorded in Bath but again Mac did his vocals in Liverpool, this time because of a cold). 

I love Ocean Rain, I love its scope and flow and the playing is superb. Compare it to the scratchy post- punk of Crocodiles and then the fluid, powerful songs on Heaven Up Here and it is a band moving on. They didn't want to repeat themselves and the experience of Porcupines sounds banished. The optimism of the songs on Ocean Rain contrasts with the earlier songs and now Ian is decorating his lyrics with the natural world- the weather, storms, rain, the moon, tidal waves, day and night and vegetables. Sometimes he crosses the line, singing portentous nonsense or stuttering his way through the names of salad ingredients, but he also sings songs that define him and the group- The Killing Moon's time shifting romance and theme of fate and destiny- 'under blue moon I saw you/ so soon you'll take me' and 'he will wait until/ you give yourself to him' coupled with something approaching poetry, 'your lips a magic world/ you sky all hung with jewels'. The 12" contained a longer mix, the All Night Version, maxed out effortlessly (just as Silver was with its 12" Tidal Wave mix). 

The Killing Moon (All Night Version)

This version, from the Life At Brian's session, was filmed for The Tube, part of Bill Drummond's madcap plan to have a day of Bunnymen activities in Liverpool- a bike ride on a route that traced a pair of giant rabbit ears, a trip on that ferry across the Mersey, a visit to the city's Anglican cathedral and a celebratory gig at St George's Hall in the evening. The Life At Brian's sessions were filmed for the Channel 4 documentary a year earlier, the band playing in the cathedral and a film based a greasy spoon café owned by Brian, a former boxer.

The Killing Moon (Life At Brian's Version)

Whether it is 'the greatest album ever made' is open to question- MacCulloch claims he said this jokingly to the head of Warner Bros Rob Dickin, who then went and used it on the posters, but MacCulloch is capable of saying it seriously too. The songs are almost all single material, strong verses and rousing chorus, Indian scales, sea shanties and pirate songs, built on Sergeant's Washburn acoustic guitars and Pete playing his drums with brushes, the orchestra sweeping in and around on top. Opening song Nocturnal Me sets the tone, blasting out of the speakers, loud and quiet dynamics with Mac singing of ice capped fire and burning wood. Crystal Days swoons and rushes by, a song that wines you and dines you and then leaves you wanting more. The Yo Yo Man channels some weird central European vibe, the words telling you of Igloos and Ian's own headstone. The Killing Moon is a peak, the chords of Space Oddity played backwards and Will's balalaika- inspired guitar solo, a song any group in 1984 would have killed to have written and one that is shot through pop culture, turning up in Donnie Darko, Grosse Point Blank and numerous cover versions. Seven Seas is a glorious romp, the third single from the album, a singalong enigma. MacCulloch has since debunked some of the mystery of his lyrics, the tortoiseshell in Seven Seas apparently the head of an erect penis after an session on cocaine. Not for nothing by this point were some people close to the band calling them Echo And The Buglemen. 

Maybe the drug use accounts for the album's one serious stumble, the over- the- top nonsense of Thorn Of Crowns. It's not terrible but it is silly, Ian's stuttering delivery chucking in cucumbers, cauliflowers and cabbages along with crucifixion imagery. Incredibly, the two chord, Velvets inspired genius of Angels And Devils was left off Ocean Rain, turning up as a B-side when it really should have been on the record instead of Thorn Of Crowns. 

The two songs that close the album are stunning. My Kingdom is an organ led delight, 1960s garage rock crossed with mid- 80s scouse mysticism, Ian stuttering deliberately on the words for effect- 'b-b-burn the skin off and climb the rooftop'- while switching in the verses to stories of the heart, soldiers at war, dancing and whatever else he dreamt up. Will plays twin guitar solos on his acoustic through an old Vox valve amp, soaring, elevating guitar lines from a man who definitely didn't see himself as a guitar hero but playing as if on one of Love's classic albums. As My Kingdom finishes Ocean Rain's title track fades in, a song that is both the calm and the storm. 'All at sea again', Ian croons before his love ends up 'screaming from beneath the waves'. Like on Heaven Up Here and Porcupine they finish with a song to sail away to. 'All hands on deck at dawn/ sailing to sadder shores/ your port in my heavy storms/ harbours my blackest thoughts'. This alternative take, stripped back and acoustic, is a beauty too, showing how the songs easily stand up in different versions.

Ocean Rain (Alt Take)

Ocean Rain may not be the greatest album ever made (and what album is?) but it is a masterpiece of kinds, a fully drawn set of strong, powerful, beautiful songs by a band who at that point had made four albums in four years, plus numerous singles, sessions, versions and B- sides. It left them in a quandary though, of where to go next. In some ways Ocean Rain sounds like a final statement, an encore, a last flurry of magnificence. Ian was already dipping his toes into a solo career. Pete was about to go travelling, with serious consequences for him and the Bunnymen. They would make one more album together as a foursome before a split and tragedy intervened. But that's all ahead of them. As it is, in 1984, Ocean Rain is where it's at. 

The Little Ones

It's funny how things can get missed and then turn up years later. I had no idea this existed and only became aware of it via a social media group where no one else had any idea it existed either. Back in 2008 one song on an album by a psychedelic indie band from Los Angeles called The Little Ones was mixed by Andrew Weatherall. They were on Heavenly at the time. Weatherall had a long running relationship with the label built upon his friendship with label boss Jeff Barratt dating back to the late 80s, a link which led to Loaded and then everything else. The very first record Heavenly ever released was a Weatherall remix (Sly And Lovechild's The World According To... Weatherall, posted previously several times). Farm Song is slow paced, day glo, 60s inspired psychedelic pop, all harmonies and tambourines, guitar solos and swirling sound. It's available at Bandcamp on the album Morning Tide. 

From the same time frame, 2009 in fact, and also on Heavenly but sounding very different, Wilmslow's kings of widescreen melancholia Doves were remixed by Andrew, a chunky, loud affair, heavy bass line in the foreground, plenty of dub space and FX and an early sighting of the chuggy ALFOS sound.

Compulsion (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Tones

It never rains eh? We had  a positive test for Covid within our household yesterday so are all now isolating for fourteen days- it's made all the more difficult by the fact our eldest is clinically extremely vulnerable so we're having to be extra- isolated within the house as far as possible (with only one bathroom) and extra- careful with the risks of cross infection. It's all it of a nightmare. 

As a distraction, here's some music- in 1990 Love Corporation released an acid house infused album called Tones. Love Corporation were Ed Ball's one man band, an side project from his music made as The Times. Tones is a six track record with Palatial as the stand out, a song later remixed by Danny Rampling, but the rest of the album is worth spending some time with too- a lesser known but rather good slice of 1990.

Palatial

Lovetones

STFU

In many ways the Trump presidency should have stopped before it even began, it should have been halted dead in its tracks when he mimicked and mocked a disabled reporter, Serge Kovaleski, back in November 2015. Any sane world would have demanded his withdrawal from the process right there, a man clearly unfit to run for public office, and it's to the eternal shame of his backers, his family, the Republican Party and anyone who voted for him that he sailed past this point. 

Since then he has dragged the office of the President of the USA to ever lower lows. His lies are ever present, over 22, 000 falsehoods and lies uttered as President identified by fact checkers. His racist dog- whistles and outright refusal to condemn white supremacist groups. His public praise for violent right wing militias and encouragement of them overthrow Democratic state governors. His appointment of family members to top jobs, the shameless nepotism of a mob boss. His determination to rip up democratic norms and conventions, the checks and balances upon which the entire system rests. His long running campaign to discredit people like Anthony Fauci, actual experts within their field. The laying the groundwork throughout this year for challenging a defeat at the ballot box by telling his supporters that postal voting is fraudulent, that Democrats will rig the election and that he may refuse to handover the reins of power even if he is soundly defeated. His approach to Coronavirus which has led directly to the deaths of over 200, 000 Americans to date. His posturing outside the Church of the Presidents holding an upside down bible, during the worst civil unrest for decades. His refusal to take questions from female reporters. His racist approach to Central American politics. It goes on and on and on...

 And it matters to us in the UK because like it or not the US is the central player in global politics and how things work. What happens in the USA affects us over here- and the general, widespread debasement of public life affects us all too. I read an article recently that described discussions among commentators and historians about whether Trump is a fascist. He shares many of the characteristics of fascist dictators (the fact that he hasn't invaded anywhere or committed acts of genocide don't necessarily rule him out). One of the descriptions of him was a 'post- fascist populist'. The funny thing about all populist leaders, and Trump especially, is that they actually despise the people they claim to speak for. Trump would rather admit the true size of the small crowds at his inauguration in January 2017 than spend any time with the poor saps in MAGA caps at his rallies. He left thousands of them standing in the freezing cold after a rally recently. He encourages them to refuse to wear face masks, a policy that has led to tens of thousands of infections among his supporters, people who are collateral damage in the Trump re- election campaign, a man with so fragile an ego that killing his own people is preferable to losing.

I've no idea what will happen today and tonight. There have been all sorts of forecasts, a narrow Biden win, a big Biden win, a Trump resurgence. It looks like a Trump tactic may be to declare victory at some point during the night, regardless of the count and see if the media go with it, an actual anti- democratic power grab. Are we still squeamish about using the word fascist? He has said that he will contest any result in the courts, and has rushed through an appointment to the Supreme Court to enable this. It looks like any kind of Biden win will lead to Trump having to be prised out of the White House, the US political system and Constitution creaking at the sides as legal crowbars are applied to jemmy the bastard out. 

He has to go. He has to be defeated. For fuck's sake America, please, get it done. 

Back in June Public Enemy returned with a new single, the righteous fury of non- Trump America diffused into one three minute song, a song that opens with Chuck D declaring 'whatever it takes, rid this dictator...' and builds to the chorus, 'State of the Union/ Shut the fuck up/ Sorry ass motherfucker/ Stay away from me'

Public Enemy also updated their 1989 single Fight The Power for 2020, bringing Nas, Rhapsody, Black Thought, Jahi, YG and QuestLove on board, a song is still as relevant as the day it was written. 

Monday's Long Song

One of the peaks of Andrew Weatherall's productions and his work with Hugo Nicolson is this version of One Dove's White Love. In its Radio Mix state White Love is perfect, breathless, left field piano pop. In its ten minute sixteen seconds long Guitar Paradise version it's a boundless, endless work of imagination, with Phil Mossman's guitar part in the forefront and it showcases Andrew's ability to stretch a song out and find new places for it to go and new directions to send the listener in. From the opening guitar chord, all feedback, pedals and amplifier, and the sliced up pieces of Dot's vocal to the arrival of the drums a minute and a half in this is a trip. The crunchy, vivid guitar continues to weave its magic and Dot's full vocal is layered on top. 

'You laugh, I smile
Mirrors in thought, these fortunes we can share
And where there is dark, there are ghosts
Who give me hope'

The bassline is an enormous dub inspired thing, bubbling away underneath. The trademark early 90s/ Sabres Of Paradise/ Screamadelica timbales make an appearance too. I remember buying the 12" single on release, in Oxford of all places, having come back from a summer spent catching trains and camping in France. We arrived back in England and were making our way back to Manchester by train. I can't remember all the details, maybe there was work on the railways, maybe we had to change trains, but I went into HMV in Oxford and there was White Love on the rack at the front of the singles department. I have no idea how having spent several weeks in France living on cheese, bread, cheap wine and even cheaper cigarettes, I had any money to buy a record but I bought it on the spot and cradled it all the way back home. The feeling I get from the sound of those guitars coming in and Dot's voice hasn't faded at all in the twenty seven years in between then and now. 

White Love (Guitar Paradise Mix)

Dry Fantasy

It's now November and it all looks pretty grim doesn't it? The tiered approach hasn't worked, we're in a new lockdown starting on Thursday. SAGE advised the government to do this weeks ago but they didn't. I guess Michael Gove was articulating government policy when he said during the Brexit campaign 'the British public has had quite enough of experts'. What he meant was government would ignore the advice of experts. 

We go back to school tomorrow, 1300 people crammed into a building together, 30 people in classrooms together breathing the same air, with an age group who can be highly contagious but asymptomatic, and therefore can be passing it on without realising they even have the virus. If you think about it too much, it's really scary. If you don't think about it, you become complacent. Something like a third of all transmissions are being traced from education, a figure that rises with the older teenage groups. A lockdown while keeping schools and colleges open will not be enough as far as I can see. We are being led by the worst people at the worst time. 

Mogwai have a new song out ahead of an album next year, an instrumental called Dry Fantasy, which suggests they've tapped into what's going on while also listening to 80s cosmische music, such as Michael Rother. 

This song was the last one on their soundtrack to the film Kin from 2018, a blistering but optimistic piece of modern guitar music, walls of sound and FX and some distant, sunken vocals that start off with the line  'holding back the fear again'. 

We're Not Done (End Titles)

Weatherall Halloween Mix

 

A Halloween special. Back in 2011 Andrew Weatherall recorded a mix for Halloween, an hour of rockabilly, garage rock, psyche and horror themed rock 'n' roll with the likes of Gin Gillette and Ronnie Cook and The Gaylads. I was reminded of it earlier in a conversation on social media and thought you might like it. Light your lanterns, put your pumpkins in the window and press play. You can download it below or play it at Mixcloud here.

Andrew Weatherall Mulletover Halloween Mix 2011

Sketch For Vini 2

A month ago I put together an hour long mix of Durutti Column songs, fifteen of what Vini Reilly refers to as his 'silly tunes' (on the other hand when stopped at customs at some point in the past and asked by the border official what sort of music he plays he replied 'nu- classical modern jazz' so he can dress it up as well as dress it down). The songs on the first mix were all from the 1980s, from his first flourish with Martin Hannett and his work with drummer and Mancunian legend Bruce Mitchell up to the point where the sound was expanded with keyboards and viola. It's here if you missed it. 

The second part has taken me a while to put together and starts where the 80s finished. As that decade ended Tony Wilson, Vini's biggest champion, manager and friend, bought him a car bootful of equipment- samplers and sequencers- and told him to get stuck in. This led to some electronic sounding albums and songs, the 1989 album titled Vini Reilly and especially Obey The Time from the following year. Into the 90s Vini expanded the sound again, survived the collapse of Factory, released albums on Wilson's short- lived Factory Too and then several other labels into the 21st century. His 2010 album Paean To Wilson was recorded as a tribute to Tony and an attempt to pull together a lot of what Wilson loved about them onto one album. In 2011 Vini suffered a stroke which left him very ill and with severe financial problems for some time. Recovery from a stroke is a long road and although Vini now seems much better his guitar playing is still recovering. This second mix, Sketch For Vini 2 isn't supposed to be a definitive summary of Durutti Column from 1990 to 2010, just some songs from that period placed together. It starts with Wilson's looped voice (the opening track on Paean To Wilson) and then dives into the samplers and sequencers of the early 90s (including the remix done by Together, a remix that wasn't finished but Wilson put it out anyway in the aftermath of Jon Donaghy's tragically early death in 1990) and then onto the the mid 90s and beyond. Vini's guitar playing was often more direct and heavier in this period, less of the nuanced, semi- ambient, Roland Space Echo sound of the 80s. He worked with vocalists including Poppy Roberts and Caoilfhionn Rose and always seemed to be looking to do something new and take his music somewhere else, even when the attention of the press and the audience of the Factory years had largely gone elsewhere. There's loads to enjoy in his post- Factory years, you just have to start digging. Sketch For Vini 2 is on Mixcloud here. 

In his own words...

'In the end, I don't know if it's good music or bad music or indifferent music. I have no idea. I don't really care too much, it's done with and over with. People would say, why do you release it anyway, if you don't really rate it? The answer is, whatever music it is, bad, good, indifferent, stupid, boring, whatever, – it's truthful. At the time, it's the truth, and it's honest. There's no attempt to portray an image or a career or anything. It's what it is. And truth can be painful. It's about losses close to me, and about my own depression, but it's cathartic. But you have to be truthful. If you're not true in what you do, if you're creative, then you should forget it. All I've ever tried to do is be truthful.'

Tracklist

1. Or Are You Just A Technician?
2. Contra- Indications
3. The Together Mix
4. People’s Pleasure Park
5. Fado
6. So Many Crumbs And Monkeys!
7. Hotel Of The Lake, 1990
8. Megamix
9. Brother
10. It’s Wonderful
11. Longsight Romance
12. Meschugana
13. Anthony

Easier Said Than Done You Said

In February 1983 Echo And The Bnnnymen released their third album, Porcupine, a record once again graced with a beautifully shot sleeve, the four band members walking on a glacier in Iceland (something they later said was incredibly dangerous, one false step and death by falling down an icy ravine awaited them). There are Echo And The Bunnymen fans who swear by Porcupine, the pinnacle of the post- punk Bunnyworld but for me it is a flawed and sometimes quite difficult album- despite this it also has at least two of their greatest moments. 

Everyone involved in making it says it wasn't a happy experience. The four members were either arguing or not speaking to each other. Ian still had superstardom in his sights and at rehearsal sessions said as much even though they were clearly struggling to come up with new material. Les was unhappy with the music industry. Pete was producing The Wild Swans. Will was making an instrumental solo album. They used a Peel Session to debut and record some new songs including what would become The Back Of Love and Higher Hell, both with different earlier names. In an attempt to get their juices flowing and get them talking to each other Bill Drummond booked them a mini- tour of Scotland. They released The Back Of Love as a single in May 1982, their first top twenty hit, and then after a summer of gigs including the WOMAD festival they went back to the studio to continue recording the album. Pete de Freitas said this was still a horrible time, the opposite of the sessions for Heaven Up Here where everything flowed and they were confident and on the rise. He said that on Porcupine the songs 'had to be dragged out' of them. Then, when it was finished WEA rejected it. Will was mightily pissed off about this but eventually they agreed to go back and do it again. Drummond brought in Shankar to add strings to the songs, such a revelation on The Cutter (another hit). The sleeve, four young men in dark serious early 80s clothing, framed small in the icy landscape hints at the difficulties inside.

Porcupine opens with the two singles, frontloading the album with two of their absolute peaks. The Cutter is tense and dramatic, full of hooks and the kind of sweeping, effortless majesty they had at their best, Ian sounding like the post- punk vocalist, the stuttering he puts into 'm- m- m- m- mustard' becoming a calling card. Shankar's strings give it an Indian feeling and some real menace. Ian drops in some sheer McCulloch brass- 'conquering myself until/ I see another hurdle approaching/ say we can, say we will/ Not just another drop in the ocean'- and the question 'Am I the happy loss?/ will I still recoil?', proper Bunnymen stuff. There's a pause and then we're into the thundering, reckless adventure of The Back Of Love, a song that could define a career and a decade for any band. The drums and bass, produced by Ian Broudie but played with such power by Pete and Les, are phenomenal, continent sized rhythms. Over this Shankar's strings and Will's guitars add the melodies, layers of sound and texture, while Ian sings his heart out. He has described the lyrics on Porcupine as his most personal and that it's an oppressive album for that reason but on The Back Of Love he sounds set free, his voice swooping and diving. 

After that anything would sound flat and the rest of album struggles to live up to the two singles. Too many of the songs are unmemorable and they sound overwrought and overcooked, the life sucked out of them by the process of writing and recording them. That's not to say Porcupine doesn't contain any other Bunnymen moments. Listening to it last week I enjoyed it far more than I had previously. After the dead stop of The Back Of Love Ian opens My White Devil in truly memorable style singing about a 16th century dramatist, 'John Webster was/ one of the best there was/ he was the author of/ two major tragedies/ The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi'. The band rattle in, off kilter percussion and sea shanty vibes. When Porcupine was re- released in 2003 the CD version came with alternate versions of many of the songs from Porcupine including My White Devil, presumably the ones WEA rejected as uncommercial. This take sounds better than the official Porcupine one to me, lighter and less oppressive, more like a step on from the group who made Heaven Up Here. Maybe Will was right. 

My White Devil (Alternate Version)

The Duchess Of Malfi is a revenge tragedy. The Duchess marries beneath her class secretly but for love. Her brothers take revenge but destroy themselves. The White Devil, also set in Italy, satirises the corruption of the Italian court and makes comparisons with the moral and political state of England of the day and the difference between the way people characterise themselves as good or pure ('white') and their reality. 

The rest of Porcupine lacks the same killer drama of the singles. Some of the songs try to reach it- Heads Will Roll, Higher Hell- but it feels like a group at odds with itself and songs that have been sapped. Album closer In Bluer Skies has it through, opening with waves and woodblocks and then Ian, 'I'm counting on your heavy heart/ Could it keep me from falling apart?', another question on a record full of them. Will's ringing guitar part is lovely and an accordion or pump organ joins in and the song, as All I Want on Heaven Up Here did, points a way forward from all of this. The waves return and everything sounds better, a band finding a way to hang it all together. 

In Bluer Skies

Three months later they'd release Never Stop, a 12" post- punk, dance record firing oblique bullets at Margaret Thatcher and her government, the magick and the light rediscovered, the Bunnygod reborn. Lay down thy raincoat and groove.  

Running Through The Fields Of Flowers And Smoke

In 2018 Calexico released their latest album in 2018, an overlong record that opened with two really good songs. Since 1997 they have made nine studio albums plus various singles, E.P.s and compilations. They started out sounding very much like their name, the mariachi horns and rhythms of the Tex- Mex border with an Ameri- indie sensibility. Their second album, The Black Light, was a brilliant realisation of this sound and their third, Hot Rail in 2000, was a song rich highlight (coming round the time they put out the magnificent The Crystal Frontier as a single). After that I dipped in and out with them (more out than in, in truth) and their 2006 album Garden Ruin and Algiers from 2012 both sounded to me like they'd lost their sound and become a bit dulled. 

I wouldn't have bothered with 2018's album The Thread That Keeps Us if I hadn't heard the first two singles (and the opening two songs of the album) on a music blog. Calexico, a core duo of Joey Burns and John Calvertino, brought in some extra musicians from around the globe to fill their sound out, to add some earthiness to their music and to expand the sound. They recorded it in northern California and both Burns and Calvertino said that the wild coastline brought something to the sound and to the songs. It was also a response to Trump. This song, Voices In The Fields, was a tribute to those who have had their lives uprooted by war and oppression and the need to hear songs written by other voices- ordinary voices of workers and migrants as well as the influences Burns was listening to when making the record (Joe Strummer, Mavis Staples, Bob Dylan). They were also into Tinariwen and the north African grooves can be heard in this. Specifically, Burns write the song after hearing about the postcards Syrian refugees were writing, one of the ways they were attempting to deal with the emotions that being a refugee brought. 

Voices In The Fields

The album's title, The Thread That Keeps Us, was a reference to living in an age of extremes, where media and politics drive people apart, and how we should try to find the common threads that bring us together. Burns mentioned these little threads that connect people wherever their come from and whatever their circumstances- '... music, a cup of coffee... a walk in nature'. These connections are even more true now than they were two years ago as we face a Covid winter. To add to the backdrop to Voices From The Fields four migrants died in the Channel this week when their boat sank after setting off from France including a child of five and a child of eight. The UK Home Secretary Pritti Patel made a typically cold response about the dangers involved in crossing the Channel. Calexico's anger at Trump's policies and presidency was evident on The Thread That Keeps Us and its opening song End Of The World With You. News coming from across the Atlantic suggests that maybe, just maybe, next Tuesday the U.S. (and the rest of us) will be delivered from the racist, white power- enabling, narcissist currently living in the White House. 

Back in the early years of this century Two Lone Swordsmen remixed Calexico, a song from their Hot Rail album. Weatherall was a fan of the band and on this remix manages to prefigure Covid while welding together Calexico's dry, dusty Tex- Mex sound with TLS's electro/ techno machine funk. 

Untitled III (Virus Style Mix)

Marble Skies

 

This previously unreleased Andrew Weatherall remix dates from 2018 when London band Django Django put out their third album, Marble Skies. I have no idea why it has been lying in the vaults for so long but now eight months after Mr Weatherall left us it's seeing the light of day which is a good thing. A nine minute piano led thumper, with some huge sounding tom toms and lots of extraneous of noise surrounding the melodies. The kick drum pounds away and a snippet of vocal , a whoop or a syllable, is looped and repeated. It's all a bit of a long, euphoric blur. Andrew's remix of Marble Skies is only out digitally as far as I can see- you can buy it for 99p here.  

a12.ab3 .215061

 

Soundcloud user18081971, Aphex Twin by another name, has posted another long lost track pulled from an old cassette. The track, catchily titled a12.ab3 .215061 is a superb piece of driving, fizzing acid recorded at some point around 1990. This piece of music, three decades old and not sounding at all like it, is four and a half minutes of buzzing 303 bassline, rattling snares and a topline that'll frazzle your head a little. There's a lovely breakdown part at two and a half minutes with a little tick tock melody playing, then everything else drops out for a while and then comes back in for the last minute with some loopy shit going on at the four minute mark. Proper lost in the strobe and dry ice of the backroom of a club stuff, wondering where all your friends have gone but deciding it doesn't matter, just stay near the speakers, it'll all be fine. The only problem with a12.ab3 .215061 is it's too short and ends abruptly, apparently because the tape ran out. It's on user18081971's Soundcloud page as a free download. 

Not entirely unrelated but written a century before is this by Erik Satie, Gymnopedie No. 1, one of Satie's modernist, minimalist piano pieces. As this was playing on the computer on Monday morning my daughter passed by and said, 'this sounds sad'. And it does but it's very nice too. 

I'm no expert on Satie. I need to explore further. Aphex Twin's 2001 album Druqks contained some Satie style piano pieces, interludes among some manic, rapid fire drum 'n' bass/ breakbeat music. Druqks was released after Richard D James left an mp3 player on an airplane and was concerned the unreleased music on it would be leaked and bootlegged. Alternatively, James had a load of music sitting on his hard drive and wanted out of his contract with Warp. Either way it made for a disjointed album, one which requires some dedication on the part of the listener (or as we'd do now, the ability to rip it yourself and pull out the ones you like into a playlist or a mix CD of your own- probably what he intended all along. I'm sure Satie would approve too). 

Monday's Long Song

This artwork is on a footbridge over the Metrolink not far from here. It seems to be a spray can sketch of female anatomy as drawn by someone who has only been told what that might look like. It has a certain primitive quality that lifts it above your average genital based graffiti. In my opinion. 

Richard Fearless of Death In Vegas is still pursuing his ambient techno vison of the future, this time with Circuit Diagram, the collaboration renamed as Death Circuit. The eight and a half minutes of Strom Dub are sleek, sexy synth sounds, science fiction as it used to be. The B-side, Teeparty am Waldbrand (translation- teaparty at the forest fire), has a relentless kick drum and throbbing bass, disembodied voices and single minded intent. No surprise this music is coming out of Germany, Hamburg to be exact. Buy it at Bandcamp. 

A List And Your Love

The clocks went back last night, ending British Summer Time for another year. As the jokes on Twitter have been having it, if you're a Brexiteer you can set yours back to 1973 or some imaginary time before you were born when England won the world war and immigration hadn't been invented. If you're a supporter or member of the current government you can reset your clock back to the nineteenth century when letting children go hungry was all part of good old Victorian values. Funny how for a group of people so often vilified as overpaid, useless and insensitive, the most effective campaigner for the impoverished in Britain in 2020 is a footballer. Hats off to Marcus Rashford.

It's funny as well how many Tory MPs are now tripping over themselves to attack him and to accuse him of 'virtue signalling'. There's a list here of all the Conservative MPs, three hundred and twenty- two of them, who voted against extending free school meals vouchers into the October half term and Christmas holidays. Next to their name, constituency and party is a column detailing the amount they have claimed on expenses from the public purse for dining and entertaining since June 2019. Jake Berry, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen and a man who was a big proponent of the so- called Northern Powerhouse, for instance claimed over £60, 000. Vicky Ford, the Minister for Children and MP for Chelmsford, claimed over £50, 000. Three of them claimed over £80, 000. Matt Hancock, role model for over- promoted car showroom middle managers everywhere, claimed over £60, 000. I'm sure that for these MPs, raised on Thatcherite ideology about dependency culture and the managed decline of northern cities and propelled into government by the Brexit culture wars, voting against poor children getting a £3.00 a day lunch voucher while supping subsidised drinks in the House of Commons bar and eating out at London's top restaurants is a moral circle they can square but for many of us it is the worst kind of hypocrisy. 

This list compiled by Pete Wylie and Josie Jones as Big Hard Excellent Fish back in 1990 and remixed by Andrew Weatherall summons up the right kind of disgust and shows how little progress we've actually made in the three decades in between then and now.

The Imperfect List (Version 1)

Anyway, onto happier things... today is my wife Lou's birthday. This is the kind of thing she likes to dance to given the chance. There hasn't been much dancing recently. We did get drunk a few weeks ago and play some records a little too loud in the dining room while our daughter cringed upstairs. In 1987 Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle released Your Love, a thumping, hands- in- the- air, genuinely inspiring and uplifting piece of early house music, a record that shows that the world can be a better place even if it's only for a few minutes.

Your Love

In 2014 London goth rock 'n' rollers The Horrors covered it for a session at Radio 1 showing what good taste they had and how a great song can translate from one form to another. 

Your Love 

Happy birthday Lou. Let's make it a good one despite Tier 3 and all the rest of it. 

Angels On My Shoulder

Keeping the Bunnymen theme going this is a cover of their greatest B- side, the kind of song most bands would kill to have written- Ian, Will, Les and Pete channelling the Velvets, covered here by French beatnik husband and wife duo The Liminanas. Renaud and Nika's version of Angels And Devils was released in 2017 originally and then again on their 2018 B-sides and rarities compilation I've Got Trouble In Mind Volume 2. The organ, sitar/ guitar, Mo Tucker drums and male/ female vocals are absolutely spot on and while they haven't really reinterpreted the song- it's a very faithful cover version- it's the spirit of Bill Drummond's bunny god reborn and exactly what you didn't know you wanted. 

Angels And Devils

Bounds, Of Course We Know No Bounds

Since writing about Echo And The Bunnymen's 1980 debut album Crocodiles last Friday I've been bingeing on the Bunnymen, working my way through the four albums they released between 1980 and 1985 while driving to and from work and listening to last year's Peel Sessions compilation at home. In between Crocodiles in 1980 and Heaven Up Here in 1981 the band released a four song e.p. recorded live at The Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, Shine So Hard, a gig where they played some of the songs that would appear on Heaven Up Here and where the army fatigues, camouflage and military netting would be used for the final time. A film of the gig and of the band hanging about in Buxton was restored last year and is a fine way to spend half an hour. Watch it here. 

Heaven Up Here is a major step forward from Crocodiles. From the beautiful sleeve photograph on, Brian Griffin shooting the group on Porthcawl beach, South Wales, this is a major piece of work, a vision conjured up by the four of them and manager Bill Drummond and producer Hugh Jones. The rhythm section are on another level, their playing completely locked in and electrifying. The songs themselves are full of dynamics, drama and deep, delicious gloom, awash with vivid colours and imagery, Will Sergeant's overdubbed and layered guitars still showing some of the spikiness of the debut but painting a more widescreen picture too. The opening one- two- three punch of Show Of Strength, With A Hip and Over The Wall are as great a first trio as on any album by anyone. With A Hip is the one for me at the moment, an urgent, deep blue song starting with echoes, noise and feedback and then suddenly jumpstarted by bass and drums. Mac comes in with a tense whisper, half- singing, 'Halt nobody's allowed/ Strictly verboten/ Out out out out' and then the career defining line, 'bounds, of course we know no bounds', a statement of intent and scouse cocksureness. The song speeds forward, Mac twisting himself in knots and Will, Les and Pete build towards the chorus where Mac delivers the still astonishing lines, 'With a hip hip hop/ And a flip flap flop/ Gonna steal some bananas/ From the grocer's shop/ With your head in the clouds/ And your trousers undone/Gonna shit on the carpet/ Just like everyone'. Then he re-writes Elvis. 

I have no idea what he's one about, some existential drama, a metaphysical conundrum, the neighbours on Lark Lane causing a scene, vignettes from being on tour, who knows, but it doesn't really matter, it sounds important, it sounds necessary. 

With A Hip

The heart of Heaven Up Here is some unholy marriage of post- punk and psychedelia, the songs effortlessly finding the spirit of the Bunnygod that Drummond claimed was on the cover of the first album. After the opening three the album dives further into the dark, black hole- the gothic rock of It Was A Pleasure and the histrionics of A Promise. Flip the record over and side two blasts straight into the drunken cavorting of the title track, a song of beer, whiskey and tequila. Ian surfaces from the chaos to croon ' we're all groovy, groovy people', doing that dance he did where he pulled at his clothes, and then he sings the line that McCulloch said defined the group at the time- 'it may be hell down there but it's heaven up here'. 

After the album's bleakest moment, The Disease, things turn to face the dawn and like the sleeve's stunning bleed of seascape colours, the songs start to get more optimistic, less full of dread. No Dark Things is followed by the escape of Turqoise Days, the Bunnymen setting sail as the music burns slowly, Mac now calmer as he asks for company- 'you got a problem come on over'- and then the fade in of the closing song, a rattling guitar part and reverb on the drums. 'All I love/ Is all I want'. In a world and at a time when there wasn't exactly a shortage of great drummers Pete de Freitas stakes a claim for being top if the pile on Heaven Up Here. The thumping drums on All I Want, the fills and rolls into the chorus, perfectly lead the way for Will's guitar lines and choppy riffs, and the song points the way to the horizon, somewhere beyond where the four young men are looking on the sleeve. 

This live version, recorded at the Manley Hotel in Sydney, Australia in November 1981, shows how good they were.

All I Want (Live 1981)

I vividly recall listening to Heaven Up here while living in Liverpool as a student, in a freezing cold bedroom during the winter of 1989. As well as all the contemporary songs of that winter, Fool's Gold, Hallelujah and all the rest, I was immersing myself in the Bunnymen's second album, at that point only eight years old but seeming like it was from another world. I had it on while writing an essay, wearing woollen gloves due to the cold and had to stop writing to give it the attention it deserved. It isn't background music. I still get the same shot of  inspiration and intensity from it now. It is, I think, their best album and it's one which still hits me hard today. I can leave it aside for months and when I put it on it surprises and excites me, one of those records which has soundtracked my adult life. 

As an extra, Brian Griffin's unused shots for the sleeve are superb, this one in particular. 

Tiers

Tonight at one minute past midnight Greater Manchester goes into Tier 3, the highest rank of the government's new Coronavirus restriction system- if this government can really be said to anything as planned or thought out as a system. The government have had months to prepare for an autumn wave. Literally everyone said it was coming. They've had months to set up a functioning testing service, to create a Track and Trace system, to come up with a coherent plan for dealing with the rapidly rising numbers of new cases and the influx of hospital admissions. Instead, they paid people to go to the pub for food in August while turning the blame for non- compliance with the rules onto the people. 

What they have signally failed to acknowledge is that this government lost all it's moral authority to govern, every last ounce of it, when they failed to sack Dominic Cummings in May. At that exact moment and that charade in the garden of 10 Downing Street where their senior advisor- an unelected member of the government remember- refused to admit any wrong doing, Johnson's government could no longer tell anyone what to do. They had broken the rules themselves and didn't care. They were laughing at us. They were contemptuous of us. 

Since then some people have kept to whatever rules are in force wherever they live, some people have largely followed the rules using their own judgement and common sense about where they can bend them and some people have taken the view that if the government don't play by the rules then why should they? Some of us have barely crept out of lockdown at all- we are still effectively shielding an extremely vulnerable person. Watching other people flout the rules hasn't been easy. The feeling that existed back in April, that we were all in this together, which existed genuinely for a while, has been blown apart. As numbers have crept up again since September Johnson has dithered and delayed. They locked down too late in March, they opened up too early in the summer. They introduced local restrictions that were difficult to understand and changed seemingly on a whim. They left Leicester in a local lockdown that never seemed to end. They announced that one place would go into further restrictions almost instantly while another would be able to wait until after the weekend. Now, with Merseyside, Lancashire and Greater Manchester all in Tier 3, gyms in Merseyside must close while in Lancashire they can stay open. Pubs serving 'substantial meals' can stay open but pubs that don't must close- does Covid 19 not infect people while using a knife and fork? They bullied the civic leaders of Liverpool into accepting Tier 3 and then found that the elected mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, the leaders of the council and a cross party group of MPs wouldn't roll over. Funnily enough the pair of Conservative MPs refusing to accept new restrictions without a fight (including the Chair of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady) weren't attacked with the same venom Burnham has been. The politicians fighting the government's attempts to impose Tier 3 on Greater Manchester weren't even necessarily arguing that the restrictions weren't called for, they just wanted the evidence that the ones being proposed would be effective (which wasn't forthcoming because this government is shit at details and just relies on the selective use of data to try to prove points). What Andy Burnham and the rest also wanted was financial support for the thousands of locals who would be affected by the loss of their jobs and the withdrawal of income. Johnson's middle man, Robert Jenrick (himself guilty of breaking lockdown restrictions in April), found himself up against a Zoom wall of anger and disgust, from Tories as well as Labour, and when it came to finding another £5 million, told his boss Johnson that the deal was off. Andy Burnham stood in front of GMex- the site of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819- and quite rightly told the cameras that this government promised to level up the north and here they were further levelling down. 

It seems pointless to close some businesses while leaving many others open. It seems pointless to close some pubs while leaving many still serving. Schools, colleges and universities are one of the main breeding grounds of the infection currently but since various opponents have called for a short 'circuit break', Johnson's government refuse to consider this- not for scientific reasons but because it's politically unacceptable for them to do what the opposition have asked for. A circuit break policy is now taking effect in Wales and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Scotland follow suit, but once again Johnson dithers until it's too late. Their own scientific advisors recommended it several weeks ago. Johnson rejected it but still claims to be 'following the science'. Tiers, as someone pointed out recently, are not enough. 

Here are The Lilac Time, mid 60s psychedelic style, in 1990...

It'll End In Tears 

Here's Paul Weller remixed by Leo Zero, Blackpool Northern Soul style, in 2010... 

Tears Are Not Enough (Leo Zero Remix)

A couple of days ago on social media I said this about Andy Burnham...

It's fair to say that this man becoming a genuine hero in Manchester and the north west wasn't predictable. His reasons for becoming mayor didn't always seem clear, his run for the Labour leadership in 2015 was a disaster and I don't think everyone here has always trusted him, but he's shown true leadership and grit the last few days, standing up to the useless bunch of chancers and incompetents in the government and standing up for us. More power to him.

And I stand by all of that, cometh the hour, cometh the man etc. It has been a truly absurd year, a nightmare in many ways, full of personal and public disasters and political horrors. It's genuinely encouraging to see the odd green shoot while also keeping that anger burning.

José Padilla

 

JosĂ© Padilla has died of cancer aged sixty four. He arrived in Ibiza in 1975 and graduated through the club scene as a DJ, playing Es Paradis and Amnesia before eventually playing sets at the CafĂ© del Mar, a bar in San Antonio that looks out over the Mediterranean and where each evening the sun dissolves into the sea. Jose would pioneer an entire new genre of music that would end up being called Chill Out. Padilla played an eclectic mix of music to accompany the sunset and afterwards and as the late 80s became the 90s his DJ sets became the thing of legend. He recorded an Essential Mix for the BBC in 1995, here, that gives an idea of his style. In 1994 he launched a series of compilation albums, out on double vinyl, that brought together the songs he played as the sun went down. Volume One and Two (or Uno and Dos to give them their proper names) are proper slices of mid 90s culture, records to play after a night out, comedown tunes to go with tea, cigarettes and chatter, the buzz of the club wearing off into something warm and glowing, songs for a Sunday morning- William Orbit, Penguin CafĂ© Orchestra, Sabres Of Paradise, Leftfield, Underworld, A Man Called Adam, Tabula Rasa...

Sunset At The Café del Mar

I've never been to the CafĂ© del Mar, never watched the ball of fire sink into the sea as JosĂ© spun laidback, downtempo tunes with snaking melodies and blissed out vocals. But JosĂ©'s outlook has had a huge impact on my tastes and record collection, the whole idea of bringing different types of music together as long as they fit the mood, a mish- mash of old and new, dance music and oddities, ambient and Balearic, a world where A Man Called Adam's Estelle, The Art Of Noise, the theme from Hill Street Blues and Music For A Lost Harmonium all live alongside each other. I've spent hours attempting to emulate JosĂ©'s style in the early hours or when making tape compilations or even, now I think of it, with some of the series of Isolation Mixes I did in the spring and summer. 

Theme From Hill Street Blues

It's fair to say that what JosĂ© pioneered on the shores of the Mediterranean spread worldwide in the 1990s and afterwards, ripples and waves landing on shores a long way from San Antonio. 

JosĂ© Padilla, RIP.

Gonna Get High 'Til The Day I Die

 

Primal Scream's Don't Fight It, Feel It was one of the songs on Screamdelica that felt truly revolutionary for a group who started as Byrds/ Buffalo Springfield imitators, evolved into a c86 indie band and then reincarnated themselves as leather trousered Stooges rockers. On Don't Fight It, Feel It Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson made an acid house song and left all traces of the guitar band off it entirely- no guitars, no Throb, not even any of Bobby's singing. Instead Denise Johnson's voice boomed out of the speakers. Weatherall took it all even further on the Scat Mix. Lesser known and heard is the Graham Massey Remix, also from 1991, a juddering Mancunian remix which takes the song into new territory once again, Denise front and centre. 

Don't Fight It, Feel It (Graham Massey Remix)

808 State and Massey were on fire around this time. Their 1990 album 90 is one of the best releases from any of the Manchester groups around that time and sounds surprisingly fresh listened to in 2020. Album opener Magical Dream is a real Bagging Area favourite. In June 1990 me, my then girlfriend and my friend Al had my cassette of 90 on all the way from Liverpool to Glastonbury in Al's car. When we pulled into the field to unload our camping kit, it was Magical Dream spooling on the car's stereo. As we got out of the car and opened the boot a mud- encrusted hippy appeared out of a nearby hedge and asked us if we needed any drugs. 

Magical Dream

Monday's Long Song

 

In April I wrote about a Leeds based band called Bushpilot who have had their recordings from the mid- 1990s re- issued by God Unknown Records. The post is here. Bushpilot made a splendid racket, channelling all kinds of leftfield influences. Former singer Ross recently got in touch to ask if I'd like a copy of their album 23, a beautifully packaged vinyl release (I said yes obvs). In the email he said the album includes a nineteen minute opus, a recording edited down from an original twenty seven minute take. Ross said it was 'like a collaged post punk Can, and was in reality mostly recorded on come downs from being at legendary Morley techno night the Orbit' and I can't add anything to that which is any better. I recommend you hit play and cancel anything else you were planning on doing for the next twenty minutes. 

Then go and buy 23 at Bandcamp. 
 

Sunday Dervish Time

 

There's been a re- issue campaign going on all year of African Head Charge's albums, a box set called Drumming Is A Language 1990- 2011 and an album of outtakes, mixes and dubs titled Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, ten songs/ dubs circa 1990 sequenced as a psychedelic dub trip. Adrian Sherwood and Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah created a unique sound as African Head Charge, percussion and African drums, Sherwood's bass heavy, dubbed out sounds and vocals sampled from religious cultures around the globe. Churchical Chant really needs to be heard as a whole- you can buy it at Bandcamp- but here's a taster, ideal sounds for a Sunday in October. Settle down, ignore the news for a while and soak it up.

Dervish Dub 

Anchor Dragging Behind

There are lots of reasons to love San Pedro's Minutemen. The band was formed as a result of a lifelong friendship between guitarist D. Boon and bassist Mike Watt. They tried to make their music democratic- the bass and guitar and George Hurley's drums would not encroach on each other's areas, guitars would be trebly to give the bass the space to be the bass. All their songs were about something, even if it was just as Mike Watt had it, 'shit from an old notebook'. All three contributed lyrics and almost everything they wrote was a personal or political response to the world their encountered. They had a philosophy, 'we jam econo', that described their dedication to low cost recording and gigging. They rejected looking and acting like clichĂ©d rockstars, loading and setting up their own gear at gigs and taking it down and loading it away afterward. They wrote songs that were short and packed their albums with them, one burst after another. They were part of an early 80s attempt to build an alternative network across the US, venues, fanzines, record labels, promoters, doing it for themselves and their fans and operating outside the mainstream because they didn't want to be inside it. 

In 1983 they released an album called What Makes A Man Start Fires?, an eighteen song record powered by Mike Watt's bass playing. On The Anchor, at two minutes thirty practically a Minutemen odyssey, D. Boon sings about a dream and about Mike Watt's bass, the 'anchor dragging behind'.

The Anchor

If you haven't seen the 2005 documentary about the band, We Jam Econo, you should put aside ninety minutes this weekend and treat yourself. At a time when there's a distinct lack of people to admire, we could all learn something from Boon, Watt and Hurley. 

Me I'm All Smiles

 

There have been a few Echo And The Bunnymen posts in the corner of the internet I frequent in recent days and it's also forty years since the release of their debut album Crocodiles, both of which seemed like good enough reasons to add some more Bunnymen to the ether. There's a recent Bill Drummond interview where he recalled the early days of the group, when they could barely make the change from a D chord to an A chord in time together but when they did, it was magic. The addition of Pete de Freitas on drums, replacing the Echo drum machine, was the final piece of the jigsaw, a truly great drummer who brought genuine musicianship and also originality to the playing. Once de Freitas was in place they found their sound. Using the Velvet Underground as a model, they knew that you only really need two chords if you've got the right guitar tone, a singer who can make silly stuff sound important and a rhythm section who marry power with groove. If the group look good- clothes, hair, cheekbones etc- you've got everything you need. In July 1980 a year after their debut single, The Pictures On My Wall, and two months after their second 7" Rescue (a song full of hooks pulled to the fore and arranged by Ian Broudie), they released their debut album, ten songs long and mystifyingly, brilliantly missing two early Bunnymen classics, Do It Clean and Read It In Books. 

Crocodiles doesn't contain the best songs the band would write, they'd outdo themselves a year later on Heaven Up Here, but it is full of Bunnymen drama and neuroticism, Mac singing of rusty chalk- dust walkers, of being rescued, of stars shining so hard, of the mythical Villiers Terrace and all that jazz, his voice already confident and memorable, while Will, Les and Pete bash away, post punk urgency, spiky guitar parts, some 60s garage rock, some nods to the Doors and a rich, solid bottom end. Will Sergeant, Drummond says, was the heart and soul of the band, a man who thought 'changing chord was selling out' the one who would draw a line and say no- if someone tried to add keyboards or trumpet he'd cut it dead by saying 'it sounds a bit like The Police'. 

Crocodiles finishes with Happy Death Men, clanging, strident 1980 post punk, Sergeant spraying dense guitar parts all over the studio, as the song reaches it freak out finale. 

Happy Death Men

In 1985 while touring Scandinavia the Bunnymen were still moving fast, four albums in and umpteen singles and B-sides. In Gothenburg hey still found room in the setlist for the debut album's title track, extending it out so Mac could drop in lines from his favourite songs. 

Crocodiles (Live April 1985)

It's Not Like It In The Movies

There's something of autumn about Michael Head's last album, Adios Senor Pussycat, recorded by the man himself and his Red Elastic Band- that scouse mysticism and the playing (acoustic guitars, trumpet, piano, slightly psychedelic folk). It's three years now since it came out and it's one of the few more trad guitar albums from recent years that I can still go back to and find fresh. The opening song is called Picasso and like many great album openers starts with found sounds, street noises, seagulls and muffled voices, before the band kick in with a folky rhythm, a saw and little flourishes of guitar. Mick's voice and lyrics have that quality of hard won wisdom, 'It's not like it in the movies/ there may be police involved', life experience coupled with poetic turns of phrase. 

Picasso

I lived in Liverpool for three years as a student, 1988- 1991, and although this song was three decades away then and Mick had a whole stretch of legendary albums and bad luck to go through in the time between, when I hear Picasso it always makes me think of Sefton Park in the autumn, leaves a riot of rust and red, waiting for the bus on Smithdown Road, record and clothes shopping down Bold Street. Weird how a song can do that, play time travel tricks on the mind. 

None

This track, seven minutes of metronomic Norwegian house music, comes in all standard- chunky, mid- paced house rhythm and a little dancing synth topline, some disco effects, a wobbly bass sound- but pretty quickly it's got you in its grip and it won't let go. The breakdown gives you a breather but then Laars takes you straight back in, Giorgio Morodor in Scandinavia on a train sweeping down the coast. 

None