Two pieces of On U Sound for the last day of March. First up the truly inspiring African Head Charge and a track from their 1981 album My Life In A Hole In The Ground, a groundbreaking record from Adrian Sherwood and Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah. Sherwood crated the minimal backing tracks. Bonjo laid down hand drums and percussion on top. Chants and FX were added, creating an unholy stew combining dub and African rhythms with anything else that fired their juices- free jazz, post- punk, whatever.
Second, fast forward to 1996 and Dub Syndicate, a long running collaboration between Sherwood and Style Scott, which by the mid- 90s resulted in an album of remixes from a variety of UK dub producers. Iration Steppas remixed 2001 Love- a clanging riff, discordant horns, echo and delay and then a massive rhythm track rides in. Eventually Allen Ginsberg appears saying 'let's all make love in London', a sample from a 1967 film about Swinging London that features Pink Floyd and a cast of thousands- Lennon, Jagger, The Small Faces, Vashti Bunyan, Chris Farlowe, Julie Christie and more in all their summer of '67 glory.
This is a new release from the Paisley Dark label, a Leeds based record label pumping electronic psychedelia and various other leftfield sounds into the ether. Matt Gunn has produced a three track EP called Disco Drohne, chockfull of dark, insistent dancefloor sounds, the music for 'a disco at the end of the universe'. On the title track there's a stoned sounding voice talking about '74 and the beginnings of disco, some acid squiggles, whooshing sounds, a chunky 303 drum track, the space of dub techno and a bassline to cause trouble.
Alternative version Lost In The Dronhe goes spaced out, the comedown after the blast off, with a swirl of guitars, FX and synths- all still pretty intense- and when joined by a piano part from the left hand side of the keyboard and some harmonica and then a guitar solo it all really goes off into inner space. I Am The Energy is robotic voices and jackhammer beats. Fourth track, the hidden Disco Drohne (Outro) is a full on psychedelic stew, a whirlpool of sounds and FX. If there is a disco at the end of the universe, this is what they're playing in the back room.
Back in the 90s Leftfield released Release The Pressure, a thumping dub techno tune. It was originally released in 1992 and then on several occasions afterwards. The vocal was provided by reggae singer Earl Sixteen, a righteous chant of 'I've got to stand and fight/ In this creation/ Vanity I know/ Cannot guide I alone' and then, 'I'm searching to find/ A love that lasts all time/ I've just got to find/ Peace and unity'. It's a heady brew, the space of dub and the rhythms of 90s club music brought together with the organ part giving it a touch of ragga. Leftfield were masters of building a track, the tension pulling you in and then the release. The song's distinctive whistling part was sampled from Polegnala E Pschenitza on the album Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, a compilation of Bulgarian folk songs by The Bulgarian State Radio And Television Female Vocal Choir from 1975. If you haven't heard it, it's a beguiling way to start your day.
Release The Pressure came out in multiple mixes and versions across the various formats and at different times (1992, 1995, 1996 and most recently 2017). All are worthwhile in their own right. Here's a selection starting with a seven minute version from 1995.
Release The Horns is a superb skanking horns, echo and drums version from 1992, the flipside to the Song Of Life 12". Thumping and scorching and ideal for dark nights and hot days.
This version is remixed by Adrian Sherwood, a new dubbed out remix for the 2017 re- release of Leftism. Sherwood pans from left to right, sound effects and distortion with Earl Sixteen, everything broken down and stripped back.
Andy Bell's new solo album, Flicker, is already proving itself to be one of the year's best (and his GLOK album Pattern Recognition, out digitally last year has finally arrived on vinyl after a six month hold up at the pressing plant). Flicker is more reflective and guitar based with some wistful songs that deal with looking back, conversations with his teenage self and some that seem to reference the last few years- Trump, Brexit, the pandemic. There are two backwards songs that open its two halves (a la Stone Roses B-sides such Guernica and Simone) and a forwards looking, hoping for better days finale called Holiday In the Sun (not a cover of the Sex Pistols song). It works as a full album, paced and sequenced properly, eighteen songs that come together as a whole. Coming on the back of The View From Halfway Down (and the superb Pye Corner Audio remix EP) and two GLOK albums plus a full double vinyl remix album (not to mention Ride's re- union records) Andy Bell is on a creative roll. I can't recommend either Flicker or Pattern Recognition enough.
Pattern Recognition closes with a fifteen minute epic called Invocation. I won't try to describe it other than to say it's a cosmische marvel.
World Of Echo has been released as a single from Flicker and with it a new cover as the B-side (I'm not sure it's getting a physical release so don't think technically this counts as a B-side but it's a new song to go with a single so that's a B-side in my books). Our Last Night Together is a cover of an Arthur Russell song and is beautiful, a woozy, FX and atmospherics six minutes forty one seconds of late night music with a reverb laden heartbeat drum underpinning it and some gorgeous guitar/ synth parts. Very forlorn but warm too.
It's a Timothy J Fairplay weekend at Bagging Area. Here's thirty-six minutes from Tim's back catalogue to give your Sunday a jumpstart- rapid fire drum machines, vintage synths and keyboards, hi- hats and all manner of uptempo analogue, sci fi soundtracks. Four tracks under his own name and two from his ravey Junior Fairplay alter ego (Faxes From The Future and Sugar Puss). Stream it at Mixcloud or get it here.
The Cat Prowls Again
Faxes From The Future
Honecker Complex
Jennifer Has Some Strange Ideas
My Etherealrealness
Sugar Puss
I had my ears syringed on Thursday after weeks of muffled hearing and some discomfort. When I got water in the right ear, from dunking my head under the water in the bath, it felt like it was in there for ages afterwards and I haven't been fully hearing on my right hand side for a long time. Walking out of the audiologist on Thursday evening I felt like I'd been given new ears and since then I can actually hear the cavities in my head, a sort of natural reverb. It's a remarkable sensation. It hasn't done anything for my tinnitus but I didn't expect it to but being able to hear in stereo and more clearly is a blessing. The pleasures of middle age eh?
A short, sweet and self explanatory theme for today from The Liminanas from back in 2021. The Fuzz Theme is on the soundtrack of a film from the year before, The World We Knew, a story of six armed robbers facing their guilt/ ghosts. Distorted guitar played through an old valve amp accompanied by tambourine and some chanting. A Link Wray, spaghetti western, surf guitar theme done in one minute forty four seconds.
Timothy J. Fairplay releases a new album today, Free Andromeda, out on Sweden's Hoga Nord record label. Tim has a room stacked with vintage synths, drum machines, FX units and pedals. He's been releasing music since 2011, a steady stream of 12" singles, cassettes and albums. On Free Andromeda Tim has pulled all his signature sounds into one unified whole, under the label electro but with a variety of influences seeping in- video game soundtracks, science fiction, West German cosmische from the 1970s, East Germany in the 80s, the soundtrack work of John Carpenter (not least Escape From New York), Italian horror soundtracks by the likes of Goblin, Vangelis and the rhythms and sounds of rave and bleep techno.
Free Andromeda bursts into life with the opening track The Gang Sets Free. Distorted squelch bass, thudding kick drum and filtered synth lines providing the melodies- it all goes off further with the arrival of the hi- hats. Drum pads bounce in. There's no fade in or softness, everything is on the B of the bang and the K of the kick drum, the Attack dial turned all the way to the left.
Dreams Of Andromeda follows sharply, gentler rhythms at the start but still a fast tempo. Acid squiggles and a sinuous keyboard melody, part vintage sci fi, part Eastern scales. Maniac Death follows, wobbly bass and the tsk tsk tsk of the cymbal. More repetitive topline melodies and arpeggios, altering subtly. At three minutes ten seconds a wall of synths crash in. Fourth track A Remarkable Claim cuts the tempos in half, bump and grind bassline from somewhere near Miami and bleeps from somewhere, Sheffield maybe, or the further reaches of the Milky Way. Satanic Cults is a wall of rave synths and crashing drums, 1990's promise of bedroom technology, 'faceless dance music' and white labels- exhilarating stuff with a voice from American television intoning, 'our families, our children and our communities' and then 'satanic cults'.
The title track bounds in, driving rhythms, energy and tempo levels still high. Sci fi phaser sounds, rising keyboard stabs, rattling drums, a voice repeating the title. There's a breakdown and the synth sounds go all whooshy, veering from left to right, tension building. The percussion hits in and the kick drum thumps back, walls of synth again, the voice comes back, missives from the outer reaches. Eyes All Over The City halves the tempo, built around a huge rubbery bass part. Underwater Struggle comes in like the early 80s, reel to reel tapes and Roland Juno sounds and an echo laden lead line that could possibly be a guitar- the retro- futuristic sound of a nightclub somewhere in East Berlin. The Source Of This Energy finishes the album in style, six minutes of taut, John Carpenter meets Altern- 8 electro with a distorted voice muttering the song's title while the 808 bangs away.
The Jam were such a formative band for many people growing up in the late 70s and 80s, whether you were twelve or eighteen their songs, look, attitude and influences had a long lasting impact (Weller was especially adept at dropping clues for fans to follow from the poetry of Shelly to the music of The Who and the books of George Orwell). There's been some discussion at various internet places recently about their best album. For some it's Setting Sons, for others Sound Affects. I imagine there's a significant cohort of fans who'd go for All Mod Cons. There's a strong argument too that albums weren't necessarily the trio's strongest suit and that their singles show them at their best, from In The City in 1977 to Beat Surrender in 1982 and all points in between. Is there a poor Jam single? I don't think so.
Looking at their singles it's pretty striking too that their B-sides were rarely anything below very good and some of them equal their A- sides. A compilation of Jam B-sides would trump many of their contemporaries singles and/ or albums. Some of the B-sides are covers, a showcase for Weller's influences and for paying homage to his inspirations- Disguises was the B-side to Funeral Pyre and So Sad About Us was on the flipside of Down In The Tube Station, both covers of songs by The Who. The Beat Surrender 7" double pack had covers of Stoned Out Of My Mind (The Chi- Lites) and Move On Up (Curtis Mayfield), both signposts for where he'd go next. Shopping, the lead B-side from Beat Surrender is a must for a Jam B-side compilation, swinging modern jazz done Jam style. Then there's The Butterfly Collector (Strange Town), the Syd Barrett whimsey of Liza Radley (Start!), The Great Depression (Just Who Is The 5 'o' Clock Hero?) Pity Poor Alfie/ Fever (The Bitterest Pill) and Smithers Jones (When You're Young). Not to mention the funk workout of Precious (officially a double A- side with A Town Called Malice).
The two greatest Jam B-sides for me though are these two- Dreams Of Children and Tales From The Riverbank. Dreams Of Children, officially a double A-side but a mix up at the pressing plant did for that notion, is Weller in 1980 coming out of Setting Sons and hitting the button marked 'psychedelic'. The song came out of Weller asking for Setting Sons to be played backwards and recorded onto cassette. Listening to it he found an appealing, trippy section of Thick As Thieves (backwards) and this inspired the guitar riff for Dreams. The horns and Summer of '67 acid guitars poke through the dense production with Weller's lyrics lamenting the loss of childhood ambitions and innocence as a generation brought up on the 60s ideal of full employment were shunted into the late 1970s, three million unemployed and the cold reality of the policies of the Thatcher government. ' I sat alone with the dreams of children/ weeping willows and tall dark building... but woke up sweating in this modern nightmare/ I was alone, no one was there...'
Tales From The Riverbank was the b-side to 1981's Absolute Beginners (there's another clue to follow, the novels of Colin McInnes). Tales From The Riverbank again mines the sound of English psychedelia, but this is slower and sleepier, the bassline drawing us in, Weller singing again of the loss of freedom we enjoy as children, the days he spent in the fields and meadows near Woking- 'true is the dream/ mixed with nostalgia/ but this is the dream that I'll always hang onto/ that I'll always run to/ won't you join me by the riverbank'- while his guitar is beamed in via George Harrison circa Revolver.
I acquired a digital copy of the 2019 remix album of R.E.M.'s Monster recently and have been playing it a lot. Monster was always an odd album for me. It came out in September 1994, the band having had two enormous records (Out Of Time and Automatic For The People) neither of which they'd played live- they hadn't been on the road since 1989's Green tour. Prior to meeting to record Monster Bill Berry said he wanted to tour and wanted an album that rocked. Green, Out Of Time and Automatic For The People had all been at least partly played on acoustic guitars and mandolins with accordions and organs, slower paced songs (I need to come back to Out Of Time at some point soon).
Monster was a curious mixture of slinky sexed up glam rock (Crush With Eyeliner, Circus Envy), some fairly straight ahead alternative rock songs ( What's The Frequency, Kenneth?, Bang And Blame) and some murky, feedback ridden laments (Let Me In, You) and a batch of album songs with lots of electric guitars (I Don't Sleep I Dream, Star 69, King Of Comedy). The sequencing seemed curious, frontloading the record with the two biggest hitters and the second half of side two a long drawn out affair. Michael Stipe's lyrics were unbalanced too- songs in character about being famous, songs about about identity and sexuality, an ode to Kurt Cobain and some songs about love gone wrong. For every song with catchy, sharp one liners like Crush With Eyeliner there's another one about self disgust like Tongue. It all seems a bit all over the place. Maybe becoming the biggest band in the world (give or take) without even touring does that to a group. Additionally, the peaks aren't as peaky as on previous albums (Out Of Time has at least five genuine R.E.M. classics, certainly from their major label years- Half A World Away, Country Feedback, Leave, Belong, Me In Honey) and Automatic For The People (which almost doesn't have a weak spot but especially the closing trio of Man On The Moon, Nightswimming and Find The River). If the peaks on Monster aren't as high, the lows are flattened out too- no billion sellers that you really don't ever need to hear again (Losing My Religion, Shiny Happy People, Everybody Hurts), no novelties. Monster just seemed a bit flatter all round, a seven out of ten record. At the time, 1994, I was drifting away from them and indie rock anyway so maybe I didn't give it the time it needed. I loved Crush With Eyeliner, liked some of the rest and some of it didn't really register at all.
But, and here's the funny thing, listening to the remix has been a revelation. Scott Litt, producer of the original album, had always felt the album needed revisiting and the 25th anniversary of its release gave him the excuse. He'd long felt the songs were often muddied by the production and that the layers of guitars and feedback that covered the songs needed stripping away and that Stipe's vocals were too often buried as well. Litt stripped away a lot of the murk, took off some of the multi- tracked guitars and pushed Michael's vocals to the fore (and in some cases used a different vocal, such as on Strange Currencies). It should be said, none of the band felt this needed doing. Stipe said Monster was an exact record of 'who we were at that moment in time'. The newer version of Monster has made me hear it anew, the songs revealing themselves in a way they didn't at the time. It sounds like four people playing together, a more balanced album. On some of the songs, it feels like Peter Buck has played the main guitar part, added one overdub and then everyone was happy with it and they left it at that, no need to go back and add more. A lot of the words are much more audible too and Stipe's lyrics on these songs are a world away from the early years but also from the more narrative approach he'd adopted on Out Of Time and the sombre meditations on death and mortality on Automatic.
I could have posted almost any of the remixed songs, they've all made an impression on me over the last couple of weeks, some of them returning into my world after a long absence and some seeming almost new.
We had a day out on Saturday, drove to Liverpool to pick up our daughter from university and then on to the Wirral. The sun was out for more or less the first time this year and we all had an urge to see the coast, walk on a beach and take in some spring sun. We walked along the promenade at New Brighton, had some sandwiches and then drove along the coast to Hoylake and West Kirby. We took Eliza back to Liverpool, through the Wallasey Tunnel, and had some tea on Lark Lane near Sefton Park and then dropped her back at her halls of residence for a party that night. Driving home down the M62 I was struck by a wave of sadness which grew in me. This ordinary day out was exactly the sort of thing we used to do with Isaac- he'd have loved the Mersey tunnel, the wandering around new places, tea and a cake in a cafe in West Kirby. He wouldn't have been much bothered about the beach to be fair but everything else was right up his alley.
The wave of sadness broke on me later on that evening. Scrolling through social media in a distracted, needing no concentration kind of way, I clicked a link to Pictures Of You by The Cure, and was hit by that melancholic guitar line and the opening lines sung by Robert Smith, 'I've been looking so long at these pictures of you/ That I almost believe that they're real... I almost believe that the pictures/ Are all I can feel'. And that did for me, absolutely and totally, in a way I can't really explain. The tears came good and proper.
This version was released in 1990 on the Mixed Up album, a double vinyl set of remixes and re- recordings. I've listened to it a few times since Sunday night and it hasn't quite repeated the trick it did that evening but I've no doubt now that this song is connected in my brain and my emotional responses to Isaac. Funny how music can do that. I have an appointment next week to be assessed for some grief counselling. I think it's about time.
No long song today, a mix instead. Tak Tent Radio is an internet radio station broadcasting out of Scotland with mixes and shows from an array of contributors and regular guests. Some time ago I was asked if I'd like to provide an hour of music for Tak Tent and have since been back four times. The latest Bagging Area Tak Tent mix went up on Saturday and can be found here. More ambient, instrumental and Balearic sounds segued together in a way that I hope is pleasing and semi- competent. I've posted quite a few of the tracks in the mix here in recent times.
Underworld: Dark & Long (Most ‘Ospitable Mix)
David Holmes and Jon Hopkins featuring Stephen Rea:
Elsewhere Anchises
William Alfred Sergeant: Circles
Chris Carter: Poptone
William Orbit: Wordsworth
Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
Steve Cobby: 45ft. Tide
Gabriel Yared: C’est Le Vent, Betty
Andy Bell: When The Lights Go Down
The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise (David
Holmes Remix)
Projections: Original Cell (Coyote Deep State Remix)
Coyote: The Outsider
For some reason while putting it together the Gabriel Yared track suggested itself to me- I have no idea why. C'est Le Vent, Betty is from the soundtrack to the film Betty Blue. I'm sure you remember Betty Blue...
Betty Blue was released in 1988, directed by Jean- Jacques Beineix and starring Beatrice Dalle as Betty and Jean- Hugues Anglade as Zorg. Zorg lives in a beach house on the coast, making a living as a handyman while trying to become a writer. Betty arrives and turns his life upside down, setting fire to a beach house, stabbing a customer at a pizzeria with a fork and a sharp, painful descent into depression and hospitalisation. The film's first half, all young love and impulsiveness, sex and bohemian lifestyle, contrast sharply with the horrors of the second half. According to the director the film's two stars became very much intertwined, a relationship that went beyond acting. 'We didn't know if they were in the movie anymore', he said. Which puts the film's opening scene, a lengthy sex scene, in a different light. The soundtrack was by Gabriel Yared, a Lebanese composer and pianist and works as a listen in its own right. As well as the track on my mix above, this pair are a good way to start the week.
Cantoma is the musical work of Phil Mison, a veteran of the Balearic scene, sunsets at the Cafe del Mar, the White Isle, beaches and tides, the whitewashed walls of Spanish houses, a week abroad, a holiday in the sun, laid back days and dancing at night. His music as Cantoma reflects all of that and more. This mix contains just under forty minutes of Cantoma and some remixes courtesy of likeminded travelling companions. The sun's out, it's warm for the first time in ages.
Last Saturday I posted Theme For Great Cities, a moment of genius from Simple Minds in 1981. It occurred to me that I might have a few songs with the word Theme in the title and that it might make a good series for a few weeks. A quick search of my downloads folder revealed multiple Themes and not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth (whatever that means) we'l have some Saturday Themes for the next few weeks at least.
Today's Saturday Theme is from a year ago from the pioneers of northern bleep techno and ambient The Black Dog. In January 202 they began a series of releases called Dubs, four track EPs inspired by their history in Sheffield. The first referenced Parkhill Flats, Sheffield's tram network, the suburb of Crookes and a northern culinary delicacy.
Theme For Chip Butty was on Dubs: Volume 1 and is a lovely piece of ambient music, four minutes of synth drones with some chanting crowds in the middle. It was released on a very limited vinyl edition of 100 with a hand numbered sleeve and twenty eight page booklet of photographs of Sheffield plus a badge and a postcard. Long since sold out of course. Buy the digital here.
A song from Turkey to see the working week out, a 70s psyche/ funk/ jazz stomper celebrating the wonders/ effects of hashish, a Rune Lindbaek edit which came out in the autumn of last year.
Hashish was on the most recent appearance of David Holmes at NTS Radio and his monthly God's Waiting Room show, two hours well spent if you haven't done so already. Find it at Mixcloud and the tracklist at NTS. This video has plenty of vintage charm.
I was listening to The Sugarcubes a while ago, sparked by a Twitter account that posts photographs of pages from the music press, in particular a run of issues of NME and Melody Maker from 1989. The Sugarcubes featured often in the live reviews, single and album reviews and interviews from that year. The Sugarcubes had hit the UK music scene hard when Life's Too Good was released in 1988. John Peel fell heavily for the single Birthday the year before, a song that sounded like little else- strange avant- pop about a girl who keeps spiders in her pocket and collects fly wings in a jar, sung in a unique voice. The album followed, a rush of post- punk, dance- pop played by a group of Icelandic punk veterans, spiky guitars, metallic drums, funky rhythms and a manic optimism with Bjork's squeals, hiccups and singing and Einar's spoken word voice. Delicious Demon, Motor Crash and Fucking In Rhythm And Sorrow were all perfect, wide eyed indie pop with audible punk roots but made for spinning round the floor to. Einar's interjections were funny, a counter balance to Bjork's otherworldliness. On Deus they muse about the existence of God.
The indie holy trio of Peel, NME and Melody Maker banged their drum throughout 1988. The Sugarcubes had front covers and went to the US, the album sold well. What the NME and Melody Maker cuttings on Twitter made clear was how sour the relationship turned and how quickly. The group's punk nature was never far from the surface. They became suspicious of all the fawning and didn't always take interviews seriously. The NME and MM printed stories about the band eating puffins and put their focus on Bjork (naturally maybe). This upset the rest of the band who wanted them to be seen as a group, a democracy, not Bjork and The Sugarcubes. Einar especially seemed prickly about it. As 1988 became 1989 The Sugarcubes released album number 2, Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! the NME and Melody Maker turned on the band, slagging the album (and listening to it again recently there's no denying it's a much weaker set of songs) and attacking Einar's contributions especially. It's amazing reading some of the reviews three decades later how vitriolic and personal some of the articles in the music press were (not just the ones about The Sugarcubes, more generally articles like weekly pages of singles reviews where bands, singers and individuals get savaged by whichever critic was in the chair that week. At the time it seemed funny I guess, and a bit edgy, a bit punk but it reads pretty cruelly now. There was a review of a Wedding Present single that read like Gedge and the boys had committed a war crime and I was left thinking that a bit of perspective was needed, it's just some indie pop).
I saw The Sugarcubes play at Liverpool Royal Court in October 1989, a gig reviewed by one of the two papers. The journalist was in the tour bus with them, reporting on the tensions and reviewing the gig. Things clearly got to Einar. That night in Liverpool he jumped off the stage to remonstrate with a heckler, grabbing hold of him in the pit. By that point there were plenty of fans who were wondering why Bjork needed a second vocalist alongside her, shouting lines in the gaps between her singing. On record Einar's vocals made more sense. Live his presence as a shouter/ dancer was part of the band's punk roots. Hot Meat came out as a B-side, a version of Cold Sweat from Life's Too Good, Bjork and Einar perfectly in balance with each other.
By the time of 1992's Stick Around For Joy the spark had gone and Bjork was already planning a solo career. She'd spent much of 1989 and 1990 in Manchester and London, soaking up the club scene. She'd recorded with 808 State, the wondrous Ooops coming out as a single and featuring on 1991's ex:el album (as well as another song Qmart). Bjork and 808's Graham Massey would write together throughout the 90s.
Stick Around For Joy had a decent single in it though- Hit- which obviously became one, their highest chart position achieved just before splitting up.
Former Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie has a long solo back catalogue recorded since the Cocteaus split up, the guitarist keeping himself busy with EPs and albums of lighter than air guitar led instrumentals, songs full of atmospherics, ambience and reverb, FX pedals, a bit of piano, drums and the presence of the room they were recorded in. At the start of January he released a four track EP called Springtime, a bit premature perhaps but now as the blossom, the daffodils and the catkins start to appear, it's perfectly apt.
With the Cocteau Twins gone and a reunion unlikely Robin has just kept going, playing the guitar, writing the music and putting it out, a one man cottage industry. His Bandcamp page is full of releases. Pick a point and dive in. This is Springtime's closing track, All For Nothing, for its first half the most ambient, most Eno- esque, song on the EP. Then the guitars kick in and it all swells and swirls around.
New Fast Automatic Daffodils coalesced in Manchester in the late 80s and were signed to Play It Again Sam, a record label based in Belgium who had early electronic rock groups on their books- Front 242, The Young Gods and Meat Beat Manifesto all released records on PIAS. New FADs fitted in with that sound in some ways, a groove based sound, drums and taut basslines to the fore, lots of percussion and bongos with clipped, spiky guitar and the gruff, economical vocals of singer Andy Spearpoint. As such, a rock band making kids dance, they had some crossover appeal with the Manchester sound of the late 80s even if they weren't really part of the scene. They had a run of singles after their debut (Lions) and a 1990 album, Pigeonhole, that all stand the test of time and really don't sound like thirty two years have passed since they were recorded.
Big is a swirling five minutes of dance rock, starting with feedback and bongos and then some frenetic drumming takes over. This is the churning, speeding album version. The 12" has a different version, with Andy's echo laden vocals, 'The desert grows three miles a year/ It just grows/ It just grows', and the Big (Baku) remix by Jon da Silva, both well worth seeking out.
Big appeared on the Happy Daze compilation, a 1990 album released by Island to cash in on the flavours of the month/ year with Primal Scream's Loaded heading the album and The Soup Dragons, Pixies, Ride, The Charlatans, Shamen, Carter USM, Inspiral Carpets, James, Soho, The Wonderstuff, Jesus Jones and Happy Mondays all present. It sold by the bucketfull and likely many people's exposure to the New FADS was from this album.
Fishes Eyes exists in multiple versions too, a slower take on the New FADs mutant dance rock. The 12" came with this one produced by Slow Bongo Floyd, with some skronky saxophone to make sure everything doesn't get too obvious.
Get Better came out in 1991, after Pigeonhole. This version was mixed by Martin Hannett, a man with not long left at this point. It's a cracking version of the song, full of tension and has energy to spare, Hannett crossing his production for the Mondays Bummed with something of what he'd done a decade earlier with ACR but between them, band and producer, coming up with a step forward. Dolan Hewison's guitar part stands out in the middle as the drums and bongos whip up a storm.
They were a phenomenal live act, totally engrossing and could get a whole venue dancing, not just those few diehards down the front. I saw them a few times round the period and a couple of years later briefly worked alongside Andy Spearpoint's partner (an English teacher in Failsworth, a school where I did a teaching practice). Andy was a drama student and has appeared in Coronation Street as well as being the New FADs frontman. Their second album Body Exit Mind came out in 1992 but by then grunge had done for Manchester and then a year or two later Britpop showed up. The New FADs split in 1995. They deserve a bit more than to be an early 90s footnote.
Mrs Swiss (real name Lou) and I (real name Adam) have been in the Lake District for the weekend and it's proved to be just what we needed- a break away from here and everything that goes with it in a place we hadn't been to before (The Western Lakes and Cumbrian coast, a bit further than the tourist honeypot places round Windermere) and a place that had no associations with Isaac. We'd been to the Lakes with Isaac several times, camping and visiting, but not the area round Whitehaven and St Bees. Driving home down the M6 as we approached Preston I felt the knot of anxiety that I've had in my stomach on and off since Isaac died reappear for the first time since we left Manchester on Friday night. I've had a lot of physical symptoms of grief/ stress recently- tinnitus and clenching my jaw/ grinding my teeth being the two main ones with a more general physical feeling of tension and stress- and I've tried to accept them as a part of the process but I think I'm going to do something about them this week and see a doctor. The tinnitus and jaw clenching was still there this weekend but the anxiety left me for longer periods. The bracing winds at Ennerdale Water (above) blew the cobwebs out a bit. On Saturday afternoon at St Bees Head (below) the sun came out and we walked on the beach, climbed on the rocks and sat in the sun for a while, coats and scarves on but clearly feeling the sun for the first time since whenever, taking in the sound of the waves crashing on the beach. Walking up to cliff at St Bees in the March sunshine felt good and at the top looking north, over the headland, the Solway Firth and south west Scotland was visible. One of the cliches is that a change is as good as a rest. I think this weekend that was definitely true- being somewhere else, not at home, was good for us. Being somewhere else for a couple of days where nobody knew us was also good.
We also took in a stone circle, the eleven stone ring called Blakeley Raise, sitting on a plateau above the village of Ennerdale Bridge. The circle was 'restored in 1925 after an 18th century farmer took many of the stones to make his gatepost and wall. The restorer, Dr Quine, claims to have replaced the stones in the holes left behind but the accuracy of this stone circle is open to debate.
On Friday night in the cottage we were staying in, sitting by the log fire and flicking thorhg the channels I found a Bob Dylan documentary, Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, 1964 and 1965. The 1965 appearance, Sunday 25th July, is legendary, the moment he went electric to the displeasure or fury of the crowd who had come to hear acoustic folk singer Dylan, not amped up, electrified Dylan accompanied by a band with Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield on board, snarling and ripping their way through Maggie's Farm, Like A Rolling Stone, Phantom Engineer and It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry. Dylan had made the decision on the Saturday afternoon, apparently on the spot after what he took to be condescending comments made by Alan Lomax about the Paul Butterfield Blue Band. According to roadie Jonathan Taplin, Dylan's attitude was 'well, fuck them if they think they can keep electricity out of here...' Like A Rolling Stone changed the world of popular music, a 7" single that clocked in at over six minutes long at a time when two to three minutes was the norm. It doesn't sound like a big deal now but fifty seven years ago it changed the format and ripped up the conventions.
Maggie's Farm, not as long but thrillingly alive, five minutes of confrontation, Beat poetry, the art of wearing a leather jacket and holding a Stratocaster at exactly the right angle. Confidence, self assuredness, cocksure in the face of opposition. He ain't gonna work for Maggie's Pa no more. And Mike Bloomfield's guitar is as electric as it could be.
Dylan was no stranger to the longer song, even in the mid 60s and on albums that came in at less than forty five minutes in total running time per disc he'd chuck in a longform song like Desolation Row (eleven minutes) or this one a year later on Blonde On Blonde- seven minutes of rhymes and riddles, with 'Shakespeare in the alley/ With his pointed shoes and his bells/ Speaking to some French girl/ Who says she knows me well', Grandpa, railroad men, Mona punching cigarettes, senators and preachers, Main Street, Ruthie, neon madmen and Bob, stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again.
It all sounds like it was never quite finished, a song constantly in a state of flux, that more verses could be added or taken out, more characters put in or lines changed and switched around. The group are raucous and on fire, electrified and on the edge. In the end at some point, it had to be recorded and that was the finished version as it went down on tape there and then.
If you fancy your Sunday a tad dystopic, and given the state of the world right now that's pretty fitting, then maybe this thirty three minute mix of music from Pye Corner Audio will do the job. It took a while to get it right and I had to chop and change the tracks around a few times There's no shortage of material- Martin Jenkins is very prolific, his synthesisers and FX units seemingly constantly on the go. The first version of this was a bit too dark, too dystopian. I had to bring some light into those deep caverns Pye Corner Audio like to be submerged in. The analogue synth sounds, drones, repeating patterns and motifs, pattering drum machines, throbbing basslines and pulsating melodies in Pye Corner Audio's music are all shrouded in a murky mystery, the sound of a future imagined in the 1970s and 80s that hasn't quite come to pass. The memory of rave is in there too (literally in a track with that exact title) and in the acid tinged finale of Jupiter Orbit, Detroit's techno/ science fiction re- imagined in 21st century Britain.
Eyes Open, Murk, Quarry Rave, Jupiter Orbit and Memory Of Rave are all from Martin's monthly offerings at Bandcamp, released over the last couple of years. Phase B is from an EP called Where Things Are Hollow 2 from 2020 and Synoptic is from the Entangled Routes album that came out at the end of last year.
Theme For Great Cities kicks off side one of the album Sister Feelings Call the record that accompanied Simple Minds' 1981 album Sons And Fascination (not a double album, two albums released together). It's a massive sounding, gloriously pulsing instrumental, all the Mittel Europa ghosts of West Berlin, Bowie and Eno Kraftwerk and Neu! reimagined by a post- punk group from Glasgow. When Jim Kerr heard it for the first time on a cassette given to him by Mick MacNeil, played on his Walkman while walking round the streets of Glasgow, he knew it was 'fucking perfect', it didn't need vocals at all. It's a futuristic piece of music, synths and keyboards giving the melodies and sounds, driving drums and a typically superb bassline from Derek Forbes. By the time they came to record it fully, Steve Hillage was in the producer's chair. When the topline comes in at one minute forty we're off, dancing in a club in one of the great cities suggested by the title.
The song developed a long life, re- emerging well after 1981 and becoming a mainstay of DJ sets in Ibiza and beyond, a Balearic classic. Weatherall played it in the early days of his DJing career (and the later days too). It's been remixed and re- edited by Fila Brazillia, Fluke, Moby. It being an instrumental leant itself to DJs, pitching it up or down according to the rest of their set. Many people danced the night away to Simple Minds unaware they were doing so- Simple Minds by the time of the Theme For Great Cities were all billowing shirts and anthemic choruses, the group that recorded the song long since turned into something else.
The photo is what remained of the Ramada Hotel, a huge 1960s concrete hotel and shopping complex by the Irwell and the cathedral in Manchester. Urban renewal deemed it no longer fit for purpose. The Ramada had itself replaced a huge Victorian building. Cities always change and grow, new replacing old, societies building on top of what was there before. I do wonder how long we can go on constructing enormous buildings and then tearing them down every 50- 60 years though. Build, demolish, build, demolish. It doesn't seem like a sustainable way to build great cities.
People used to joke that you couldn't name five famous Belgians* as if that somehow marked the country down. Fame is overrated anyway isn't it? Belgium has a rich musical history from New Beat to the present day and is especially influential in dance and electronic music. I've written quite a few times before about Rheinzand, a three piece from Ghent who make fantastic dance pop spliced with Balearica and disco. Multi- instrumentalist/ producer Reinhard Vanbergen, singer Charlotte Caluwaerts and producer/ DJ Mo Disko cook up a shimmering, unapologetic dance floor oriented storm. The single We'll Be Alright was one of my favourites from last year. Their 2020 self titled debut album was a wall to wall treat, from the cover of Talking Heads Slippery People to the nagging electronic bliss of Fourteen Again. They also roped in all and sundry to remix it, a slew of outstanding remixes from the likes of Red Axes, Scorpio Twins, Chris Coco, Pete Herbert, Skylab, Superpitcher and so on. This one, Obey (Hardway Bros Stereo Odyssey), as remixed by Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros is utterly sublime and seductive leftfield dance music.
Part of the recent cross blog pollination between this blog and Dr Rob's Ban Ban Ton Ton led to me reviewing the forthcoming Rheinzand album. You can read that here. The single Elefantasi has been recorded and released digitally in five different languages- English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish- and at Bandcamp you can download a Make Your Own version (that's Belgian for instrumental). Elefantasi is sumptuous, trippy Nu Disco with an imaginary Peter Hook on bass.
* Obviously it's not even that difficult- Eddy Merckx, Herge, various footballers (Enzo Scifo from the 80s and several current modern ones such as Romelu Lukaku, Eden Hazard and Kevin de Bruyne), Adolphe Sax, Magritte- and that's without resorting to Google. All men I've just noticed however.
Michael Head, in some ways Liverpool's finest but most unsung songsmith, is back with his Red Elastic Band and a new song ahead of a new album. His 2017 album Adios Senor Pussycat, at that point his fist album for eleven years, was one of that year's best and a record I keep going back to- the songwriting, the playing, the moods and textures, the hard won wisdom and melancholic celebration of the lyrics never gets tired or overdone. I saw him play at Gorilla in May 2018, a gig which lives long in the memory.
The new song is called Kismet and is as wonderful as anything on Adios Senor Pussycat, acoustic guitars and acid rock guitars and Mick's voice all sounding as you'd want them to.
Sometimes I feel like I go round in circles a bit here, a familiar roster of Bagging Area favourites who rotate from month to month. Sometimes it feels like there's too much music as well- new songs, new tracks, new remixes, new mixes, new DJ mixes, new podcasts, on and on. I suppose it becomes natural to focus in what you know as a way of finding a way through it all. So here, after multiple posts, is Daniel Avery again.
After releasing several albums in the last few years Daniel is back remixing other artists too. This one came out in February, a remix of Enfant Sauvage (the solo project French producer Guillaume Alric) who is usually found in due The Blaze. His Enfant Sauvage album Petrichor came out at the end of last year. Daniel's remix of 58500 is up to his recent high standards, a close cousin of Daniel's own Lone Swordsman track- feedback fades in quickly, the drums clatter into earshot and then we're inside Avery's characteristic echo chamber, that monumental reverb sound he gets from inside a shipping container in East London. Trebly synthesizer melody lines and an insistent buzzing bassline. Tension and a faint feeling of anxiety, waiting for release- instead at three and a half minutes, the drums stop and there's a squeal of feedback to take us out.
In 2007 goth punk queen Siouxsie Sioux released a solo album called Mantaray, ten songs taking in pop to glam with some cabaret inbetween along with some undeniably Siouxsie- esque rock. The woman herself is in fine voice throughout, fired up by working with new and different people. Album opener Into A Swan was inspired partly by her divorce from Budgie, partly by working with Basement Jaxx the year before and partly by the arrival of Egyptian percussionist Hossam Ramzy (who'd previously worked with Robert Plant). Siouxsie took all this and threw it into the pot, a song about starting anew, being transformed, becoming a swan.
In 2007 Andrew Weatherall was a little more niche than he is today, feeling his way into a solo career under his own name and about to begin a streak of remixes that put him back at the top of his game. He got his hands on Into A Swan and turns it into a dancefloor smash, fast and intense, kickdrum pounding, with whistles and snares and a jacking bassline. Siouxsie's vocal survives almost entirely intact. There are breakdowns and grinding sounds, squalls of guitar and thunderous percussion. In the second half the pace gathers further, Siouxsie spinning as the strobe flashes and singing, 'I feel a force I've never felt before/ I burst out I'm transformed'.
Over the last few years I've had quite a bit of contact with Dr. Rob, the man behind the blog Ban Ban Ton Ton, an online archive for all things electronic and Balearic. Rob served his time in London during the acid house years, a period of great music, great clubs and legendary nights out, where he took full part in everything London could offer. Now, older and wiser, he lives in Japan. Well over a year ago Rob suggested a Ban Ban Ton Ton/ Bagging Area collaboration and we've finally got around to it, after both of us thinking it was a good idea but neither of us quite sure how it would work in practice. Recently I've written a couple of reviews for Ban Ban Ton Ton, the first a review of Richard Norris' Chrome and more recently a review of Nina Walsh's Music To Fall Asleep To: Delta Waves. Even better that those, today sees Dr. Rob write for Bagging Area- fittingly (for both blogs), it's a piece of music first encountered while listening to Andrew Weatherall.
Over to Rob-
Harry
Roche`s Constellation / Spiral 2022_02_28
Wah wah
guitar gets this groovy gear going - out of the gates at a cracking clip, as if
it were scoring a chase scene in a cool `70s flick, like Shaft. Mod jazz
organs and big band brass blasts rise and fall in massed fanfares. There’s
soulful moaning care of Clare Torry, whose deep, psychedelic tones also
graced Pink Floyd`s Great Gig In The Sky. The word “spiral” is whispered
as if it`s a spell. Things are already pretty frantic with only a tambourine`s
tapping keeping the beat, and it`s a full four minutes before the drums kick
in. When they do though, they signal a crazy keyboard solo. At 6 minutes the
track hits its first breakdown, a quick short switch into an easy-listening
swing. Then trumpets and trombones sound and the race is on again - a soaring saxophone
joining the party, before pausing once more for a bash on some bongos. At 8
minutes, things enter the same syncopated, symphonic Sci-Fi space as Deodato
covering Strauss` Also Sprach Zarathustra - aka the theme from 2001
- the sort of fusion favoured by the Creed Taylor`s CTI label. The climax then
comes in the form of a final funk freakout. Believe me, Harry Roche`s
Constellation`s Spiralis a real library music / muzak
rollercoaster.
Originally
released on Pye in 1973, Spiral was squeezed in as the last track on an
LP in the imprint`s “4D” quadrophonic demonstration series. Goodness knows
where the budgets came from in those days, but the recording credits list some
15, 16, 17, players. I first heard Spiral on an Andrew Weatherall mix
made for Dummy Mag,
back in July 2013. Spiral just leapt out. It was so unique…and it just
didn’t seem to quit. It immediately became a “must have”. As far as I know, the
original LP has never been reissued, and is still quite pricey. However, if
you’re after a vinyl copy of the song it can be found on Sequel Records` 1995
comp, Easy Project: 20 Lounge Core Favourites. Try to ignore the cheesy
title, `cos there Spiral spins spaced-out, loud and proud, over the
whole side of a bonus 12.
*Spiral
also featured on another outstanding Weatherall mix, over at The
Rotters Golf Club, where it rubbed musical shoulders with a track
from a perhaps more well known quadraphonic masterpiece, Mystic Moods`
Awakenings.
The Dummy Mix Rob refers to appeared in 2013.Tthere's a link to it the text above or you can download below.
Oskar Sala: Improvisation No. 2 Arthur Lyman: Exodus The Harry Roche Constellation: Spiral Beaver And Krause: Another Part Of Time Francois Roubaix: Militerreuse Francois Roubaix: La Fete Des Deux Avions Mad Professor: Rampage In L.A. Count Ossie And Leslie Butler: Soul Drums Effie Briest: New Quicksand Team Ghost: Echo White Noise 3: Time Travel Moebius And Plank: Tollkuhn Hannah Peel: Electricity Wild Nothing: Bored Games
Today's half hour mix is from Nottingham via the Balearic isles (or vice versa), thirty minutes from Coyote. Tim Sure and Richard Hampson met in Venus, the legendary early 90s Nottingham club that was part of the Balearic network. After spending much of the 90s DJing the pair formed Coyote in 2004. Their back catalogue goes way back but all of the music in the mix below comes from 2021, a year in which they put out several waves of releases and remixes of other artists.
Stockport doesn't have a coast but the idea of a Costa del Stockport is a brilliant one. This graffiti sits on the base of a bridge carrying the M60 over the Mersey near Stockport. Coyote's music is very much the music of the coasts.
Opening track Cafe Con Leche was one of my favourites from last year, a female voice saying 'when all this is over I plan to head north', a sentiment we've all felt at times in the last two years. Mint Tea comes from last year's album The Mystery Light as does Andrew Weatherall tribute The Outsider, an acoustic guitars and a bass overlaid with part of an interview with Alan Watts where he talks about society and the insanity that 'everyone must join in, everybody must work, everybody must belong... you don't have to join in, you don't have to play the game'. Feedback County is a slow mo, acoustic guitar flecked delight from the album Buzzard County, out just under a year ago and Paris From Above is a remix of Icelandic artist Tonarunur. Will We Ever Dance Again was the A-side of a 12" released last autumn, a question without a question mark.
I wasn't expecting one of the most impressive and one of my favourite records of 2022 to be some psyche- folk from East Sussex but things are unpredictable all round at the moment and given Richard Norris' involvement I should have known it would be good. Lore Of The Land by The Order Of The 12 is a ten song album, an album reflecting the folk scene of the late 60s and early 70s. I read Rob Young's Electric Eden a few years ago and have a rough working knowledge of some of that sound- Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Vashti Bunyan and so on- but I'm far from an expert. Richard writes and produces on the album, plays keys and percussion with singer Rachel Thomas and guitarist Stuart Carter. The guitars, from beguiling circular folk finger picking to a couple of acid rock lines, are superb throughout and Richard's production, in his studio on the banks of Lewes Castle, gives the album space and depth. Album opener Against The Tide is a perfect introduction to the record- layers of guitars, Rachel's voice and the subtle FX playing in the background.
The East Sussex area is famous for its folk tradition and for its weird, English folklore. The nearby Chanctonbury Ring, a prehistoric hill fort, is connected with all sorts of ancient stories about the devil, rituals and mystic power. Alastair Crowley used to live nearby. Folk singer Shirley Collins still does. The Order Of The 12 have tapped into this, an album combining The Wicker Man style popular culture with 17th century magick and late 60s folk. As I said, unexpected, but highly recommended.
Nicky Tesco, frontman of punk band The Members, died last week aged 66. The group signed to Virgin in the great major label scramble to sign punk bands in 1977/ 1978 and wrote one of the great singles of UK punk, Sound Of The Suburbs- a slice of energy, guitars and dissatisfaction with boredom that every teenager in the late 70s could identify with, tailor made for the 7" single and bedroom record player.
'Every boring Sunday morning/ Old men washing their cars/ Mum's in the kitchen cooking Sunday dinner/ Herbert's still moaning for food/ And Johnny's upstairs in the bedroom/ Sitting in the dark/ Annoying the neighbours with his punk rock electric guitar.... This is the sound/ This is the sound of the suburbs'
It's not all about the suburbs though. The Members were more than capable of taking aim at more political targets. In 1979 they took a shot at tax dodgers, banks, Bermuda and the Bahamas.
Nicky was a member of The Members throughout the first incarnation of the band but left in 1983). He became an actor and in 1989 appeared the still bewildering but brilliant Leningrad Cowboys Go America, a film about a fictional Russian band with enormous quiffs on tour in the US. On Twitter earlier this week my online friend Danny Kelly summarised the importance of Nicky Tesco and The Members- ' trillions of words were written about punk. Wasted effort. You nailed it in five'.
A trip back to the 00s when male/ female duos were all the rage, often one on guitars/ vocals and the other drumming, sometimes husband and wife. Handsome Furs were from Montreal, a married couple consisting of guitarist/ singer Dan Boeckner accompanied by Alexei Perry (now a writer/ poet). This song popped into my head at some point last week, I think in connection with Russia.
The song (and the album Face Control) came out on Sub Pop in 2009, inspired by Dan's adventures in Eastern Europe and Russia. He was writing about the post- Communist Russia, a place that had adopted a kind of hyper- capitalism with 'no regard whatsoever for human beings'. In Talking Hotel Arbat Blues Dan sings about Face Control, the culture in Moscow where people could book a table in a nightclub, pay in advance, and then be denied entry by the bouncers because they weren't good looking enough (face control). Seems like small beer now in the light of Russia invading Ukraine but the line 'every little things been bought and sold' says something about the state of Russia under Putin. As does the opening line.
Talking Hotel Arbat Blues is a tremendous blast of 00s lo- fi indie/ punk- a crashing, overloaded drum machine, pounding but sparse kick drum, distorted guitar chords and an impassioned vocal. Handsome Furs called it a day in 2012 after releasing their third album Sound Kapital
Curses is a one man outfit based in Berlin, an 80s obsessive with a chilly New Wave/ post- punk sound, all urgency and paranoia, some Cold War dread along with some tough beats beamed in from Belgian New Beat or early acid house. A few years ago his cover version of The The's This Is The Day pricked my ears up, powered by a Hooky- esque bassline that you could dredge a canal with, some bleepy toplines and a vocal that always seems to me like he slightly misses his cue for the first line but makes it work anyway.
Last year Curses released a song on Dischi Autunno with vocals from Cici, a sparse, rhythmic, iced tribute to Italian actress and photojournalist Gina Lollobrigada.
Gina was a high profile international star in the 1950s and 60s and has lived quite the life and aged 94 is still with us, the last of the superstars of the silver screen. She starred alongside Humphrey Bogart in Beat The Devil and Crossed Swords with Errol Flynn as well as films with Yul Brynner, Ernst Borgnine, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.
Curses has a new album out this month, Incarnadine, more pumped up dark disco and post- punk that sound like they've been mainlined straight from a Berlin of the 1920s/ 1980s transplanted into now. You can buy it here. If you dig around his Bandcamp site you'll also find a thirty eight track compilation album called Next Wave Acid Punx that explains everything, from Gina X to Yello and all points in between.
