Bagging Area Tak Tent Mix Nine

My latest hour long mix for Tak Tent Radio went live at the weekend. Tak Tent have been broadcasting out of Scotland on the internet since June 2020, with a range of contributors including the legendary Richard Youngs. The latest Bagging Area mix is my ninth for Tak Tent and contains solely music from this year. You can listen to it here or directly at Mixcloud. Don't let them tell you there's no good new music any more. 

• Alex Kassian: Lifestream
• Marshall Watson: High Desert (Seahawks High Sky Remix)
• Whitelands: Setting Sun (AR Kane Initiation Dub)
• Dot Allison: Unchanged (GLOK Remix)
• Dickie Continental: Simon Says (Congagong rework)
• African Head Charge: Passing Clouds
• Coyote: After All These Years
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Chaldean Oracle (GLOK Remix)
• Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Richard Norris: The Third Day
• JIM: Still River Flow (Generalisation Dub)

Forty Five Minutes Of Tim Burgess

Tim Burgess is an instantly recognisable figure as frontman, singer and lyricist of The Charlatans, the young man with the pudding bowl haircut of Indian Rope and The Only One I Know who has weathered the fads, phases and storms of the music industry and life and who still looks barely a day older than he did back in 1990. Outside The Charlatans he's written three books (including the brilliantly titled Tim Book Two), all three showing him to be a considered, thoughtful and witty writer. He has made six solo albums, from 2003's countryfied I Believe to the synths and FXed sax of Same Language, Different Worlds with Peter Gordon, with songs written and recorded with Lambchop's Kurt Wagner in between. He has a record label O Genesis which has put out solo albums by members of Factory Floor, by Martin Duffy and by The Membranes, among others. There is, it is fair to say, more to him than met the eye when he first shook his fringe with The Charlatans in January 1989. 

Today's mix is a selection of Tim Burgess solo/ with others/ outside The Charlatans that starts out with some gloriously frazzled, hazy ambient drift and ends with some block rocking beats and industrial thump. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Tim Burgess

• Stoned Alone Again Or (Seahawks Remix)
• Tobacco Fields
• Another Version Of The Truth
• Hours (Tandy Love Remix)
• Begin (Carter Tutti Remix)
• The Economy II (Prince Fatty Remix)
• Life Is Sweet (Album Version)
• White (Factory Floor- Gabe Gurnsey Remix)

Stoned Alone Again Or was a 2012 one off 12" single, remixed by Seahawks as a ten minute ambient epic, indie rock taken as far away from its roots as it can go. Seahawks are ambient/ Balearic duo Jon Tye and Pete Fowler, who have released umpteen albums and singles since 2010- I recommend Escape Hatch, Starways and Paradise Freaks as good starting points. 

Tobacco Fields is from Tim's 2012 solo album Oh No I Love You. It is a beauty, with barroom piano, a frazzled vocal and an ambient backdrop, co- written with Kurt Wagner. 

Another Version Of The Truth was on As I Was Now, a solo album recorded between Christmas and New Year in 2008 but not released until 2018- music that is experimental, krauty and pop. The group for the album consisted of My Bloody Valentine's bassist Debbie Goodge, Josh Haywood from The Horrors, Martin Duffy and Ladyhawke. 

Hours was on Oh No I Love You. Some editions of the CD came with a disc of remixes- the Tandy Love remix is by Andy Votel. Others on the second disc were by Tom Furse of The Horrors and Gabe Gurnsey of Factory Floor, whose remix finishes this mix. At the time Nik Void of Factory Floor was Tim's partner.

Begin is from Same Language, Different Worlds, an album made with New York avant garde composer Peter Gordon, a member of the legendary Love Of Life Orchestra. Begin was remixed by Carter Tutti, Chris Carter and Cosey Tutti of Throbbing Gristle/ Chris and Cosey fame/ infamy. Oh Men, also on the album, was remixed by Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert, Peaking Lights, Grumbling Fur and Carter Tutti- that's quite the line up. 

The Economy II is also from Oh No I Love You, dubbed out in 2013 by the superb Prince Fatty.

In 1995 The Chemical Brothers released their debut album Exit Planet Dust. Tim had been a regular at The Social, the Sunday afternoon/ evening party thrown weekly by Heavenly Records and Tom and Ed at The Albany on Great Portland Street. Tim sang on Life Is Sweet, a song which became the album's second single. On an album not short of bangers, Life Is Sweet still stands out- a furious synth riff, crunching beats, whooshes, sirens and a dirty bassline, and Tim's vocal, a celebration of mid- 90s hedonism. The Chemical Brothers returned the favour by working with The Charlatans on 1997's Tellin' Stories, most notably on One To Another.

Forty Minutes Of Seahawks

Since 2010 Seahawks, a duo made up of Pete Fowler and Jon Tye, have released a hatful of albums, singles and EPs, plus done multiple remixes of other artists- dreamy, drifting, brightly coloured ambient/ Balearic/ cosmic music that ebbs and flows in waves. The mix below is a sample of some of their own tracks with a couple of remixes stitched in, perfect for the heat that's arrived this weekend and which promises to be something else next week. Music to do nothing to. 

Forty Minutes Of Seahawks

I've listened back to this mix several times since putting it together and have to say it sounds really good- that's all credit to Seahawks. Making a lovely sounding mix from their music was not difficult at all. Islands, Missed and Rainbow Sun are all from the Paradise Freaks album, released in 2014. The Pye Corner Audio remix of Sky Is You comes from a remix EP the same year that also featured a Prins Thomas remix that I couldn't fit on here but is very much worth checking out. Escape Hatch is from their 2016 album of the same name. The remix of Tim Burgess, every gloriously broken and wasted eleven minutes of it came out in 2012 and their remix of Private Agenda was one of last year's highlights from a six track remix mini- album called Submersion.

• Seahawks: Islands
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Seahawks: Rainbow Sun
• Seahawks: Escape Hatch
• Seahawks: Sky Is You (Head Tek Pye Corner Audio Mix)
• Tim Burgess: A Gain/ Stoned Alone Again (Seahawks Remix)
• Seahawks: Missed

Malanai

Some more thoughts about bereavement. I'm not always sure sharing this stuff publicly is the right thing to do but writing it down definitely helps me and this seems a better place to put it than say Twitter or Facebook. If you just want the music, feel free to skip to the end. I really wouldn't blame you- this isn't necessarily what people come here for and I get that. 

It's now nearly three months since Isaac died. That feels like quite a long time without him- a quarter of a year- but in lots of ways it feels like it's passed very quickly and it's very recent. There are times now when I can go a period of time without feeling completely bereft or physically ill from it, where for the duration of a TV programme say or the time it takes to read an article or the chapter of a book it isn't at the front of my mind. When it comes back though, the grief, it still has the capacity to crush me. A memory or photograph can do it. At first looking at photos of Isaac helped, it made me feel closer to him. Not it's pretty painful to see them. One of the side effects of smartphones and social media is the memories function/ algorithm which pushes 'a year ago today' into your  timeline unexpectedly. Sometimes it makes me smile and sometimes it reminds me he's gone. I had a few fairly flat days at the end of the week before last, not good or bad just flat. On Monday night I saw a photo of Isaac and it sideswiped me, leaving me thinking (I almost said it out loud to myself), 'how are we ever going to get over this?'. And I think the answer is we won't ever get over this, it's just that over time, it becomes easier to live with. 

When a person with learning disabilities dies there has to be a review to check that everything happened correctly and that there were no concerns about their care and what happened. This would involve input from the hospital, the GP and the deceased's family. We were asked if we wanted to contribute and said yes. The meeting took place on Zoom and was pretty tough going for us at times (and we had no concerns about Isaac's care or how he and we were treated in hospital). The report was emailed to us recently and seeing it all in print was hard.

On Saturday we had our first big family get together since he died, an afternoon pub meal for my family for my Mum's 73rd birthday with twenty three of us present, ages ranging from six months to 83. It's the sort of event Isaac would have loved, all those people to speak to. It's the first time we've gone to one without him. I can never be sure how I'm going to be. Tears are never far away. I've cried in front of various people recently who I never would have before and usually I just say something like, 'don't worry, this happens all the time at the moment, just keep talking to me'. The birthday party was fine by the way. I felt a little out of it once or twice but on the whole it was a good get together and another hurdle cleared. But when we got home and sat down a wave of sadness broke onto me. When this happens I just go with it, accept it's all part of the process, but it's pretty heavy and it feels very like it did back in December. I guess three months isn't really very long at all. 

We've also had family to stay and I've been out with two different sets of friends, all of which has been good. It's good to see people and it's good to do things. It helps. That's where I'm up to I think. 

This came out last year and I thought I'd give it a bump to put it back out into blogworld. Private Agenda are a London/ Berlin duo whose six track EP Submersion last year was inspired by water, the sea, coasts and islands. Seahawks are a Balearic duo who have made some wonderful albums over the last decade. Their take on Malanai Ascending is a languid, floating beauty, shimmering synths and bubbling rhythms rippling ever onwards for six minutes. It could be twice as long and I wouldn't complain. Malanai I've just discovered is a trade wind and in Hawaiian translates as 'the gentle blowing of the northeast wind'. 

Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)

My journey to work yesterday was disrupted by a lorry that had overturned on Barton Bridge, a flooded road with a car abandoned in it and a fallen tree that closed part of the A666, the effects of Storm Franklin blowing in on northwest England coming only a day after Eunice had battered the south. None of your gentle blowing of the northeast winds round here. 

When All This Is Over

A new Bagging Area mix for Sunday, an optimistic sounding one now that the days are getting longer and the summer seems to be just round the corner. A lot of these songs have been posted here recently individually but they sounded good together. I'm not sure there's a huge amount of cause for optimism with the continuing, ceaseless flow of bad news, bad government and virus rates increasing but maybe it's best to turn the news channel off for a while and unplug. It's at Mixcloud, it won't embed but you can find it here. 

As the voice says in the opening Coyote song, 'when all this is over.... I plan to go north...' 

• Coyote: Café Con Leche
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Chris Coco: Rainy Season
• Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Carulaerts: Julien
• Primal Scream: Inner Flight
• Justin Deighton and Leo Zero: I Feel Edit
• Cantoma: The Mountain (Lexx Remix)
• HiFi Sean Ft. Yoko Ono: In Love With Life
• A Certain Ratio: Berlin (album version)
• Coyote: Feedback Valley
• Future Beat Alliance: Birth (Claude Young Remix)

Malanai Ascending

Private Agenda are a two man team split between London and Berlin (Sean Phillips and Martin Aggrowe) who have an extensive back catalogue behind them, their own work, along with numerous remixes and collaborations. Their first full album came out in 2019, an album called Île de Rêve, a dream island which inspired the nine tracks- downtempo, Balearic, ambient music. The album and the rest of their back catalogue is here. Recently a remix package called Submersion came my way- water, islands, the sea, coasts all loom large in Private Agenda's musical headspace. The six remixes are a mini- album in themselves- half an hour of washes of synth, drum pads, half heard vocals, brightly coloured passages and parts where the sound drifts by, repeating piano parts and warm drones- with remixes and reworkings by Coral Sea, JQ, Delac, Delmer Darion, Ocean Moon and this one from Seahawks.

Seahawks are masters of this kind of thing, the point where Balearic and ambient gently bump into each other, with their own recordings dating back to 2010 and the authors of several albums which I've played to death- Paradise Freaks, Escape Hatch and Starways are all recommended. Seahawks remix of Malanai Ascending is a chilled but persistent, slightly psychedelic swim in warm seas, the bass pulsing while waves of sound swoosh by, birdsong, a piano- kaleidoscopic like bright sunlight glinting off the surface of the sea. Buy it digitally or on cassette here. 

A Lockdown Mix

An hour and four minutes of music for lockdown. This lockdown hasn't been any fun at all. The novelty of the first lockdown has been absent and in the two darkest months of the year, it's been difficult. There are at least some glimmers of light now, the vaccines, the numbers starting to come down but I don't have much confidence Johnson will make the right call on Monday and fear that he is in thrall to the voices on the right wing who want to unlock everything as soon as possible. No one wants to stay in lockdown any longer than necessary but I think many of us would rather soldier on for another month or two with a very gradual loosening than open up quickly, chuck away all the gains and end up with another surge in cases and lockdown four in April. 

It's easy to be overwhelmed when faced with all this, all these problems and issues that are beyond our control. As Richard Norris said recently, 'music is the answer'. This is a mix I put together recently, starting out with some street sounds from the BBC's extensive online archive and a bit of Blade Runner, some drones and spoken word, something from Luke Schneider's astonishing steel pedal ambient album, more ambient music with guitars and pianos and synths and then a second half that opens up and lets the light in, a bit of optimism before the strings and drama of Two Lone Swordsmen remixed by In The Nursery. It's at Mixcloud. 

• Romanian street sounds (morning in Bucharest)/ Leon’s Voight Kampf Test
• Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: Estuary Embers
• Luke Schneider: Anteludium
• Mark Peters: Ashurst’s Beacon (ambient version)
• Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini: Illusion Of Time (Teodor Wolgers Rework)
• Smoke Test: Regress
• Ganser: Bags For Life (GLOK Remix)
• The Primitive Painter: Invisible Landscapes
• Underground System: Bella Ciao (Laguna Mix by Gigi Masin)
• Seahawks: Sky Is You (Pye Corner Audio Head Tek Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: In The Nursery Visit Glenn Street

More Islands

While searching for Islands by The xx for yesterday's post I found Islands by Seahawks, two minutes of gorgeous, ambient balm. It was the last track on their 2014 Paradise Freaks album, and could easily be three or four times as long but it's a lovely to way for the album to drift out on.

Islands

Another island- in 1989 Joe Strummer, dismayed and adrift after the break up of The Clash, recorded an album in Los Angeles with a band that became known as Latino Rockabilly War. Earthquake Weather is a couple of songs too long, the production and the mix are a mess in places, some of the playing is unsympathetic (some of Zander Schloss's guitar playing grates on me), Joe's voice is low in the mix- a lack of confidence in the material maybe- but there are some good songs hidden inside the album's grooves. Island Hopping is one of them, proof that Joe hadn't entirely lost his talent or his inspiration. A laid back, tropical tune with catgut guitar strings and percussion and Joe singing about escaping to a simpler life. 

Island Hopping

Isolation Mix Thirteen

Lockdown ends today- at least, that's how the government and the media have been portraying it with occasional reminders that social distancing and a 2 metre gap might be important. The government have largely dropped the daily infection figures and death toll from their bulletins. You don't want to be depressing people at this stage of proceedings with doom and gloom, not when there are pints to be drunk! The media have been splashing stories about Super Saturday, Independence Day and the End Of Hibernation. It does look like they deliberately chose July 4th so they could call it an Independence Day. Meanwhile, Leicester is in lockdown, the R rate in London is apparently creeping above 1, there are Covid hotspots around the country, the deaths are still well over one hundred every day, and lots of people are talking about a second wave and a second spike without the people in charge actually wanting to do anything about it. We are still shielding, the medical advice we received this week is that due to our son Isaac being in the extremely vulnerable category we should stay in isolation until August 1st. Despite a few minor changes to our lockdown lives, we are still very much in isolation.

This mix is an hour and eight minutes of music with a folky, ambient, pastoral tinge with some Balearica and guitars thrown in, some old stuff and some brand new- some birdsong and synth ambience to start and finish, blissed out tracks from Seahawks, Apiento and Ultramarine, Green Gartside solo and as Scritti Politti, acoustic guitars courtesy of Nancy Noise, Michael Head and Barry Woolnough, some understated brilliance from The Clash and Sandinista!, Julian Cope covering Roky Erickson, Thurston Moore covering New Order and Jane Weaver's cosmic/folky weirdness.

Tracklist-
Stubbleman: 4am Conversation

Seahawks: Islands

Nancy Noise: Kaia

Green Gartside: Tangled Man

Barry Woolnough: Great Spirit Father In The Sky

The Clash: Rebel Waltz

Thurston Moore: Leave Me Alone

Julian Cope: I Have Always Been Here Before

Jane Weaver: Slow Motion (Loops Variation)

Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band: Picasso

Scritti Pollitti: The Boom Boom Bap

Apiento: Things You Do For Love

Ultramarine: Stella (Stella Connects)

Stubbleman: 6am Chorus

Isolation Mix Five

Five weeks into these isolation mixes already- doesn't time fly when you're socially restricted? There is a higher BPM count on this mix but also some folky darkness and post punk dread from Nick Drake and A Certain Ratio respectively, some dance grooves from Ellis Island Sound and Scott Fraser, the ultra Balearic vibes of Richard Norris' Time And Space Machine remix of A Mountain Of One, some 1990 class from World Unite when Creation Records went all E'd up and dancey, Andrew Weatherall remixing Moby and Wayne Coyne in epic style, half of The Clash with Frank Ocean and Diplo plus the West Los Angeles Childrens' Choir (brought to you in association with Converse) from 2014 and a very long Seahawks remix of Tim Burgess, some headspinning ambient noise set against Harry Dean Stanton's monologue from Paris, Texas. 'Yep, I know that feeling'.

Tracklist:

Nick Drake: ‘Cello Song

A Certain Ratio: Winter Hill

Ellis Island Sound: Intro, Airborne, Travelling (Scott Fraser Remix)

A Mountain Of One: Ride (The Time And Space Machine Remix)

World Unite: World Unite

Moby Ft. Wayne Coyne: Another Perfect Life (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Frank Ocean, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Diplo: Hero

Tim Burgess: A Gain// Stoned Alone Again Or (Seahawks Remix) v Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Ry Cooder: I Knew These Two People, Paris Texas soundtrack

Isolation Mix Two

A second Bagging Area mix for lockdown, an hour of tunes starting out ambient, taking a turn toward the Balearics and some fizzing electronics before the jetstream sends it back into more ambient, melancholic lands with waves and seagulls. Having the time and space to think about putting these together is one of the upsides of social distancing and isolation.

Private Mountain: Coming Back Home v Eric Cantona ‘When the seagulls follow the trawler…

Nils Frahm: Over There, It’s Raining

Steven Leggett: Bathhouse

Seahawks: Rainbow Sun

Peaking Lights: Beautiful Dub

Circle Sky: Ghost In The Machine

The Neil Cowley Trio: Echo Nebula (Vessels Remix)

Fila Brazillia: Midnight Friends

Mark Peters: Jacob’s Ladder (Ambient Innerlands Version)

Jan van den Broeke: Memories

A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Gospel Oak FX)

Bjorn Torske: First Movement

Monday's Long Song

Since posting Rainbow Sun by Seahawks in the middle of August I've been digging around their back catalogue, acquiring a 2016 album (Escape Hatch), some Prins Thomas remixes and a remix compilation called Deep Haul. Ecsape Hatch is a dreamy piece of work, ten songs that seem to be centred around the ebb and flow of Mediterranean with rhythms that occasionally make it to house music tempo but are usually much slower, saxophones drifting in from Bladerunner, piano and guitars lost in a haze of FX, lots of texture and sheen. Very easy to put on and then lose yourself in. Starways is just shy of twelve minutes long and is an excellent way to start the working week.

Starways

Rainbow Sun Electricity

I went back to this 2014 album recently and it fits into my current listening palette really well- Paradise Freaks by Seahawks. Opener Rainbow Sun, with guest vocalist Maria Minerva, is a beauty, fading in on wash of sounds and a synth part. When Maria's voice comes in over a bouncing synth bassline it's like the clouds parting and the sun breaking through.

Rainbow Sun

The rest of the album is lovely too, songs with titles about the sea, drifting, the moon, harbours and waterfalls, all filtered through an electronic haze, with live instruments from some of Hot Chip and production from Tom Furse of The Horrors plus guest vocals from Tim Burgess and Indra of Peaking Lights. Paradise Freaks works as an album too, a fifty minute drift, some tracks structured as proper songs and some textured, open ended soundscapes to wash over you.

Escape Hatch

An escape hatch is exactly what this 2016 track by Seahawks is, a combination of white noise and lush melodies that swirl about until the bongo and piano hit at around a minute in. After that, it's another seven minutes of bliss. Even the saxophone, an instrument I can often do without, is a joy.

Look At The Sun

This is just the sort of thing for a Sunday morning, a blissed out, sun drenched song from Seahawks with Tim Burgess on vocals. When I first saw The Charlatans at a tiny venue in 1989 doing Indian Rope I wouldn't have put much money on Tim Burgess still being around twenty-five years later but here he is, a survivor as has been said many times before, and doing stuff that is much better than many of his contemporaries are currently doing.



There is also a very nice Prins Thomas remix if you fancy a version with a bit more shimmy shimmy.



The Seahawks album is out in September, which might be a little too late to do much looking at the sun. Mind you, we spent two weeks in the Loire valley in August and we didn't see too much sun there. This was the view from our tent more than once. Our neighbours were flooded out and started digging a levee before they were moved.

When the sun did come out it was lovely- this is the Medieval bridge at Beaugency. The Loire valley is beautiful and we met lots of very nice people on the campsite. French roads are amazing for cycling on- great condition, little traffic and motorists that don't try to run you off the road. It's just good to be away from home sometimes, especially when the wine, cheese and bread are so cheap.

The Loire valley is beautiful and we met lots of very nice people on the campsite. French roads are amazing for cycling on- great condition, little traffic and motorists that don't try to run you off the road. It's just good to be away from home sometimes, especially when the wine, cheese and bread are so cheap. We found the time to do a bit of exploring. This is Grande Pierre, a menhir in a farmer's corn field in the middle of nowhere, north of Blois. Not everyone in our party got on the prehistoric tip. Our eldest refused to get out of the car to look at it and child number two was fairly unimpressed. 'It's just a stone in a field'.

And this is Special Sport, my favourite shop in the village of Mer. In France the shops open at about 9.30 and stay open as late as midday. Then everyone shuts up shop and takes a two and a half hour lunch break before ambling back to work at around three, going through until about half six. No-one looks particularly stressed out, no-one rushes anywhere, things get done eventually. I think they may be onto something. Although I'm not sure Special Sport has survived the recession.

Oh No He Loves Us

Tim Burgess' still-really-good-sounding album from last year Oh No! I Love You, co-written and recorded with Kurt Wagner from Lambchop, has already had some remixes released. I posted the Factory Floor and Andy Votel ones and there was a Django Django one I might have done too. Memory fails me at times. There are a few more just floating about the internet at the moment, and cos Tim loves us, they're free downloads. I'm still trying to convince people that Tim's solo album is worth their time- go on, give it a go.

Seahawks have done this slow, stately, ambientish one which hangs around very pleasantly for eleven minutes plus. Anton Newcombe from top underground rockers Brian Jonestown Massacre has done two, one of which- The Doors Of Then- is here. It is on a psychedelic tip.