To conclude this week's run of photos of abandoned and defunct pubs this is The Oxford on Oxford Street, Liverpool. It was once part of a Victorian terrace and is now the only building that remains standing. Given its boarded up state I guess that may not be the case for much longer. It stands at the eastern end of the University of Liverpool campus. At the other end is The Cambridge, a regular haunt of mine back in the late 80s and thankfully still open. This is one race in which Cambridge have definitely beaten Oxford.
Today is Weatherall Remix Friday Twelve and his ties in to last Sunday's Saint Etienne mix post too. Back in 2000 Two Lone Swordsmen remixed Saint Etienne's Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi), a single from their Sound Of Water album. The album is a low key, minimalist affair, pared back and with some influences from the late 90s leftfield/ avant garde/ ambient end of things.
Two Lone Swordsmen went to town on remix duties, producing four versions- gritty, bass heavy TLS urban dub. Only one was officially released, the other three appearing on a white label promo disc. I'm not going to describe each one in turn- they're all variations on a theme that go progressively further, murkier and dubbier. If you like the turn of the millennium TLS dub sound (and you should) you'll enjoy these. If you're a completist (and I know some of you are) you'll want them for your collection.
When Saint Etienne appeared in 1990 they seemed too good to be true. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs love of 60s pop and kitchen sink drama, 70s TV and films and late 80s dance music blended together into a dizzy, heady style of dance/ pop/ indie- dance, knowing but inclusive, cool but not taking itself too seriously. Their first few singles were all totally loveable and Foxbase Alpha remains one of 1991's best albums- a year stuffed full of great albums. They kept it up into the mid- 90s, So Tough and Tiger Bay, with Sarah Cracknell firmly now part of a trio. This forty five minute mix focusses on those early/ mid 90s records, songs in love with pop music in all its forms, with samples from their extensive record collections and a real sense of joie de vivre. There's nothing wrong with much of what came later but these early songs have a thread running through them that the late 90s ones (and onwards) don't.
Putting this together made me think of several other things. Firstly, a second Saint Etienne mix pulling a lot of the remixes of their songs together might work (and one dealing with their post- 1998 songs). Secondly, I have a load of Two Lone Swordsmen dubs of Heart Failed (In the Back Of A Taxi) that should show up int he Weatherall Remix Friday series. Thirdly, I've been meaning to go back to 2021's I've Been Meaning To Tell You for some time and promised a post about it here ages.
Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves by Andrew Weatherall)
Speedwell was the B-side to third single Nothing Can Stop Us from 1991. A lovely deep sound, warm bass, vocal sample from an old gospel record. There were a pair of remixes by Dean Thatcher and Jagz Kooner too, the Flying Mix one of the sounds of summer 1991.
Girl VII is from Foxbase Alpha- any of the songs from that album could have shown up here, the freshness of the songs, the samples, Sarah's singing, the sheer fun involved in them. In Girl VII Sarah reads out a list of places, 'June 4th, 1989, Primrose Hill, Staten Island, Chalk Farm, Massif Central, Gospel Oak, Sao Paolo, Boston Manor, Costa Rica, Arnos Grove, San Clemente, Tufnell Park, Gracetown, York Way, Videoton, Clerkenwell, Portobello, Maida Vale, Old Ford, Valencia, Kennington, Galveston, Holland Park, Studamer, Dollis Hill, Fougeres, London Fields, Bratislava, Haggerston, Lavinia, Canonbury, Alice Springs, Tooting Graveney, Baffin Island, Pollard's Hill, Winnepeg, Plumstead Common, Hyderabad, Silvertown, Buffalo', one of my favourite lists in any record ever.
Everlasting was supposed to be a single with You're In A Bad Way as the B-side. THeavenly disagreed and wanted You're In A bad Way as the single and Everlasting was unreleased until the 2009 CD re- issue of the album.
Mario's Cafe and Conchita Martinez are both from 1992's So Tough. Mario's Cafe is instant 1992 with its KLF references and very located in London, specifically a cafe in Kentish Town. Conchita Martinez samples Rush.
Kiss And Make Up is a cover of a song by The Field Mice, one of 1990's essential 12" releases, in its EU flag sleeve but in green and white. The remix 12", in reverse coloured sleeve, green stars on a white backdrop, came with two remixes, the Midsummer Madness and midsummer Dubness remixes, both by Pete Heller.
Like A Motorway is from 1994's Tiger Bay and a single too. The band hid themselves away in the Forest Of Dean to write the album, thinking they'd come back with some pastoral folk songs. They were planning on writing an album of death songs too. Like A Motorway is a sleek gliding rush of Morodor- esque synth- pop, borrowing the melody from a 19th century folk song, Silver Dagger. Once you realise the vocal is about a death not the break up of a relationship it changes it somewhat. The line, 'She said her life/ Was like a motorway/ Dull, grey and long/ Til he came along' is a cracker. The 12" came with a David Holmes remix that can shatter dancefloors, full on acid- techno.
Only Love Can Break Your Heart was their debut single, a cover of Neil Young's 1970 classic. Saint Etienne turned from a waltz time song into one with a four four house rhythm and changed Neil's major chords to minor ones. Summer 1990 gold. Andrew Weatherall's remix is one of his best, the song turned into a dub with the dub half first and the song half second. Andrew pulls the dubby bassline to the fore, adds an Augustus Pablo inspired melodica line (played by Loft/ Weather Prophet Pete Astor) and the pair of samples from Jean Binta Breeze's Dubwise ('cool and deadly' and 'the DJ eases a spliff from his lyrical lips and smilingly orders... cease' sending sample spotters down a rabbit hole or two, and not for the last time). The song is pre- Sarah, with Moira Lambert on vocals.
Today, 21st June, is the summer solstice, the midpoint of the year and the time at which it's lighter longer and later than at any other point- something worth celebrating. It therefore also has to be noted that we start crawling back after tonight, we can't have one without the other. Something Rich Lane noted on his chuggy, slow mo Balearic classic from 2020 titled Solstice.
According to the Christian church midsummer is officially 24th June, six months before/ after Christmas, but given that any midsummer celebration almost certainly pre- dates Christianity let's go with today.
In 1990 Saint Etienne's glorious second single, their shuffly indie- dance cover of The Field Mice's Kiss And Make Up was remixed twice by Pete Heller, the Midsummer Madness and Midsummer Dubness versions, both versions arguably superior to the original single. They didn't release the remixes until October 1990 which seems a missed opportunity. Both are full of the spirit of the times, that joyous sense of freedom and possibility that the period had- although maybe that's partly because I was just twenty and everything was in front of me. The world was changing though. Thatcher gone, people power across the eastern Europe contributing to the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Nelson Mandela's release. Let's kiss and make up.
Room for one more? This is Midsummer's Dream by DJ and producer Massimiliano Pagliara, southern Italian by birth but resident of Berlin. This track, seven minutes of thumping drums and trancey synths and acid toplines, came out last year and sounds much more Berlin than Lecce.
We all love a good cover version don't we? The reconstructing of a familiar song in a new form, the buzz of hearing someone do a song differently, irreverently or lovingly, and the nodding of the head to influences and inspirations. At times cover versions can also seem a bit lazy, a way out of writer's block or something thrown together for B-side at a late hour and under pressure, but when done well and with the right intent, they're a joy.
In two weeks time it would have been Andrew Weatherall's 60th birthday had he lived. There are a series of events taking place nationally throughout April to celebrate this- a full on night at Fabric in London with a huge line up of DJ talent together with nights in Glasgow, Belfast and Todmorden, all places with strong Weatherall connections and crowds. I'll come back to the Todmorden one nearer the time (29th April) with more details but it does include a second ride out for The Flightpath Estate DJ team (which includes yours truly). I expect to run several Weatherall posts over the next few weeks- that's probably not much different to usual round here, he does tend to feature fairly often- and thought I'd kick off with this one, a mix for Sunday of cover versions Andrew either recorded as an artist himself or other other artists he remixed. It is not surprisingly a fairly eclectic bunch of songs and artists. It now occurs to me that I should have put the originals together as a mix too so maybe that will follow at some point a companion piece.
Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)
Witchi Tai To (2 Lone Swordsmen Remix)
The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
A Love From Outer Space (Version 2)
Sex Beat
Slip Inside This House
Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall's Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
Faux/ Whole Wide World
Carry Me Home is a cover of a Dennis Wilson song from 1973, a wracked funereal blues for a dying soldier in Vietnam that was written for the 1973 album Holland but was left off. 'Life is meant to live/ I'm afraid to die', he sings. Primal Scream's version which Andrew produced is from the Dixie- Narco EP, a very downbeat and beautiful way to pay homage. Andrew and Hugo Nicolson's mix of instruments and production is stunning, Duffy's electric piano at the start and the acoustic guitar and cello in the end section especially so.
Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a Saint Etienne cover of a Neil Young song. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. Andrew's remix sent the song into a dubbed out bliss, Augustus Pablo- esque melodica in the first half (played by Pete Astor of The Weather Prophets), the Jean Binta Breeze dub poetry sample in the middle cutting the track in half, and then the song appearing in the second (along with the Jean 'cool and deadly' sample).
Witchi Tai To was a 2007 single by X- Press 2, the Two Lone Swordsmen remix adding the live drums of their sound from that period and matching the Wrong Meeting albums of the same year. The original was a a 1971 single by Jim Pepper, a Native American singer and saxophonist who took a peyote chant his grandfather taught him and turned it into a hybrid jazz/ Native American song. X- Press 2's cover was sung by Tim de Laughter of The Polyphonic Spree.
The Drum was a single for The Impossibles, an Edinburgh duo who made early 90s jangly indie- pop. The original is a Slapp Happy song from 1974. Weatherall's remix, from 1991, is a lesser known one from his early 90s hot streak, a tour de force of throwing whatever is at hand in the studio/ imagination at a remix and it working. Andrew was ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on this one too.
A Love From Outer Space was the calling card from the 2013 album by The Asphodells, the outfit he formed with Timothy J. Fairplay after they had bene working together on remixes and their own material and realised they had enough for an album. Andrew's vocals were a big feature of The Asphodells (following on from the Two Lone Swordsmen records of the previous few years where he stepped up to the mic for the first time since the early 80s). A Love From Outer Space also became the name of his traveling club night, with compadre Sean Johnstone, a night never knowingly exceeding 122 bpm. The original song is by late 80s one offs A.R. Kane, a duo of dreads who made spaced out dub/ dreampop.
Sex Beat was a Two Lone Swordsmen single in 2004 and on the From The Double Gone Chapel album of the same year, a radical shift in sound and style after the pure electro of 2000's Tiny Reminders. Andrew and Keith Tenniswood becoming a garage band with Nick Burton on drums and Chris Mackin on guitar. Sex Beat was such a blast when it came out in 2004, an energetic swerve in the road to somewhere new. Sex Beat was on The Gun Club's 1981 debut Fire Of Love, a blues/ rockabilly/ Southern Gothic classic. Leader, singer and writer Jeffrey Lee Pierce pops up again in this mix in the form of Goodbye Johnny.
Slip Inside This House is a cover of The 3th Floor Elevators song from their 1967 album Easter Everywhere, the second song on Primal Scream's 1991 opus Screamadelica, a juddering statement of acid house intent after the rock n' roll opening of Moving On Up. Hypnotone's Tony Martin was involved in the production of this track too. It was sung by Throb. Bobby Gillespie is said to have bene suffering from 'acid house flu'.
Goodbye Johnny was on Primal Scream's 2013 album More Light. It came from a covers project that paid tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Weatherall's spaced out remix tips its hat to the Nyabinghi sound of African Head Charge, a big influence on Andrew.
Faux/ Whole Wide World comes from a Radio One session from 2004. Faux was the first single ahead of From The Double Gone Chapel, a scuzzed up slice of electro- rockabilly, combining rapid programmed drums and fuzz guitars with Weatherall vocals and lyrics about the love of his life, Elizabeth Walker. As a touring band Two Lone Swordsmen had a habit of working Faux into Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World, a peerless 1977 single. At the time Andrew was recommending the new album then just released by Eric, Bungalow Hi, a record Andrew described as 'like Duane Eddy meets Aphex Twin'. The recording here is ripped from a radio session, never officially released. There was a version on the Rotters Golf Club website for a while too, part of a three song session they recorded playing at the Bloc Weekender. Of all the lyrics that swirl around Andrew's world and outlook, 'I don't do faux', is as good as any.
Daniel Avery's new album Ultra Truth came out on Friday, a record already sounding like a contender for album of the year. Across fifteen tracks Daniel's cavernous, euphoric/ anxiety inducing ambient/ industrial/ techno has been fine tuned into an emotive and immersive album. Back in January when I started this Sunday mix series the second week was an Avery half hour mix. In way of a follow up and to celebrate the release of Ultra Truth I thought I'd do a second Avery half hour but this time remixes, Daniel's of other people and one of Daniel, all dating from the last couple of years. The sounds that are trademark Avery- the reverb, the drums, the wall of fog and distortion, the thump of the kick drum, the wobbly synths- are present in many of these which range from fairly languid to full on 'panel beaters from Prague' techno (quote courtesy of Andrew Weatherall, who is never very far away).
Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have a very good sideline outside Saint Etienne, putting together themed compilation albums for Ace Records. Often these mine the rich seams of the 60s and 70s, unearthing forgotten album tracks and B-sides. Their most recent album is Fell From the Sun, a selection of 98BPM tracks from the summer of 1990 where the dance music revolution slowed down and a floaty, chilled out, modern psychedelia came in, records for the sunrise.
Many of the songs on the album (double vinyl, single CD) have been posted at this blog before- Primal Scream's Higher Than the Sun (produced and remixed by The Orb), Sheer Taft's Cascades, Saint Etienne's B-side Speedwell, One Dove's Fallen, BBG's Snappiness, the Jon and Vangelis/ Martin Luther King inspired Spiritual High by Moodswings, the Apocalypse Now! sampling Never Get Out Of The Boat by The Aloof and The Grid's Floatation. You'd be correct in seeing the hands, or the spirit, of Andrew Weatherall all over this compilation- Loaded was one of the records that kicked it off. There are quite a few I've never posted (one below and also Soul Family Sensation's I Don't Even Know If I Should Call You Baby, which is odd as I love it and was sure I'd written about it at some point). There are lesser known songs from Massonix, Elis Curry, History and Q- Tee and Critical Rhythm. It's a lovely snapshot of a time and a place (Britain in the summer of 1990), perfectly chiming with this period of hot and sunny weather we've been having. The sleeve photos and Bob's notes are spot on too, as you'd expect.
This is one of the songs on Fell From The Sun that I can't believe I've never posted here, Temple Head by Transglobal Underground. All the summer of 1990 elements are present- a unifiying, coming together 'Na na na/ Na na na' chant, that 98 BPM chuggy rhythm, loved up pianos and a 'watch the skies' vocal sample (from the film The Thing From Another World). The group signed to DeConstruction who re- released Temple Head on 12" the following year.
Fell From The Sun goes very well with another compilation covering the same period put together by Jon Savage and released in 2015, a double vinyl album called Perfect Motion- A Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia. Savage also saw it as a new (or neo) psychedelia and pulled together his snapshot of the 1988- 1993 period, a time when dance artists, guitar bands and pop groups with new technology and new drugs made music that seemed to promise endless possibility. Jon's compilation also has Saint Etienne (with Q-Tee, on their B-side Filthy) and Primal Scream (Slip Inside This House, itself a cover of freaked out 1960s psychedelia) and fellow guitar travellers Shack, Northside, The High and The Stone Roses (with one of their head-spinning backwards tracks, Full Fathom Five) alongside Deee- Lite, a Pet Shop Boys B-side, Weatherall's remix of Sly And Lovechild and his group Sabres Of Paradise's Clock Factory, rave from 808 State, DHS and Joi and DNA's remix of Electronic's Get The Message. A slightly wider ranging selection than Bob and Pete's but the two compilations sit side by side very well, two halves of the same pill.
Filthy was the B-side to the 1991 re- release of Saint Etienne's first single, their cover of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a genuine lost classic. Riding in on a, yep, filthy bassline and a swamp rock guitar solo sampled from Afrique, South London rapper Q- Tee delivers a scene stealing vocal, rapping and singing. 'This is not a media hype', she drops huskily before the xylophone solo comes in.
Out in Mallorca, straddling the Palma Nova/ Magaluf border, sits Disco Poco Loco Pub. Sadly, it wasn't open when we were there two weeks ago but every time we passed it I enjoyed the sign and the thought of Disco Poco Loco Pub. For this week's half hour mix I'm putting together thirty four minutes of music that the DJ at Poco Loco might have played. I'm guessing that the tracks I've stitched together below aren't what will be coming out of the speakers and filling the floor once the season is well under way in Magaluf so the mix below is more of a Poco Loco mix of the mind or of my imagination, some piano house and Balearic remixes, spanning the mid 80s to this year.
If the mix is a bit clunky in places, that's all part of the appeal. The DJ at Poco Loco isn't too fussed about mixing, it's all about the vibe and the song selection. Plus it's difficult to see with those sunglasses on indoors. While smoking. It was even more random when he/I was trying to shoehorn Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the theme from Hill Street Blues into it. Maybe we'll have to return to Disco Poco Loco Pub another time.
Underneath Disco Poco Loco Pub there is a shop selling tat for tourists. Being both a tourist and someone who is partial to a bit of tat, I had a look inside. All three of us agreed that Isaac would have loved the mug you can see below. He would have laughed long and hard at being offered his juice in it. So we bought one for him. It now sits on the bookshelf near by records and stereo, in between a replica Lewis chessman and a knitted Andrew Weatherall doll. I did think about putting it on his grave but we felt that was a step too far.
Saint Etienne's 1991 debut Foxbase Alpha is an album that perfectly summarises time and place (autumn 1991 to be specific), a cohesive record from start to finish taking from pop, the 1960s, wider British popular culture, the purity of the 7" single, house music and club culture, couple of cover versions that show the breadth of their influences (Neil Young and The Field Mice), samples from TV and radio and more besides. It concludes with a song named after Melody Maker photographer and drummer Joe Dilworth, a short piece of 60s influenced pop, fading in on a shimmer of synths, a ton of reverb on Sarah's voice and some lovelorn lyrics- 'Oh babe/ I know you've gone/ I won't be sad alone/ Cos the song you left me/ Has the sweetest refrain'. Piano and swelling synths drift on, then suddenly replaced by traffic noise and voices talking about the 90s, the decade ahead and finishing with the two word phrase- waffle cardigans. After the dreampop and feedback of the previous song, Like The Swallow, an intense trip that borrows from the spirit and sound of The Stone Roses backwards songs and AR Kane, it's a classic Saint Etienne nod and wink.
Joe Dilworth played/ plays drums in Stereolab, Th' Faith Healers and Cavern Of Anti- Matter. This song, Void Beat, was on Cavern Of Anti- Matter's 2016 album Void Beat/ Invocation Trex. Cavern Of Anti- Matter were formed by Dilworth and fellow former Stereolabber Tim Gane, based in Berlin and is very pleasant way to spend the best part of ten minutes, cosmische to the max.
I've done an end of year list at the end of every year since starting the blog in 2010. I started to pull a list of albums and songs together back in November and thought I should at least try to finish it off. Everything I've listened to since the end of November has been coloured by Isaac's death so I'm not sure if this is how the lists would have turned out if things had been different but we are where we are, as people say.
Albums of 2021
I've heard loads of good albums this year. My initial list ran to over twenty albums (and that was before the Pye Corner Audio album turned up) and there are several I've not heard yet that would surely be contenders had I got round to listening to them (I'm thinking of Carnage by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and this year's releases from LoneLady, WH Lung and Low). Floating around somewhere outside my top ten are these albums (in no particular order): Andres Y Xavi's Sounds From The Secret Bar; Stinky Jim's It's Not What It Sounds Like; The Vendetta Suite's Kempe Stone Portal; Steve Cobby's Shanty Bivouac (which has a close to perfect side 2); Richard Fearless's unsettling ambient techno masterpiece Future Rave Memory; Roisin Murphy's remixed Crooked Machine; Bicep's Isles; Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Caluwaerts' Souvenir Des Bon Gout; Sons Of Slough's Bring Me Sunshine; Sonic Boom's remix album Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough; Cheval Sombre's pair of albums Days Go By and Time Waits For No One; Dry Cleaning's New Long Leg; Cerulean by Nashville Ambient Ensemble; The Liminanas and Laurent Garnier's De Pelicula; The Grid and Robert Fripp's Leviathan; Rose City Band's Earth Trip. The Bagging Area top ten looks like this-
10. Pye Corner Audio 'Entangled Routes'
9. Mogwai 'As The Love Continues'
8. Richard Norris 'Hypnotic Response'
7. Dean Wareham 'I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A.'
6. Sedibus 'The Heavens'
5. Daniel Avery 'Together In Static'
4. GLOK 'Pattern Recognition'
3. Coyote 'The Mystery Light'
2. Circe Sky 'Dream Colour'
1. Saint Etienne 'I've Been Trying To Tell You'
I wasn't expecting Saint Etienne to make an album as good as this, at this stage of things- made in isolation but sounding like the work of three people in a room together, I've Been Trying To Tell You is a woozy, reflective album digging away at late 90s nostalgia (but not sounding itself nostalgic), built around samples from that period and with a strong undertow of bass and a warm wash of effects. On top of this Sarah Cracknell's voice is used almost like a sample library, cut up phrases and snatches of dialogue.
EP of 2021
5. Rich Lane 'Camo'
4. Three EPs of outstanding new music from A Certain Ratio, 'EPA', 'EPC' and 'EPR'. I couldn't separate them so have bunched them together.
3. SUSS 'Night Suite'
2. Hugo Nicolson 'Lost And Found'
1. Andy Bell and Pye Corner Audio 'The Indica Gallery EP'
No question here, the single piece of vinyl/ mp3s I've probably played as much as any other this year since it came out in April, six wondrous remixes of Andy Bell's 2020 album The View From Halfway Down. Pye Corner Audio's sunshine dreamscape remixes were the sound of this year for me in lots of ways, especially the analogue cosmische of Skywalker, Indica and Cherry Cola.
So many good songs/ tracks/ remixes, I could easily list a top fifty. Someone wrote recently a top ten should be enough and I kind of agree- but all of these have been essential listening in 2021 (again, in no particular order); AMOR 'Unravel' from Lemur; Daniel Avery's Lone Swordsman as remixed by Chris Carter; Craig Bratley and Amy Douglas' No In Between; 10:40's Sleepwalker; a pair of remixes of Fontaines DC, one of A Hero's Death by Soulwax, the other Televised Mind by Dave Clarke; A Mountain Of One's Stars Planets Dust Me; Perry Granville's Dexter In Dub; Mat Ducasse's Bunny's Lullaby; Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio's Early Morning; Future Beat Alliance's Primordial Sky; Daniel Avery's remix of Winter In The Woods by Leaving Laurel; Coyote's remix of Original Cell by Projections and Coyote's two track 12" Will We Ever Dance Again; Cheval Sombre's Althea; various Pye Corner Audio one offs (Fictional Drilling and Eyes Open stand out); and last but not least Woodleigh Research Facility's All Is Not Lost and Vernal Invocation releases.
As well as all of those Sean Johnston has been responsible for a steady stream of remixes in his Hardway Bros guise, any one of which could/ should be in the list below but they can have their own sublist here-
Hardway Bros Sublist
10. Martyn Walsh and Simon Lyon 'Afterglow' Hardway Bros Dub
9. Shadowlark 'Come Around Here' Hardway Bros Remix
8. Cold Beat 'Double Sided Mirror' Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Noch Einmal Remix
This song, a tour de force from Mr Holmes with vocals by Raven Violet, provided a glimmer of light in a year that has been bleak as fuck for all kinds of reasons, personal and political, macro and micro. The song is political, a call to arms, a lyric about not putting up with it any more,a demand to say enough is enough, but it works on a variety of levels for me. Hopefully 2022 will see it get a vinyl release.
I clicked play on the new Saint Etienne single the other day and it hit me in the chest. There's a general anxious knot in my stomach much of the time at the moment and I'm just accepting it as a part of grief, trying not to fixate on it or worry too much about when it will go.
Her Winter Coat is following hot on the heels of Saint Etienne's autumnal album I've Been Trying To Tell You, and is tinged with the sadness that permeated the album. Pete, Bob and Sarah are saying Her Winter Coat is a Christmas single but it just sounds like a song to me, no novelty or Christmas artifice about it at all.
I submitted another mix to Tak Tent Radio, an eclectic and broadminded internet radio station broadcasting out of Scotland. It went live yesterday. You can find it at Tak Tent and at Mixcloud. No irritating DJs talking over the intros, no cutting away for the travel news or adverts, no playlist songs you don't like but they have to play anyway, just an hour of songs from my record collection/ hard drive. I don't think there are many surprises in the tracklist, it's the usual sort of stuff I've been writing about here but collected into one hour long mix.
Tak Tent Four
Durutti Column: Sketch For Dawn I
Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood: The Crescent
David Holmes and Steve Jones: The Reiki Healer From County
Down
Reinhard Vanbergen and Reinhard Roelandt: Amber Amplifier
Steve Cobby: 45ft Tide
Nick Drake: Rider On The Wheel
Saint Etienne: Little K
One Dove: Breakdown (Squire Black Dove Rides Out)
David Holmes: Theme/ I.M.C.
A Mountain Of One: Custards Last Stand
10:40 Kissed Again
Ry Cooder: Cancion Mixteca (Paris Texas Soundtrack)
If you subscribe to Richard Norris' monthly Bandcamp deal you'll have received a CD through the post recently, a limited edition five track EP release from The Time And Space Machine, a solo project that sounds like a band from the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Good Morning is slow motion, late 60s, sunrise psychedelia with sitars, shakers, a 3 string cigar box guitar and Richard singing 'Good morning/ Time to face the day...'.
As well as Good Morning, the EP has remixes from Leftside Wobble, Saint Etienne and Coyote, all dating from 2012 or thereabouts. Coyote aim for a Balearic sunrise, less San Francisco in '69 more Ibiza in '91. Leftside Wobble go for a beat driven remix, propelled by an enormous bassline and ecstatic synths. For their remix Saint Etienne add a clubby rhythm track and loops, a piano line and what sounds like Sarah Cracknell adding a vocal part, sounding like she's just woken up. Time to face the day.
Out of nowhere, after a run of albums which were always pretty good if a little tame, Saint Etienne have released what's sounding like one of the year's best lps- and listened to on vinyl it sounds like a proper lp, from the beautiful sleeve inwards to the eight songs that merge into each other, sequenced as a whole and difficult not to turn over when side one finishes. The three members- Bob, Pete and Sarah- recorded their parts separately, working individually at home, but it doesn't sound like a record made in isolation, it sounds coherent and organic and the result of people bouncing off each other. Many of the songs deal with memory, or more accurately maybe popular memories and false memories, nostalgia and the recent past. The samples contained within the grooves are all taken from the years 1997- 2001 (a Natalie Imbruglia vocal, some Samantha Mumba, a Lightning Seeds part) and the manipulation of them adds to the idea, that memory can be unreliable. That period, 1997- 2001, is sometimes painted as a golden few years, the gap between New Labour's election after a lengthy period of increasingly unpopular and out of touch Tory rule and the attacks on the Twin Towers. The optimism of the May '97 faded quickly for many and looked back at now the optimism about Blair looks really naive. What Bob and co seem to be saying, to these ears, is that any rose tinted look at those few years is an unreliable view of the past. It may have seemed like the sun was always shining but the state of the world in 2021 is partly the product of what happened then. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn't happened when the album was made but is very much a consequence of decisions made in 2001. The recent past for millennials is the same as the 60s was for us- a romanticised place that looks good in pictures but for people living through it had the same problems, worries and horrors as any other time. Not that you need any of this conceptual stuff to enjoy the album, which stands on its own two feet easily, but it adds layers to it which make it a deeper listen.
Penlop is astonishingly good- a wash of sound effects, a bass pulse and then drum sample before those chords hit you in the tear ducts. When Sarah starts singing its almost too much. A slow burning, dreamlike state/song that builds and swells, that sticks with me long after it's ended. The video, by Alasdair McLellan, is a stunner too.
I've Been Trying To Tell You is very much an album of atmospherics, a hugely affecting, melancholic, semi- ambient haze. It's very much an autumnal record to me, the end of summer and the turning of the days into nights (in contrast to their early albums which always sounded like spring to me). Some people and reviewers have been less complimentary, less blown away by it, but it's hitting me very hard at the moment and I can't see me getting bored with it any time soon. It's also nice to be surprised and to have your expectations changed- I really wouldn't have expected such a record from Saint Etienne at this stage in proceedings and full marks to them for reaching deep into themselves to create it.
The new Saint Etienne song Pond House (released at the end of July ahead of an album called I've Been Trying To Tell You, out yesterday) is a bit of a joy. It opens with sound effects and a lazy 90s drum beat and has a slightly woozy, end- of- the- day feel, gloriously melancholic with a dubby bassline and a Natalie Imbruglia vocal sample. Despite the melancholy and nostalgia trapped within it it manages to leave you feeling better than it found you and that's quite a trick to pull off.
Jean 'Binta' Breeze, Jamaican dub poet and storyteller, died a couple of days ago aged sixty five. Jean's poetry took her around the world, her performances described as 'a one woman festival'. Her 1991 album Tracks was produced by Linton Kwesi Johnson and Dennis Bovell, a proper pair of UK dub/ poetry heavyweights, and opened with this- forty nine seconds of street smart, earthy, Jamaican poetry.
If you're anything like me the first time you'll have heard this poem (or two excerpts from it) will have been on this record also released in 1991 where Andrew Weatherall sampled Jean and sent Saint Etienne and Neil Young to dubbed out splendour.
It's difficult to know where we are with isolation any more. Many people seem to be acting like it's all over, parks are full of groups of people and social distancing is a thing of last month. The daily death toll doesn't seem to be diminishing that much and in the north west we currently have the highest regional infection and death rate in the country. As the government brings about the end of lockdown in favour of the economy and to distract from the horrors of their mismanagement of the entire period, some people I'm sure will stay in and stay distanced. In our household we are shielding so our lives will carry on as before for the moment. God only knows where we go from here.
Isolation Mix 9 came partly from a comment I made at The Flightpath Estate, an Andrew Weatherall Facebook group where I promised a Weatherdub mix, and partly from Isolation Mix 6 three weeks ago, an hour of dub that had several of Lord Sabre's fingerprints on it. There's some crossover between that mix and this one but I chose the other Steve Mason remix and dropped the Sabres Of Paradise dub of Regret by New Order just for variety's sake. This mix, an hour and a quarter of dub business from Andrew Weatherall as a solo artist, aided and abetted by Nina Walsh, as a remixer, as a Sabre Of Paradise and as an Asphodell, spans thirty years taking in songs from 1990 and 2020. There's loads more that could have gone in but I thought I'd keep it compact.
Sabres Of Paradise: Ysaebud (From The Vaults)
Sabres Of Paradise: Return of Carter
Steve Mason: Boys Outside (Andrew Weatherall Dub 1)
Andrew Weatherall: Unknown Plunderer
Saint Etienne: Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Andrew
Weatherall Mix)
Sabres Of Paradise: Edge 6
Andrew Weatherall: End Times Sound
Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon (Andrew Weatherall Dub)
Richard Sen: Songs Of Pressure (The Asphodells Remix)
Andrew Weatherall: Kiyadub 45
Lark: Can I Colour In Your Hair? (Andrew Weatherall Version)
An hour and a minute of stitched together songs for Saturday. This one caused me a bit of a headache at times. It was an attempt I think at first to try to join some dots together in terms of feel or sounds, with a nod to Kraftwerk following Florian Schneider's death last week. There was an earlier version that went quite techno/dance for the last twenty minutes but I then went back and did the end section again. I'm still not sure I got it quite right, and think I may have tried to cover too many bases stylistically, but my self imposed deadline was approaching so 'publish and be damned', as the Duke of Wellington said. Although he wasn't dealing with the business of trying to get spaghetti westerns, indie dance, shoegaze and leftfield electronic music to sit together in one mix was he?
Ennio Morricone: Watch Chimes (From ‘For A Few Dollars
More’)
David Sylvian and Robert Fripp: Endgame
Talk Talk: Life’s What You Make It
Saint Etienne: Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)
Spacemen 3: Big City (Everyone I Know Can Be Found Here)
Beyond The Wizards Sleeve: Diagram Girl (Beyond The Wizards
Sleeve Re- Animation)
My Bloody Valentine: Don’t Ask Why
Jon Hopkins and Kelly Lee Owens: Luminous Spaces
Kraftwerk: Numbers
Death In Vegas: Consequences Of Love (Chris and Cosey Remix)
Chris Carter: Moonlight
Simple Minds: Theme For Great Cities
Durutti Column: It’s Wonderful
I have a significant birthday fast approaching. A few months ago we had planned that today would be a day of celebrating with anyone who wanted to join us, starting with lunch and few beers in town and then a tram pub crawl southbound out of the city centre towards Sale, stopping off in Old Trafford (maybe) and Stretford (definitely) before some drinks locally in the evening. That obviously isn't happening. I'll have to re-schedule for my 51st.
I mentioned the remixes Andrew Weatherall made his name with yesterday. In the early 90s remix culture became the big thing, record companies throwing thousands of pounds at club DJs to stick dance beats underneath a song. Weatherall's remixes never took the easy road, were never formulaic. In most cases the remixes were better than the source material and he was still producing superb remixes until recently.
Primal Scream have put out several Best Of/ Greatest Hits, one only last year. The one they haven't released and would be the contender for the best Best Of would be the one that compiled Weatherall's work for the group. The AW/PS compilation wold start with Loaded, a remix so groundbreaking and gigantic it created an entire scene and gave the Scream a career. Andrew's remix of Come Together is monumental. I once said here that there are days when I think it is the single greatest record ever made and I don't see any reason to argue with myself.
'Today on this programme you will hear gospel and rhythm and blues and jazz. All these are just labels, we know that music is music'
The rest of Screamadelica that Andrew produced would be on this Primal Scream Best Of too- Inner Flight, Shine Like Stars, Don't Fight It Feel It (and the amazing Scat Mix where Denise Johnson's voice is chopped up and scattered over the track) and the Jah Wobble bass of Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts). Then this, ten glorious minutes of slow groove, horn driven spaced out house, from the Dixie Narco e.p.
His knob- twiddling on the other two songs on the Dixie Narco e.p. brought two other classics in the shape of Stone My Soul and their cover of Dennis Wilson's Carry Me Home, one of the very best things Bobby Gillespie and co ever did. Primal Scream's follow up was their Rolling Stones record. Weatherall produced remixes of Jailbird. Trainspotting from Vanishing Point. The far out Two Lone Swordsmen remix of Stuka. The pair of productions he did on Evil Heat- the gliding shimmer of Autobahn 66 and the mutant funk of A Scanner Darkly. Two TLS remixes of Kill All Hippies. Bloods. The ten minute remix of Uptown, a signpost in 2009 that Weatherall was back at the remix peak. The remix and dub version of 2013. The stretched out remix of Goodbye Johnny. That's the Primal Scream Best Of.
In the early 90s his remixes broke genres, chucking in the kitchen sink, its plumbing, the work surface and all the white goods too. His dub remix of Saint Etienne was a moment of clarity for me, the doorway to another world, the two halves glued together by the sample 'the DJ, eases a spliff from his lyrical lips and smilingly orders ''cease!'' '
Andrew's remixes from this period are full of little moments to raise a smile, samples from obscure places, huge basslines, sudden changes in pace or tempo, piano breakdowns and thumping rhythms. Almost every single one is worth seeking out and almost every single one has been posted here at some point. In no particular order- S'Express' Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Forget 'Em, The Drum by The Impossibles, a mad pair of remixes of Flowered Up's Weekender, the magnificent The World According To... for Sly And Lovechild, his work for One Dove (that produced some career high remixes in the shape of Squire Black Dove Rides Out and the Guitar Paradise version of White Love and his production work on the most beautiful and most lost of the lost albums of the 1990s Morning Dove White), his remix of My Bloody Valentine's Soon, on its own a justification of remix culture and two reworkings of The Orb's Perpetual Dawn that take his and The Orb's dub roots into pounding new places. Roots music.
Add to all these his remixes of Jah Wobble, three versions of Visions Of You, spread over twenty five minutes of vinyl and two remixes of Bomba that have to be heard to be believed. Decades after first hearing this one I found the source of the madcap intro (Miles Davis) when it had been there in the title all along.
His remixes of The Grid's Floatation are also sublime. As a fan of The Stone Roses the moment when he drops John Squire's guitar part from Waterfall into the ending of the track brought things together for me perfectly.
There are so many more. The speaker shattering thump of Fini Tribe's 101. His long tribal workout of Papua New Guinea. The sweet smell of didgeridoo on Galliano's meandering Skunk Funk. The wide eyed mixes of A Man Called Adam's CPI. Indie, ambient, house, dub, everything from the fringes of music's past, ready to sample and plunder to make something new, with a sense of possibility and openness. This would all be mere nostalgia were it not for Weatherall's continual left turns and about turns in the following years. His remixes from the last decade, again almost all posted here at some point, are of a similar high standard but he rarely if ever repeats himself. There are similarities in tone and palette but always with an eye looking forward and perpetual motion. The remix of MBV's Soon and his remix of Fuck Buttons Sweet Love For Planet Earth seem somehow linked to me, the manipulation of noise and the intense melodies found within over crunching dance floor rhythms. I've not even begun to touch on his remixes with Sabres of Paradise, the treasure that lies within Sabres own records (Sabresonic, Haunted Dancehall, Theme, Wilmot, oh man, Wilmot- we were at Cream once waiting for ages for Weatherall to arrive and eventually word came through that he was delayed, wasn't going to make it. Resident DJ and owner Darren Hughes played on and dropped Wilmot, unheard by us at that point, the whole back room skanking to those wandering horns).
Then there was Two Lone Swordsmen whose remixes were harder, purer somehow, more focused, less obvious. It took time sometimes for them to reveal themselves. The TLS albums from The Fifth Mission onward, the stoned hip hop grooves of A Virus With Shoes, the double album of juddering bass and London machine funk of Tiny Reminders, Swimming Not Skimming. My favourite of the TLS albums from this period has become Stay Down. Released on Warp from its cover art, a painting of a pair of deep sea divers, to its memorable song titles (try Hope We Never Surface, Light The Last Flare, Spine Bubbles, Mr Paris' Monsters and As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye for starters- that last one has just made me gulp) it is a self contained mini- masterpiece. Stay Down is an abstract album of short tracks, weird, rhythmic, minimal ambient music, sounding like it has been submerged and then recovered from the deep, humanised analogue IDM. Never standing still, always moving forward.
On Boxing Day night sitting in the room with all the records in it we played the game where someone pulls a record at random from the shelves and we play it. First to go was my daughter, who had already said she didn't like what my brother- in- law were listening to when she came in- 'it's not music, it's just noises' (Richard Norris' Abstractions Vol. 2). She was given the first go and pulled out St Etienne's 1994 12" single Pale Movie.
Pale Movie is off Tiger Bay, the sleeve with a tiger on both front and back. I photographed the tiger above at Port Lympne safari park in Kent a few years ago. I don't think keeping tigers in cages is a good idea (apart from the obvious conservation arguments) but the tigers at Lympne had a lot of room and seeing one close up and hearing it roar was pretty exciting. I digress. We played the single version of Pale Movie from the choice of four mixes on the single. Pale Movie is classic mid- 90s St Etienne, equal parts Eurobeat, Spanish guitar and Sarah singing lyrics about a boy and girl ('he is so dark and moody/she is the sunshine girl'). Pete, Bob and Sarah went to Nerja in Spain to shoot the video.
I went back to the 12" afterwards to re- listen to the other three mixes, all of which were worth giving a spin. Mark 'Spike' Stent, the man who mixed the song (and Hug My Soul from Tiger Bay as well), did the Stentorian Dub, a straightforward but effective clubby remix- plenty to enjoy in it with its bleepy synths and chunky drums.
The longest remix was ten minutes from Kris Needs in his Secret Knowledge guise. It starts with an extended intro which builds into the first of several peaks. The Secret Knowledge Trouser Assassin mix goes pretty trancey with pummelling drums and Sarah's vocals dropped in along with the kitchen sink. Kris Needs was a master of this kind of thing in the mid 90s.
Finally a remix by Underworld (credited solely to Rick Smith), the Lemonentry Mix, one that clocks in at just over four minutes, very short for Underworld at the time. Rick worked on Tiger Bay too, mixing and programming Like A Motorway, Cool Kids Of Death and Urban Clearway. The Underworld remix of Cool Kids Of Death is one I'll come back to when I do a follow up to the Underworld remixes post from a week or two ago. The Lemonentry Mix is a slowed down, dubby affair, darker and moodier than the rest, with Sara's vocal intact.
Just to show how random the following selections from the shelves were my niece followed St Etienne with Gnod and a song from their Just Say No To The Psycho Right Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine album. We played the opening song, Bodies For Money, a glorious piece of feedback guitar led noise, every instrument recorded with the needle tipping into the red and Gnod raging against late period capitalism.
Mrs Swiss then pulled out a six track maxi- single The House Sound Of Chicago and as Gnod's noise dissolved we had Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk's 1986 song Love Can't Turn Around, featuring the sublime vocals of Daryl Pandy, a song that was the first US house track to hit the UK charts. It still sounds huge, crashing pianos, 808s and 303s. Magical.
Today is the summer solstice, the longest day, midsummer. This time last year we were deep into a heat wave and weeks of wall-to-wall sunshine. This year less so. But still, we should have a celebration of midsummer nonetheless.
St Etienne's early singles were so carefree and joyous, hopped up on the spirit of the times and the possibilities that 1990 seemed to offer. Their debut 12" cover of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart and the follow up, their cover of The Field Mice's Kiss And Make Up, are both prized records for me. In a way, if they'd done nothing else I'd have been happy. Obviously they went on to record loads of good songs and several really good albums but there's an innocence and purity about the early days singles that sets them apart.
The Kiss And Make Up 12" came in a green sleeve with the European Union flag stars in white, reversed for the remix 12" where Pete Heller takes the original and makes it even more loved up. The vocals on this are pre- Sarah Cracknell, with Dead Famous People's Donna Savage at the mic. Turn it up a little bit louder and celebrate midsummer as the sun stays around longer than on any other day.
