No One But Me

There's an enormous five disc edition of The Wicker Man out this week, a 50th anniversary celebration of the film. The box contains three versions of the film (Director's Cut, Theatrical Cut and The Final Cut) along with all manner of extras- interviews, trailers, documentaries, commentaries and photographs. There's more info at the BFI shop. The final disc is a CD which has grown from a Katy J Pearson cover of Willow's Song which was on her Sound Of The Morning album. Willow's Song is from the film and supposedly sung by Britt Eckland, played by the band Magnet (Britt apparently struggled to hold a tune even when equipped with a bucket and Willow's Song was actually sung by Rachel Verney. Or possibly Annie Ross). Written by composer Paul Giovanni, Willow's Song is haunted 1973 psychedelic folk, genuinely beautiful, a moment of calm with a darkness residing inside it too. 

Katy J Pearson's cover is psychedelic/ motorik, a krauty four four beat kicking up and echo laden guitar. As well as Willow's Song the box contains several other songs from the film covered by Katy. 

The CD also contains a pair of new versions of Katy's Willow's Song, one a far more folky cover done with alt- folk group Broadside Hacks, the acoustic guitars and folk arrangement transporting it back to Summerisle in 1973 with visions of Edward Woodward, pagan rituals and Britt. 

The other is a seven minute remix by Richard Norris, a slowed down dub folk remix with long trumpet notes and deep bass. Katy's voice eventually glides in on top, floating over the dubness. Richard's recent immersion into dub sounds and production as seen in his new Oracle Sound label, is paying off massively with this remix, a track crying out for a vinyl release. 

Credit where it is due- earlier this week Khayem featured the Richard Norris remix over at Dubhed as part of a 2023 mix he put together, marking the slow fade from summer to autumn. All three versions of Katy J Pearson's cover have the shiver of autumn about them, the dusk falling sooner and the mornings cooler and mistier even if the trees are still full of green leaves. 

Back at the tail end of 2021 Sean Johnston put Hardway Bros aside for a while and released a cover of Willow's Song as The Summerisle Trio, a collective formed with Duncan Gray and singer Sarah Rebecca (later expanded to The Summerisle Six for the This Is Something 12"). Willow's Song was only available as 7" vinyl on Golden Lion Sounds, backed with The Emperor Machine's chunky self explanatory dancefloor monster Dance Your Tit Out. The Summerisle Trio's cover is less folky than Katy's cover, the drum machine and synths casting an electronic shimmer behind the vocal. You can listen to it here. 

Forty Minutes Of Tracey Thorn

A January 1995 episode of Top Of The Pops came up on the repeats on BBC4 recently including this performance of Protection, Tracey Thorn and Massive Attack in imperious form. Protection is one of the 90s best songs, a genuine jaw dropper on first and subsequent listens and a song its impossible to turn off once it starts. Tracey's voice is perfect for the song, her singing a perfect blend of strength and hurt and her lyrics, switching the gender around mid- song, spin the song around. Protection, the album, came out in  September1994. Following up Blue Lines was never going to be easy but Protection mainly manages it with the title track and others- Karmacoma, Sly, Better Things, Three and Spying Glass, some of their best songs. The cover of Light My Fire less so maybe. But Protection is the towering achievement, a song that even mid- 90s Top Of The Pops can't ruin. 

Tracey's songs and recordings outside Everything But The Girl, both solo and with other people, are many and various. I thought, having listened to Protection a few times and then heading to the Andrew Weatherall remix of Tracey's Sister from 2018, that a Tracey Thorn solo/ collaboration mix might work. And it does. 

Forty Minutes Of Tracey Thorn

• Protection (Brian Eno Remix)
• Raise The Roof (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix)
• Sister
• Sister (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Moving Dub
• Night Time

Protection came out in 1995, one of the singles/ songs of the 90s. The 12" came with this Brian Eno remix, a ten minute ambient affair. It had already been the lead song on the album Protection, released in 1994 and an obvious choice for a single. 

Raise The Roof was a 2007 Tracey Thorn single, and on her solo album Out Of The Woods. Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, Richard Norris and Erol Alkan's psyche outfit, twist it into new shapes and spaces.

Sister was the lead single from Tracey's 2018 album Record, a song with Corinne Bailey Rae and Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa on board. Tracey sings the line 'And I fight like a girl' and makes it sound like the toughest, most menacing line she's ever sung. Andrew Weatherall 's remix (and the dub version too) are ten minutes of late period Weatherall brilliance, chuggy, dubby remix splendour. 

Moving Dub is from No Protection, the Mad Professor dub version of Massive Attack's Protection. Moving Dub, with Tracey on vocals, is Better Things sent through the dub blender. 

Night Time is a cover of a song by The Xx, released as a standalone solo EP in 2011. It has husband Ben Watt on guitar. The Xx asked Tracey to cover it for a compilation of covers of their songs by their favourite artists they were planning. It never happened except for Tracey's cover. Drums, programming and production were courtesy of Ewan Pearson. 

Forty Minutes of World Of Twist

World Of Twist have come up in my internet world a couple of times recently and it seemed too good an opportunity to resist to sling some of their best moments together into a single forty minute mix, one side of a C90 tape in old money. The group's back catalogue is fairly slim- a 1991 album, Quality Street, a handful of singles and remixes and a pair of BBC radio sessions, one for John Peel and one for Mark Goodier. My first encounter with them was on a Manchester compilation album, the swirling song The Storm already getting mentions in the music press. After that I bought everything they released, seeing them live twice, once in Liverpool and once in Manchester. 

World Of Twist formed in Sheffield in 1985, disintegrated, and then reformed in Manchester in 1989, many of the members living in the Withington/ Didsbury area where I grew up. The line up of singer Tony Ogden, guitarist Gordon King, Andrew Hobson on synths, Alan Frost (FX, visuals, synths), MC Shells aka Julia on 'swirls and sea noises', Angela Reilly (visuals) and drummer Nick Sanderson found press and a record contract quickly, caught up in the feeding frenzy of late 80s Manchester. They took the driving rhythms of northern soul, 80s indie rock and late 60s psychedelia, the end of the pier, faded glamour of seaside towns like Blackpool and fused it all together. Their live shows had slide shows and projections, trippy effects, glitter curtains and rotating signs with the words Rock And Roll on them. Tony Ogden, floppy hair centre parted and black leather jacket, had a stage stance that was like a young Elvis (if Elvis had been from Stockport rather than Tupelo). They finished their live gigs with a cover of The MC5's Kick Out The Jams. If Pulp (who travelled a similar road to much greater success) had covered Kick Out The Jams it would have been draped in knowing irony, Jarvis giving it high leg kicks and an arched eyebrow. World Of Twist, after an ascending Blackpool Ballroom organ intro, attack Kick Out The Jams in deadly seriousness. I really liked them. 

There was a feeling that Quality Street missed the boat. By 1991 the Manchester tide was going out and the album, largely produced by Richard Norris and Dave Ball of The Grid with Martin Moscrop of A Certain Ratio and Cliff Brigden also at the desk, never seemed to be loud enough, no matter how much you turned your volume knob. The press went from full blooded praise to very lukewarm in months.  They called it a day in 1992 when, having begun work on a second album, Tony decided he didn't want to sing any more. Gordon King and Nick Sanderson went on to Earl Brutus. Sadly two members are no longer with us- Tony Ogden died in 2006 and Nick Sanderson in 2008. 

Forty Minutes Of World Of Twist

• The Storm
• Lose My Way
• Blackpool Tower (John Peel Session 1991)
• She's A Rainbow (12" Version)
• This Too Shall Pass Away (Chat)
• Sweets (Barratt 200 Mix)
• I'm A Teardrop
• Sons Of The Stage (12" Version)
• On The Scene
• Kick Out The Jams (Live at St. Andrew's University 1991)

The Storm was on the demo tape that got them a deal. It came out several times as a single with their cover of She's A Rainbow on the B-side, variously with Martin Hannett and/ or The Grid on production duties and Hugo Nicolson and Spencer Birtwistle from Intastella engineering. It starts with thunder and sound effects, then the swirly organ and rapid fire drums kick in. Indie night floor filler. 

Lose My Way opened Quality Street, a strong start to the album with its trumpet part, hammering four four drums and Tony's full throttle vocal and lyrics about love and lust. On The Scene is from the album too, an album track that is the closest they came to the Manchester sound, swirly indie- dance from 1991. 

Blackpool Tower is from a John Peel session, 25th June 1991 along with versions of Lose My Way, St Bruno (otherwise unreleased) and Kick Out The Jams. Blackpool Tower became part of a ten minute song called Blackpool Tower Suite, released on 12" in late 1990 with The Storm and She's Rainbow.

She's A Rainbow was one of their signature tunes and the record company threw it out multiple times looking for a hit. It's a cover of a 1967 Rolling Stones song, one of highlights of the Their Satanic Majesty's Request album, and one of Martin Hannett's last production jobs. The 12" version opens with some lovely, gnarly distorted guitar before the famous piano line comes in. 

This Too Shall Pass Away was the B-side to the single Sweets (and in its 'proper' form appears on Quality Street). The song is a cover of a 1964 Honeycombs single. On the Chat version Tony's vocals have been replaced by samples of people talking about Norman Wisdom, gardening, artichokes and potatoes and other everyday matters. 

Sweets was a sugary pop song, lovely stuff. The Barratt 200 Mix  came out on the 12" and CD single.

I'm A Teardrop is a great little song, recorded for a Mark Goodier session in September 1990, two and a half minutes of indie- guitar pop. 

Sons Of The Stage was on the album and a single and if it was all they had ever released, it would be more than enough. Like Hawkwind streamlined and rebooted for the early 90s, the song is a rush of indie dance, northern soul and early 70s sci fi psychedelia. It's a magnificent achievement. Tony's lyrics describe the sensation of being the singer on stage, with the band powering away around him and the crowd a seething mass in front of him. 'The beat breaks down so we pick it up/ The floor shakes down but it's not enough/ The beam is up and kids are high/ I see them move and it blows my mind/ The floor's an ocean and this wave is breaking/ The head is gone and your body's shaking/ There's nothing you can do 'cos there is no solution/ You gotta get down to the noise and confusion...Out of our minds on the stage...'

Kick Out The Jams is a cover of The MC5's famous high octane 1969 song. This recording is live, from a gig at St. Andrew's University in 1991, World Of Twist marrying their devotion to music with the rundown pleasures of British seaside resorts, utter conviction. Kick 'em out. 

Double Dub

Accidental/ ambient art- this is the detail of a large piece of plywood boarding up the windows of an empty shop in Chorlton with a small piece of black tape stuck in the centre. If I set out to paint something like this deliberately, it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as this. 

Richard Norris has taken a detour recently. Alongside his always excellent monthly twenty minute ambient/ deep listening excursion Music For Healing (the most recent release in that series is the autumnal Equinox 9) Richard is now making dub and has a new label to put it out under- Oracle Sound. The first volume of Oracle Sound is out in October with three deep dubs available to listen to in advance- Lightning Version, Birthday Dub and Sodium Haze. This is dub created from scratch, allowed to unfold over long periods of time, beds of echo and space, ambient/ drone backdrops, kicking rhythms and lovely warm bass. You can find Oracle Sound Volume 1 here. Subscribers to Richard's Bandcamp can get hold of the twenty minute long Shark Tooth Dub, experimental, ambient dub that glides on and on. 

More dub now, of the dubbing out already existing songs variety. Panda Bear and Sonic Youth's album of last year Reset has been dubbed out in full by Adrian Sherwood. The original album was a brightly coloured, sweeter than sugar blast of 60s psyche- pop. Sherwood has applied forty years of dub experience at On U Sound to the songs, re- imaging the songs, breaking them down, smothering them in dub FX, pulling basslines and drums/ percussion to the fore, adding new horns/ melodica lines and adding those cymbal crashes, whirrs, gurgles and thick bottom end.  I could post every/ any version from Reset In Dub but perhaps its best just to go for Getting To the Point Dub.

 

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)

Bank Holiday Monday Long Songs

Richard Norris' latest Music For Healing came out on Friday, a beautifully relaxed twenty minute voyage titled Equinox 4 Alban Elir (translation- spring solstice). The stone above is one of the forty- two stones at Castlerigg stone circle, situated at the centre of an enormous natural bowl near Keswick, constructed roughly 5000 years ago in the Neolithic. We visited last weekend while driving home through the Lake District and it never fails to impress. 

Equinox 4 Alban Elir comes in two versions, 3 and 4, and can be listened to or bought at Bandcamp. Slowly rippling synth lines, a background haze, some pops and bubbles, a calming drone- an ideal start to a bank holiday, twenty minutes of brain soothing, guided meditation music an dedicated to Andrew Weatherall for his 60th birthday too. 

At the other end of the bank Hholiday scale is the Bacchanalian excess of Flowered Up's 1992 epic Weekender. Andrew Weatherall remixed it twice, the first one a fifteen minute excursion of juddering bass loop, backing vocal turned into main vocal, synths, crunching drums, breakdowns, echo effects, Liam Maher stuttering, sirens, bongos and congas, time shifting tempo changes, not a little mania and general sense of excess. It's your bank holiday- make your choice.

Weekender (Audrey Is A Little Bit Partial)

Forty Minutes Of Dot Allison

A Dot Allison mix for Sunday, entirely songs from the post- One Dove years (a One Dove mix is something for another Sunday I think, maybe quite soon). It was only when I started thinking about this mix properly that I realised how many songs she's sung on with other people since One Dove, not to mention her various solo albums (Afterglow in 1999, 2002's We Are Science done with Two Lone Swordsman Keith Tenniswood, 2007's folky singer songwriter Exaltation Of Larks and 2021's Heart Shaped Scars all exist in one format or another round here). In the end, once I decided to include the Lee Perry remix and her two songs with Wigan guitarist Mark Peters from last year, it turned into a fuzzy, hazy Balearic, leftfield kind of selection- I tried some of the songs from We Are Science but they just didn't fit with the mood.  

Forty Minutes of Dot Allison

• Switched On
• Love Died In Our Arms (Lee Scratch Perry Remix)
• Dirge (Adrian Sherwood Remix)
• Dirge
• Aftersun
• Sundowning (Richard Norris Remix)
• Mo' Pop
• Message Personnel (Arab Strap Remix)

Switched On and Sundowning are both from Mark Peters excellent 2022 album Red Sunset Dreams with Dot on vocals. Switched On is a version of Switch On The Sky, the first single from the album, and Richard Norris remixed Sundowning twice for a follow up single, one ambient and one with drums. 

Love Died In Our Arms was from a solo EP, Entangled, out a year ago. Lee Scratch Perry's remix was the final thing he worked on before his death. Dot had assumed Lee had died before being able to remix her song until she was contacted by Lee's widow and told otherwise. 

Dirge was on  the 1999 Death In Vegas album The Contino Sessions, the  opening song and a single too. Apologies if the Adrian Sherwood remix version in this mix is a bit quiet- from memory I downloaded it from the Death In Vegas MySpace page (!) circa 2007 and it's a low bitrate compared to everything else here. You may have to turn the volume up. 

Aftersun was recorded with Massive Attack in 2005 and included in the film Danny The Dog but not the CD soundtrack. It was available from Dot's website. 

Mo' Pop was on Dot's debut solo album Afterglow and a single too. It is late 90s soul- pop perfection, with a superb Henry Olsen bassline. Message Personnel was on Afterglow too and also a single, which came with this very nice Arab Strap remix. 

Monday's Long Songs

This bootleg re- orbited into my musical world last week, a 2021 cut- and- shut of Malcolm McLaren's Madame Butterfly and The Grid's Floatation by pflext, the two songs working together perfectly, Malcolm's 1984 marriage of opera and 80s r'n'b and hip hop spliced with Richard Norris and Dave Ball's 1990 Balearic/ ambient house classic, remixed by a then fledgling remixer Andrew Weatherall. Richard did point out in 2021 that the bootlegger pflext missed a trick by not calling it Floats Like A Butterfly. Listen here, eight and a half minutes of bliss. Pflext is Paul Flex Taylor currently based in Sydney, Australia. 

Here's the original of Madame Butterfly from '84, McLaren, Stephen Hague, Debbie Cole and Betty Ann White taking on Puccini and winning. The album Fans was six tracks long and included pieces from Carmen and Turandot over hip hop drums but madame Butterfly was the only one where he really nailed it.

Madame Butterfly (Un Bel Di Vedremo)

The McLaren/ Grid mash up led me to Paris in 1994, where Malcolm McLaren was still looking for the next big fusion, making an album celebrating the city in the form of atmospheric future jazz and synth pop with vocals from Catherine Deneuve. A second disc of remixes brought this seventeen minute ambient classic from Youth titled The Emotional Curvatone At A Given Moment In Time And Space Listen at Soundcloud or Youtube. It really is something special with Deneuve's softly spoken vocals, waves of rippling synths and endless flow. I posted it before in 2019, a year which is both fairly recent but also feels like many, many years ago. 

Monday's Long Song

Richard Norris' Music For Healing enters its fourth year with the release of two twenty minute pieces of ambient/ deep listening titled Winter Solstice 1 and 2. Winter Solstice inches forwards slowly with found sounds, synth washes, glacially paced rising and falling piano notes and what could be a choir/ could be a synth all coming together to bring some ambient warmth to early January. Halfway in a baritone instrument/ tone picks out a topline melody and then fades in and out of the haze. Some birdsong drifts in. Time passes. The choral sounds return. The synths become slightly more insistent and to the foreground. Winter Solstice can be bought here.

Next month Richard releases a twenty track compilation bringing together highlights from his recent electronic and ambient work, dating back to 2019, a collection called Deep Listening 2019- 2022. Much of the impetus for these recordings came from lockdown in March 2020 but they started before that, Richard using the creation of ambient and deep listening pieces to deal with the stress of the world outside his front door. 

Music Is The Answer

It would be overly dramatic to say that music has saved my life this year but there's no doubt it has been there to pull me through and has provided moments where I have been, temporarily, transported out of myself. Grief has been permanent- changing but still permanent- and music has been one of the ways through which I have been lifted out of it, even if only for a few minutes. 

Back in December 2021, in the week or two immediately after Isaac died, I didn't listen to any music. The grief was so raw and so harsh, so present in my body. I never knew that emotional pain could be so physically painful, that it could actually hurt so badly. There was a Saturday afternoon in December were I sat in our back room. It seemed like it was dark all day and that that particular Saturday afternoon would drift on endlessly forever. Eventually I played a record from the pile near my feet, Promise by SUSS, which I'd bought not long previously (although it came out in 2020). SUSS play ambient Americana/ ambient country, and the album is a quiet wash of gentle drones and sounds, pedal steel, e-bow guitar, mandolin and so on, with loops. If I remember correctly, I just needed something to take away the silence in the room, ambient music to provide something else to focus on while sitting staring into the room. 

Home

As the afternoon wore on I was able to sit on the sofa and listen to wordless, largely ambient music and it helped in some way. I played both sides of Promise and when it finished I plugged my phone into the stereo and played what was then the latest in Richard Norris' monthly Music For Healing ambient releases, December. The music couldn't take the pain away but it seemed to provide something, a salve of some kind. After forty minutes of Music For Healing I pulled out a record from the pile near to me, the records that were either most recently bought or taken from the shelves because I wanted to listen to them- the pile was all from before Isaac's death. A few records in was the recent re- issue of Victorialand by Cocteau Twins. The gauzelike guitars, ambient-ish haze and Liz Fraser's voice all became part of that afternoon. 

The Thinner The Air

During 2022 I've been to lots of gigs, more than in any single since the late 80s/ early 90s I think, when gig going was cheap and weekly. Some were bought as presents last Christmas- we had no time to do any real Christmas shopping for each other in the aftermath of Isaac's death. In January I saw Half Man Half Biscuit at the Ritz. A month later we saw John Cooper Clarke with Mike Garry and Luke Wright at the Bridgewater Hall. I saw John Cooper Clarke again in November at the Apollo supporting Squeeze courtesy of a friend with a spare. A few weeks ago the same friend gave me a ticket for Stereolab at the New Century Hall. In between I've seen a revelatory Ride doing Nowhere at the Ritz, Paul Weller at the Apollo, Andy Bell upstairs at Gullivers, The Charlatans doing Between 10th And 11th in full and then the hits at the New Century Hall, Echo And The Bunnymen in imperious form at Manchester's Albert Hall, Ian McCulloch solo (with a band) at Nantwich Words and Music Festival, Pete Wylie and Wah! at Night And Day, Warpaint (also at the Albert Hall), Pet Shop Boys at the arena and Primal Scream at Castlefield Bowl. Quite a few of these were courtesy of the generosity of friends, something I'm really grateful for. 

At some of these gigs I've cried, sometimes completely unexpectedly and overhwlemingly. At Echo And The Bunnymen in February the opening chords and first verse/ chorus of Nothing Lasts Forever reduced me to a mess of tears, I almost dissolved completely. In September The Charlatans' North Country Boy made me cry, Mike Garry's poetry did it, Pete Wylie did it more than once, Pet Shop Boys too with Being Boring. None of these tears have been a bad thing, they've all hit an emotional spot that connected me to Isaac in some way. As well as the tears (and the looks from other gig goers that a middle aged man crying at a gig can bring, followed by me shrugging and smiling) these gigs have provided moments where I've been transported out of myself for a while- for a song or for an hour. Good gigs can do that anyway, provide an act of communion between band and crowd, between music and people, but the act of being transported away somewhere else is a magical one and not much else has been able to do it this year. 

In October I DJed at the Golden Lion in Todmorden as part of The Flightpath Estate group, five of us supporting and warming up for David Holmes. The memories of that afternoon and evening still linger and of Holmes' set in that packed pub, four hours of dance music, the transportative effect of music once again lifting me up and out of myself. 

In a year where grief and pain have been ever-present, where the physical manifestations of bereavement have been there almost every single day, where the loss of Isaac has been such a huge sucking black hole in our lives, music in all its forms- that long ambient afternoon last December, experienced live at gigs, listened on record, streamed through the computer, listened to via headphones while out walking, bought from Bandcamp and burned to CD to play in the car, played on a tinny portable speaker on a balcony in Gran Canaria in July- has often been the answer. It won't bring Isaac back- nothing will- but at times it makes being without him something that can be borne or briefly make the loss and his absence fade for a while. 

Vapour Trail, the final song from Ride's Nowhere when it came out back in 1990 and the set closer at the 30th anniversary tour, was a beautiful moment at the Ritz, a crowd of middle aged and their late teenage/ early twenties children singing along to the swirling guitars, pounding drums and Andy Bell's declaration of love. Music is the answer. 

Vapour Trail

Monday Mix

A mix for Monday, my seventh for Tak Tent Radio who broadcast out of central Scotland with a range of contributors and guests. This one, has music from a lot of artists who have graced the pages of this blog this year- Mark Peters with Dot Allison remixed by Richard Norris, Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel from 1991, Pye Corner Audio remixed by Sonic Boom, Andy Bell remixed by David Holmes, Gabe Gurnsey, Jazxing, Jezebell's recent edit of Laurie Anderson, Carly Simon, Dirt Bogarde and Boxheater Jackson. In short- starts ambient, goes Balaeric and ends up dancey. Listen here or here.

• Mark Peters and Dot Allison: Sundowning (Richard Norris Ambient Remix)
• Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel: Don’t Lose Your Drums
• Pye Corner Audio: Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)
• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology remix)
• Gabe Gurnsey: To The Room
• Jazxing: Fala
• Jezebell: Re- birth (Edit)
• Carly Simon: Why (Extended 12” Mix)
• Dirt Bogarde: So Far Away
• Boxheater Jackson: Don’t Complicate

Sundowning

Mark Peters, guitarist/ multi- instrumentalist from the Wigan area, had a beautiful album out a few years ago called Innerland (follow by Ambient Innerland and then a remixes album called Routes Out Of Innerland too). Innerland was an album of guitar led instrumentals that sounded like windswept moorlands in the north west of England, captured as autumn turns to winter when dusk hits in late afternoon. 

Mark's new album, Red Sunset Dreams, came out recently and suggests more of the same but transplanted slightly further afield than West Lancashire, into the American West. On two of the songs Mark asked Dot Allison to add vocals- Sundowner and the previously posted Switch On The Sky. On Red Sunset Dreams there is banjo, pedal steel and ukulele as well as the guitars and synths. And on new single Sundowning there are a pair of Richard Norris remixes, one with drums and one without, that relocate Mark's music from Wigan and Arizona to the Balearics. Utterly gorgeous, slightly forlorn, floaty ambience. Buy it at Bandcamp.

Strummer Mix

Today would have been Joe Strummer's 70th birthday had he lived. In way of a tribute and celebration of the man, his music and this event I've put together not one Sunday mix but two. Both mixes are post- Clash solo songs. The first is twenty minutes of solo Joe rocking, motorcycle guitars and leather jackets, and the second, half an hour of Joe in global/ dubbed out mode. Happy 70th birthday Joe, wherever you are. 

Strummer Rockers Mix

• Johnny Appleseed
• Generations
• Trash City
• Coma Girl
• Burning Lights

Johnny Appleseed is from is second album with The Mescaleros, Global A Go- Go (it was also a single). Generations was a one off song recorded with Rat Scabies and Seggs from The Ruts as Electric Dog House and released on an album called Generations: A Punk Rock Look At Human Rights. Trash City was a 1988 7" single, Joe and Latino Rockabilly War, recorded when Joe was doing the soundtrack for the film Permanent Record. Coma Girl, a tribute to his daughter Lola and the Glastonbury festival, was on 2003's Streetcore, his last album, recorded with The Mescaleros and released posthumously. Burning Lights is just Joe and his Telecaster, one of the key songs of his post- Clash years, a rumination on being yesterday's man. It was in I Hired A Contract Killer, a 1990 film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. 

Strummer Global/ Dubby Mix 

• Mango Street
• Sandpaper Blues
• Yalla Yalla
• Yalla Yalla (Norro's King Dub)
• At The Border, Guy
• X- Ray Style

Mango Street was one of the B-sides on Joe's Island Hopping 12", a single ahead of his first solo album Earthquake Weather, a largely instrumental version of the song Island Hopping. Sandpaper Blues and X- Ray Style were both on the first Mescaleros album, Rock Art And The X- Ray Style, Joe's return from the wilderness in 1990. Yalla Yalla, written and produced by Richard Norris was the first single from the same album. Norro's King Dub is from the 12", Richard Norris' dub of the song. At The Border, Guy is from Global A Go- Go. 

Light Flight

Andy Bell has a new single out to further promote his solo album Flicker, much played round these parts since it came out earlier this year. The B-side to Lifeline is a cover of Light Flight by Pentangle. 

Light Flight has some lovely cascading guitar riffs and a sweetly sung lyric about getting away from it all, getting your head together in the countryside, 'Let's get away... find a better place/Miles and miles away from the city's race'. Andy throws in a superb little backwards guitar part in the middle before the pace picks up again in the second half, the jazzy time signatures and acid- folk pastoralism collapsing the timespan of the half century between Pentangle's original recording and Andy's cover. Along with his recent cover of Arthur Russell's Our Last Night Together Andy is putting some superb and unexpected cover versions out into the world. 

I'm not an expert on late 60s folk rock by any means and find some of it an acquired taste I've not fully acquired- I've got Nick Drake's LPs, a smattering of Bert Jansch albums, a Sandy Denny compilation, Vashti Bunyan's Another Diamond Day, some Fairport Convention and a Bob Stanley compiled CD called Gather In The Mushrooms: The British Acid Folk Underground 1968- 1974. That album has this Pentangle song on it...

Lyke Wake Dirge

An eerie, traditional English folk song, choral voices and a picked acoustic guitar. A dirge is a funeral song and a wake, obviously, is a ceremony for the dead. The song describes a soul's journey from earth to purgatory and the hazards faced making that trip. It features lots of Christian references but some think it pre- dates Christianity. Pentangle were a five piece, fusing folk, jazz and folk rock- Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Danny Thompson, Jacqui McShee and Terry Cox. Jansch and Renbourn shared a house and were the rising stars of British folk rock, their guitar parts interlocking and complex. I have to be in the right mood for this and maybe I appreciate it more than I enjoy it. 

It reminds me though that I did and do really enjoy this record, also out earlier this year- Richard Norris' superb Lore Of The Land album, recorded by the Lewes, West Sussex based acid- folk trio he formed called The Order Of The 12. This is the title track...

Warpaint At The Albert Hall, Manchester And A Half Hour Mix

The Albert Hall has become Manchester's best gig venue in recent years. Holding 1800 people in a second floor former Wesleyan Chapel (Grade 2 listed), hidden and forgotten about for forty years, it's now the perfect venue for bands- the stained glass windows above the balcony are stunning, especially at that ideal time in the spring and summer when the sun sets just as bands take the stage and the natural light and stage light play against each other. The stage is compact with the old organ pipes visible behind it. It's big on atmosphere and intimate feeling and can conjure up some real magic.

Warpaint played there on Thursday night, a band I've been meaning to see live for years and for some reason never managed until now. They're touring to promote a new album, Radiate Like This, a record I've not really heard in full yet but one which has a poppier, lighter tone than some of their previous albums. The four members arrive on stage just after 9pm and play a mixture of songs from the new album along with older ones- they kick off with Stars from 2009 mini- album debut Exquisite Corpse and follow it with new one Champion. The rhythm section of bassist Jenny Lee and drummer Stella are locked in, the sound is great, guitars clear and bright over the post- punk/ dubby rhythms. The bass is pleasingly loud, felt as well as heard. Jenny often moves to the centre of the stage when starting a song, face to face with guitarist/ singer Emily, eyes locked into each others. Seven songs in they play Love Is To Die, the moment when everything really takes off, slow burning and intense, the song's heavy churn and sweet harmonies really hitting the mark. A little later the four of them come to the front of stage and sing Melting a capella (except for some delicate finger picked guitar from Emily), a sweet moment of calm. Stevie from the new album and Bees follow and then New Song from 2016's Heads Up, a powerful, filled out version of the song, with Emily dancing at the mic, and then they finish with one of their best songs, Disco// Very, a tense, dark and menacing, going off like a slow firework. 'I make room for everyone', Emily sings, 'I make room for everyone/ I... need... to... take... a break!' 

The encore gives us Elephants, the song that was the stand out on their debut, thumping drums, squealing guitars, propulsive bassline and threats to 'break your heart'. Beetles, equally old, is next before the final song, a slighter and more delicate song from the new album, Send Nudes. The very mixed age crowd- everyone from sixteen year girls to sixty year old men with thirty- somethings well represented- are happy, everyone's had a good time and Warpaint seem genuinely excited by the reception they received. They're a powerful live band, the songs bursting to life on stage, the four women equally adept at atmospherics, dreamy, stoned Californian post- punk with Mamas and Papas vocals, and hypnotic 21st century dance- rock too. 

Today's half hour mix is a Warpaint compilation with a Jennylee solo song thrown in (Never from her 2015 album Right On!). There's a lovely cosmic Richard Norris remix of Disco// Very, the version of Undertow from the re- released version of The Fool (from last year's Record Store Day, the Weatherall mixes of the album that were shelved at the time of the album's original release), No Way Out- a standalone 7" single in 2016 and one of their best songs for me and three of their killer songs- Elephants, Keep It Healthy and Love Is To Die, all played at the Albert Hall on Thursday night. 

Thirty Minutes Of Warpaint

• Disco// Very (Time And Space Machine Remix)
• No Way Out (Redux)
• Undertow (Andrew Weatherall Mix )
• Elephants
• Never
• Love Is To Die
• Keep It Healthy

Against The Tide

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. 

Monday's Long Song

I wrote a piece for Ban Ban Ton Ton, the number one blog for all things electronic. Dr Rob, said blog's author, is a veteran of the scene, someone who was there at the heart of things in the late 80s and early 90s. He's been resident in Japan for some time and our blogs have grown closer, musically and spiritually, and a while back Rob suggested a blog to blog tie in or collaboration. A few days ago I wrote a piece for him about the most recent long form Richard Norris release, Chrome, a long form ambient piece where Richard's Music For Healing series has entered its third year. You can find it here. I've been a big advocate of Richard's ambient work and its therapeutic properties over the last few years, even moreso in the last few months. 

One of Rob's recent recommendations was Max Essa's work. This led me to Panorama Suite, a twenty minute long Balearic beauty, a very lengthy track where the entirety is one seamless piece of music but also made up of different musical sections, making a whole- synths and keys followed by pads and toplines, guitar lines taking over, basslines coming in and out, and then percussion and more, through to the end. Panorama Suite was re- released this month by Japanese label Jansen Jardin and you can buy it for a couple of quid here. Press play, let it go and then press play again. 

December And Ultramarine

Richard Norris' subscription model for music worked well for everyone last year- a monthly payment (three tiers, download, CD or vinyl) and in return a long form piece of music, twenty minutes of ambient/ deep listening released on the first on the month. On top of this regular physical releases throughout the year including his Hypnotic Response album, the long awaited Circle Sky album, a collaboration between The Grid and Robert Fripp made up from guitar parts and soundscapes recorded in the 90s and reworked by Richard and Dave Ball, plus triple CD box sets compiling the year's Music For Healing releases. All of these releases are long term commitments, music to come back to time and time again. In 2020 the Music For Healing project started with numbered pieces. In 2021 they became named for the months of the year. In 2022 each monthly release is named after a colour and will be in two parts, the final full version and an additional version, stripped back to pull the focus onto the bassline or some of the layers of drones and synth parts. 2022 kicked off with Ultramarine and is a dive into the sine waves, oscilating drones and synths. Find Ultramarine and Ultramarine 2 at Bandcamp. 

When we got out of hospital just over a month ago I couldn't face any music for a few days. I couldn't work out what I wanted to listen to and didn't want to forever taint something with it always being associated with Isaac's death. In the end the first thing I pressed play on, a month ago today, was December's Music For Healing release- a twenty minute piano piece, rippling notes and reverb with some gentle washes behind it. It did the trick, broke the blockage and sounded like just what I needed, some much required musical balm. December is here. 

To finish off, one from each year of the project, this is the shorter four minute version of Music For Healing 10, from the end of 2020. More piano and a lovely warm bass string keeping it grounded. 

Dream Colour

Richard Norris and Martin Dubka's Circle Sky album has finally seen the light of day, three years on from the release of If I Let Go and Ghost In The Machine, a pair of singles that married their analogue synths with a weirdly almost human voice, some beautiful, light than air melodies and a sense of melancholy. The album, Dream Colour, has that feeling of a future that has been lost, the promise and hope of the 21st century as it looked a few decades ago that hasn't materialised- a future/ present weighed down by environmental collapse, terrorism, fractured societies, loneliness and isolation, plague and technology that presents as many problems as solutions. Somehow though, there's a sense that things might just be ok. 

The title track has the bassline and bounce of 80s house with that female voice singing vague somethings. The voice isn't quite human and isn't quite robotic either- how they've created her/ it, they're not saying. 

Salvation is altogether less physical and more ethereal, floatier, with twinkling synthlines and warm pads, a drifting, gliding piece of electronic music. The album has a cocoon- like feel, something to bathe in while the outside world carries on. There's something of the future of Blade Runner in Dream Colour too, replicants with human emotions that they don't understand yet. I think its an album I'll be coming back to often. 

 

Devil Rides out

The Lucid Dream had a new album out earlier this year, a customarily vibrant sonic attack, guitars and synths and drums all turned up loud. From Carlisle, they started out very much as a guitar based psyche- rock group and have shifted into dancier territory. The album, The Deep End, is well worth your time and attention, full on, experimental grooves with tunes attached. Lead single CHI- 03 begins with chanting crowds and hip hop drums before bringing the noise, riding along on a huge bassline. 

Ten years ago they released Devil Rides Out, a song Richard Norris' Time And Space Machine remixed, one psychedelic pioneer twisting another. This is actually what the 60s garage bands and freakbeat groups would sound like if they were time warped from 1967 into 2011- insistent, snarling, juddering psychedelic adventures. 

Devil Rides Out (The Time And Space Machine Remix)