Bank Holiday Monday Long Song

 
Bob Marley remixed by Bill Laswell, ambient dub par excellence, for your bonus Bank Holiday anyone? You can't turn that kind of offer down can you?

Rebel Music (3 O'Clock Roadblock)

If the temptation of this languid, sumptuous, utterly absorbing ten minute Bill Laswell reworking of Bob Marley weren't enough, I could add that the source material for this mp3 is a pair of CDs Andrew Weatherall burned when he went to DJ at The Beat Hotel, two CDs of the highest quality dub you can imagine. The CDs were uncovered recently and shared with The Flightpath Estate and the mp3 of Rebel Music was copied from there to here- so there you have it, a coronation treat, your own Weatherall/ Marley/ Laswell ambient dub mp3.

The remix is originally from a 1997 album titled Dreams Of Freedom (Ambient Translations Of Bob Marley In Dub). I can recommend the whole thing, the entire eleven song album is an ambient dub treat- but the remix of So Much Trouble In the World, fading in with found sound and then hand drums and ambient orchestral strings is currently flipping my lid. 

Polychrome Occult Persuasion

Two updates from the world of David Holmes for Friday. In the middle of the week Unloved, David's cinematic/ girl group/ weird 60s for the 21st century trio he formed with Jade Vincent and Keefus Ciancia, are following their twenty three song Pink Album (which only came out last year) with a nine song album called Polychrome. Ahead of the album Unloved have released I Did It, hip swinging psyche- pop  built around a wobbly bassline and whipcrack snare and ice cold vocals.

Polychrome is out on 24th February, vinyl and download. Order here. 

David returned to NTS this week too for the first God's Waiting Room radio show of this year (going live on the 23rd January 2023 for the 23 fans out there), two hours of sounds kicking off with some beautiful pedal steel guitar from Andrew Tuttle and then winding its way onwards in laid back, cosmische fashion, taking in Rico Toto, Prince Jammy, the dub splendour of Occult Persuasion by Bill Laswell, The Residents, Vangelis, Pleasure Pool among the many treasures played. You can listen at NTS or at Mixcloud. 

David Holmes At The Golden Lion: Recreated

A trip back in time to two weeks ago for today's Sunday mix and a much longer offering than usual. You might remember- I do- that on Saturday 1st October a group of us supported David Holmes at the Golden Lion in Todmorden and had quite the night. David came on at about nine and played a four hour set that took the proverbial roof off. Using the power of our memories (hazy, intermittent, vague and unreliable admittedly) and those people who had the presence of mind to use Shazam in the building at the time, we've attempted to put together David's setlist from that evening and then I've slung the ones we've been able to identify together in a one hour and forty seven minutes long, fifteen track mix, in roughly the order we recall them being played. It's missing a lot of tracks clearly- Holmes played for four hours- and it's not anywhere near as skillfully mixed but it's here to give a flavour, a short recreation of David at the Golden Lion a fortnight ago. I've listened to it a couple of times since finishing it midweek and it works for me- if I do say so myself. 

David Holmes at The Golden Lion recreated by The Flightpath Estate

• Alex Kassian: Spirit Of Eden (Bill Laswell Remix)
• Roberto Rodriguez: Mustat Varjot
• Carte De Sejour: Ouadou
• Axel Boman: Klinsmann
• Pete Wylie and The Oedipus Wrecks: Sinful (Tribal)
• Dornbirn 78: Dancing In The City
• Suuns: Up Past The Nursery (Ivan Smagghe Edit)
• Ettika: Ettika (Version Maxi Inedite)
• Hans Zimmer: Inception (Junkie XL Remix)
• John Talabot: Depak Ine
• The Blow Monkeys: La Passionara
• David Holmes: It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Darren Emerson Huffa remix)
• Unloved: Turn Of The Screw (Erol Alkan Rework)
• David Holmes and Keith Tenniswood: I Am Somebody
• Orbital: Belfast (David Holmes Remix)

Alex Kassian's Spirit Of Eden came out as a 12" last year, my favourite release from last year I've only discovered this year. The original and the Bill Laswell mixes are superb. Roberto Rodriguez's Mustat Varjot is from a 2012 compilation EP called On the Latch. Carte De Sejour is Italian disco/ funk from 1984. The vinyl rip included here is crackly as fuck but I think it actually adds to the fun. Klinsmann by Axel Boman, a tribute to a very well known German footballer perhaps, is from 2013. Sinful (Tribal Mix), one of the night's highlights, is a 1986 single remixed by Zeus B. Held- the definitive version. I'm going to see Pete Wylie a week today and if he plays Sinful I will be very happy. 

Dornbirn 78 released Dancing In The City in 2019, a cover of Marshall Hain's 1978 song. Ivan Smagghe's edit of Suun's Up Past The Nursery is from 2013. Ettika is French disco from 1985. John Talabot's Depak Ine came out on his 2012 album Fin. The Junkie XL remix of Hans Zimmer's theme from the film Inception is from 2010. La Passionara is a  Balearic classic from 1990 by The Blow Monkeys.

The Darren Emerson remix of David Holmes' It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love was part of a remix package from earlier this year, with Raven Violet on vocals. Raven also sings on Unloved's Turn Of The Screw, from The Pink Album, out shortly on vinyl and already available digitally. The Erol Alkan remix came out as part of an EP recently. David's track with former Lone Swordsman Keith Tenniswood is currently unreleased and appears here courtesy of a rip from Holmes' wonderful Desert Island Disco mix for Lauren Laverne back at the start of the year- it has the voice of Andrew Weatherall at the end talking about acid house as gnostic ceremony. The David Holmes remix of Orbital's Belfast was the 'one more tune' track at The Golden Lion and came out a couple of months ago as part of Orbital's 30 Something compilation. 

Monday's Long Song

Out last year but new to me (via David Holmes playing it on the June edition of God's Waiting Room at NTS) is this vinyl only four track EP by Berlin's Alex Kassian. The long songs for today are both on the B-side, the sumptuous Spirit Of Eden. Long and lightheaded electronic joy, dub teetering into jazz/ deep house, beautiful melodies and floating production, Spirit Of Eden is the sort of thing that for the duration it spins, totally transports you somewhere else- and that's exactly what we want music to do sometimes isn't it?

The 12" follows Spirit Of Eden with a Bill Laswell dub which at eight and a half minutes is slightly longer and taken at a slower tempo with a lovely flute part that comes and goes as the refrain from the original drifts in and out.