Bank holiday Monday at the end of August always feels like a bit of a last gasp affair, the last gasp of summer before September strikes with its new school year and change of the seasons. It's the last bank holiday before Christmas too, which has a certain grimness about it. Best to make the most if it and squeeze as much out of it as we can.
This is brand new from Oliver Sim, remixed by bandmate and producer Jamie Xx, with some help from Floating Points. The Xx changed popular music in the late 00s, bringing a minimal, crisp, r'n b/ indie crossover into the mainstream and a sound which has been copied/ borrowed by many since. Oliver, bassist and co- singer with The Xx, has his solo album, Hideous Bastard, coming out soon. This remix of GMT is nine minutes forty seconds of deep, sinuous, murky but celebratory dance music, an entrancing soundscape that pushes and pulls in all directions, and swerves in another direction entirely halfway through, deep vocal hmmmms and hand drums ushering in strings and a massive juddering bassline leading into a long build up, electronics and synths, another breakdown, another build up and finally a long slow finish.
A bit of a diversion from my Sunday mix series of (roughly) thirty minute mixes of tracks and songs by a single artist- today's mix is themed around the sound of children's voices/ children's choirs. Do not fear though, there are no St Winifred's School Choirs here, no Primary School end of year shows. This is I hope a bit further left of there. Sometimes the use of children's voices in songs can be quite unsettling, that combination of sweetly sung innocence and the feeling of something being lost. Sometimes they provide a higher register counterpoint. Sometimes they add to a sense of trippiness and dislocation. Sometimes they just sound good, a contrast to adult voices and instruments. Sometimes, as The Clash and Mickey Gallagher's kids prove, they're a joke to ensure that Sandinista! had six songs on each side, making thirty six songs in total.
The Children Of Sunshine: It's A Long Way To Heaven
The Avalanches Ft Jamie Xx, Neneh Cherry and Calypso: Wherever You Go
Gorillaz: Dirty Harry
Soul II Soul: Get A Life
Poly High: Midnight Cowboy
The Clash: Career Opportunities
It's only right I should give a nod of the head to David Holmes whose crate digging inspired some of this mix. He played the Poly High song on his Desert Island Disco on Lauren Laverne's 6 Mix show earlier this year, included the Family Of God track on a free CD that was given away with the NME in 2000 and put the Children Of Sunshine song on his superb Late Night Tales compilation from 2016. The Frank Ocean, Paul Simonon and Mick Jones song was a one off done with/ for Converse in 2014, produced by Diplo, with the West Los Angeles Children's Choir providing backup. The Avalanches song also has Mick Jones playing on it but this time piano not guitar, and samples The Voyager, NASA's tape for aliens, currently somewhere out there way further than any of us have ever been. The album We Will Always Love You came out in 2020. Gorillaz, Damon with Dangermouse, was released in 2005. Soul II Soul's Get A Life was a huge hit in 1989 and includes Jazzy B's still excellent advice- 'Be selective, be objective, be an asset to the collective/ As you know, you got to get a life'. Something in that for all of us perhaps.
Another Top Boy related post following yesterday's Fuck Buttons double bill. At the end of episode three, series one, Sully says to his young daughter, 'You're the most beautiful girl in Hackney y'know', a line I instantly recognised (Sully is played by rapper and grime artist Kano). It took me a moment to pinpoint where I'd heard it before...
Girl is the final song on Jamie Xx's solo album In Colour from 2015, a dizzying swirl of synths and beats and a voice, chopped up and distorted singing 'I want your love'. The album, seven years old now, is a peach, a thoroughly modern mish mash of samples, voices and songs, spanning the range from bedsit broken heart laptop ballads (like Loud Places) to massive club tunes (such as Gosh). As well as the line of dialogue from Top Boy Girl samples Brian Wilson and Freeze's I.O.U.
Loud Places, with vocals from his Xx bandmate Romy, was remixed by John Talabot twice. This one is the pick of the pair, a stunning ten minute remix that builds gradually but incessantly, synths and voices climbing euphorically, drums padding softly and then a part of Romy's vocal- 'Didn't I take you to/ Higher places, you can't reach without me?' The second half, after six minutes, takes off elsewhere with the bassline leading and Romy's vocal shifting to breathy mutterings about ecstasy and, in a kiss off moment, not being around when he/ she/ they come down.
Some Kieran Hebeden/ Four Tet for this week's Sunday half hour. There's an embarrassment of riches in his back catalogue- the difficult part was narrowing it down to just six or seven tracks. Kieran takes the energy and feel of rave and combines it with ambient sounds, skippy laptop drums and Indian instruments to make something which is very much his.
The mix starts with Teenage Birdsong, one of my favourite Four Tet tracks, taken from his Sixteen Oceans album, a record which reminds me of the first days and weeks of the first lockdown in March and April 2020 like no other. Lahaina Noon is from the Ana Painting EP which came out in 2019, a collaboration with the painter Anna Liber Lewis where he made music and she painted in response to each other. Two Thousand And Seventeen is from 2017's New Energy album. Jamie Xx's remix of Lions came out as part of the Atoms For Peace project in 2014 and Raga To Midi W was part of a collection of unreleased tracks and edits he dropped onto his Soundcloud page in 2020. There's one of his unpronounceable Wingdings tracks on there and it finishes with his epic eight minute remix of Daniel Avery's New Eternity.
More new stuff for this week in the shape of a multi- guest star release from The Avalanches. Sometimes projects with large numbers of guests feel a bit overwhelmed or weighed down them but that isn't the case here. Wherever You Go is expansive electronic music, taking off with a sample from the Voyager Project, music sent into space with the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1977. Co- produced by Jamie xx and with Neneh Cherry and Clypso on vox and with piano from Mick Jones it sounds like a meeting of minds and talents, a song that picks up the pioneering spirit that sent music out of orbit and into the solar system and runs with it. The children's voices suggest '70s TV shows, the drums coming in just after two minutes and the pumping bassline make it more contemporary, and the layering of sounds, Clypso's rap and sheer bounce of the last couple of minutes plant it in now. The promise of space exploration coupled with the sort of sounds that should be heard from a car radio passing by in the street.
'Why do we send music to the stars?
Is it because we want our voices to live forever?
How else should we become pure spirits, singing forever in the dark?' The Avalanches, July 2020
We went for a walk on Sunday, up the canal and round the water-park, across Chorlton Ees, stopping for a pint on Chorlton Green and then back through the floodplain towards Ashton village. These places might not mean anything to you but they are green land around the Bridgewater Canal and River Mersey in south Manchester, rural feeling but with motorway, Metrolink and roads audible, and fairly full of strollers, dog walkers, cyclists and so on. On the walk, back towards Stretford cemetery there had been an enormous amount of fly tipping going on. And while I can't condone this kind of large scale littering it provides some interesting subject matter for photographs. Other people on the walk took pictures of their kids in Christmas jumpers. When we compared the photos on our phones at the end of the walk my view of the afternoon was a little bit gloomier. This shot in the tunnel under Washway Road that looks like it's from A Clockwork Orange.
Back in 2012 Four Tet and Jamie Xx remixed each other. This is an unsettling, disjointed and uneasy piece of work although the synths bring a certain kind of warmth..
I've got more and more out of The Xx as time has gone on. At first I thought they were impressive but easier to admire than to love. That's changed over the years since their debut and its follow up, even more so after Jamie Xx's solo album from last year. News came out on Friday that their third album will be released in January and in advance of it comes a single called On Hold.
The opening section with Romy and Oliver trading lines starts out sounding like an 80s power ballad but stick with it. The synth stabs coming in forty seconds and then the repetitive vocal sample (Hall and Oates) at fifty seconds take it elsewhere, into higher places.
While I'm in the Xx zone this Jamie Xx edit of Sunset off second album Coexist is a wonderful bass and kick drum led thing of beauty. The repeated guitar line building up to Romy's vocal drop is magnificent use of tension and release and the end section is pretty amazing too.
Since my car was condemned to the scrapyard I've been driving a different car to work. Ok, alright, I've been driving my mother in law's car to work. It has a CD player so I've switched from my in-car mp3 player and the world of shuffle to grabbing some cds from the pile next to the stereo waiting to be filed and working my way through albums instead. One of them is Jamie Xx's remixed version of Gil Scott Heron's I'm New Here, released back in 2011 as We're New Here. Jamie kept the vocals and reworked the music entirely, sampling some of Gil's older vocals too. The closing song, I'll Take Care Of U, an old Brook Benton song, is one of the best and the one that most successfully takes Gil's vocals somewhere else (London pirate radio).
This song has been posted fairly recently over at the mammoth 200 songs rundown at When You Can't Remember Anything At All. I'd been meaning to write about it for some time and a little repetition in our part of the blogworld is inevitable I think. Jamie Xx released a single back in 2014 that attempted to summarise and pay homage to the entire history of UK underground dance music. It is inevitably nostalgic but it is also totally contemporary and bang up to date. Using UK garage's beats, some heavy bass and his own trademark steel drum sound Jamie builds a track in love with the music that inspired it. Throughout he uses vocal samples (taken from a short film called Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore) to illustrate it and drive it, starting with 'You like junglist music?', moving on to 'we kept it UK, that's what we're trying to do, we're keeping it going the same way, we're all under one roof raving, laughing and joking, y'know what I mean' and eventually finishing with the voice getting distorted as someone reels off clothing labels 'Fila, Head, Kappa, Ellesse, Lonsdale, Sergio Tachini, Burberry, Diadora...', neatly summarising the longstanding link between British dance music and British street wear. It is a pretty stunning and evocative piece of work, and it wasn't even on the 2015 album In Colour that it clearly predicts.
Here is my list, self indulgent as Drew says, but fun to do. I've enjoyed more new music during 2015 than any in recent years. These are the albums and songs/singles that have struck a chord with me and that have stuck with me since their release.
Albums
12. Mbongwana Star 'From Kinshasa'
Traditional African forms coupled with electronics. Still startling.
11. Mick Jones 'Ex Libris'
Vinyl only, six track instrumental.
10. MonoLife 'Phrenology'
The skull from Hull with some cracking old school dance music.
9. The Orb 'Moonbuilding 2703AD'
A return to form, four very long pieces full of ambient buzz.
8. Le Volume Courbe 'I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was Here With Me'
Contains two of my favourite songs of this year- The House and Rusty.
7. Steve Cobby 'Everliving'
It could have been 'Revolutions' as well. Both are full of sumptuous electronic tunes and ideas.
6. Gwenno 'Y Dyad Olaf'
Perfect psychedelic pop sung in Welsh (except for the one sung in Cornish).
5. Crocodiles 'Boys'
Dirty, sexy, brash guitars from San Diego. If you haven't heard Foolin' Around, click play now.
4. Moon Duo 'Shadows Of The Sun'
Loads of uptempo two chord motorik psyche but with In A Cloud they had one of the year's most beautiful, almost Balearic guitar moments.
3. Sexwitch 'Sexwitch'.
Six covers recorded by Natasha Khan, Toy and Dan Carey. The intense stomp of the Middle Eastern songs take some beating and Natasha's vocals are superbly focused while also slightly unhinged. Possessed and obsessive.
2. The Charlatans 'Modern Nature'.
Recorded after the death of drummer Jon Brookes, a band back on form and determined to celebrate life with some of the best, soaring songs of the year- So Oh and Come Home Baby especially.
1. Jamie Xx 'In Colour'
A history of dance music from house to grime, emotionally charged from start to finish, with moments of ecstasy, clarity and genuine beauty. I'm still playing it from start to finish.
Singles/Songs
The hand and influence of Mr Weatherall is all over this section. That's just the way it's been this year. Both lists show I've been veering far more towards dance/electronics this year. A top seventeen for no real reason.
17. Noel Gallagher 'In The Heat Of The Moment' Andrew Weatherall Remix
It came out last year online but was released on vinyl in April. Glorious remix.
16. Dubrobots 'Forever'
This Cardiff based producer sent me two versions of this massively dub influenced song. Still rattling my ribcage.
15. Public Service Broadcasting 'Gagarin' Richard Norris Remix
The album did nothing for me but this remix, full of Spanish acoustic guitars, sent Yuri to Ibiza.
14. jennylee 'Never'
Warpaint's foxy bassist with an early 80s single that pushed the right buttons.
13. Gwenno 'Chwyldro' Andrew Weatherall Remix
Further, stranger, slower.
12. Unloved 'Guilty Of Love'
David Holmes' new project taking in 60s/70s filmscores with a girl group vibe. Also had two long dubby Weatherall remixes.
11. Vox Low 'Cast Upward Through the Waves, A Ruby Glow
Strange stuff from a French duo finding weird spaces between rock and dance.
10. Heretic 'Pollux' Andrew Weatherall Remix
I'm getting repetitive strain from typing those three words- this one took early New Order and merged it with some sparse electronics and a spooky vocal refrain.
9. Timothy J. Fairplay
Timothy J released several superb four track e.p.s this year, full of vintage synths- Stories Of Prison, Love And Columbium, No News From New York. Take your pick. Together they'd make a potential album of the year.
8. Paresse 'Rosita'.
Super smooth stuff from Scandinavia. Wraps your ears up all warm.
7. Haunted Doorbell 'Unconnected Thoughts On Jacking'
I'm cheating here- Fairplay again, this time with Matilda Tristam. Four outstanding instrumentals joining the various dots. The e.p. and title track gave us the song title of the year. Beautiful Sheffield is exactly as it sounds.
6. Patti Yang Group 'I'm Ready'
Chris Rotter, Matty Skylab and Patti Yang with a thumping piece of hymnal house. Do you want a free download?
5. Jamie Xx 'Loud Places' John Talabot's Higher Dub
I posted this last week. It's stunningly good, reworking an album highlight into something else with mesmerising, euphoric peaks.
4. C.A.R. 'Glock'd' Asphodells Remix
Super glam stomp, a massive wobbly bass, dirty guitars, French accented vocals; the sound of the future.
3. Sinkane x Peaking Lights 'Mean Dub'
This ten minute dub version of Yacha was the sound of my summer. All four tracks on the reworked dub e.p. were top quality stuff but Yacha is something else entirely and from somewhere else entirely too. Fast dub.
2. Pearl's Cab Ride 'Sunrise' (MonoLife Extended Trip)
A Humberside funk and soul sixpiece taken on a long trip by MonoLife- trumpet, distorted vocal, two note bass, drifting but always moving forwards. Beautiful.
1. Mike Garry and Joe Duddell 'St Anthony: An Ode to Anthony H Wilson'
This came out in August, an emotional tribute to Mr Manchester set to Joe Duddell's Your Silent Face inspired strings, full of Mike Garry's poetic references to the city and its sounds. All proceeds go to The Christie so if you haven't bought it yet, there's another reason to do so. Almost inevitably, there's a Weatherall remix on the other side (which isn't too shabby either. In fact it's very, very good). Still prone to move me after umpteen listens.
Drew posted this last week but on the off chance that there's anyone who missed it there or who reads this but not Across The Kitchen Table I'm going to share it here today. I've been playing it daily since I first heard it. John Talabot's remix of Jamie Xx's Loud Places. Drew called it mesmerising- which it definitely is. Add euphoric. And gorgeous. At ten minutes long, if you click replay twice that's half an hour of your day gone in a blissful haze, lost with that line or two of Romy's vocal isolated and repeated, and those wonderful drum patterns and synths. Between them Jamie, Romy and John also nail the happiness/sadness that is part of dance music and club culture- the communal joy of dancing against the loss of the lyrics. She's not waiting around, she's going, going, gone.
I'm still massively enjoying the Jamie Xx album. This John Talabot remix of one of the standout songs Loud Places strips it down, keeps Romy's vocal and then goes synth crazy at the end. Probably works best in a club but still sounds good at home.
My first few listens of the Jamie Xx solo album have been very enjoyable- it's got the tunes, it's well paced, full of thumping and/or interesting drums and percussion, and moments of bittersweet euphoria. The sleeve's lovely too. There's a garage/dubstep influence on the some of the songs which keep it from being too tasteful and give it a rougher edge. The Rest Is Noise already sounds like being the song you're going to hear out of open windows and on TV festival coverage. Another highlight is Loud Places, sung by bandmate Romy. This recent live performance from French TV has Romy singing and guitaring, a lively percussionist, a choir and Stella from Warpaint on drums.
There's been a lot of internet used up today with opinions about Spike Island, from naysayers and fans alike. I just read a review of the forthcoming Jamie xx solo album, In Colour, and then scurried off to listen to something off it. Listening to Gosh Jamie has taken that line from She Bangs The Drums and run with it- 'the past is your's the future's mine'. It's exhilarating, inventive and absorbing stuff. The staccato rhythm (sounding like the blood pumping through your head when you're exercising and at full pelt), the build up and then the drama of the last two minutes is something else.
Wherever it was that I read the review said that Jamie's album is about memories of UK rave and dance music (or something along those lines). That dance music is always about creating something new from the recent past. That this album is in colour compared to the black and white palette of The Xx. I'm up for all of that. Now I'm off to listen to Gosh again.
