Saturday Live

If we're accepting that a DJ playing records in a club- selecting a set that builds, mixing and cutting between decks, adding FX and making something new out of existing older music- is a live performance as much as a band playing a gig with instruments (and I am) then DJ sets qualify for this series as much as any other kind of live show. The only cheat with this post is that the set was not played live in front of an audience but is a recreation of those live club sets. In this case, this is an attempt to recreate the DJ sets by JD Twitch from Pure in Edinburgh back in the early 90s. This was originally released on cassette in 2021 and has just recently come out digitally as two downloads, forty five minutes each, and titled Raise Your Hands If You Understand. 

Twitch's set here is ninety minutes of sublime ambient house/ ecstatic electronic music, a counterpoint to the faster, more hardcore sounds played elsewhere at the time. Twitch sees this as E- Musik, a spacey blend of ambient, house, new age, utopian, tripped out, edge of trance, turning tribal music. The first half opens with a long ten minute wash of warm synths, joined after a while by a voice and then a eventually a heartbeat tempo drum kicks in. 'Come together in peace and harmony', the voice says as the rhythms pick up a little, the bass throbs and piano runs tinkle in. It's wonderfully evocative and progressive stuff. The two halves of the tape are available at a Free/ Pay What You Like deal but any money raised is going to the Glasgow food bank so every little helps. The cassette version from two years ago currently change hands for somewhere in the region of £30. You can get them here. 

Ten years ago JD Twitch turned up at the Parisienne website I'm A Cliche, a music label that gave away free edits. Twitch's gnarly, stompy, acidic version of Bill Callaghan's America was a highlight, the gritty guitar line running through it like an oil spill in a river.

Edit Service 22 (JD Twitch)

As half of Optimo Twitch remixed Jeremy Deller's version of Voodoo Ray. In 2013 Deller exhibited at the Venice Biennale, part of his ongoing exploration of rave culture. Twitch's remix of Voodoo Ray is a joy filled, hands- in- the- air version, the sleeve emblazoned with the hook from the vocal sample, 'Ooh- oo- hoo- ah ha ha yeah'.

Voodoo Ray (Optimo Remix)

Forty Five Minutes Of Factory Floor And Gabe Gurnsey

Friday's Factory Floor single Two Different Ways sent me back into the group's back catalogue. I've also been playing Factory Floorer Gabe Gurnsey's Diablo a lot recently, an album that is up there with this year's best to these ears. Factory Floor, a trio but then slimmed down to Gurnsey (drums, programming, synths, production, vocals) and Nik Colk (vocals, guitar, samples) started out in the mid- 00s, all post punk dread and industrial noise before hitting a Chris and Cosey inspired, acid house/ techno groove. Dystopic dance music. Synth- noir. No wave electronica. 'Unsettling disco' according to New Order's Stephen Morris who has worked with them (like Morris, Gurnsey is a Macclesfield man). 

The idea to sequence a bunch of FF and GG tracks together seemed like a good one but technically has been quite tricky. I use Audacity where it's a matter of drop and drag, lining them up next to each other, slightly overlapping to give the impression of mixing. But without any actual DJ software, getting tracks to segue and mix properly can be difficult and this one took a lot of playing around with. There were a few that didn't make the cut- Two Different Ways and the Factory Floor remix of Grinderman were both vying for inclusion but didn't make it. 

The tracks here won't ease you into Sunday gently but if you want modular synths, acid squiggles, thumping 808 kick drums, slowly building tension and blank/ sexually charged vocals (courtesy of Colk on Factory Floor and Tilly Morris on Gabe's Diablo) to throw yourself around the kitchen to, then give it a whirl.

Forty Five Minutes Of Factory Floor And Gabe Gurnsey

• Factory Floor: Heart Of Data
• Daniel Avery: Drone Logic (Factory Floor Remix)
• Gabe Gurnsey: Eyes Over
• Gabe Gurnsey: Push
• Gabe Gurnsey: You Remind Me
• Factory Floor: ~(REALLOVE) (An Optimo (Espacio) Remix)
• Factory Floor: Ya

Heart Of Data came out in 2018, a pulsing modular synth score to Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, commissioned by London's Science Museum). Highly recommended. 

The remix of Daniel Avery's Drone Logic came out in 2013 along with a multitude of other remixes from Avery's first album. 

Eyes Over is from Gabe Gurnsey's first solo album, Physical, released in 2018. Eyes Over was a single and came with a very good extended dub mix on the 12".

Push and You Remind Me are two of the standouts from this year's Diablo, both with vocals from Tilly Morris. 'This is the kind of feeling I could ride forever/ Let's push together', Tilly sing speaks on Push, sounding like you're there for her amusement solely. 'You remind me of a sunrise/ You remind me of a good time', she sings on the latter, again sounding like she's pretty much done with your shit. 

Real Love (or ~(REALLOVE) came out in 2011 on DFA and was remixed by Scottish legends Optimo. A track that really goes for it brackets- wise and produced by Stephen Morris. 

Ya was on Factory Floor's 2016 album 2525, a juddering, minimal, floor filling electronic dance record with one foot in the Hacienda. 

Not Sleeping

The Twilight Sad's No One Can Ever Know came out in 2012 and is about to be re- issued. It came with the line that it had been 'anti- produced' by Andrew Weatherall. I was never absolutely sure what this meant but according to the internet he gave the group some advice about analogue synths and some words of wisdom. He had apparently been lined up to produce the album but for whatever reason this didn't happen. Several years later, in 2018, a remix by Andrew of their song Videograms appeared, a seven minute piston- powered drum machine excursion with a huge synth riff and early 980s New Order/ Depeche Mode vibe. Lovely stuff.



Back to 2012. No One Can Ever Know was paired with a vinyl only remix album release, nine reworkings of the songs from the album by sympathetic remixers such as Liars, Com Truise, The Horrors and Optimo. The remixes are club based, pushing the darker, more industrial sound the band were experimenting with further. Tom Furse of The Horrors took them to a sleek, cosmische place, somewhere in the spiritual vicinity of West Germany in the 1970s.

Not Sleeping (The Horrors Dub Mix)

JD Twitch fired up the kick drum and sent them out onto the floor in the early hours.

Alphabet (JD Twitch/Optimo Remix)

Tranquillity Mixes

The blossom has suddenly appeared on the trees round here, a sign that some things are going ahead as they should be even if everything else is completely upside down. Long ambient mixes are the order of the day round Bagging Area much of the time at the moment- they seem to have a positive effect and provide a welcome distraction from the news. This one by Youth dates from five years ago, an hour and fifty minutes of ambient with several detours into psychedelia and global sounds from the likes of Cliff Martinez, Popul Vuh, Orchid Star and Suns Of Arqa. Highly recommended.



JD Twitch, Glasgow's Optimo supremo, put together the first in a series of Tranquillity mixes last weekend aimed specifically at calming the nerves during the coming months. Perfect for headphones while social distancing. There's a download button too if you want to keep it.

Takashi Kokubo - A Dream Sails Out To Sea part 1
Mkwaju Ensemble - Lemore
Hiroshi Yoshimura - 小川にそって
Yumiko Morioko - Rainbow Gate
Haruomi Hosono - Fujitsubo
Inoyoama Land - Glass Chaim
Inoyama Land - Pokala (remix)
Popol Vuh - Ah!
Justus Köhncke and Fred Heimermann - Albatros
Nuno Canavarro - Blu Terra
Erik Satie - Gnossienne No. 1
World Standard - Rozo, Du Pecoj
Testpattern - Souvenir Glacé



The second Tranquillity Mix went up on Wednesday, similarly ambient and calming but with some beats appearing towards the end.



Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (piano version)
Bill Evans Trio - Peace Piece
Eden Ahbez - The Wanderer
Popol Vuh - We Know About The Need
Gaelic Psalms From The Hebrides Of Scotland - Psalm 62
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - 合唱刈干切唄
David Cunningham - Blue River
Inoyama Land - Anatano Yushoku No Tameni
Raymond Scott - Sleepy Time
Sheila Chandra - Quiet 1
Sheila Chandra - Quiet 6
Resili - Corrie Caves
Dettinger - Oasis A3
Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

Wahre Liebe

Factory Floor's live soundtrack to Fritz Lang's 1929 Weimar sci-fi masterpeice Metropolis comes out today. I've been looking forward to this since the Heart Of Data/Babel 12" came out back in February. Their score is film length, an hour and fifty minutes long, and is out on double cd or quadruple vinyl (and you can imagine how much that costs).



In 2011 Factory Floor's Real Love single was remixed by Glasgow clubbing veteran JD Twitch, a controlled collision of analogue synths and digital drum machines.

Real Love (An Optimo Espacio Mix)

I was showing some young people (16-17 year olds) some clips from Metropolis earlier this week as part of their studies of Weimar Germany and its culture. I don't think the jawdropping special effects or the look of the film or its technical genius of the film was lost on them although some of the acting is very hammy 90 years later. They were equally if not more impressed with Nosferatu which they found genuinely freaky. And then one of them mentioned they already knew Nosferatu from this...

Brass Shaker

Some sort of unholy trinity of artists going on here mixing up a classic house-acid brass delight. To clarify- Jeremy Deller's acid brass cover version of Voodoo Ray remixed by Optimo's JD Twitch, out on vinyl on Monday. And worth every penny I'd say.

Twitchy

Following a tip off by the RiG contributors this a rather splendid, slow and funky electronic reworking of Bill Callahan's America by JD Twitch. Gets a bit messy in places. Free download from the I'm A Cliche people in Paris. Bob's your uncle.

Nosferatu

More Weatherall- yawn. Wait though, there's other stuff here too.



In November 1998 I went to Manchester's Cornerhouse Cinema and Arts Space to see Andrew Weatherall play records as a soundtrack to FW Murnau's 1929 silent film Nosferatu. It was very, very good and very, very spooky. Mrs Swiss was heavily pregnant with our unborn firstborn and the scary soundtrack obviously affected pre-natal I.T. At one point he moved, a limb causing a shark's fin to arc visibly over Mrs Swiss's belly. Bizarre.


The Youtube poster of the entire film says this of Nosferatu-

1929 silent film by F.W. Murnau tells the story of a young man who leaves his bride and travels to see a mysterious count in order to sell a house. He finds that the creature he encounters is not of this world. This version of the"Dracula" tale remains one of the best and rightfully claims it place in cinematic history.



This Weatherall- Dracula event was pre-internet, pre-mobile phone recording. Neither Andrew Weatherall nor the Cornerhouse recorded it (unless they did and it's never been released). I think it was a one-off and there is almost nothing on the internet about it. A Weatherall event with no internet record- double bizarre. 

The song here, vampire link ahoy, is Destroy Yourself by Michael Dracula, remixed by JD Twitch from 2009. Michael Dracula are or were, I think, a band from Glasgow. Ms Dracula (above) sings

'Wake up 
Be happy 
Stay in
Save your money 
You'll be dead a long time honey'


 After that things go a bit mental in Optimo style.


Destroy Yourself (Twitch's Optimo Mix)