Forty Six Minutes Of Twenty Three

Two months ago this weekend, the day before we were taking Eliza back to Liverpool for her final year in university, the three of us were sitting in a cafe in Didsbury village, one of our afternoon walk and a brew haunts. Eliza said, out of nowhere, 'I think we should all go and get a number 23 tattoo for Isaac'. Lou and I looked at each other and both said, 'yeah. ok'. It was very spontaneous, none of us ever really thought abut getting a tattoo before. Me and Eliza had joked about but very much in a 'we won't ever do this' kind of way. But at that moment it suddenly seemed like a good thing to do. Unfortunately the tattoo parlour in Sale couldn't fit us in on the day so we booked in for a month later- it felt like something the three of us should do together and Eliza didn't want to come back from Liverpool for a while. It also gave us some time to think about fonts and parts of the body.

The number 23 has become associated with Isaac. I've written about it before this year. He was 23 when he died and his birthday is the 23rd November (just a couple of weeks away now with the 2nd anniversary of his death a week later). In the last year the number 23 has kept appearing in front of me- on street signs, graffiti, electricity boxes, random tv countdown shows suddenly channel surfed onto, the only available table in a pub. I don't think it necessarily means anything- it's just something I've started noticing and when I see a 23 now it makes me think of him and smile. Getting a 23 tattoo might trigger the same reaction (and a month later, I'm happy to say it does). We got the tattoos done a month ago. Mine is pictured above, a type writer font on my forearm. Lou got a smaller 23 on her side and Eliza got an even smaller, fine line 23 on her upper arm. 

The number 23 has a rich history. I've written before as well about it's part in KLF mythology, with their interest in Discordianism and numerology. When Isaac died I was reading John Higgs' book about The KLF. A few weeks after he died I picked the book back up and the first chapter I read was about the significance of 23. I finished the chapter and put the book down, totally freaked about. I read it again the next day and it had a similar effect. When I was looking at fonts for my tattoo I thought about a KLF block 23 but it would very inky and take some time to do. I fancied a type writer font. On the morning we were due to go I suddenly wondered what 23 would look like in a factory/ Peter Saville font and started going through my various Factory art books. What, I asked myself, was Fac 23? A quick search later and I realised Fac 23 was the 7" release of Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division. Which caused me to stop in my tracks for a moment. In the end I didn't quite go full Peter Saville Fac font but it played a part in my thinking. We're all really glad we got them done. At the moment, all autumn chilliness and long sleeves, its often covered up, but when I see it, it makes me smile. The upcoming anniversaries are weighing quite heavily and I'll be glad to get November over with- but the tattoos feel like a positive and I'm not sure a year ago I'd thought that would be possible. 

This mix is 46 minutes of songs connected to the number 23. I was going to bring it in at 23 minutes but that felt too short so went for double 23. Two of the songs below were also released in full 23 minute versions which felt too long for a Sunday mix but they're here in shorter versions to represent their 23 minute long brothers. 

46 Minutes Of 23

• Chris Rotter And The Bad Meat Club: 86'd
• 10:40: Sleepwalker
• Local Psycho And The Hurdy Gurdy Orchestra: The Hurdy Gurdy Song (Mothers Of The New Stone Age Remix)
• 23 Skidoo: Coup
• Jah Division: Jah Will Tear Us Apart
• The Vendetta Suite: Eye In The Triangle
• Two Lone Swordsmen: 23rd Street
• Mogwai: U235
• Gorillaz: Aries
• Psychic TV: Godstar
• The KLF: 3am Eternal

Chris Rotter was the guitarist in the live band incarnation of Two Lone Swordsmen and played on and co- wrote songs on Andrew Weatherall's solo album A Pox On The Pioneers. I became friends with Chris online and then in real life. When Isaac died he wanted to record a song for Isaac. I asked him to do 86'd, a song I heard Andrew play on a radio show, a glorious chiming krauty instrumental. Chris went and re- recorded 86'd in new form, 23 minutes long. For reasons of space I've included the shorter one here. The full length 86'd (For Isaac) is here. 

Last December Jesse represented the entire 10:40 back catalogue as an advent calendar. This was the track for the 23rd December, the sleek psych and somewhat krauty Sleepwalker with Ben Lewis on guitar.

The KLF and the number 23 I've mentioned above. Read John Higgs' Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds for more detail. Local Psycho And The Hurdy Gurdy Orchestra are ex- KLF Jimmy Cauty and ex- Pogue Jem Finer. Their hurdy gurdy, neolithic celebration drone came out on 12" came out earlier this year complete with a 23 minute mix. I've included the shorter remix here but the 23 minute version is the one really. 

23 Skidoo are here for obvious reasons. Coup is a block rocking post- punk/ punk funk track from 1984. In a further Andrew Weatherall connection, it was one of the songs on his 9 O' Clock Drop compilation from 2000. 

Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, as I said above, was Fac 23. Factory's numbering system was central to their ethos. All Joy Division and New Order singles ended in 3. Rather than include the original I decided to put Jah Division's dub cover in- it fitted better. Jah Division released an EP of four dub covers of Joy Division songs  in 2004. If you ever see a vinyl copy, please give me a ring. 

The Vendetta Suite are from Northern Ireland, the work of Gary Irwin. In 2017 Gary released an EP titled Solar Lodge 23 from which this piece of cosmic dubbiness is taken. 

Two Lone Swordsmen- yes, them again- released their first record in 1996, a 12" that contained four tracks- Big Man On The Landing, Azzolini, The Branch Brothers and the one here, 23rd Street, a few minutes of abstract Swordsmen sounds. 

Mogwai's move into soundtrack work has paid off. This is from the soundtrack to Atomic, a bit of a cheat maybe numerically but 23's in there and the track fits.

Gorillaz have played with the number 23 frequently in their imagery and artwork. This song Aries was a single in 2020 and has the unmistakeable and melancholic/ uplifting sound of Peter Hook's bass at its heart.  

Psychic TV, Genesis P Orridge's experimental psychedelic/ acid house band had some interest in 23. In 1986 they began a series of gigs to be recorded and released, 23 in total, each played on the 23rd of a month for 23 consecutive months. Godstar is a single from 1985, a tribute to Rolling Stone Brian Jones.

The KLF's 3am Eternal was the second of their stadium house trilogy, released in 1991 (after a previous version in 1989 and a subsequent one in 1992). The version here, the 1991 single and chart topper, took this mix to 46 minutes. 

Monday's Long Song

Jane Birkin died yesterday aged 76. She was a genuine counter culture superstar, an actress and singer and the voice of Je t'aime... Moi Non Plus, a 1969 show stopper of a single recorded with Serge Gainsbourg. In 1971 Serge recorded Historie De Melody Nelson, a thirty minute concept album about an affair between a middle aged man and a teenage girl (something that would be received very differently if released in 2023). The album is a tour de force musically. Jane takes centre stage on the cover and is present on vocals. The lush, orchestral sounds are coupled with grimy funk bass and superb sounding early '70s guitars, spoken word vocals and choral backing vox. There are few other albums from that time or since that sound much like it. This is Cargo Culte, the seven and a half minute finale, a sublime piece of groove and feel, the guitar as good as any electric guitar anyone else put down on tape.

Cargo Culte

Jane appears on this song, the much shorter Ballade De Melody Nelson, a duet with acoustic guitar and strings. 

Ballade De Melody Nelson

In 1997 David Holmes sampled the tile track Melody for Don't Die Just Yet. When it was released as single it came with some tasty remixes- this one by Mogwai for instance.

Don't Die Just Yet (Mogwai Mix)

In 1985 Jane covered Kate Bush's Mother Stands For Comfort, a song originally from Kate's Hounds Of Love

Mother Stands For Comfort

As well as continuing to make music and films, Jane was a French national and resident of Paris long after her relationship with Gainsbourg ended. She was an activist and campaigner for Amnesty International, migrant support groups and Aids charities. There isn't a bad photograph of her. RIP Jane Birkin. 

There's No Real Truth With My Fury

Back to the Manic Street Preachers, so soon after last week's post- while looking for the Stealth Sonic Orchestra remix of A Design For Life I came across some other remixes which are worth revisiting, two by David Holmes and one by Mogwai. The David Holmes remix of If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, a gorgeous, languid nine minute affair, was posted at The Vinyl Villain recently and I'm sure it's still there. Holmes also remixed You Stole The Sun From My Heart, a 1999 single from the album that came out the years before (This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours). The song describes Nicky Wire's dislike of touring- not playing live, which he loves but the deadening routine of hotels, soundchecks, busses and so forth. Hearing pop stars moan about touring never sits that well with me but I can understand the feeling, the dislocation and the homesickness. The song also doesn't sound like a pop star moaning, more like an existential crisis set to music. 

You Stole The Sun From My Heart (David Holmes A Joyful Racket Remix)

Holmes doesn't do anything too radical with it but it's a lovely version, spacious and lilting with less of James' crunchy rock guitar playing. The name of the remix, A Joyful Racket, sits pretty well and the melody lines he picks out would go just as well on the songs he recorded for his own Let's Get Killed album from 1997 or his Bow Down To The Exit Sign album of 2000.

Mogwai start out with just James' vocal and some guitar parts providing atmospherics, but begin to ratchet up the unease and distortion with static, feedback, rain and loops. It's doesn't ever go full on Mogwai wall of noise but it's none the worse and no less unsettling for it. 

You Stole The Sun From My Heart (Mogwai Remix) 

The line that gives this post its title was Nicky's nod to and steal from Welsh poet R.S. Thomas.

Twenty Five Minutes Of Mogwai

Inspired by a text conversation with JC (The Vinyl Villain) and also by Khayem's Dubhead blog I thought I'd try this out for Sundays, a half an hour mix (or thereabouts) of songs by one artist- not necessarily their best or most representative, just a few that work well together- starting today with Mogwai. In recent years Mogwai have started adding vocals to some of their songs. In 2017 their Every Country's Sun album was led by Party In The Dark, a beautiful piece of soaring 21st century indie- rock sounding like Joy Division but with Bernard singing. A year later they soundtracked a sci- fi film called Kin. The final song We're Not Done (End Titles) had vocals and then last year's As The Love Continues album had vocals on Ritchie Sacramento, one of 2021's best songs. I thought these three would work well together and added two instrumental Mogwai songs to stretch it out- Rano Pano from 2011's Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, guitars set to noise and distortion, and then finished it off with the rolling, skyscraping splendour of 2008's The Sun Smells Too Loud, a masterclass in post- rock groove. 

• Ritchie Sacramento
• Party In The Dark
• We're Not Done (End Titles)
• Rano Pano
• The Sun Smells Too Loud

Twenty Five Minutes Of Mogwai

Money And Murk

Two tracks that both came out recently and that seem to work together very well for me for today and both sound like they could have been put together during an all night recording session in the 1940s pill box in the photo above. When we were down in the Wye Valley in July I stumbled across it, hidden in the undergrowth overlooking the river. How long any defenders would have lasted in it is open to question. Local youths have made more use of it in the years since 1945, for various activities. You can probably imagine. 

The first track is an Alessandro Cortini rework of a song from Mogwai's latest album, the amusingly titled Fuck Off Money. Cortini is formerly of Nine Inch Nails and more recently worked with Daniel Avery to produce an album of sweet, intense industrial ambient, released with some appropriateness of timing at the beginning of the first lockdown in March 2020. Alessandro's eight minute rework of Mogwai is intense, to put it mildly, and ends up like a slow motion ride through hyperspace. It's a heavy trip, in all the right ways. Buy it here.

Pye Corner Audio is a regular on these pages, his monthly tracks released during the last eighteen months acting as  a sonic journal. Martin Jenkins has moved towards a kind of dark, industrial modular rave sound on some of them, a sound he has perfected with his latest one, a seven minute ride titled Murk. It's as intense and darkly beautiful as the Cortini/ Mogwai one, two sides of the same synth. Get it here at a name your own price deal. 

Here We Go Forever

Mogwai's album As The Love Continues has been nominated for the Mercury Prize. I'm not sure I'd even clocked that the Mercury Prize was still going and apart from the publicity the nominees and winner get it's always seemed a very arbitrary thing, announcing one album a year as 'the winner' from a field that tries to include everything from avant- rock to folk to modern jazz to 21st century smart pop. But the announcement did encourage me to go back to the Mogwai album, one I played a lot when it came out back in February but not much since. If anything it sounded better, stronger, than it did first time around and for a band that have been around and releasing records since 1997 it's encouraging that their latest release stands alongside their earlier work. 

In some ways As The Love Continues doesn't break any new ground but it does bring together what they do very well, on the back of two previous albums that did the same (the soundtrack to Kin and 2017's Every Country's Sun were both first rate albums). Mainly instrumental, monumental, slowly building songs, with freak out climaxes and sections of beauty, the odd sung song (and I love the Mogwai songs with Stuart Braithwaite singing), the synths and vocoders becoming as integral as the guitars, and obtuse, laugh out loud song titles. This song, although admittedly not blessed with a funny title, is as good as any. 

Here We, Here We, Here We Go Forever

Ritchie Sacramento

Mogwai's habit of having one sky- scraping, yearning, wall of guitars with a Hooky- esque bassline and singing per new album continues. Ritchie Sacramento is all of these things and more- just like Party In The Dark (from  Every Country's Sun) and We're Not Done (off their soundtrack to Kin) were. 

The new album, out in February and called As The Love Continues, also keeps up their strike rate of superb song titles- To The Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth is the standout but Fuck Off Money and It's What We Wanna Do, Mum run it close. They get better and better and there aren't many guitar bands who have been releasing records since 1997 you can say that about. 

We're Not Done (End Title)

Dry Fantasy

It's now November and it all looks pretty grim doesn't it? The tiered approach hasn't worked, we're in a new lockdown starting on Thursday. SAGE advised the government to do this weeks ago but they didn't. I guess Michael Gove was articulating government policy when he said during the Brexit campaign 'the British public has had quite enough of experts'. What he meant was government would ignore the advice of experts. 

We go back to school tomorrow, 1300 people crammed into a building together, 30 people in classrooms together breathing the same air, with an age group who can be highly contagious but asymptomatic, and therefore can be passing it on without realising they even have the virus. If you think about it too much, it's really scary. If you don't think about it, you become complacent. Something like a third of all transmissions are being traced from education, a figure that rises with the older teenage groups. A lockdown while keeping schools and colleges open will not be enough as far as I can see. We are being led by the worst people at the worst time. 

Mogwai have a new song out ahead of an album next year, an instrumental called Dry Fantasy, which suggests they've tapped into what's going on while also listening to 80s cosmische music, such as Michael Rother. 

This song was the last one on their soundtrack to the film Kin from 2018, a blistering but optimistic piece of modern guitar music, walls of sound and FX and some distant, sunken vocals that start off with the line  'holding back the fear again'. 

We're Not Done (End Titles)

Isolation Mix Eight

An hour and five minutes of lockdown vibes and an attempt to lift the spirits and up the tempo a bit this week. This one is a global trawl of tunes taking in Dubwood Allstars and their splicing together of King Tubby, Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton, a classic 70s Lee Perry production from the Black Ark in Kingston, Jamaica, Moon Duo doing Black Sabbath in very laid back style, groove- based melodic noise from Scotland (Mogwai) and Norway (Mythologen), some funky 80s crossover dance pop from NYC, Natasha Khan and Toy as Sexwitch, Paris duo Acid Arab and South London's Rude Audio, all on a Middle Eastern tip, and early 90s Balearic dub house majesty from Sheer Taft (Glasgow) and Underworld (Essex). Bank holiday weekend. Take it easy. Stay safe.

Dubwood Allstars: Under Dubwood

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Zap- Pow: Riverstone

Moon Duo: Planet Caravan

Mogwai: The Sun Smells Too Loud

Mythologen: Trust

Tom Tom Club: Wordy Rappinghood

Sexwitch: Ha Howa Ha Howa

Acid Arab: Club DZ

Rude Audio: Rumble On Arab Street

Sheer Taft: Cascades (Hypnotone Mix)

Underworld: M.E.

Isolation Mix Four

A bit of a change again for this week's hour long isolation mix, this time a trip into more psychedelic and psyche areas, some guitars, a couple of cover versions, some remixes and a re-edit of an 80s alt- classic with an eye, a third eye maybe, on the cosmic and the blissed out. One of the segues is a little bit clumsy but I can live with it. I've had to move the host over to Mixcloud as I'd used up all my available space at Soundcloud without going to the paid for service.



Tracklist-
The Durutti Column: Otis

Wixel: Expressway To Yr Skull (Long Champs Bonus Beats)

Moon Duo: Stars Are The Light

Curses: This Is The Day

Le Volume Courbe: Rusty

Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End

Mogwai: Party In The Dark

The Liminanas: The Gift (Anton Mix)

Goldfrapp v Spiritualized: Monster Love

Julian Cope: Heed Of Penetration and the City Dweller Head Remix by Hugo Nicholson

Edit Service 8 by It’s A Fine Line: The Story Of The Blues (Talkin’ Blues)

The Early Years: Complicity

Space Age Miracles

When Mogwai nail it they really nail it. Their 2017 album Every Country's Sun contained several career bests and this one was superb, led by plunging bass, dreamworld guitars and distortion and the echo drenched, otherworldly vocals of Stuart Braithwaite. Space age miracles are mentioned in the first verse but this is 21st century guitar music of the highest order.

Party In The Dark

Too Loud

Mogwai's The Sun Smells Too Loud (off their 2008 album Hawk Is Howling) is one of my favourite pieces of music of the 21st century, centred around rolling, pulsing bass and pounding drums and soaring guitars making an ecstatic noise. It is very lysergic with a groove you can dance to. A Youtube user called Simon has put Mogwai's music to clips of the Tommy Seebach Band and their dancers (filmed sometime in the late 60s doing Apache) to good effect.



There- doesn't improve your day?

The Sun Smells Too Loud

The James Holden remix, only available I think as part of his DJ Kicks CD, turns the noises up all over the place, dismantles the original and put its back together in a completely different order to fairly disorienting effect. All sorts of effects and FX going on including the main rippling guitar part played backwards (I think).

We're Not Done

This song from Mogwai came out back in June, from a soundtrack they've done for a sci fi film called Kin. The full soundtrack is out at the end of the month and also features an instrumental called Donuts that came out back in April. We're Not Done (End Title) picks up where last year's superb Party In The Dark left off with hazy vocals, washes of feedback and overdriven guitars and a sense of uplift among the noise and unease. A bit like standing in the hallway between two rooms, one where My Bloody Valentine are on a crappy radio and another where a pop group are playing, a bit indistinct but enough to hear the difference between the verses and chorus. Very nice indeed.

Mogwai Fear Nobody

Mogwai came back to Manchester's Albert Hall on Sunday night to play to another sold out crowd (they'd played Friday night too). People who went on the first night said I was in for a treat and they were right. Mogwai were stunning. Making noise is easy. Making noise with beauty in it, controlling it and riding it is something else. Mogwai have also hit upon a sweet spot where they can make largely instrumental guitar-heavy music that has huge emotional resonance. Post-rock can sometimes be technically impressive but a bit bloodless, without heart. Mogwai's tunes, especially the ones off last year's excellent Every Country's Sun, hit the spot. Party In The Dark, surging psychedelia crossed with Peter Hook's bass, is a proper moment, getting me right there.

The group switch instruments around, swapping from bass to guitar or guitar to keyboards, shards of melody escaping through the FX pedal wall of noise. In the fairly compact space of the Albert Hall with its high roof space, Methodist chapel organ pipes still in situ above the stage, the rising waves of guitar cause a few whoops and arms in the air but mainly people stand in silence, swaying slightly. Their use of rhythms, bass and toplines, crescendo, peaks and troughs often make me think that this is a band who are not just post-rock (which is a rubbish description anyway) but post-house too. The lightshow, strips of colour behind them, strobes and spots, add to the intensity. Mogwai work their way through much of the recent lp plus some older ones, a magical Rano Pano and an epic Mogwai Fear Satan. The songs unfold slowly, still and quiet beginnings and endings, sections that create a vast noise, three guitarists and a bassist perfectly in tune with each other, who can then kill it dead. At times, there's so much going on in the mix that its difficult to tell who is doing what. At the end of the set three of them are on their knees at the front of the stage, manipulating their pedals, playing the howling feedback and distortion. At the close of the encore Stuart is last off, again fiddling with the buttons on his pedals before leaving and the roadies appearing to turn the amps off. My only complaint is that they didn't play The Sun Smells Too Loud. I'm not sure I can forgive them for that actually, as it would have taken the top of my head clean off given the form they are in.

Mogwai Fear Satan


I caught the last two-and-a-bit songs by support act, electronic trio Beak>, who were busy being very good indeed- live synths and samples, bass and Geoff Barrow's krautrock drumming. The new one they finished with, which they promised they'd get wrong, sounded ace- and they didn't get it wrong either.

Let The Evocation Begin

Kettle on- Weatherall's brewing up. It's that man again back at that radio station playing that high quality and eclectic mix of songs again. Includes two from the excellent new Liminanas album, an old Weatherall remix of The Shoes, a new one from Timothy J Fairplay, an unreleased one from the Woodleigh Research Facility plus the latest Fort Beulah release.



Tonight I'm off to see Mogwai go through their paces at the Albert Hall in town. I am expecting a night of intense but ultimately uplifting instrumental post rock from bearded Scots in black played to intense but ultimately uplifting bearded Mancs in black.

Crossing The Road Material

Let's blow those post-Christmas cobwebs away with some Mogwai, a song that gained a video/short film on December 21st. This is one of those slowly building, sky-scraping guitar tracks that they do so well.



It can't take away that extra inch you've gained around the waist over the last few days though.

Party In The Dark

Oh look everyone, Mogwai just recorded and released one of the best things they've ever done. And it doesn't sound like a nuclear apocalypse either.



Feedback intro leading to Hooky-esque bass, rolling drums, euphoric guitars and gentle singing, everything rising steadily and insistently to a crescendo. Seems to fit in with these end days of summer, the closing in of the nights, the fading sunshine and Autumn's chilly fingers poking at you.

This song, from 2008's Hawk Is Howling, is a masterpiece of flowing, ecstatic, instrumental rock, which could work equally well on a dancefloor. One of my favourite pieces of music from the last decade.

The Sun Smells Too Loud

The picture shows a statue of Friedrich Engels, imported from Ukraine and placed outside the Manchester's new arts centre Home, in Tony Wilson Place. Engels lived in the city in the middle of the 19th century and wrote The Condition Of The Working Class In England based on his observations and research here. Engels had been sent to Manchester by his father, to live in Weaste, Salford, to work at the family firm. It was supposed to 'cure' him of his radical views. It had the opposite effect. Karl Marx visited him several times during his almost thirty year stay. The rest, as they often say, is history.

Fear

Flaming June eh? How come it's nearly half way through 2016 already? Today's offering is a treat for noiseniks from 1998, Kevin Shields remixing Mogwai and their already fearsome Mogwai Fear Satan song. Shields goes for broke with this sixteen minutes long song, adding flute and what at one point sounds like bagpipes to the guitar feakery. The first play of this on 12" when it came out made me wonder if the stylus or stereo were broken and although the breakdown section at around nine fifty is pretty beautiful it's probably not best served at a family barbeque. Credit where it's due, thanks to DH for his photo of a forest in the Lake District taken at the weekend.

Mogwai Fear Satan (My Bloody Valentine Remix)

Atomic

Mogwai are going to release their soundtrack to Atomic: Living In Dread And Promise, a BBC4 documentary from last summer. The documentary was a montage of the atomic age- mushroom clouds, fallout shelters, the Cold War, protests, X-rays and so on. The album will be have ten tracks and this one, U-235, is out on Soundcloud. It actually manages to sound like growing up in the 1980s with the ever present threat of nuclear war.

Rave On

I'm a bit of a dipper with Mogwai. I've got Young Team, Hawk Is Howling and one other- can't remember which off the top of my head. All three are excellent albums. They managed to pull off the trick of being always the same, always different. They have really good song titles. The new album- Rave Tapes- has unexpectedly wormed its way into my ears over the last week and is highly recommended. Quiet bits, noisier bits, some beautiful melodies, guitar lines and keyboards building intricately, a few crescendos, atmosphere, a bit of groove and rumbling drum patterns, the sampled ramblings of a Led Zep fan.

Here, one set of noisy boys (Mogwai) remix another set of noisy boys (Fuck Buttons).

Colours Move (Mogwai Remix)