Tears In June

Richard Norris continues to produce his Music For Healing series, monthly long form pieces of ambient/ deep listening. It started in March last year, and turned out to be an excellent way to deal with the pressures of lockdown. This year's releases have all been named after the months they appear in- June's is a particularly special piece of music. It's at Bandcamp. As it plays, the twinkling synth parts and washes of warm drone, there are moments where it really reminds me of Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack and especially Roy Batty's death scene with Rutger Hauer's partly improvised monologue. 

'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion. I watched C- Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.'

Tears In Rain

As June plays it attains a real sense of weightlessness, of being beyond gravity, the feeling of drifting through space. This feed from the International Space Station provides some very fitting footage to go with Richard's music. 

Tales Of The Future

More and more I think that the soundtrack to Blade Runner has been a formative influence on my listening. Which is weird because if someone asked me to list my favourite artists I'd never reply 'Vangelis'. Then film came out in 1982 and I saw it at the cinema (the Scala in Withington, a very run down flea pit with three screens, two small ones downstairs and a larger one upstairs with double seats on the back row. Entry was £1 and they weren't too fussy about age restrictions. It later became Cine City and then was demolished). The look of the film, the non stop rain and night, neon lights, 1940s/ 1980s fashions, Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Darryl Hannah and Sean Young all captured my attention- the famous roof top scene and Roy Batty's death (and Hauer's famous improvised lines) lingered long after the credits had rolled. Vangelis' instrumental score must have stuck with me too- the synths and keyboards, the rolling drums and pulsing synthesisers, the bleeps and sounds of the machinery worked into the music and the snippets of dialogue, the strange bursts of Japanese singing in Tales Of The Future, the ambient washes of sound and sudden rumbles of distant timpani... I hear these all over the place in things I listen to at the moment. Vangelis has a long shadow.

Tales Of The Future

Blade Runner (End Titles)

Tears In Rain

Strange to think that when Blade Runner came out the year it was set in, 2019, was nearly four decades away in the future and is now two years gone. These Polaroids were taken by Sean Young during filming are an incredible time capsule and snapshot of the past/ future.

Monday's Long Song

Eight minutes of blissed out synths and drum pads from Scottish DJ and producer Lord of The Isles with a track named after Rutger Hauer's famous line from Blade Runner. Tears In Rain was the closer on a 2011 release, an ep called We Were There (Freestyle Dancin').

Tears In Rain

If you want some freestyle dancing to brighten up your Monday this clip came my way over the weekend and it's ace, champion B-girls Wonda and Macca cutting some rug to Caterpillar by Royce da 5' 9".

Do Androids Dream Of 2019?

We're now in the year Blade Runner was set. We have until November for all the aspects of the film to be realised- replicants, flying cars, off world colonies, Voight- Kampff empathy response machines (although it wouldn't surprise me if these do exist). Maybe Blade Runner isn't very far from our 2019 at all- in the film corporations are all powerful, product and advertising is everywhere, the climate is seemingly broken (perpetual rain and night), the wealthy isolate themselves living high up above the streets where everyone else exists. Deckard's Esper machine is voice controlled and has the functions of Google Earth, the ability to manipulate photographs.

In Blade Runner's 2019 people dress in a cross between 1940s film noir and early 80s synth pop.

In the meantime, Vangelis' soundtrack remains a repeated joy.

Rachel's Song

Blade Runner Blues

Orion

Sons And Daughters were a two boy/two girl band from Glasgow, dressed like Johnny Cash and sounding like a roots group gone punk. Taut guitars, crisp drums, Scottish swagger, growls and shrieks in the vocals. I liked their first two albums a lot. They split up a few years ago.

The Emperor Machine is Andrew Meecham, synth enthusiast and producer and formerly a member of Bizarre Inc. In 2012 he remixed Sons And Daughters' Orion and turned it into a long, funky, expansive, in your face, cosmic trip. Eleven minutes and thirty seven seconds of trip.

Orion (Emperor Machine Mix)

Orion is one of the most prominent constellations in the sky, visible across the world, named after Orion the Hunter from Greek mythology. It makes me think of Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Bladerunner...

'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die'

Elle Et Moi

Sean Young and Rutger Hauer on the set of Bladerunner taking a replicant Polaroid selfie, circa 1982.

I'm A Cliche is the brainchild of French dj and producer Cosmo Vitelli. It's Edit Service offers up fortnightly remixes, edits and reworkings of all sorts of stuff by various remix types, often under pseudonyms, putting unofficial goodies into the public domain. Well worth a trawl if you've got a few hours on your hands this weekend. This one, Edit 61 from Front De Cadeaux, seems to be a slow mo version of Max Berlin's Elle Et Moi. The thunking piano chords and snaking horn make nine minutes fifty seconds go by in a very pleasant haze. Free download too.