Edit: this should have published eight hours ago but gremlins prevented it. Apologies to anyone eager for today's post- better late than never.
Back in 2006 Sunray recorded a single with Sonic Boom, a cover of Ocean by The Velvet Underground. Sunray's cover is a thirteen minute voyage of blissed out drones, led by organ and wobbly guitars, Sonic Boom on board all the way for the slo- mo, frazzled psychedelia. Epic in every sense.
Lou Reed wrote Ocean around the time of the sessions for Loaded but it didn't make the album. It turned up on his self titled debut in 1970, then on the 1974 Velvets live album 1969: The Velvet Underground Live and then the studio version finally seeing the light of day on VU in 1985. The tripped out lyrics- waves crashing down by the shore, the sea as a drug- are thrown into disarray by the second verse with its lines about insects, selfish men, Lou being driven nearly crazy and being a lazy son. The playing is superb, splashy cymbals and spindly guitars with a backwash of organ. The Velvets studio version, recorded in 1969, is much shorter than Sunray's cover, a mere five minutes- but what a way to spend five minutes.
Panda Bear and Sonic Boom's album Reset came out last year, a brightly coloured, psyche- pop record that took samples/ ideas from songs from the past and recast them. Sonic Boom asked Adrian Sherwood to do a dub and in typical Sherwood fashion he didn't do a dub, he did many dubs, eventually the entire album remixed dubwise style out by Sherwood and a selection of the On U Sound cast of players. Reset In Dub comes out in August digitally and then December on vinyl. To whet your whistle they launched Whirlpool Dub into the wilds last Friday. This dub/ psyche version of Panda Bear and Sonic Boom is very nice, with a tripped out edge, lots of warmth and sounds bouncing around the parameters of the mix- there's a cello in there too which works perfectly, as Panda Bear's voice gets sent reverberating into space. Buy it here.
Spacemen 3 had a relatively brief existence and unless you were there from the start by the time you'd read about them in the NME or Melody Maker, seen them on Snub TV, picked up 1989's Playing With Fire and then begun to find other pieces of vinyl by them, they were gone. By the time of 1991's Recurring album it was over for the group, Jason and Sonic Boom/ Pete recording separately, one side of the album each.
This footage on the internet is one of the few recordings of their gigs that exist, an hour of Spacemen 3 live at The Forum in Enger, Germany in 1989, transferred from VHS.
The setlist is prime '89 S3, opening with their cover of The 13th Floor Elevators and then their cover of Red Krayola's Transparent Radiation, Sonic Boom on Vox Teardrop and fuzz, drummer Jon Mattock banging away, Jason brining his Velvet gospel Underground and bassist Will Carruthers locked in with both notes (his book Playing The Bass With Three Left Hands is a must read). This footage is grainy, close up and full of what made them great.
RollercoasterTransparent RadiationThings'll Never Be The SameRepeater (Break)Take Me To The Other SideStarship (intro)StarshipRevolutionSuicideBo Diddley Jam
A Spacemen 3 Live In Europe came out in 1995, live recordings taken from four nights in Germany. Live, loose, ragged late 80s garage psychedelia.
Pete Kember's music in Spacemen 3 and afterwards as Spectrum, E.A.R. and Sonic Boom, sometimes looks like one long blissed out haze of analogue synths, shimmering waves, drones and endless repetition. Nothing wrong with that. His back catalogue has a wealth of songs, albums and remixes. The three quarters of an hour below contains nothing from his 1994 masterpiece Highs, Lows And Heavenly Blows, a treatise on meditative, tranced out, hypnotic guitar and synth drones with Sonic's trademark lethargic vocals, and that's solely because I don't have any of the songs from it in digital format. Pete currently lives in Sintra, Portugal which is clearly good for his work rate- he's released two new albums since 2020 and toured to promote them, along with last year's album with Panda Bear, as well as producing albums by Cheval Sombre, Beach House and Moon Duo.
True Love Will Find You In the End (Alternate Version)
How You Satisfy Me
Just Imagine
The Horizon (Sonic Boom No Drums Version)
Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough
Frozen (Sonic Boom Mix)
Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)
Tremolos and True Love Will Find You In The End were both released as Spectrum in 1992, the former a four minute wobbly, two note drone and the latter a gorgeous cover of Daniel Johnson's most well known song. They were also on a 1997 compilation called What Came Before After which is where this version of True Love Will Find You In The End is from.
How You Satisfy Me is from 1992's Soul Kiss (Glide Divine), an album that came with a translucent, liquid sleeve. Rare and expensive second hand and prone to bursting/ degrading.
Just Imagine was the lead song from 2020's All Things Being Equal. Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough was a follow up a year later, with a remix of Just Imagine and some new songs.
The Horizon is by Sinner DC, a Swiss ambient/ electronic/ drone group who have made a dozen albums since the 1990s.
Frozen, not from the Disney film about a snowman of the same name, is by The Insect Guide, a duo from Leeds who formed in 2005 and released two albums between 2007 and 2010.
Warmth Of The Sun is by Pye Corner Audio from last year's Let's Emerge album, a track with Andy Bell on guitar. Sonic Boom remixed three of the songs for an EP titled Let's Remerge.
Yesterday 200 miles, today 200 bars. On Spiritualized's debut album, 1992's Lazer Guided Melodies, Jason closes an hour's worth of pain and beauty, spaced out symphonies and gliding garage rock, with 200 Bars. Over waves of organ and chiming guitars Kate counts from 1 to 100, the bars (musical) and bars (drinking) word play driven home as Jason starts singing/ whispering, 'I'm gonna lose my thoughts in 200 bars/ You know I've tried but now I'm tired/ I'm losing track of time in 200 bars'. The music comes to a stop and Kate closes things with, '200'.
In the same year, Jason's erstwhile bandmate Pete Kember, was moving on slowly as Sonic Boom/ Spectrum. Soul Kiss (Glide Divine) came out that year on translucent vinyl in a liquid sleeve. The ten songs housed in that liquid sleeve find Sonic in an even more dreamy, drifting spaced out place than Jason. Tranquil, dappled, blissed out, waves of sound.
A mix for Monday, my seventh for Tak Tent Radio who broadcast out of central Scotland with a range of contributors and guests. This one, has music from a lot of artists who have graced the pages of this blog this year-Mark Peters with Dot Allison remixed by Richard Norris, Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel from 1991, Pye Corner Audio remixed by Sonic Boom, Andy Bell remixed by David Holmes, Gabe Gurnsey, Jazxing, Jezebell's recent edit of Laurie Anderson, Carly Simon, Dirt Bogarde and Boxheater Jackson. In short- starts ambient, goes Balaeric and ends up dancey. Listen here or here.
Mark Peters and Dot Allison: Sundowning (Richard Norris Ambient Remix)
Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel: Don’t Lose Your Drums
Pye Corner Audio: Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)
Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology remix)
More new music, this time from regular postees Pye Corner Audio and Sonic Boom, the latter remixing the former. Pye Corner Audio's album Let's Emerge has bene a 2022 highlight, layers of subtleties and nuance in the drones and ambience. Pye Corner is often the music of dystopic nightmares, unsettling and subterranean. On Let's Emerge he has tried to face the light and make music that is optimistic and warm. On the closing track, Warmth Of The Sun, with Andy Bell on guitar he more than achieves it. Over the previous two sides of vinyl, the more I listen to it, the more I hear it (especially now my right ear is functioning more fully).
Sonic Boom, residing in Sintra, Portugal, has remixed three of the tracks from let's Emerge and they're coming out as an EP, digital and vinyl with the 10" vinyl limited to 1000 copies on orange vinyl with am inside print too. By the time I heard about it it had sold at Bandcamp which at least spared me the moral dilemma of whether or not I could justify spending £17.99 on a three song EP (spoiler- I couldn't). The first of the three is available to listen to, a remix of Saturation Point that Sonic has pivoted back to the gloom. It starts out with gloomy synth sounds and creeping drones but eventually the door opens and twinkling beams of light work their way in, with a lovely, echo- laden Andy Bell guitar line that working its way to the fore. The EP, Let's Remerge!, out in November, also has Sonic Boom remixes of Haze Loops and Warmth Of The Sun which on the basis of this will be worth waiting for.
Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures is a repeated listening highlight, broadcasting on Radio Magnetic from Glasgow, Brother Joseph in the mix joined by Stephen Haldane and an all star cast of guests- David Holmes, Sonic Boom, Nina Walsh, Andy Bell/ Glok and Chris Rotter have all spun in guest mixes.
Sonic Boom has recently released an album, Reset, with Panda Bear, a collaboration combining their love of early 60s pop with their own psychedelia. In making Reset they sampled various artists from the Kennedy/ Kodachrome years and constructed their own songs around the samples- The Troggs, Eddie Cochrane, The Everley Brothers, The Drifters and Randy And The Rainbows all turn up in the songs, recognisable but submerged too. The effect is a brightly coloured, woozy, layered, head spinner of an album where everything sounds both new and old at the same time. The loops and samples make the songs exist in circles, spinning permanently on a Sonic Boom/ Panda Bear jukebox- the appear, play and disappear, one after another, harmonies and handclaps and reverb drenched drum tracks rotating, seemingly forever. This one Edge Of The Edge , sampling Randy And The Rainbows' 1963 song Denise, sounds like the most early 60s Beach Boys song since the Beach Boys themselves were an early 60s band.
Brother Joseph invited Sonic Boom back to Sonic Treasures and Sonic put together a Reset mix, the source songs and the Sonic/ Panda songs together in a seamless fifty two minutes. The full four hour show with Brother Joseph playing an hour of ambient/ psyche/ country with some new Chris Rotter magic, Stephen Haldane with a half hour delight including Django Django, Andrew Weatherall and Syd Barrett, Sonic Boom's Reset mix and then Joseph back for the outro section is at Soundcloud.
I was reminded of this poem earlier this week while reading something else, sweltering in the heat we've had hanging over us. It's called The Dead and it's by US poet Billy Collins.
'The dead are always looking down on us, they say, while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich, they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth, and when we lie down in a field or on a couch, drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon, they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes'
It was the final reading at Isaac's funeral last December, read by the celebrant at the graveside. I found it in a poetry anthology I have and it seemed appropriate. How we managed to do anything last December baffles me looking back, never mind plan a funeral- it seems now like we were alternating between being on numb autopilot and stumbling round in a fog. I haven't thought much about the poem since the funeral but reading it two days ago, sitting and sweltering in the heat we've had hanging over us for the last few days, it moved me (again) and I was struck (again) by the sentiment in it and it seemed to provide some comfort in a way I hadn't considered when I chose it back in December.
I've not been very well recently. In the middle of May I developed a cough which refused to go away for six weeks. After three weeks of coughing I went to the doctors and they sent me for various tests- a chest X- Ray, blood tests and so. All came back clear. It was suggested I might have developed asthma and I was prescribed an inhaler which made no difference. Just as the cough started to clear up I went deaf in my right ear (nearly four weeks ago now). At a rough estimate I'd say I've got about 10% of my hearing in that ear. It's muffled and feels blocked and no matter what I do I can't pop it. It seems my sinuses and eustachian tube are blocked but nothing seems to be unblocking it and as well as being incredibly frustrating (not being able to hear is grim) it veers between uncomfortable and painful. In the morning it has sometimes cleared but as soon as I get up and stand up, it fills up again. At times the tinnitus in the right ear is very pronounced too (although that was there before it got blocked). Since going back to the doctor I've been on a steroid nasal spray and decongestants but nothing seems to be working. I've had some hay fever in the past but nothing like this. I don't know if the pollen is particularly bad this year- some reports say it is- and maybe my hay fever has been exacerbated by having Covid last December, everything inflamed by the virus, or if the stress of the last seven months has poleaxed my immune system, or if it's something else, but having never been a particularly ill person, it's really affecting me being unwell for so long. I can't help but feel it's in some way connected to Isaac's death and the aftermath of all that. Apart from anything else, it's really affecting my ability to listen to and enjoy music, which is shit.
This is new from Panda Bear and Sonic Boom, a summer infused slice of Beach Boys style psychedelic pop called Go On with a Troggs sample contained within it's grooves. An album follows in July. It's got little to do with either the Billy Collins poem above or my medical woes but it's a feel good piece of music for the middle of July and even heard in mono lifts me up.
No long song today, a mix instead. Tak Tent Radio is an internet radio station broadcasting out of Scotland with mixes and shows from an array of contributors and regular guests. Some time ago I was asked if I'd like to provide an hour of music for Tak Tent and have since been back four times. The latest Bagging Area Tak Tent mix went up on Saturday and can be found here. More ambient, instrumental and Balearic sounds segued together in a way that I hope is pleasing and semi- competent. I've posted quite a few of the tracks in the mix here in recent times.
Underworld: Dark & Long (Most ‘Ospitable Mix)
David Holmes and Jon Hopkins featuring Stephen Rea:
Elsewhere Anchises
William Alfred Sergeant: Circles
Chris Carter: Poptone
William Orbit: Wordsworth
Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
Steve Cobby: 45ft. Tide
Gabriel Yared: C’est Le Vent, Betty
Andy Bell: When The Lights Go Down
The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise (David
Holmes Remix)
Projections: Original Cell (Coyote Deep State Remix)
Coyote: The Outsider
For some reason while putting it together the Gabriel Yared track suggested itself to me- I have no idea why. C'est Le Vent, Betty is from the soundtrack to the film Betty Blue. I'm sure you remember Betty Blue...
Betty Blue was released in 1988, directed by Jean- Jacques Beineix and starring Beatrice Dalle as Betty and Jean- Hugues Anglade as Zorg. Zorg lives in a beach house on the coast, making a living as a handyman while trying to become a writer. Betty arrives and turns his life upside down, setting fire to a beach house, stabbing a customer at a pizzeria with a fork and a sharp, painful descent into depression and hospitalisation. The film's first half, all young love and impulsiveness, sex and bohemian lifestyle, contrast sharply with the horrors of the second half. According to the director the film's two stars became very much intertwined, a relationship that went beyond acting. 'We didn't know if they were in the movie anymore', he said. Which puts the film's opening scene, a lengthy sex scene, in a different light. The soundtrack was by Gabriel Yared, a Lebanese composer and pianist and works as a listen in its own right. As well as the track on my mix above, this pair are a good way to start the week.
Earlier this year Cheval Sombre, the musical vehicle for New York poet/ songwriter Chris Porpora, released two albums- Time Waits For No One and Days Go By. Both are beautiful records, slightly frazzled, folky/ acoustic guitar songs with Sonic Boom at the controls adding a swirly, quietly psychedelic backdrop. Dean and Britta added backing vocals and guitar. Both are really good, a self- contained world in themselves and also, especially Time Waits For No One, quite bleak. Had Enough Blues, a desperate plea to shut the outside world off is punctuated by samples of terrorist attacks and atrocities from news channels.
The pair of albums were released a couple of months apart and they're not an easy, everyday listen but well worth the investment and the time spent with them if you fancy some catharsis. Cheval Sombre's voice is recorded really close to the mic, like he's singing in the room next to you. Days Go By is more up, the promise of spring after the dark of winter It's difficult not to draw parallels with the recording of them during 2020 and everything the pandemic threw at us. Even so, Days Go By isn't exactly a happy- go- lucky song and dance album, more a sense of relief that we made it through the night and the dawn has actually appeared.
To bookend the year there's now a three song EP (out of 10" vinyl if that's your bag). The lead song is an eight minute cover version of Althea, a song originally by The Grateful Dead (and that's the first time they've been mentioned here I think).
It's followed by a Sonic Boom remix of Are You Ready (from Days Go By), the sound of snow falling late at night while, all echo and reverb, some organ and FX and Cheval Sombre's voice. It's a stunner.
This is an hour's worth of songs and sounds I put together a week ago, got distracted from and went back to yesterday. I'm not sure it's quite right but I'm not unpicking the whole thing now so it's here for what looks like a wet and rainy Monday in August. Find it at Mixcloud.
I did think about dropping found sounds from the BBC sound archive all the way though it- a future project perhaps. I'm not sure the Scritti Politti song works where it is either but there's some nice ambient sounds from Sebidus (The Orb's Alex Paterson and Andy Falconer), some Balearic loveliness from Coyote, solo Strummer, Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson as Poltergeist, Dean and Britta doing Kraftwerk, Sonic Boom droning out Sinner DC, some spaced out sounds from Oregon's Lore City, William Orbit at chill level 10 and Mono Life's stunner of a remix of Pearl's Cab Ride from a few years ago.
A week in blistering heat in the Wye Valley does wonders- the lazily twisting River Wye, the hills and deep valleys of the Forest of Dean, houses dotted on the hillsides and built into steps cut out of the landscape, a wooden cabin shaded by the canopy of an oak tree, cold beers and long evenings... the only shame is five days wasn't long enough. I've never been to the Wye Valley before. It's a very distinctive part of the country and it really feels like a place on its own, a geographically unique area with beautiful countryside and an industrial heritage- iron, timber, mines, railways, ore, charcoal, wire and cable industries all thrived during the 19th and early 20th century. Just a few miles drive and you hit the River Severn and various harboursides.
Some valleys in song from the hard drive. Allez Allez were an early 80s Belgian New Wave produced by Martin Ware.
Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasure Show broadcasts out of Glasgow via Radio Magnetic, weaving a mix of cosmic, psyche, ambient, downtempo and dub. This one, Sonic Treasures Part Six, went out two weeks ago. At the start of the year there was a superb two part adventure through the world of Woodleigh Research Facility. Tonight Joseph presents a three part show featuring himself, the talents of Stephen Haldane and a one hour forty minute mix courtesy of Sonic Boom. Now based in Portugal, Sonic Boom (Pete Kember) has pursued analogue synths, space rock and electronic drone with a single minded devotion from Spacemen 3 to Spectrum to E.A.R. to his 1990 and 2020 albums under his Sonic Boom name and through productions and remixes of a bunch of like minded artists, including Dean and Britta, Cheval Sombre, Moon Duo, Yo La Tengo, Panda Bear and Beach House. Having had a taster in advance Sonic's mix for tonight's show is a blast, a trippy glide by through his back pages with productions for Beach House, Deakin, Dean and Britta (a very blissed out cover of I'm So Bored With the USA), Moon Duo and Cheval Sombre, remixes of Ghost Wave, Vola Tila and some of his own songs from last year's All Things Being Equal album and much more, ebbing and flowing, waves of spaced out, forward thinking, psychedelic sounds. Well worth tuning into if you've had any interest in Mr Boom's work from Spacemen 3 and beyond. You can find the show at Radio Magnetic from 9.00pm tonight.
Sonic Boom's album Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough is out later this month, with remixed and reworked versions of songs from last year's album plus two songs previously not released outside Japan. This song, Tick Tock, one of the songs released in the Japanese market only, is a masterclass of repetition and warm drones and tones.
Cheval Sombre's album Time Waits For No One came out in February, a Sonic Boom produced collection of after hours psychedelic folk songs. There's a companion album coming out in May called Days Go By, again produced by Sonic Boom (who also contributes keyboards and processing) and this wasted, dreamy sparse folk song has just come out in advance of it. The strings that come in and take over for the last couple of minutes are especially sublime.
Sonic Boom has announced a remixed version of his album from last year, a record called Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough, out in April. More analogue synths, more drones, more slow motion, tripped out washes of sound, more songs that sound like waking up to the sun coming through the trees, flashes of light and rainbows at the edges of your vision. On A Summer's Day is the first release. The album is available at Bandcamp and out on clear vinyl with a neon candy splatter in a foil embossed jacket with a poster. I'd be happy with plain old black vinyl and a cardboard sleeve but that doesn't seem to be an option. Video here.
The album he produced with Cheval Sombre is also out soon, at the end of this month I think. Fragile songs for late at night, acoustic guitars and hushed vocals. Curtain Grove has Sonic on guitar and Britta on backing vocals. The album, Time Waits For No One, will be on white vinyl. Video here.
A cosmic, psychedelic lullaby from Cheval Sombre- you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be touched by this. A little bit of the 'it's 2am and you're still up thinking things through' feeling, fragile but out there too. The acoustic guitar motif circles round and round gently as Cheval sings softly. The video- two sunsets side by side- is quite something too. Produced by Sonic Boom and from an album out at the end of February called Time Waits For No One. It's Not Time is here and below.
Sonic Boom has a Christmas song out now, roping in Dean and Britta (from Galaxie 500 and Luna) for some vocal harmonies. It's a blissed out ode to finding some warmth in the middle of this winter. 'Take me somewhere' Pete sings, 'a lil' bit deeper', as the synths wash, the loops loop and the drum machine whirrs. Peace on earth and goodwill to all. Available at Bandcamp at a name- your- price deal with all the proceeds going to EarthIsland.
It's going to be a funny old Christmas for many of us but everyone seems to be determined to make the best of it and rightly so. Happy Christmas to you all, look after yourselves and each other.
2020, it goes without saying, has been a year unlike any other. When the first lockdown kicked in back in March, schools were closed and everyone bar essential workers was told to stay at home, I briefly wondered if writing a music blog was suddenly a redundant activity, a bit futile and inadequate in the face of what was happening. The fear back in March was real, the scenes of people dying in hospital corridors in Italy coupled with rising case numbers and deaths and the sheer ineptitude of our government made everything else- even Brexit- seem inconsequential. In fact, as the weeks of lockdown turned into months and now almost a year of lockdowns and Tiers, music has been one of the things that has helped and despite our individual isolation has been one of the things that has brought us together. Anyone that has logged onto one of Sean Johnston's Emergency Broadcast Sessions and seen a community coming together in the chat function, enjoying hours of Sean DJing and chatting away will have seen how important music is as a release, as a connection and as simple escapist enjoyment. And despite everything there has been loads of great music made, written, recorded, produced and released this year. In some ways, I've enjoyed more new music this year than in many recent ones.
Albums Of The Year
The best albums this year seem to have reflected the year (some of been made as a result of lockdown and time artists have had to create). There are masses of albums that have been floating around and that caught my ear. Before I get into the list proper, these ones have all been part of 2020- Wedge by Number, an exuberant post- punk, dance album with an ACR remix to boot, Julian Cope's Self Civil War (my last gig before lockdown, in February, was Julian at Gorilla), Steve Roach's Tomorrow, Rickard Javerling's 4, The Orb's Abolition Of The Royal Familia (or at least parts of it), Youth and Jah Wobble's Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse (an album with multiple guest stars, including Hollie Cook, Alex Paterson, Blue Pearl and beats from Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh and which sounds good when it's playing but which I can't remember much about when it's not), Rose City Band's Summerlong (the latest Ripley Johnson project, cosmic country/ boogie, some of which is superbly out there, a blissed out version of Laurel Canyon), the nine remixes that made up Unloved's Why Not release (including a superb Richard Sen remix and dub plus outstanding remixes from Phil Kieran, Hardway Bros and The Vendetta Suite), a similar release by Joe Morris, nine remixes of his Balearic album from the year before compiled as Exotic Remixes, and a follow up to his The Malcontent Volume 1 by Duncan Grey (who drip fed us some great standalone songs throughout 2020 before giving us The Malcontent Volume 2). An honourable mention too to three albums that were made decades ago but only saw the light of day this year- Neil Young's legendary Homegrown, Rig's Perfect and Bushpilot's 23, three very different but better late than never albums. I also loved A Man Called Adam's career spanning oddities and extras round up Love Forgotten, a digital only release that packs a huge amount into it's twenty songs.
I know that I should have heard Working Men's Club by now and just haven't got round to it despite them appearing to be right up my alley. They're on my list, as are Sault who everyone else I know raves about and I just haven't dived in there yet.
These are the twelve albums that have been the pick of 2020 at Bagging Area, in roughly this order even if finding a meaningful way to rank them is really tricky. The albums at the top of the list could be placed either way round depending on which I'm listening to at the time.
12. Future Beat Alliance 'Beginner's Mind'
An immersive nine track trip taking in ambient, drones, acid and the melodic futurism of 2th century Detroit techno.
11. Kelly Lee Owens 'Inner Song'
A strong set of electronic songs and grooves from Kelly and a step on from her debut (which I loved). Corner Of My Sky, intense, weather beaten 2020 techno with John Cale's vocals stood out but everything else on it, from the banging grooves of Melt! to the bleary eyed soundscapes, sounded as good.
10. GLOK 'Dissident remixes'
GLOK's 2019 record was as good as anything else out last year. The remix album was trailed by one of the final Andrew Weatherall remixes, a beautiful but low key, urban ambient remix of Cloud Cover. Across the rest of the record were some equally innovative versions from Richard Sen, C.A.R., Leaf, Minotaur Shock and others and from GLOK (Andy Bell himself).
9. Brian and Roger Eno 'Mixing Colours'
A beautifully meditative set of treated piano pieces that drift out of the speakers and around the room. Made perfect sense back in May when I was raging about VE Day and contemplating turning fifty.
8. Richard Norris 'Elements'
Five long tracks made with modular synths, lovely pulses and washes of sound, hypnotic analogue sequences and gentle drones that built on his Abstractions records from 2019 and his excellent Music For Healing series from the spring and summer- deep listening for difficult days. Richard has made some of the defining sounds of 2020 for me.
9. The Long Champs 'Straight To Audio'
A one man band from Wales (Lloyd Jones) making chuggy, trippy instrumentals that found favour with Andrew Weatherall's Convenanza and the Weatherall/ Johnston travelling disco A Love From Outer Space. Multiple, shimmering guitar tracks, washes of FX, slow motion dance beats and a style of upbeat shoegaze that transported me when things seemed irredeemably gloomy.
8. Four Tet 'Sixteen Oceans'
Released as lockdown struck Kieran Hebden's latest record, three sides of vinyl plus a fourth of locked grooves, is a distillation of everything that he's good at. Teenage Birdsong came out in 2019, those skippy beats and lighter- than- air melodies pointing the way, and the rest of the album lived up to it. When I was hearing this in March it seemed like it made a stake to be the year's defining record and it hasn't diminished that much in the time between. A cut above most of the rest.
7. Rheinzand 'Rheinzand'
Rheinzand are a trio from Belgian who have made the darkest disco and the headiest sounds of 2020, a stunning twelve song record with a hot, sticky cover of Talking Heads' Slippery People and in Fourteen Again a song to keep picking up the needle and putting it back to the start. One of those albums that made you/ me forget everything and just focus on being in the music, in the moment.
6. Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini 'Illusion Of Life'
This record sound tracked March for me and will forever be the music of lockdown 1- drones, industrial ambience, some intense and dense atmospheres and mesmerising waves of noise. It is beautiful and ominous and sometimes a really difficult record to pin down. These are the sounds that increasingly have been where I've headed as the year has gone on and if Daniel hadn't recorded another album in lockdown that just pips this one, this could easily be my album of the year.
5. Sonic Boom 'All Things Being Equal'
Pete Kember's first new album in decades, an analogue synth based set of songs that are exactly what he's been doing for three decades but which sound like a new idea. The lead single, Just Imagine, is one of my favourite songs of this year and it sits among the hypnotic, beguiling, psychedelic trip of the rest of the record. When it's on the turntable it engulfs you and fills the room, Pete seeing through his own hallucinations to deliver a political message of kinds- the way you live your life matters.
4. Roisin Murphy 'Roisin Machine'
The glitterball, dancefloor dynamics of Roisin and DJ Parrot turned into album form, songs segueing into each other, tension and release, and Roisin's singular vision front and centre. Dazzling in places and dizzying in others, 2019's single Incapable and 2020's Something More showcasing the just- this- side- of- demented disco pop that she's made her own. If New Year's Eve parties were a thing, this record would be best slipped on at about 10.45pm and then played through to midnight. This performance was filmed in lockdown in Ibiza.
3: A Certain Ratio 'Loco'
Loco, the first ACR album for twelve years, came out in September, a ten song record that seems to try to fit onto one disc everything that makes them who they are: post- punk veterans, 80s funk experimenters, late 80s/ early 90s acid house dance movers, a motorik Berlin- inspired pop group and writers of Mancunian love songs. It's a completely self- contained record- it sounds like them and could only have been made by them, and Jez, Donald and Martin sound revitalised. Sadly, it came only weeks after the tragic death of Denise Johnson, who had sung with the band since the early 90s and who sings on four of the songs on Loco. Along with her solo album which came out at the same time, it's a fitting tribute.
2: Daniel Avery 'Love + Light'
In lockdown Daniel shut himself away in his studio, a shipping container overlooking the Thames and made music. Ghostly ambient moods, intense sounds that ripple and shudder out of the speakers, late night/ post- club washes of calming noise, bleepy melodies that pull at the emotions and some blistering techno capable with a few heart- stopping moments. A gorgeous, immersive record that sounds like the respite we've all needed this year.
1. Andy Bell 'The View From Halfway Down'
Andy stopped off from the Ride re- union and his cosmic adventures as GLOK to make a solo album and it hasn't been far from my turntable since it's release in the autumn. Opened by the late 80s guitar attack bliss of Love Comes In Waves and then followed by the rolling reverse groove and backwards vocals of Indica, the album is the perfect marriage of texture, sound and feel with songs- Skywalker is beautiful, sun kissed psychedelia, Cherry Cola is upwards looking, dreamy psyche- pop and album closer Heat Haze On Wayland Road is seven minutes of shoegaze updated for 2020, a Hooky- esque bassline and some achingly lovely synth sounds.
Neither Album Nor Single But Something Else Entirely Releases Of The Year
Richard Norris 'Music For Healing 1- 12'
In between my albums and singles of 2020 there is a series of releases by Richard Norris, twelve twenty minute ambient/ deep listening tracks, recorded and released with the intention of giving people music to help them switch off and to cope with the stresses of the first lockdown. The twelves pieces are all beautiful, meditative, immersive pieces of work that are as much part of 2020 for me as anything else I've written about here- they are neither albums nor singles but something else entirely (although the twelve have been edited down to much shorter pieces and compiled as a CD which is highly recommended).
Singles/Songs / Remixes/ EPs Of The Year
I'm not sure what even constitutes a single anymore and it probably doesn't matter. Anyway, a top forty five, the number most associated with the single format (apologies to anything I've missed and there will be something).
45. Fireflies 'The Machine Stops'
44. Joe Morris 'The New Dawn Will Come' EP
43. Stray Harmonix 'Mountain Of One'
42. Apiento and Tepper '17- 44- 58' EP
41. A.M.O.R. 'The Decline And Fall Of A Mountain Of Rimowa'
40. Fontaines DC 'A Hero's Death'
39. Rich Lane 'Barry Island'
38. Michael Son of Michael 'Babylonian Beaches' Rude Audio Remix
37. Pye Corner Audio 'Where Things Are Hollow 2' EP
36. Golden Fang AsTRiD
35. Doves 'Carousels'
34. Sink Ya Teeth 'Somewhere Else'
33. The Orielles 'Bobbi's Secret World' Confidence Man Remix
32. Thurston Moore 'Hashish'
31. Sinead O'Connor 'Trouble Of The World'
30. Roisin Murphy 'Something More' Crooked Man Remixes
29. Massey v Sir Horatio 'Music Control'
28. Leo Mas and Fabrice ft. Sally Rodgers 'This Unspoken Love' and dub mix
27. Rich Lane 'Prusik' (Live From The Woods) from the Knots EP.
26. Dreems 'Shark Attack' EP
25. Night Noise 'Dancing In Space' EP
24. Fjordfunk 'It's All Black' Hardway Bros Remix
23. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Woodleigh's Lament'
22. Number 'Wedge' A Certain Ratio v Number (ACR Rework)
21. Dan Wainwright 'Raindance' EP especially the pagan house of A Blessing
20. Duncan Grey 'Steve Killage'
19. The Avalanches ft. Jamie Xx, Neneh Cherry and CLYPSO 'Wherever You Go'
18. Richard Norris 'Golden Waves' EP
17. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Medieval Dub'
16. The Venetians 'Son Sur Son' Andrew Weatherall Remixes
15. Django Django 'Marble Skies' Andrew Weatherall Remix (from 2018 but unreleased until this year).
14. Cantoma 'Closer' Apiento remix
13. The Orb 'The Weekend It Rained Forever (The Ravens Have Left The Tower)'
An album track but I'm sneaking it in here because it shows what Dr. Alex Paterson can still do when he gets everything exactly right- a long, meandering, slightly spooky ambient future classic, Blade Runner and pouring rain, and another track that chimed in tune with lockdown in March.
12. Moon Duo 'Planet Caravan'
A ten minute long cover of a 1970 Black Sabbath song that is the pinnacle of chilled out, take your time guitar playing and whispered vocals. From a Sacred Bones compilation.
11. Andy Bell 'Chery Cola' Pye Corner Audio Remix
The album song made even better, layers of cosmic synths and the ending, where it breaks down into folky acoustic guitar, is sublime.
10. Andy Bell 'Love Comes In Waves'
Shimmering guitar lines beamed in direct from 1989 and a vocal that surfs over the top. Euphoric guitar pop. Summer 2020.
9. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Monthly EP Series'
These should probably be presented above with Richard Norris's Music For Healing series. In January Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh began a series of digital only, three track EPs to be released monthly throughout 2020. Events overtook them but the releases kept coming and there are some magnificent pieces of music contained within the folders- a few highlights include Birthday Three from January, Fume Homage a month later, Somnium from March, the tracks from the autumn with Joe Duggan's poetry over the top (Downhill and Play Bingo With Me), the Karra Mesh EP in May and July's Substation Glow and from the latest release The Fallen.
8. Bicep 'Atlas'
I slept on this a bit at first, thinking it was just another Bicep track, but its peaks, the ebb and flow, the rippling toplines, rattling drums, snatches of vocal and happy/ sad house music have been coming around again and again since it came out in March.
7. Formerlover 'Correction Dub'
A bonkers but enthralling collision of dub and Nigerian rhythms by Justin Robertson with his wife Sofia on vocals, speaking/ singing about domination and suchlike.
6. Aimes 'A Star... In The Sky' plus Hardway Bros remix'
Massive sounding sci fi chuggy dance music with a bouncing bassline and portentous vocal sample. Ridiculously good and with Saturn and Jupiter about to be in close conjunction in the sky next week well timed for pulling out again.
5. Sonic Boom 'Just Imagine'
I mentioned this in the album review above but it's such a wonderful, tripped out, wiggy song, Pete asking us to imagine being a tree/ simplicity/ being truly free as the analogies rhythms and synths whirr by.
4. Andrew Weatherall 'Unknown Plunderer/ End Times Sound
This pair of deep cuts, experimental end of the world dub with spaced out sound effects and some guitar from beyond the solar system by Andy Bell (him again), were released on February 21st, four days after Andrew died, a piece of timing no- one expected or wanted. The two tracks demonstrate why he was such a gifted producer and why he is so missed.
3. Green Gartside 'Tangled Man/ Wishing Well'
This came out of nowhere on 7" in the summer, a gorgeous pair of covers of songs by British folk singer Anne Briggs, the golden voice of Green Gartside reborn with some sumptuous dubby folk- pop music. I love it when a single blindsides me and this did exactly that.
2. Andrew Weatherall 'The Moton 5' EP
Four slices of Lord Sabre's customary, easy brilliance, not least in the title track of this EP which glides in with a propulsive bassline, a mechanical rhythm and some very moody synths. The strings that come in at two minutes add some drama to the chug and then it all then glides on, seemingly endlessly but actually only for another five minutes. The Moton 5.2 strips it down and delivers an alternate take. The 12" EP came out in April, two months after he passed and sounds like what he always promised on his Music's Not For Everyone radio show for NTS- tomorrow's music today.
1. Daniel Avery 'Lone Swordsman'
On the morning of February 17th Daniel Avery was in his metal box studio when he heard of the death of his friend and mentor Andrew Weatherall. He captured his feelings in this piece of music, four minutes of emotional, instrumental dance music that captures the spirit of the man and how many people felt with him suddenly gone- a breakbeat, some synths, an unfolding chord sequence and what appear to be the root notes of Smokebelch occasionally peaking through. In a year where emotions have often been very close to the surface, Daniel made a piece of music that is simple and minimal but layered and nuanced and extremely moving. Proof as well that music helps, and that when times are hard music is often the answer.
This long song came out in 1989, the first solo single by Sonic Boom. He recorded it while still in Spacemen 3 and put it out on 12" and then also as a song on his 1989 album, an album called Spectrum which later became the name of his post- Spacemen 3 project. It's all part of the same body of work I think. The album and single version were over seven minutes long but the 12" had this extended version, nine minutes forty seconds of Sonic's slow burning plea for redemption/ ode to heroin. Beginning with finger snaps and then a muted guitar riff rising and falling, Sonic speaks his way through the song. A guitar solo long, slightly distorted notes kicks in. After an age an organ and a heavenly choir join and the whole thing repeats through to the fade out hypnotically.
