Weatherall Remix Friday Eleven

Inevitably September arrives and brings summer to an end, dusk falling earlier and back to school. I'm feeling it particularly keenly right now, the changing seasons and forward march of the year.  And the return to work which happens today. 

This week's Weatherall Remix Friday visits Two Lone Swordsmen in 1997 remixing old friends The Aloof (a group containing two former Sabres Of Paradise in Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner plus Rich Thair of Red Snapper, Dean Thatcher and Ricky Barrow). Sinking was the title track on The Aloof's second album, following 1994's superb dub- techno/ rave opus Cover The Crime. Sinking was a darker album, less clubby, more after hours, with some trip hop and blues as a part of the sound and more of a live band feel, something of a comedown record after the previous one's partying. 

There's plenty here to enjoy. TLS load up a skippy house beat, a deep house bassline, splashing cymbals and a lovely wiggly synth topline that weaves its way through the remix for seven minutes. Late 90s downtempo/ deep house that keeps your attention engaged and head nodding throughout. This vinyl rip has a lovely burst of crackle at the start for the vinyl lovers out there. 

Sinking (Two Lone Swordsmen House Mix)

Also from the 12" remix package is a pair of Ashley Beedle remixes, this one being the pick of the pair. Clattering drums, whispers, whistles and minor chords.

Sinking (Nautical Cosmic Break Mix)

Half An Hour Of Disco Poco Loco Pub

Out in Mallorca, straddling the Palma Nova/ Magaluf border, sits Disco Poco Loco Pub. Sadly, it wasn't open when we were there two weeks ago but every time we passed it I enjoyed the sign and the thought of Disco Poco Loco Pub. For this week's half hour mix I'm putting together thirty four minutes of music that the DJ at Poco Loco might have played. I'm guessing that the tracks I've stitched together below aren't what will be coming out of the speakers and filling the floor once the season is well under way in Magaluf so the mix below is more of a Poco Loco mix of the mind or of my imagination, some piano house and Balearic remixes, spanning the mid 80s to this year. 

Disco Poco Loco Pub Mix

• Voice Of Africa: Hoomba Hoomba
• Piano Fantasia: Song For Denise
• Coyote: As The Crow Flies
• Saint Etienne: Speedwell (Flying Mix)
• The Aloof: Never Get Out Of The Boat (Gosh Mix)
• Audio Trip: Dreamatic

If the mix is a bit clunky in places, that's all part of the appeal. The DJ at Poco Loco isn't too fussed about mixing, it's all about the vibe and the song selection. Plus it's difficult to see with those sunglasses on indoors. While smoking. It was even more random when he/I was trying to shoehorn Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the theme from Hill Street Blues into it. Maybe we'll have to return to Disco Poco Loco Pub another time. 

Underneath Disco Poco Loco Pub  there is a shop selling tat for tourists. Being both a tourist and someone who is partial to a bit of tat, I had a look inside. All three of us agreed that Isaac would have loved the mug you can see below. He would have laughed long and hard at being offered his juice in it. So we bought one for him. It now sits on the bookshelf near by records and stereo, in between a replica Lewis chessman and a knitted Andrew Weatherall doll. I did think about putting it on his grave but we felt that was a step too far. 

Blind Faith

I've posted this before, Sensurround's 1992 progressive house single Blind Faith, a record made by a group containing John Robb (then stepping outside the punkier environs of The Mekons). The 12" had a 7" mix and this one by Dean Thatcher, a dreamy, chunky, chuggy piece of early 90s progressive house.

Blind Faith (Aloof Mix)

When John Robb, Andy Piper and Patrick Simons originally recorded Blind Faith they constructed it around some rather well known samples- the rain and piano from Riders On the Storm, the mellotron from Strawberry Fields Forever, a blast of feedback from the intro to I Fee Fine- and for obvious reasons the samples were removed from the finished released record. But thankfully someone has uploaded the original version to Youtube so we can enjoy it in all its unofficial, 60s pilfering glory.

Monday's Long Song

Robert Frank died last week aged ninety- four. In 1957 he published a book of his photographs called The Americans, a collection of pictures taken across the USA over a two year period in the mid 1950s. The photos showed a different US from the one portrayed on TV, in the cinema and the magazines, the brightly coloured, neon lit America of the Eisenhower years- Frank's America was the lives of people at the margins and shots of the places most people passed by or through. Arriving in the USA in 1947, an immigrant escaping post- war Europe, the son of a German Jew who lost his citizenship in the 1930s. He began to see the USA as a bleak and lonely place for those excluded by poverty.

The Americans had an introduction written by Jack Kerouac, whose own travels across the continent mirrored Frank's. He shot his pictures using only his Leica and the light that was available, and what his pictures show more than anything to me is that the key thing needed to take good photographs isn't a piece of equipment but the eyes. Frank saw a different America and photographed it. He looked at it from another angle. He saw that he could frame scenes differently. An article at The New Yorker in the wake of his death said ' Frank’s nakedness to what was to him an alien land terrified us, and we were joyous. In a way, this amounted to a callow extension of American exceptionalism—postwar national hubris, only negative. Tragedy with its foot to the floor. We were special, all right. Also fucked. Sure.' R.I.P. Robert Frank. 

Anyway, back to the music- a long song for Monday and completely unconnected to the above. This is some lengthy progressive house from 1992 by The Aloof remixed by Fabio Paras. Paras was one of the original DJs on the London scene in 1988, playing in Ibiza and then at The Astoria and Flying. Fabio's remix of On A Mission opens with drums and percussion, huge tribal beats building before the chopped up vocal comes in. 

On A Mission (Fabio Paras Remix)

Flying

I last posted this song three years ago in January 2016 and it's fair to say a lot has happened since then. Theresa May stumbles on, unable to act, held hostage by her own red lines, her own party and the wingnuts and closet racists of the right wing, and her deal with the DUP. A government that can't deliver whatever it was the 52% imagined they were voting for. The vox pop sections of TV news and the papers are currently full of people saying they want it over, they want out and they're happy with a hard Brexit so 'we' can get back to being 'great' again (never mind the fact that almost everyone who uses that phrase seems to think that the word Great in Great Britain means amazing or powerful and isn't actually just a geographical term to describe a landmass containing England, Scotland and Wales). Many of these people seem to have an unlived, deluded nostalgia for a England of the early 1950s, a post-Dunkirk and World War II but pre-Suez Crisis country, with an Empire overseas, where the milkman came every morning whistling as he left glass bottles on doorsteps, the birds chirruped in the trees and you could get an appointment at the doctor's the same day (and there weren't any people with darker skins or eastern European accents living down the road). I fear we are heading for a No Deal Brexit and that there are plenty of people happily welcoming this, all of whom are also suddenly experts on WTO rules and tariffs. How leaving the E.U. is going to achieve this is unclear to me. From where I'm sitting, it looks like a total disaster, for all of us. People that want to live in the past usually get stuck there. Does any other nation other than the English have such an obsession with its past, a past that never really existed? The only faint glimmer of hope is that the Tory Party will have to own this fuck up forever (and if this whole debacle led to the break up of the United Kingdom, that would be an even sweeter irony).

Back to the song and a total change of mood. St Etienne's third single was Nothing Can Stop Us, an uptempo slice of indie/dance/northern based around a Dusty Springfield sample and the then new vocalist Sarah Cracknell. The single was a double A-side, the flip being Speedwell, a chunkier, deeper, house influenced tune. The 12" single was followed up by second 12", released a week later, with two remixes of Speedwell and an instrumental version of Nothing Can Stop Us. The remixes of Speedwell were by Dean Thatcher and Jagz Kooner, as The Aloof, and are superb. Totally 91.

Speedwell (Flying Mix)

Blind Faith

I'm going to keep the Balearic vibes going in a vain attempt to make it seem like summer despite the fact that I'm at work and the weather has turned dull and a tad wet. This 1992 Sensuround single was partly the work of a post-Membranes, pre-Goldblade John Robb, with vocals from Tracy Carmen and remixed here by Dean Thatcher, who was responsible for several key remixes from the early 90s. Stick it alongside some early Saint Etienne, some A Man Called Adam and some Screamadelica era Primal Scream and it makes perfect sense.

Blind Faith (Aloof Mix)

Speedwell

Speedwell was the b-side to St Etienne's Nothing Can Stop Us 12". A second 12" single was released with this remix by Dean Thatcher and Jagz Kooner of The Aloof, one of those deep, dub-house remixes from 1991 that are rather popular round here. For that moment just after the sun has gone down (probably best in a summer context that, given that it goes dark at around 4pm currently).

Speedwell (The Flying Mix)

Never Get Out Of The Boat

It feels like spring is finally here- the evenings are lighter, the clocks go forward tonight, the trees have the first signs of blossom, I've got two weeks off work for Easter, the temperature has hit double figures occasionally (I'll ignore the fact that I drove to work through snow on Thursday morning). Springtime brings promise and sunshine and... Balearic records.



The Aloof's first 12" single was this Apocalypse Now! sampling classic Never Get Out Of The Boat. Good advice under the circumstances. You don't need me to describe it for you- just listen to it.

You have probably noticed I've run out of bandwidth for downloads. I could set up a second Boxnet account with a different email address I suppose but haven't got around to it so far. There's more to life than downloads.

One Night Stand

Can't believe I've not posted anything by The Aloof before. This remix is a stunner- Ashley Beedle's thirteen minute take on their One Night Stand from 1996. The instrumentation (dramatic and sweeping strings, tabla, the kitchen sink) is good enough on it's own but taken with singer Ricky Barrow's extraordinary voice (and self loathing of the one night stand) it's almost too much for one record to contain. The Aloof contained two Sabres Of Paradise and one Red Snapper (which sounds a bit like an alternative, clubby version of the twelve days of Christmas).

One Night Stand (The Long Night and The Samba)