World Of Twist have come up in my internet world a couple of times recently and it seemed too good an opportunity to resist to sling some of their best moments together into a single forty minute mix, one side of a C90 tape in old money. The group's back catalogue is fairly slim- a 1991 album, Quality Street, a handful of singles and remixes and a pair of BBC radio sessions, one for John Peel and one for Mark Goodier. My first encounter with them was on a Manchester compilation album, the swirling song The Storm already getting mentions in the music press. After that I bought everything they released, seeing them live twice, once in Liverpool and once in Manchester.
World Of Twist formed in Sheffield in 1985, disintegrated, and then reformed in Manchester in 1989, many of the members living in the Withington/ Didsbury area where I grew up. The line up of singer Tony Ogden, guitarist Gordon King, Andrew Hobson on synths, Alan Frost (FX, visuals, synths), MC Shells aka Julia on 'swirls and sea noises', Angela Reilly (visuals) and drummer Nick Sanderson found press and a record contract quickly, caught up in the feeding frenzy of late 80s Manchester. They took the driving rhythms of northern soul, 80s indie rock and late 60s psychedelia, the end of the pier, faded glamour of seaside towns like Blackpool and fused it all together. Their live shows had slide shows and projections, trippy effects, glitter curtains and rotating signs with the words Rock And Roll on them. Tony Ogden, floppy hair centre parted and black leather jacket, had a stage stance that was like a young Elvis (if Elvis had been from Stockport rather than Tupelo). They finished their live gigs with a cover of The MC5's Kick Out The Jams. If Pulp (who travelled a similar road to much greater success) had covered Kick Out The Jams it would have been draped in knowing irony, Jarvis giving it high leg kicks and an arched eyebrow. World Of Twist, after an ascending Blackpool Ballroom organ intro, attack Kick Out The Jams in deadly seriousness. I really liked them.
There was a feeling that Quality Street missed the boat. By 1991 the Manchester tide was going out and the album, largely produced by Richard Norris and Dave Ball of The Grid with Martin Moscrop of A Certain Ratio and Cliff Brigden also at the desk, never seemed to be loud enough, no matter how much you turned your volume knob. The press went from full blooded praise to very lukewarm in months. They called it a day in 1992 when, having begun work on a second album, Tony decided he didn't want to sing any more. Gordon King and Nick Sanderson went on to Earl Brutus. Sadly two members are no longer with us- Tony Ogden died in 2006 and Nick Sanderson in 2008.
Kick Out The Jams (Live at St. Andrew's University 1991)
The Storm was on the demo tape that got them a deal. It came out several times as a single with their cover of She's A Rainbow on the B-side, variously with Martin Hannett and/ or The Grid on production duties and Hugo Nicolson and Spencer Birtwistle from Intastella engineering. It starts with thunder and sound effects, then the swirly organ and rapid fire drums kick in. Indie night floor filler.
Lose My Way opened Quality Street, a strong start to the album with its trumpet part, hammering four four drums and Tony's full throttle vocal and lyrics about love and lust. On The Scene is from the album too, an album track that is the closest they came to the Manchester sound, swirly indie- dance from 1991.
Blackpool Tower is from a John Peel session, 25th June 1991 along with versions of Lose My Way, St Bruno (otherwise unreleased) and Kick Out The Jams. Blackpool Tower became part of a ten minute song called Blackpool Tower Suite, released on 12" in late 1990 with The Storm and She's Rainbow.
She's A Rainbow was one of their signature tunes and the record company threw it out multiple times looking for a hit. It's a cover of a 1967 Rolling Stones song, one of highlights of the Their Satanic Majesty's Request album, and one of Martin Hannett's last production jobs. The 12" version opens with some lovely, gnarly distorted guitar before the famous piano line comes in.
This Too Shall Pass Away was the B-side to the single Sweets (and in its 'proper' form appears on Quality Street). The song is a cover of a 1964 Honeycombs single. On the Chat version Tony's vocals have been replaced by samples of people talking about Norman Wisdom, gardening, artichokes and potatoes and other everyday matters.
Sweets was a sugary pop song, lovely stuff. The Barratt 200 Mix came out on the 12" and CD single.
I'm A Teardrop is a great little song, recorded for a Mark Goodier session in September 1990, two and a half minutes of indie- guitar pop.
Sons Of The Stage was on the album and a single and if it was all they had ever released, it would be more than enough. Like Hawkwind streamlined and rebooted for the early 90s, the song is a rush of indie dance, northern soul and early 70s sci fi psychedelia. It's a magnificent achievement. Tony's lyrics describe the sensation of being the singer on stage, with the band powering away around him and the crowd a seething mass in front of him. 'The beat breaks down so we pick it up/ The floor shakes down but it's not enough/ The beam is up and kids are high/ I see them move and it blows my mind/ The floor's an ocean and this wave is breaking/ The head is gone and your body's shaking/ There's nothing you can do 'cos there is no solution/ You gotta get down to the noise and confusion...Out of our minds on the stage...'
Kick Out The Jams is a cover of The MC5's famous high octane 1969 song. This recording is live, from a gig at St. Andrew's University in 1991, World Of Twist marrying their devotion to music with the rundown pleasures of British seaside resorts, utter conviction. Kick 'em out.
This bootleg re- orbited into my musical world last week, a 2021 cut- and- shut of Malcolm McLaren's Madame Butterfly and The Grid's Floatation by pflext, the two songs working together perfectly, Malcolm's 1984 marriage of opera and 80s r'n'b and hip hop spliced with Richard Norris and Dave Ball's 1990 Balearic/ ambient house classic, remixed by a then fledgling remixer Andrew Weatherall. Richard did point out in 2021 that the bootlegger pflext missed a trick by not calling it Floats Like A Butterfly. Listen here, eight and a half minutes of bliss. Pflext is Paul Flex Taylor currently based in Sydney, Australia.
Here's the original of Madame Butterfly from '84, McLaren, Stephen Hague, Debbie Cole and Betty Ann White taking on Puccini and winning. The album Fans was six tracks long and included pieces from Carmen and Turandot over hip hop drums but madame Butterfly was the only one where he really nailed it.
The McLaren/ Grid mash up led me to Paris in 1994, where Malcolm McLaren was still looking for the next big fusion, making an album celebrating the city in the form of atmospheric future jazz and synth pop with vocals from Catherine Deneuve. A second disc of remixes brought this seventeen minute ambient classic from Youth titled The Emotional Curvatone At A Given Moment In Time And Space Listen at Soundcloud or Youtube. It really is something special with Deneuve's softly spoken vocals, waves of rippling synths and endless flow. I posted it before in 2019, a year which is both fairly recent but also feels like many, many years ago.
This is very good indeed, a ten minute advance on a full album coming out in June, from the combined talents of The Grid and Robert Fripp. Back in 1992 Dave Ball and Richard Norris worked with Fripp with some of these recordings saw the light of day on the albums 456 and Evolver. Recently Richard rediscovered the tapes from the sessions which included unreleased material, unfinished and unmixed tracks. Some new synths and drums, FX and some technical jiggery- pokery were then added to Fripp's '92 soundscapes and voila!, a new album called Leviathan. Fire Tower is a ten minute treat, programmed beats, long tones and drones, bags of texture and atmosphere- something to sink into on a rainy day.
The sheer quantity and at times the torrent of new music this year have been one of the things that have helped to deal with all the shit that has been thrown our way. Regardless of your political persuasion or your thoughts on how the pandemic has been handled, it's been almost unremittingly grim. Music helps. Richard Norris' Music For Healing series in the spring was a guaranteed aural balm, longform pieces of ambient/ deep listening designed to help and bring some form of ease. In September Richard followed these with an album called Elements, five lengthy instrumentals, using analogue synthesisers to make hypnotic and uplifting music.
Now Richard has added a four track EP to his 2020 catalogue, Golden Waves, four chilled, ambient works, all rippling synth lines, pulses and soothing drones. Lead track Golden Waves has some beautiful little melodies dripping over it. Cloud Surfing is lighter than air, padding drum sounds and warmth. Blue Star Gold harks back to the Music For Healing tracks, patterns of single notes and reverb. Signal To Power sets out with long chords and synth sounds, washes of tone and a celestial choir, a distinct lack of hurry to go anywhere, just a lovely, long drift. Buy it at Bandcamp.
Back in the 90s Richard was one half of The Grid along with Dave Ball (formerly of Soft Cell). Their 1993 single Crystal Clear was remixed by The Orb in majestic fashion, Clear Like An Unmuddied Lake, an absolute highpoint of 20th century ambient acid house, a track still revealing its pleasures twenty- seven years after its release (which unfortunately I can't find on mp3 and I'm sure I had it digitally at some point. Probably on an old hard drive).
I mentioned the remixes Andrew Weatherall made his name with yesterday. In the early 90s remix culture became the big thing, record companies throwing thousands of pounds at club DJs to stick dance beats underneath a song. Weatherall's remixes never took the easy road, were never formulaic. In most cases the remixes were better than the source material and he was still producing superb remixes until recently.
Primal Scream have put out several Best Of/ Greatest Hits, one only last year. The one they haven't released and would be the contender for the best Best Of would be the one that compiled Weatherall's work for the group. The AW/PS compilation wold start with Loaded, a remix so groundbreaking and gigantic it created an entire scene and gave the Scream a career. Andrew's remix of Come Together is monumental. I once said here that there are days when I think it is the single greatest record ever made and I don't see any reason to argue with myself.
'Today on this programme you will hear gospel and rhythm and blues and jazz. All these are just labels, we know that music is music'
The rest of Screamadelica that Andrew produced would be on this Primal Scream Best Of too- Inner Flight, Shine Like Stars, Don't Fight It Feel It (and the amazing Scat Mix where Denise Johnson's voice is chopped up and scattered over the track) and the Jah Wobble bass of Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts). Then this, ten glorious minutes of slow groove, horn driven spaced out house, from the Dixie Narco e.p.
His knob- twiddling on the other two songs on the Dixie Narco e.p. brought two other classics in the shape of Stone My Soul and their cover of Dennis Wilson's Carry Me Home, one of the very best things Bobby Gillespie and co ever did. Primal Scream's follow up was their Rolling Stones record. Weatherall produced remixes of Jailbird. Trainspotting from Vanishing Point. The far out Two Lone Swordsmen remix of Stuka. The pair of productions he did on Evil Heat- the gliding shimmer of Autobahn 66 and the mutant funk of A Scanner Darkly. Two TLS remixes of Kill All Hippies. Bloods. The ten minute remix of Uptown, a signpost in 2009 that Weatherall was back at the remix peak. The remix and dub version of 2013. The stretched out remix of Goodbye Johnny. That's the Primal Scream Best Of.
In the early 90s his remixes broke genres, chucking in the kitchen sink, its plumbing, the work surface and all the white goods too. His dub remix of Saint Etienne was a moment of clarity for me, the doorway to another world, the two halves glued together by the sample 'the DJ, eases a spliff from his lyrical lips and smilingly orders ''cease!'' '
Andrew's remixes from this period are full of little moments to raise a smile, samples from obscure places, huge basslines, sudden changes in pace or tempo, piano breakdowns and thumping rhythms. Almost every single one is worth seeking out and almost every single one has been posted here at some point. In no particular order- S'Express' Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Forget 'Em, The Drum by The Impossibles, a mad pair of remixes of Flowered Up's Weekender, the magnificent The World According To... for Sly And Lovechild, his work for One Dove (that produced some career high remixes in the shape of Squire Black Dove Rides Out and the Guitar Paradise version of White Love and his production work on the most beautiful and most lost of the lost albums of the 1990s Morning Dove White), his remix of My Bloody Valentine's Soon, on its own a justification of remix culture and two reworkings of The Orb's Perpetual Dawn that take his and The Orb's dub roots into pounding new places. Roots music.
Add to all these his remixes of Jah Wobble, three versions of Visions Of You, spread over twenty five minutes of vinyl and two remixes of Bomba that have to be heard to be believed. Decades after first hearing this one I found the source of the madcap intro (Miles Davis) when it had been there in the title all along.
His remixes of The Grid's Floatation are also sublime. As a fan of The Stone Roses the moment when he drops John Squire's guitar part from Waterfall into the ending of the track brought things together for me perfectly.
There are so many more. The speaker shattering thump of Fini Tribe's 101. His long tribal workout of Papua New Guinea. The sweet smell of didgeridoo on Galliano's meandering Skunk Funk. The wide eyed mixes of A Man Called Adam's CPI. Indie, ambient, house, dub, everything from the fringes of music's past, ready to sample and plunder to make something new, with a sense of possibility and openness. This would all be mere nostalgia were it not for Weatherall's continual left turns and about turns in the following years. His remixes from the last decade, again almost all posted here at some point, are of a similar high standard but he rarely if ever repeats himself. There are similarities in tone and palette but always with an eye looking forward and perpetual motion. The remix of MBV's Soon and his remix of Fuck Buttons Sweet Love For Planet Earth seem somehow linked to me, the manipulation of noise and the intense melodies found within over crunching dance floor rhythms. I've not even begun to touch on his remixes with Sabres of Paradise, the treasure that lies within Sabres own records (Sabresonic, Haunted Dancehall, Theme, Wilmot, oh man, Wilmot- we were at Cream once waiting for ages for Weatherall to arrive and eventually word came through that he was delayed, wasn't going to make it. Resident DJ and owner Darren Hughes played on and dropped Wilmot, unheard by us at that point, the whole back room skanking to those wandering horns).
Then there was Two Lone Swordsmen whose remixes were harder, purer somehow, more focused, less obvious. It took time sometimes for them to reveal themselves. The TLS albums from The Fifth Mission onward, the stoned hip hop grooves of A Virus With Shoes, the double album of juddering bass and London machine funk of Tiny Reminders, Swimming Not Skimming. My favourite of the TLS albums from this period has become Stay Down. Released on Warp from its cover art, a painting of a pair of deep sea divers, to its memorable song titles (try Hope We Never Surface, Light The Last Flare, Spine Bubbles, Mr Paris' Monsters and As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye for starters- that last one has just made me gulp) it is a self contained mini- masterpiece. Stay Down is an abstract album of short tracks, weird, rhythmic, minimal ambient music, sounding like it has been submerged and then recovered from the deep, humanised analogue IDM. Never standing still, always moving forward.
Boom! Two booms today- I can't remember exactly why either of these songs came into my head recently or if one sparked the other but I thought it seemed like a decent idea for a post.
Happy Mondays released Wrote For Luck in October 1988, a record around which an entire scene could be/was built, a riot of guitars and dance beats with Shaun Ryder's surrealist swirl of words reaching a peak. The first 12" release of Wrote For Luck with the famous Central Station sleeve had a B-side called Boom, a three minute extra that didn't make the cut for Bummed. Boom opens with heavily reverbed drums and then that queasy musical stew the Mondays created in 1988, keyboards and guitars and bass all fighting over the same ground, the instruments all over each other searching for space. Shaun delivers more wisdom from the microphone, tales of cabbies and drugs and living in a box with cardboard socks. I don't know if Martin Hannett produced Boom. He produced Bummed and this song sounds like it comes from the same place (a studio in Driffield, East Yorkshire with mixing done at Strawberry in Stockport).
In 1991 The Grid released a 12" called Boom, progressive house, pianos, synth stabs and bleeps, thunderous bass and chunky drums heading for deep space. The single came with several mixes. The one here is the 707 mix, presumably named after the drum machine which powers it. Not much to say about this slice of Richard Norris and Dave Ball music other than it is very good indeed.
As a postscript- and this only occurred to me while writing this post- in the same year the two came together, Happy Mondays remixed by The Grid, two tracks from their Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches album. It was a 12" I didn't get at the time- you couldn't buy everything could you? I don't own either of the remixes on CD or mp3 either so it's Youtube only. One of The Grid remixes was of Bob's Yer Uncle, Shaun's dirty talking sex song (a song incidentally that Tony Wilson selected to be played at his funeral which must have caused a few sniggers). The other remix was of Loose Fit, a low slung, smokey vibe of a song with a snakey guitar line and Shaun muttering and growling about a loose fit being his way of life. The Gulf War features too- 'gonna buy an air force base, gonna wipe out your race'. The Grid's Loose Fix remix isn't hugely different for the first few minutes, reworking the drumbeat and stretching everything out, gradually departing at the half way mark and going off into the distance slowly and hazily.
In 2015 Richard Norris and Dave Ball reunited as The Grid and recorded using the Moog Soundlab at the University of Surrey. They have just put some of the results of this on the internet. One Way Traffic is a half hour dive into the sound of the Moog modular synth, a world of drones and lovely repetitive noises, pulses and waves of sound and rhythm. I think some of you may love this as much as I do.
The Moog Soundlab UK includes the Moog System 55 modular synthesiser and developed by Dr Robert Moog who 'established standards for analog synthesizer control interfacing, with a logarithmic one volt-per-octave pitch control and a separate pulse triggering signal.' Furthermore, 'The Moog modular system consisted of a number of various modules mounted in a cabinet. Each module performs a specific signal-generating or -modifying function. These modules offered unprecedented control over creating sounds by allowing a user to modify primary sound waveforms with amplitude modulators and spectral modulators and other modifiers. Envelope generators provided further control by modulating the attack, decay, sustain and release parameters of the VCAs, VCFs and other modules. The modules are patched together with patch cords with ¼-inch mono plugs. The patch cords and module parameter knobs could be adjusted in countless ways to create a nearly infinite number of sounds. The final sound was heard ('triggered') from the system by pressing a key on an attached keyboard or pressing on the ribbon controller'. Now cover that up and see what you can remember.
I found myself humming this song to myself while at work earlier this week- not sure what that tells you. This Too Shall Pass Away was on World Of Twist's 1991 album Quality Street, the 3rd track in after the magnificent opening one-two punch of Lose My Way and Sons Of The Stage. Fading in on some studio chatter and tons of echo and a bubbling bassline, it is a gently sung, swirly piece of psychedelic pop, FX and atmospherics courtesy of producers The Grid. This Too Shall Pass Away is a cover, one of two covers on the album along with their terrific cover of The Stones' She's A Rainbow (and also Sly Stone's Life And Death on the cd version). It was originally by 60s pop combo The Honeycombs, who had a million selling number one with the Joe Meek produced Have I The Right? This Too Shall Pass Away
Quality Street is often seen as a 'lost' album, a record that slightly missed the boat. The band lost momentum and broke up. Part of this was down to the failure of the album (and not having a massive hit single) which led to the band being dropped. The Manchester wave crested and broke. But it was partly down to the album itself (not that there is anything wrong with the songs or the production). It's the mastering of the volume. It's too quiet. Tony Ogden, who died in 2006, was interviewed about the record and said 'We wanted to make the greatest psychedelic dance rock album ever and there was a lot of coke and E in the studio. But the album came out at half normal volume. We'd spent £250,000 making an album with the smallest bollocks in pop history! The band just fell apart. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast and that led to communication problems. I didn't wanna sing, the guitarist didn't wanna play. When the company didn't get a hit they threw us in the bin. I was devastated - I spent four years on smack watching Third Reich movies because the good guys always win. I'm really sorry for letting our fans down. But I'd ask anyone to play that World of Twist album 20 times with every dial on full. If it doesn't rock, come and smash it over my head.'
World Of Twist were the outliers of the Manchester scene and made some cracking records between 1990 and 1992. Sweets was a stab at a hit on the proper charts with a lyric written by Tony Ogden in a deliberate attempt to write an awful lyric- 'sweets are sweet but you are sweeter baby'. Actually it isn't that bad. I've heard worse. It wasn't a hit reaching number 58 in 1991. This version is from the 12" single, produced by The Grid, and is really rather sweet.
Talking Heads yesterday, Severed Heads today. Severed Heads are/were an Australian electronic/post punk outfit formed in 1979 and operating on and off with a revolving door of personnel from then until now. In 1989 their Greater Reward single was remixed in a variety of versions and mixes and the following year The Grid turned in this rather nice and very 1990 version, house piano to the fore at first, then beats and bass and handclaps before the pianos return.
Sometimes a fringe and a denim jacket is all you need. Johnny Marr's been all over the media recently including here two days ago. His guitar playing was all over other people's work too, occasionally during his time in the The Smiths and then especially in the years afterwards. In full flow in the years after the split he recorded impossibly funky Nile Rodgers style guitar onto Still Feel the Rain by Stex. I've got a real softspot for this single and even with that very 1990 drumbeat this song still sounds good today. The Grid were involved in a remixed version on the 12". Difficult to believe this wasn't a massive hit.
In the video the fringe and denim jacket have gone, replaced by a crop and baggy white sweatshirt and jeans. Time moves on, never stand still, keep looking forward and all that.
In the second hand record shop the other day I picked up a 12" of Lundi Bleu by The Times. The Times was Ed Ball's (note NOT Ed Balls) acid house project and Lundi Bleu was his cover version of Blue Monday which I posted here several years ago. The 12" had two remixes of the track by The Grid which were what caught my eye and at £2.00 I decided it was worth a punt, having heard none of the remixes before. The two Grid remixes are both good, dubby with vocal samples, chugging away nicely. Here's The Grid's World Communications remix. It's a Youtube video only I'm afraid- my computer issues continue and ripping anything is a bridge too far at the moment.
I enjoyed both The Grid remixes, especially as being off this week I had the house to myself and could turn it up loud enough and sit back with a cup of tea. But the real treat is on the flipside with Bandulu's remix. Bandulu were from London, also on Creation and made reggae influenced dub/techno. Their remix of Lundi Bleu is a delight which defies description really- bubbling sounds and bouncing bass with an otherworldly, underwater groove. Futuristic in '92 and still sounding so today. Properly making something wonderful and new out of a track.
Here's a 1991 tune from yesterday's remixers The Grid to welcome in May. Boom is a rolling uptempo, Italo piano led seven minutes worth of music to lift the spirits and expand the mind, messages and bleeps bouncing back to us from a very long way away.
IF? were a three piece progressive house group from the early 90s, one of the three being Sean McLusky who was previously a member of Subway Sect and JoBoxers and also the man behind a multitude of influential London clubs including The Brain Club and Love Ranch. Although IF? didn't see much in the way of chart success they did record some good singles. This one, remixed by The Grid (Richard Norris and David Ball, Ball being one half of Soft Cell), is a lovely, expansive, end of night tune.
I logged into my Boxnet account yesterday to upload Crystal Clear by The Grid, one of those ace 90s dance tracks with a dub-techno beat and acid squiggle, and found that I have used 1654% of my bandwidth for this month. Which is well over ten times what I usually use. Which was a bit confusing. I skimmed through my files to find that Ohm's Tribal Tone (Sabres Of Paradise Remix) had been previewed over 7000 times. Which is about 6970 more times than even my most popular downloads get downloaded. So I don't know what's happened there. But my bandwidth for the rest of September has now gone tits up. Very strange.
It took thirteen hours of driving to get home yesterday. While sitting in a traffic jam on the M25, having gone counter-clockwise towards the M40 to avoid advertised long delays at the Dartford Crossing, this superb example of early 90s Balaerica from The Grid and Mr Weatherall made staring at another car's bumper and back window more bearable. Blissful sounds.
Without music blogs I would probably also have missed this- the Prins Thomas remix of The Grid's classic 1990 Floatation single, stretched out, zhizzed up and as dreamy as yesterday's Brian Eno remix. The music blog in question was Nolan Micron's Castles In Space, which continues to provide top quality tunes. When I was in Piccadilly Records a while back I found a copy of this on 10" vinyl. Circle completed.
The Man Ray portrait is of Genica Athanasiou, a Romanian actress and Antonin Artaud's partner. Which doesn't really explain why he was looking so unhappy in his portrait. Unless he was annoyed his curtains had been pulled down.
