Monday's Long Song

Back in 2009 The Horrors returned with a song that proved they were much more than a bunch of skinny jean wearing, straggly haircutted, black leather jacket wearing NME garage band. Sea Within A Sea was an eight minute krautrock inspired epic, pounding in on a distorted bassline and the motorik rhythms it builds and shifts, marrying Neu! with Silver Apples. Cymbals splash, bursts of guitar shatter their way in, minimalist synths pulses ripple and Farris sings, drenched in reverb, about 'dreams in the shallows' and 'my destination there tonight'. There's a superb bit halfway through where everything drops out except the drums and a spooky, hypnotic synth arpeggio squiggles away on top. It's a magnificent song, a 21st century take on psychedelia and proof that sometimes bands can spring surprises and create something that takes them to a new place. 

Sea Within A Sea

A List And Your Love

The clocks went back last night, ending British Summer Time for another year. As the jokes on Twitter have been having it, if you're a Brexiteer you can set yours back to 1973 or some imaginary time before you were born when England won the world war and immigration hadn't been invented. If you're a supporter or member of the current government you can reset your clock back to the nineteenth century when letting children go hungry was all part of good old Victorian values. Funny how for a group of people so often vilified as overpaid, useless and insensitive, the most effective campaigner for the impoverished in Britain in 2020 is a footballer. Hats off to Marcus Rashford.

It's funny as well how many Tory MPs are now tripping over themselves to attack him and to accuse him of 'virtue signalling'. There's a list here of all the Conservative MPs, three hundred and twenty- two of them, who voted against extending free school meals vouchers into the October half term and Christmas holidays. Next to their name, constituency and party is a column detailing the amount they have claimed on expenses from the public purse for dining and entertaining since June 2019. Jake Berry, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen and a man who was a big proponent of the so- called Northern Powerhouse, for instance claimed over £60, 000. Vicky Ford, the Minister for Children and MP for Chelmsford, claimed over £50, 000. Three of them claimed over £80, 000. Matt Hancock, role model for over- promoted car showroom middle managers everywhere, claimed over £60, 000. I'm sure that for these MPs, raised on Thatcherite ideology about dependency culture and the managed decline of northern cities and propelled into government by the Brexit culture wars, voting against poor children getting a £3.00 a day lunch voucher while supping subsidised drinks in the House of Commons bar and eating out at London's top restaurants is a moral circle they can square but for many of us it is the worst kind of hypocrisy. 

This list compiled by Pete Wylie and Josie Jones as Big Hard Excellent Fish back in 1990 and remixed by Andrew Weatherall summons up the right kind of disgust and shows how little progress we've actually made in the three decades in between then and now.

The Imperfect List (Version 1)

Anyway, onto happier things... today is my wife Lou's birthday. This is the kind of thing she likes to dance to given the chance. There hasn't been much dancing recently. We did get drunk a few weeks ago and play some records a little too loud in the dining room while our daughter cringed upstairs. In 1987 Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle released Your Love, a thumping, hands- in- the- air, genuinely inspiring and uplifting piece of early house music, a record that shows that the world can be a better place even if it's only for a few minutes.

Your Love

In 2014 London goth rock 'n' rollers The Horrors covered it for a session at Radio 1 showing what good taste they had and how a great song can translate from one form to another. 

Your Love 

Happy birthday Lou. Let's make it a good one despite Tier 3 and all the rest of it. 

Not Sleeping

The Twilight Sad's No One Can Ever Know came out in 2012 and is about to be re- issued. It came with the line that it had been 'anti- produced' by Andrew Weatherall. I was never absolutely sure what this meant but according to the internet he gave the group some advice about analogue synths and some words of wisdom. He had apparently been lined up to produce the album but for whatever reason this didn't happen. Several years later, in 2018, a remix by Andrew of their song Videograms appeared, a seven minute piston- powered drum machine excursion with a huge synth riff and early 980s New Order/ Depeche Mode vibe. Lovely stuff.



Back to 2012. No One Can Ever Know was paired with a vinyl only remix album release, nine reworkings of the songs from the album by sympathetic remixers such as Liars, Com Truise, The Horrors and Optimo. The remixes are club based, pushing the darker, more industrial sound the band were experimenting with further. Tom Furse of The Horrors took them to a sleek, cosmische place, somewhere in the spiritual vicinity of West Germany in the 1970s.

Not Sleeping (The Horrors Dub Mix)

JD Twitch fired up the kick drum and sent them out onto the floor in the early hours.

Alphabet (JD Twitch/Optimo Remix)

Something To Remember Me By

Back in 2009 something most unexpected happened. I remember the moment I read something like 'you won't believe this', clicked play and the opening seconds of Sea Within A Sea came out of the speakers- a throbbing bassline , motorik drumming and some phased guitar sounds. Farris's vocal covered in echo. The second half of the song with the synth arpeggio part lifting it and then the building keyboard part. Eight minutes of glorious surprise.

Sea Within A Sea

The album that followed, Primary Colours, had other peaks too (Who Can Say is one the last decade's best guitar songs). After that I bought the third album, Skying, which hasn't stuck in the memory and didn't get the following one. The new album, V, is out now and the video for the closing song Something To Remember Me By went online yesterday. The song is synth-led, a black clad leather version of Moroder's pulsing sound topped with Badwan's confident indie/goth vocal. This is pop music, left of centre but direct pop music nonetheless. I like it.

The video has the band signing up with a company to have their bodily fluids extracted and turned into artefacts to be sold via the internet, including a green dildo. Which is nice.

One Million

At some point while away in London this blog passed one million page views. One million! I've no idea how this compares to other blogs, how many page views other bloggers have had/get but it seems like a bit of a milestone.

Tom Furse of The Horrors has remixed the new Cavern Of Anti-Matter album into one seventeen minute megamix, a psych/cosmiche feast.

Moving Further Away

A humdinger of a Weatherall remix that appeared on a very pricey Horrors vinyl box set from 2012 for Thursday. The drum machine wheezes away, a bleepy arpeggio repeats and builds, and the Farris chorus part comes in and out. Hypnotic.

Moving Further Away (Andrew Weatherall remix)

I would pay good money for a Weatherall remix of Beyonce.

Your Love

Jamie Principle and Frankie Knuckles' Your Love is one of the cornerstones of modern music- the two note bassline, that sequenced arpeggio part, the gospel vocals, the four-four beat. Back in the mid-80s Jamie Principle put it together in his Chicago bedroom on cheap and homemade machinery. Frankie Knuckles then sprinkled his magic over it. It was played off cassette for ages in Chicago warehouses before it got a vinyl release. It's been an everpresent record of uplift and ecstasy ever since, especially since it then went and got magically spliced with Candy Staton.

At a recent Radio 1 session The Horrors covered Your Love. Do not worry. It is fucking superb.

Your Love (Radio Session)

I'm Going To See The Stars

This is good in an exotica/lounge/library records sort of way. Tom Furse, out of The Horrors, and some first rate retro-futurism.

Free Action

That Moon Duo remix album that came out for Record Shop Day is very good- eight remixes and only one that doesn't really do much for me. I haven't got the actual vinyl unfortunately- I found this somewhere on the internets. This song, remixed by Tom Furse of The Horrors, is a beaut.

Free Action (Tom Furse Remix)

Misbegotten

I was once teaching a class of Year 11 students and we were studying the Cold War- something that having grown up since the collapse of Communism, the Eastern Bloc and the Berlin Wall, meant little to them. One lad's only response to the Soviets crushing the 1956 Hungarian uprising was 'that girl with the machine gun's pretty fit.'

The Horrors remixed The Charlatans a few years ago. Nicely electronic.

The Misbegotten (The Horrors Remix)

Edit- my Boxnet bandwidth's gone- try here instead.

Horror Show

Nope, I don't know what's going on with Salvador Dali's trousers either (particularly the crotch area) although Gala seems to have got it going on. Tight trousered enthusiasts The Horrors have set a load of remixers loose on their 2011 album Skying, most of them doing exactly what remixers should. The digital release came out this week- two Weatherall mixes (the previously released remix of Wild Eyed and a new bleepy one of Moving Further Away). Other equally good highlights are present from Daniel Avery, Peaking Lights, Andy Blake and Blanck Mass (one half of Olympians Fuck Buttons). All well worth downloading from Beatport or somewhere similar. You can listen below.




The Higher physical boxset comes out in March- four pieces of vinyl, two cds,a dvd and one previously worn winklepicker. With a price tag of fifty quid. Which is, y'know, quite a lot of money.

Montevideo Horror Show

Montevideo is the capital of Uruguay. Apart from being a lovely word to say, Montevideo was the home of the first football World Cup back in 1930. In the picture the French national team relax on deck on their way to the finals which were eventually won by Italy. Host nation Uruguay would go on to win the following tournament four years later.

Montevideo are also a Belgian indie pop outfit who produce music for fans of 'funereal beauty'. They've made this song Castles (remixed by spindly legged, black clad Horror Tom Furse) available for free download from Soundcloud. Starts out all murky then lurches into sunny psychedelia. Just the thing for Saturday morning at the start of half term.

Wild Eyed Mania

Andrew Weatherall's remix of The Horror's Wild Eyed has been set against some nice visuals here.



And similar for his remix of Hardway Bros here.



I know the number of Andrew Weatherall posts here may be passing well beyond the point of tedium for some folks.

Wild Eyed

Half a year ago ago I wrote this piece about the Andrew Weatherall remix of the Horrors. Six months later you can get the instrumental remix here (no vocal remix yet I'm afraid).

Those of you who haven't seen this should pre-order the Andrew Weatherall Masterpiece 3 cd set as soon as possible, out April the 23rd. It looks very exciting.

Also, if you go to Soma Records you can download his remix of Pablo's Stratus for a quid. I posted the original ages ago. The remix is very good dub disco.

Edit; just realised The Horrors remix cuts out before the end. Soz, as my daughter says.

Record Industry Blues

I got in this evening. I went looking for Andrew Weatherall's remix of Wild Eyed by The Horrors. I was prepared to pay for it. After a little searching I ended up thinking 'Is it any wonder the record industry is on it's arse?'

The only place you can buy the track is as part of the iTunes version of the album Skying. It's there, but you can't buy it as a separate track, only as part of the US version of the album, at a cost £7.99. Thing is, I've already bought Skying in a physical format and it cost more than £7.99, which is what the record industry wants isn't it? I didn't download it illegally. I paid money for it, in a record shop. Old fashioned I know but there you go. If I want the Weatherall remix I've got to buy the whole album again. And this isn't one of the majors, this is XL who like to dine out on being a credible, cutting edge little guy. At the moment I still don't have it, as I haven't found an illegal download either. So what do they want- sales which rip off the niche band fan or illegal downloads? I suppose I could just stop being a Weatherall completist but it's a habit that's a little ingrained by now. In the spirit of the whole thing, no music with this post. But if and when I find the song, I'll let you have it too.

Him Of The Big Wheel

Andrew Weatherall djing recently in a pod on the London Eye, promoted by the makers of some sticky fluid. Can't imagine there was much room for dancing. No track listing and I haven't listened to it all but the opening ten minutes sound great, dreamy, krauty synth stuff.

Edit- also includes Weatherall's own cover of AR Kane's A Love From Outer Space and what I think is his remix of The Horrors.

http://redbullmusicacademyradio.com/shows/4555/

Visions Of Scum

S.C.U.M. are a South London bunch- gloomy, gothic, a bit electronic, a bit rock. Kind of like The Horrors (the bassist is brother of a Horror), they sound like they look. They've got a new album out- Again Into Eyes- and this song was their debut single back in 2008 and is very good, if you like that kind of thing.

Visions Arise

And Then I Kissed Her With A Kiss That Can Only Mean Goodbye Part Two

Just so you can compare and contrast, here's Roland S Howard's She Cried, from his 2000 album Teenage Snuff Movie, which today's earlier Horror's song is clearly indebted to. Rowland S Howard was guitarist in The Boys Next Door (for whom he wrote the still stunning Shivers aged only 16) and then The Birthday Party. He died of liver cancer on December 30th 2009, two days before I started Bagging Area. His cover of Talk Talk's Life's What You Make It was the second or third post here, and was part of the reason for starting blogging.

She Cried

And Then I Kissed Her With A Kiss That Can Only Mean Goodbye

Everyone's favourite skinny legged, crate-digging, goth and garage rocking five piece The Horrors are back with a new album Skying. The last time they put an lp out they flipped lids all over the place. Primary Colours featured the electro and krautrocking Sea Within A Sea and Who Can Say, just about my favourite rock single from that year. They also released a superb single, Whole New Way, which I posted here ages ago. By way of celebrating the new album, shaping up to be on heavy rotation, here's Who Can Say from a 6 Music session. The mp3 I think came originally from the late, lamented Ripped In Glasgow blog (although Moggieboy's RiG adventures do continue on a well-known social networking site). Anyway, distorted guitars, 60s organ, girl group drums, Rowland S Howard 'inspired' breakdown- what more could you want?

Who Can Say (6 Music Session)

Side Project Death Match

Nick Cave's hirsute side project Grinderman get remixed by Faris Badwan's mascara'd side project Cat's Eyes to good and somewhat spooky effect. I imagine no-one involved sees these as side projects, but it's a bit inevitable. Faris Badwan, spindly goth/art-rock front man from the Horrors, has joined up with Canadian classical starlet Rachel Zeffira to make music inspired by Italian horror soundtracks and the 60s girl groups, with an e.p. and album to come. They played their debut gig at the Vatican. Amazingly, they make all these things seem like really good ideas.

When My Baby Comes Cats Eyes Remix.mp3