Forty five minutes of Scandi space disco/ psychedelic house from Norwegian DJ and producer Prins Thomas to ease you into Sunday. His remixes/ diskomiks are a rich vein of music and his own releases are well worth exploring too (along with his records with Lindstrom). The mix below is little more than a sampler but it turned out really well (if I do say so myself), a dizzying mix of electronic sounds, cosmic disco, Balearic/ ambient styles and some quite intense dance music.
Rusty: Everything's Gonna Change (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
Dungen: Achmed Flyger (Version 2)
Daniele Baldelli and DJ Rocca: Space Scribble (Prins Thomas Remix)
The Orb: Alpine (Prins Thomas Short Yoga Break Version)
Deo' Jorge: Sparking Plugs (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
Quixote: Before I Started To Dance (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
Gran Paradiso is from Prins Thomas' Italia Uno EP, twisting, giddy psychedelic acid- ambient, released in 2013.
Rusty's Everything's Gonna Change came out in 1989 and then again in 1992, Italo house that was big, nay massive, in Sasha's DJ sets. Prins Thomas' remix from 2013 is a smooth, sultry, lush ride.
Dungen are a Swedish band who make pastoral psychedelia, long guitar epics. In 2017 Prins Thomas remixed songs from their Haxan album, ending up with an entire new album, ten songs sent into new directions. His version of Achmed Flyger is bubbling bass- led psyche.
Italian legends Daniele Baldelli and DJ Rocca's Space Scribble came out in 2011 with Prins Thomas' remix on the B- side of the 12". Daniele is one of Italian music's innovators, one of the originators of the cosmic disco scene and sound. Space Scribble is a huge piece of electronic music, seriously good stuff.
The Orb's Alpine dates from 2016 and the Moonbuilding 2703 album. Prins Thomas provided three remixes of the track, including the one here which is said to be ideal for a short yoga break. I've never done yoga so can't really comment.
Deo' Jorge's Sparking Plugs came out in 2021, part of an EP called Robotic Souls which also contained a cosmic Hardway Bros remix which was big round these parts. Prins Thomas' remix is very good indeed, finding a Balearic/ cosmic disco sweet spot and spinning it around for nine and a half minutes.
Quixote are a French group about whom I know very little. Discogs says they make leftfield, krautrock, nu- disco and that's good enough for me. Before I Started To Dance came out in 2008. For his remix Prins Thomas added bass, guitar, omnichord, melodica, synth, drums and percussion- a little bit more than just sticking a new drumbeat underneath the song. Hummed backing vocals, acoustic guitar, a driving bass, some jangle, thumping rhythm and then some harmonised vox, extended on and on. Lovely stuff.
I recently watched 101, D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film from 1989 that showed the group preparing to play the 101st gig and final leg of their world tour the year before. It was good fun, a time capsule peak into the world of 1988, with a van of radio competition winners travelling to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to see DM with live snippets of the group interspersed.
It's fair to say that I'm a fan of some of Depeche Mode's songs rather than an outright fan of the band. Their story is interesting, electro- pop boys from Basildon who survive the departure of their songwriter becoming a pop sensation and then a stadium size electronic rock group. The death of Andy Fletcher last year showed a fairly unique aspect of the group too- Fletcher was the man who made the group work but whose contributions weren't predominantly musical. For the mix below I've concentrated on the late 80s/ early 90s era of the group, mainly singles with some remixes. I seem to have omitted Personal Jesus which is an error on my part.
From 1990 The Orb's remix of Happiest Girl confusingly titled as the Orbital Mix (how both The Orb and Orbital mist have wished the other had chosen a different name). The remix is typically Orb- like, downtempo ambient house with Dave Gahan's words on top. As well as a 12" single in 1990, it came out on The Orb's compilation of their own remixes in 1996, alongside a welter of other remixes- Pop Will Eat Itself, Erasure, Killing Joke, Primal Scream, Yello, Innersphere and Wir all feature.
Never Let Me Down is a throbbing, growling, druggy electro- rock single from 1987 and from their Music For The Masses album. The Tsangarides mix is from the 12", a remix by Chris Tsangarides. My favourite DM song, one that has worked its way into my musical world in recent years.
I Feel You was a 1993 single, screeching tyres, glitter stomp and blues guitar riff.
Enjoy The Silence was a 1990 single and from their massive 1991 album Violator. Synths, monochrome gloom, a lush darkness made for those sunset moments in stadia round the world- along with Personal Jesus it's the 90s Mode in excelsis. The version here is a re- edit by Stoke- on - Trent's Rich Lane, a man who knows his way round a re- edit better than most.
Blasphemous Rumours came out in 1984, a song about suicide, survival and religion that baited the religious, including those in the band. The crunchy synth sound and industrial drums show the way ahead.
Barrel Of A Gun was a single in 1997, the lead song for their Ultra album. Underworld's remixes, three of them, showed the two sides of late 90s Underworld- the Hard Mix is nine minutes of thumping, hard and fast drums that don't let up. The Soft mix (included here) is Underworld in dreamy, floaty mode and proof that Underworld were still capable of great remixes and of creating some lovely, low key, intimate moments.
Alex Paterson's Orb side project Chocolate Hills announced a new song and album recently, the song called Cracking Kraken and the album Yarns From The Chocolate Triangle (out in June). Sometimes I think Orb world is being spread a bit a thin, release after release by multiple incarnations and offshoots but the quality remains high and Cracking Kraken seems to promise a lot- piano, deep sea submersion, ambient sound, distant drums, synths with a rupture towards the end and sampled voices and noises. No doubt it will all make more complete sense in the context of the full album.
Chocolate Hills is Paul Conboy with Alex. Paul swears off computers using only analogue kit and pre- digital age gear. The ten track album is a musical expedition, an imaginary voyage by sea to the Bermuda Triangle and back. Back in 2019 Chocolate Hills released an album called A Pail Of Air, a deeply ambient and atmospheric seven track exploration of synths, sounds and samples which is one of the highlights of the recent Orb related releases.
Two piano pieces for Saturday, one from the 1880s and one from the 2020s, both finding a stillness, sadness and a delicate beauty in single piano notes played slowly.
The first is Gymnopedies No. 3, composed by Erik Satie in 1888 and played here by Reinbert de Leeuw in 1980.
Dr. Alex Paterson has been in a rich vein of form in recent years with The Orb and various side projects rediscovering and revisiting the sounds and elements that made The Orb so good in the 90s- widescreen ambient dub house liberally peppered with vocal samples and the feel of the weightlessness of space. It seemed only right to stitch some of these together into a forty minute mix, the only problem being Orb songs are sometimes of such a length that it could easily have been a three song mix. It was only once I started putting it together I realised that some of the Orb's recent works have a particularly current resonance...
Dohnavùr: New Objectivity (The Orb's Rest And Be Thankful Mix)
Sedibus: Toi 1338b (Edit)
OSS: Wow Picasso!
The Orb: Ital Orb
The Orb: Alpine (Prins Thomas Short Yoga Break Version)
The Orb: The Weekend It Rained Forever- Oseberg Buddha Mix (The Ravens Have Left The Tower)
Dohnavùr are a Scottish duo on the excellent Castles In Space label. The Orb's remix is on a remix package that came out in January this year.
Sedibus is Alex and original Orb man Andy Falconer. Their album The Heavens came out in May 2021 and was one of the records that sound-tracked last summer for me.
OSS (Orb Sound System) are Alex and Fil Le Gonidec. Enter The Kettle, a six track album, came out in either November 2021 or July 2022 depending on whether you got the digital or the endlessly delayed vinyl.
Alpine was a single from 2016 with the Prins Thomas mixes following shortly after. At this point The Orb were Alex and Thomas Fehlmann (who has since departed).
Ital Orb and The Weekend It Rained Forever are both from the album which was one of the sounds of the first lockdown, released just a couple weeks after the country shut down- March 2020's Abolition Of The Royal Familia. On Abolition Of The Royal Familia The Orb were Alex and Michael Rendell with contributions from Roger Eno the lovely piano on The Weekend...), Youth, Steve Hillage, David Harrow, Gaudi, Miquette Giraudy and Nick Burton and it sounded then and still sounds now like a 21st century Orb classic. Have the ravens taken flight yet?
I posted the Hardway Bros remix of Sparking Plugs by Deo'Jorge last week (the post is here) and at that point hadn't heard the Prins Thomas remix of the same track. Nine and a half minutes of dark, entrancing, sinuous, Scandi- disco is what I'm saying.
Prins Thomas remixes, often titled Diskomiks, are a joy- wiggy, pulsing and inventive versions. His soaring Diskomiks of Kingdom Of Rust by Doves is always a pleasure to hear as is his spaced out bouncy remix of Seahawks with Tim Burgess on vocals, there's a stunning take oo Terr's Tale Of Devotion, a very long one of Kelly Lee Owens's Bird from last year and A Man Called Adam's Paul Valery At The Disco. This one of Alpine by The Orb is very good too, a track I thought was pretty recent but is already five years old.
The sheer quantity of new material coming from The Orb stable could be a bit overwhelming; alongside the Royal Familia album and the remixes version, the recent further adventures of The Orb remixes of other artists, the outstanding Sebidus album from Alex Paterson and Andy Falconer, not to mention the Chocolate Hills album from 2019, there's now another new album in the pipeline- Enter The Kettle from OSS. OSS is Orb Sound System (or On Sum Shit), a collaboration between Alex and Fil, friends from both being Killing Joke roadies way back and with Orb history dating back through various albums and gigs. The first taster for Enter The Kettle is Whippersnapper, a track that sounds like it started out in the same space as the Sebidus album, space travel and widescreen ambience, but on OSS Fil brings a tougher edge to the sound, a metallic, industrial ambient groove.
The album isn't out until November and it seems a bit depressing to be looking and pre- ordering an album that far ahead, when summer will be long gone and winter in front of us, but I'm guessing that this is in large part due to the problems in getting vinyl pressed by the limited number of pressing plants available and the major labels block booking plants for their own releases.
The quantity of releases Alex has been putting out across the Orb board, to go back to the start of this post, would be too much of the quality wasn't high but the entire Orb operation is at the top of its game at the moment and OSS looks like being another genuine contender.
I started the week with an Orb related release and we're bouncing back in that direction today with one of the remixes from the Abolition Of The Royal Familia Guillotine Mixes album, out back in April. There's a host of Orb- linked names offering up new versions of tracks from last year's album- Youth's ten minute odyssey Shape Shifting Pt 1 is superb, a long drawn out ambient first half and a driving beat driven second. David Harrow contributes two remixes, both well worth the price of admission. Moody Boys, Andy Falconer, Sendelica and Kris Needs all turn up and then there's this beauty from Gaudi, the album track bent into all kind of new shapes and positions.
The new album from Orb boss Alex Paterson and old Orb partner Andy Falconer- released under the name Sedibus- is turning out to be one of early summer's real treats. Recent Orb albums have been a bit hit and miss and 2020's Abolition Of The Royal Familia had some very good, long tracks towards the end and some lovely remixes too but some misfires too. The Heavens is beautiful, immersive ambient house from start to finish, only four tracks but each one a journey- littered with samples, some familiar ones, space and NASA samples recurring, the thumping kick drum and dub bass present and the trademark Paterson sense of humour evident too. Dr Alex and Andy Falconer last worked together thirty years ago on Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld and in some ways this album seems to have picked up where that one left off. All four tracks are superb, weightless, organic and absorbing stuff. Unknowable, all eighteen minutes of it, is a trip.
A postcard from 1996 today, System 7 and Alex Paterson from The Orb, and a gently pulsing, psychedelic bubblebath with a nod in its title to the seabed- aptly so- this track sounds like it has surfaced from the bottom of a deep blue sea and into the sun. A funky guitar part strumming away for eleven minutes, a dubbed out bassline, warm atmospherics and a faint male voice choir humming along.
The KLF have spluttered back into life recently, thirty years since deleting their back catolgue. A couple of weeks ago a compilation album called Solid State Logic 1 appeared on the internet, dropped onto streaming services without warning- well, almost without warning, apparently a fly poster appeared under a railway bridge in Kingsland Road, London on the last day of 2020, but the eight track Best Of took most people by surprise. Yesterday Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty launched the second chapter of their musical back pages into the internet- a version of their 1990 album Chill Out appeared on Youtube retitled Come Down Dawn.
Chill Out, from its sheep in a field cover to it's mythical recreation of a drive from Texas to Louisiana, was a KLF concept album, an ambient classic designed to be listened to as one piece of music, Drummond and Cauty on a road trip through the Deep South. It is peppered with samples from some of rock histories most famous songs- Elvis singing In The Ghetto, Fleetwood Mac's Albatross and Aker Bilk's Stranger On The Shore. Come Down Dawn has removed these samples, presumably for legal reasons, and although I miss them the broad, cinematic, blissed out sweep of Come Down Dawn works perfectly well without them. The rumble of trains, the voices, the pedal steel guitar, the radio reports and bird sounds are all still there, the vision is intact. The tracks have all been renamed and the original road trip from Texas to Louisiana now sets out from Brooklyn and runs down the east coast before heading to Mobile, Houston and Loredo, finishing in Mexico City. The last ten minutes of Come Down Dawn depart from the original release too, lots of new/old elements thrown in with parts from The White Room movie and various other KLF releases. A new mix then, the original re- imagined and reworked, much more than just the removal of some difficult- to- clear samples and you can say it's just a new way to recycle their material and provide some cashflow (although the return artists get from streaming rates means they won't see much) but it sounds pretty fresh to me and just what's needed for a Friday in February 2021.
Here is an uncredited remix from The Orb in 1989 which takes a maximal approach to ambient house.
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).
In 1991 Barry Adamson heard three women singing/ busking on Portobello Road. The songs they were singing were Elizabethan madrigals, not the most obvious type of music to busk in the early 1990s. He was struck by their voices and they ended up working on a soundtrack he was making, signing to Mute Records, going in the studio with Danny Rampling to record their debut single Gush Forth My Tears and album Madra and going on tour supporting Blur (where on stage they received a barrage of sexist abuse from some of Blur's fanbase). The music press were all over Miranda Sex Garden briefly, partly because of their novelty value- three attractive young women with a memorable and provocative name singing Elizabethan madrigals a capella while supporting Blur at their drunkest was a story in the same way the NME and Melody Maker latched onto Dread Zeppelin (American rock band with a singer dressed as Vegas- era Elvis play Led Zep covers in reggae style). Miranda Sex Garden's career saw them expand and release several albums up until 1995 when they split and then Kathryn Blake formed a new group, Medieval Baebes.
Their 1991 debut single, Gush Forth My Tears, was remixed by Orb man Thrash and Paul Kendall (who'd produced Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb). The remixes as reported at the time felt a bit desperate at first glance, as if Mute calculated that either by Rampling sticking a clubby drumbeat underneath the madrigal or by Thrash remixing it for the ambient crowd they'd end up with a crossover clubland hit one way or another. But that's to do Thrash and PK a disservice and the original record too because Gush Forth My Tears (Ambient Mix) is a bit of treat.
Fluttering synth sounds, a warm kick drum, some trademark Orb ambience, the hiss of a hi hat, some distant violins and the trio of clear voices harmonising. There are several different mixes but this one is the pick and while you might not think you need a twenty nine year old Elizabethan madrigal revival/ ambient crossover record at this point in 2020, a sharp a rise in Coronavirus infections sweeping in and a new lockdown imminent, you actually do. And, if you're going to have one, it should be this.
After last month's Flightpath Estate Zoom meeting with Hugo Nicolson (Andrew Weatherall's engineer and co-producer on Screamadelica, One Dove and a host of classic late 80s/ early 90s remixes) another Andrew Weatherall collaborator, David Harrow, offered to spend an evening talking to anyone who was interested in listening. On Wednesday night a group of us listened to David talk at length- he said at one point 'I warned you I can talk'- about his life, from London in the 80s to LA now, a fascinating account of a life spent in music, at times living in a fairly hand- to- mouth kind of way, trying to make a living from what you love. He talked about the problems encountered when musicians have to decide whose work the music is, who contributed what and who gets credited, whose name goes on the front of the record and whose goes in small letters on the back and how this is a big deal when you're young and hungry- and the problems those things can cause. He found his way in to music working with Anne Clark and then Jah Wobble. David spent a few years in the second half of the 1980s in West Berlin, asking for his tour pay and passport when a tour he was part of the band for ended in the divided city (an Anne Clark tour I think). He described his life as a 'full on West Berlin goth' and then his re- entry into London, first with Wobble, and then as acid house kicked off a visit to Shoom and The Clink and the subsequent change in outlook, mood and dress. In a matter of weeks he went from the long black hair and leather trousers of Berlin to brightly coloured cycling jerseys and caps, and the accompanying changes in drug of choice. David ended up not being invited to be part of Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart band and looking for something else began to work with Adrian Sherwood and On U Sound. He talked in depth about his role at On U Sound, what he learnt from watching Adrian Sherwood and working with him and the combustible mix of characters that made up the On U Sound groups- the On U Sound touring sound system, Dub Syndicate, African Head Charge, Tackhead, Gary Clail (and there was much about Gary and the situation that developed there). David's role in the On U Sound world was pretty central, playing keyboards (and being shown how to do this 'properly' by one of the On U team at one point), songwriting, programming and co- producing.
David and Andrew Weatherall's paths crossed in London in the early 90s and they worked together at various points. In 1990 David produced the London group Deep Joy, a three piece fired up by the acid house revolution and its possibilities. David's produced their song Fall which was remixed by Weatherall, a chunky 1990 floor filler with saxophone, a choppy guitar riff, some Italo piano, an example of Weatherall's expansive widescreen remix style in full effect.
Andrew said he'd release David's own music on his label, putting out various Technova releases on Sabres Of Paradise, memorably the Tantra 12" and Tantric album. They went on to develop the Blood Sugar sound, minimal, deep house/ techno, gritty but seductive music for nights in dark basements. David recalled Andrew telling him in the studio that they could only have four musical elements in a track at any one time and that if they wanted to bring another element in, something else had to be removed from the mix, the sort of detail that when you then go back and listen to Blood Sugar's Levels double pack or the releases they made together as Deanne Day, illuminates the music and its creation.
There are many parts of the story I can only remember sketchily- I should have taken notes I suppose. David wrote Your Loving Arms for Billie Ray Martin (a worldwide hit thanks to its inclusion on multiple compilations), a song David described as financially 'the best forty five minutes work I've ever done'. He talked about his decisions with humour and occasionally a rueful smile. He played keytar bass for Bjork but then turned down the position doing that on an eighteen month tour. He advised Tackhead singer Bernard Fowler not to take up the position of backing singer for The Rolling Stones (Bernard has sung back up for The Stones worldwide since the 90s and now lives among the super rich in LA). He found another musical life after hearing drum and bass and beginning to make music under the name James Hardway, a jazz/ drum and bass project that brought success around the world. He talked about his devastation at the death of Jamaican singer Bim Sherman in 2000 and his subsequent move to Los Angeles. This track has recently been finished, a song with the late Bim Sherman on vocals, remixed by The Orb, and it hits all the spots you'd expect it to.
David has continued to put music out. Sitting in his studio talking to us he laughed about the amount of technology available now compared to the kit available thirty years ago- a sampler, a drum machine, some records, a keyboard. David continues to make music as Oicho, and with Ghetto Priest, and has just put several dubs recorded during lockdown onto Bandcamp. This one, Main Earth Dub, has an elastic bassline, some distant percussion and then some of those rattling snares and kickdrums, dub techno sounds that aren't a million miles from the Blood Sugar sound of the mid 90s.
101 Steps (Lockdown 2) is cut from similar cloth, a deep, dubby, experimental drive round a city at night, the echo and stop- start rhythms building the tension.
David talked to us for what ended up being three hours, taking questions and speaking honestly about his life making music since the early 80s. There's loads more he talked about that I haven't mentioned not least his time with Psychic TV (a big influence on Andrew Weatherall too), the gentrification of Los Angeles, the club Flying Lotus emerged from and Billie Eilish and her mum, and some I've left out, but it was an entertaining and fascinating way to spend a Wednesday night.
The new album by The Orb, Abolition of The Royal Familia, has been a bit of an opinion splitter. For some it's a return to the halcyon days of Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld and U.F.Orb, a sprawling four sides of vinyl, dub house odyssey. There are, for some people, some issues with the running order and the first few songs which seem very out of step with the rest of the album but on the whole it's been very well received. One thing is certain for me- the penultimate song, the twelve minute bliss of The Weekend It Rained Forever- Oseberg Buddha Mix (The Ravens Have Left The Tower)- is something that I cannot get enough of. It has some recurring echoes of and themes from the Blade Runner soundtrack and Roger Eno's piano playing is perfect. My only concern is that it will forever in my mind be associated with the lockdown and everything that goes with it.
'Don't create congestion in commonly used space', a poster from the Soviet Union, 1950s.
I thought I'd do something new today and maybe make it a regular feature. Everyone and their dog is transmitting DJ sets at the moment. One thing we've all got lots of is time. So in the moments between phoning in to long video conferences, teaching online lessons, wiling away hours absentmindedly surfing the internet and social media, spending time with my family and getting my state sanctioned daily exercise allowance I've also put together the first Bagging Area mix, fifty four minutes of music called Isolation Mix 1.
It's actually Isolation Mix 1.1, the first one wasn't quite right and I removed a couple of tracks and replaced them with some other ones. It's a mix of old and new, largely ambient and instrumental, a bit of dub and dub techno in there and appearances from Rutger Hauer and a retired French footballer.
Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini: Illusion of Time v Eric Cantona 'As Flies To Wanton Boys...'
Four Tet: Teenage Birdsong
Durutti Column: The Second Aspect Of The Same Thing
Richard Norris: Shorelines
Sabres Of Paradise: Jacob Street 7am
A Winged Victory For The Sullen: Keep It Dark, Deutschland
Vangelis: Tears In Rain
The Orb: The Weekend It Rained Forever (Oseberg Buddha Mix (The Ravens Have Left The Tower))
Dub Trees: King Of The Faeries (Avengers Outer Space Chug Dub)
Two Lone Swordsmen: As Worldly Pleasures Waves Goodbye...
I thought this piece of music might be good to bring things home this week and round off a week of excursions into a largely ambient, instrumental world. Penguin Cafe Orchestra's Music For A Found Harmonium was recorded in 1984, the work of PCO founder Simon Jeffes who found a harmonium on a pile of rubbish and bits of wood in Kyoto, Japan while on tour there with his avant- pop- folk ensemble. He took the instrument to a friend's home and wrote the music. It came to wider attention when it was featured on 1994's Cafe del Mar compilation, a double vinyl record with tracks chosen by legendary Ibizan DJ Jose Padilla. The harmonium and the repetitive tune sounded perfect next to the ambient house and down tempo dance music of the first half of the 90s. This song is one of the sounds that immediately reminds me of the flat I lived in for a couple of years near Altrincham c.1994.
The Orb remixed it and their version, with found sounds, tabla and a dubby ambient haze, appeared on a Penguin Cafe Orchestra primer called Preludes, Airs and Yodels in 1996 and an Orb remix compilation (Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond the Call Of Duty Volume 2). The original music is so simple and so strong I think it could probably be reworked and remixed in all sorts of ways and guises without suffering.
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.
Brexit is happening suddenly but quietly. It's largely disappeared as a news story, forced off the front pages/ top of the hour reports by Johnson's victory in December which has taken all the debate and opposition out of it and a flurry of other stories- the royal family and paedophilia, the royal family and racism, the royal family and the entirely sensible decision by two of its members to get out of it, the Coronavirus, Trump's impeachment and Iran to name but a few. Johnson promised to get it done. What he's done is get everyone to stop talking about it. In two days time Britain will leave the E.U. Admittedly we won't see any real changes until the end of the year. Freedom of movement will remain while the UK is in the transition period, we will still be bound by E.U. laws, and the European Court of Justice, worker's rights and trade will remain the same but without any representation in the European Parliament. As the press looks elsewhere the government will supposedly get on with the job of negotiating the terms of the real departure and the UK's future relationship with Europe, trade deals and all the rest. They've already passed legislation banning themselves from extending the transition period beyond the end of 2020 which means that we could conceivably slip out of the EU on December 31st without any deal. Something that a good number of these bastards have wanted all along.
Symbolically the moment when we leave is midnight on January 31st (Brussels time, nicely). That's the moment that this country takes the step to make itself poorer, worse off in all sorts of ways, to cut itself off from the largest single market in the world, the moment this country chooses to be an inward looking, mean spirited, small minded Little Englander nation. There will be some arseholes draped in Union flags having parties where they've 'banned' French wine, Dutch cheese and German sausage, Little Englanders to a man. They will be misty eyed dickheads standing staring at Big Ben, willing it to bong, and sharing pictures of the White Cliffs of Dover. These people will be gone one day, forgotten, swallowed up by the mess they created, the country they chose to reduce, the country they willingly have turned into a laughing stock around the world. I hope each one of them at some point has a moment where they see what they've done and silently admit to themselves that they made a massive fucking error.
Two late period Big Audio Dynamite songs, both showing in different ways that there was life in Mick Jones' band after they were seen to have passed their sell- by date. In 1991 Mick put together a new version following the departure of the original line up after Megatop Phoenix. Recruiting three younger players (Nick Hawkins, Gary Stonadge and Chris Kavanagh) and renaming the band Big Audio Dynamite II they released Kool Aid in 1990 and then The Globe in 1991. The Globe was in part a re-working of Kool Aid, kicking off with Rush and the cracking title track plus fan favourite Innocent Child and one or two others that still cut the mustard. The Globe was remixed by ambient house heroes The Orb, nine minutes of bliss starting out with the song, then going all dubby bubbly and ambient before bringing in Mick's most famous guitar riff to see us throgh the last few minutes.
By the mid 90s B.A.D. II had become Big Audio and then back to B.A.D. They were dropped by their major label and signed to Radioactive. In 1995 they released F- Punk, eleven songs created with the same line up Mick put together in 1990 but now with Andre Shapps on board on keyboards and co- production. Andre is the cousin of Grant Shapps, former chairman of the Conservative party and currently transport minister in Johnson's cabinet. We can't really hold this against Andre but it's a bizarre link. F- Punk contained one end period B.A.D. classic...
October half term. A week off for me (or wee calf in the punchline to Drew's joke on Twitter last week). Monday's long song this week is less a song, more a mini- mix courtesy of Coldcut and The Orb, who spend fourteen minutes and twenty six seconds with each other's record collections, tracks and samples live on the air at Kiss FM, New Year's Eve 1991. Coldcut were just getting their Ninja Tune off the ground, The Orb were about to take off.
There's all sorts going on in here, opera, cockerels crowing, thumping rhythm tracks, voices dropping in and out of the mix, Denise singing 'rama lama lama fa fa fi, I'm gonna get high til the day I die', Neil Armstrong's famous line as he steps down the ladder on to the moon, the vocal line from Roach Motel's Movin' On. Sampledelic fun for your Monday morning.
