Mighty Force have had a very good 2023, the Exeter label putting out several high quality electronic releases, albums from Boxheater Jackson, Fluffy Inside, Shrieky, KAMS and M-Paths and EPs from AP Organism and Davd Harrow plus some compilations. The latest release is a three track EP from Yorkshire Machines titled Firing Up. Yorkshire Machines are a duo with a history, Mark Franklin and Stuart Brown, with back pages taking in Warp, 90s clubbing and bleep techno and goth.
Crystal Beams arrives slowly, long synth chords and some dramatic tension before the bassline is released, more tension builds, ghostly voices rattle about and then the acid kicks in. Dark and intense and very good.
Track two is the magnificently named Existential Dread O' Clock, a voice intoning about time, matter and motion and then slow motion clanking drums, heavy duty rhythms and the sound of steel mills, acid basslines, and lots of lovely bleeps.
The third track is LS3 03 opens with a Yorkshire voice, Sean Bean, talking about shopping centres and investments (sampled I think from the televised version of David Peace's Red Riding Hood series from a few years ago I think) followed by the bleepiest of bleep techno, a wild, trippy and speaker busting six minutes, the Roland 303 being put through its paces. Crowd noises, echo, snares, kick drums, rumbling bass, acid squiggles, the lot- and finally, 'this is the north!'
Firing Up is available at the Mighty Force Bandcamp site.
This song, Yes by McAlmont & Butler, came out in mid- May 1995. In eighteen months time it will be thirty years old, which seems ridiculous- as does the idea that the mid- 90s are now three decades ago. Bernard Butler and David McAlmont had both left their previous bands in acrimony, Bernard walking out of Suede and David out of Thieves, and when they bumped into each other, in the Jazz Cafe in Camden, both were looking for some kind of statement to announce their return and to kick back against their former bandmates. Bernard had written the song as an instrumental and was coming out of 'a very dark place'. It was , he has said, 'a very liberating song'. McAlmont had a verse and the voice of an angel. Between them they recorded this enormous piece of 60s inspired, Wall of Sound pop music, a song to be sung loudly and in that sweet spot between anger and celebration.
I turned 25 four days after Yes was released. Isaac would have been 25 this week had he lived. When I heard Yes last week it struck a chord with me, a song about survival and sticking up two fingers to the world, but sitting here typing this now, three days before Isaac's birthday, I'm not sure I do feel that much better. It still feels really shit.
Yes, to paraphrase McAlmont, I do need November to be over.
David McAlmont has recorded an album with Hifi Sean, a producer, songwriter, musician and DJ and also the former/ current singer of The Soup Dragons. Their album Happy Ending came out either last year or this year- the full vinyl release was this year so I think it counts as a 2023 album- and is a joy from start to finish, a beautiful stew of dance rhythms, synths, Bollywood strings, pulsing bass, piano and McAlmont's extraordinary voice. A psychedelic electronic soul soundtrack according to Last Night From Glasgow, and they ain't wrong.
One of this blog's readers Spencer regularly sends me musical tips and recommendations and he's rarely wrong. On Friday he sent me a link to an EP by Rosco, The Call of The Cosmos (volume Unit Number 2). Rosco, aka Sterling Roswell, was the some time drummer in Spacemen 3 (he left in 1989 having played on The Perfect Prescription and the live album Performance). He also writes, records, plays guitar and other instruments, produces and fronts The Darkside. Spencer was listening to Call Of The Cosmos, three pints in admittedly, and sent me the link, calling it 'mind melting electronic psyche'.
Opening track, The Call of The Cosmos, is twenty minutes and twenty seconds long, more a long, strange dream than a piece of music. It is sounds and colours and yes, mind melting electronic psyche. Set aside twenty minutes of your day and listen to it here.
There's more- Trip Inside This House is eight minutes of cardboard box drums, swirling organ, peels of feedback, sound effects and drones. A Second Variety is a walk on the moors after dark, wind rushing through the speakers, ominous drones and chanting. Eventually a pipe of some kind plays a lament. There are three shorter songs too, Ojos En Llamos 8mm Film Soundtrack, Watkins Rapier 44 Blues and El Rosco Rides Again, all of which drink from the same well. Nothing on Call of The Cosmos is conventional or expected, it's experimental psychedelia and totally absorbing. Listen/ buy here.
This is from The Perfect Prescription, the second Spacemen 3 album, released in 1987- the year is there in the song's lyrics, '1987, all I want to do is fly'. Come Down Easy roots the Spacemen's music in gospel and the blues, specifically the song In My Time Of Dying, a song first released by Blind Willie Johnson back in 1928. Spacemen 3 turn repetition into into religious experience, the rhythm and riff repeated endlessly.
Putting together a forty minute mix of songs by The Fall is the easiest one I've ever done.
Go into the folder marked The Fall and start selecting songs.
Sequence them into an order that is pleasing.
Note that this process could be repeated three, four , five more times over and the quality would not dip.
Mark E. Smith famously said that 'if it's me and your nan on bongos, it's The Fall' but there's no doubting the musicians who came and went through the ranks over the years added a significant amount to the songs the group wrote and played. The songs here would sound different if Brix Smith, Steve Hanley, Craig Scanlon, Simon Wolstencroft, Karl Burns, Marc Riley, Martin Bramah, Spencer Birtwistle and all the rest hadn't been members of The Fall. Mark E. Smith may have been an intolerant and difficult person to be in a band with as time went on but he was also a singular and endlessly electrifying presence, as the songs below demonstrate. The lyrics and vocal delivery are of course central and the ones here find room for the Kennedy assassination, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Frank Zappa, Australians, Oprah Winfrey, Nelson, Tolstoy, Jeanette Fletcher, forty year olds in coloured shirts, the Flintstones, Star Wars, Nietzsche and the hip priest.
Cruiser's Creek is a single released in November 1985, one of the first songs written and recorded for This Nation's Saving Grace, when Brix joined the band and upped the ante a little in terms of sound and melody. John Leckie produced. The intro, MES shouting through a megaphone or over a tannoy, 'What really went on there? We only have this excerpt', is a brilliant way to open any song/ mix/ compilation tape.
Australians In Europe was a B-side to Hit The North, released in October 1987. Hit The North is a great single, 80s indie/ alternative night dancefloor gold.
Free Range came out in 1992, on the album Code: Selfish and a single in the same year. There are dance/ techno influences finding their way in to The Fall's sound, partly brought by new recruit on keys Dave Bush. At some point in the mid- 90s Andrew Weatherall was lined up to produce a Fall album but it became clear to him that his way of working ('You will give complete control of songs and production over to me and I will turn the vision in my head into a wildly expansive album') and Mark's ('I am The Fall and I say what it sounds like') would not be conducive and he backed out. A Weatherall produced Fall album is one of life's great What If's....
Oswald Defense Lawyer is from 1988's The Frenz Experiment, my first Fall album and hence one of my favourites (I think it ranks fairly low among The Fall's cognoscenti). There are Fall fans who say the cover of The Kinks song Victoria (also from this album) and There's A Ghost In My House are the worst songs The Fall did. Similarly there are Clash fans who hate Should I Stay Or Should I Go and Rock The Casbah because they sold in large quantities and were hits. Generally, I distrust these views. A good song is a good song regardless of how many or few people bought it.
Touch Sensitive came out in 1999. I'd drifted from The Fall by this point and this single bought me back, a dancefloor friendly, catchy as you like, thundering rumble of Mancabilly, filled with MES one liners. It opened the album The Marshall Suite, the 20th Fall album and last one in the 20th century.
Two Librans came out on 2000's The Unutterable, the first Fall album of the 21st century, and proof that the band and Smith were as vital as they'd ever been.
Big New Prinz is a contender for my favourite Fall song, the first song on October 1988's I Am Kurious Oranj (either my second or third Fall album purchased I think). The album was conceived as the soundtrack to a ballet performed by Michael Clark and Company, a performance based on William of Orange's ascension to the English throne in 1588, the so- called Glorious Revolution. Big New Prinz is based on 1982's Hip Priest. The album also contains their cover of Jerusalem which is priceless.
Blood Outta Stone was on 1990's The Dredger EP, a four track 12" led by the cover of White Lightning. It was later on added to CD re- issues of Shift- Work.
High Tension Line is another favourite of mine, also from 1990, a period when they seemed to release 12" singles almost weekly. It was produced by Grant Showbiz who did a lot of good work with them around this time.
Dead Beat Descendant is prime late 80s Fall, the B-side to Cab It Up. The title apparently comes from an episode of The Flintstones, Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty sent into the 21st century by The Great Gazoo. The four of them are chased out of Fred's company by George Slate the 8000th, Fred's $4 loan from prehistory now ballooned into a $23 million debt, Slate shouting 'come back here you dead beat's descendants!'
Rikki Turner has a past. He is a former Paris Angel, a veteran of Manchester bands The New Southern Electrikk and The Hurt and more recently San Pedro Collective. He has been working on a project recently that he says will be his last, that once it is done he will retire from music. Rikki always knows who to work with. His previous groups seen him write and play with among others Wags (a Paris Angel who went on to Black Grape), Suddi Raval (of Hardcore Uproar fame), Simon Wolstencroft (The Fall, pre- Stone Roses Stone Roses).
His latest and last musical outlet is Unknown Territories, a collective based in Manchester's Spirit Studios, with Martin McLaren and bringing ex- Inspiral Carpet Tom Hingley on board along with Sean Crossey and Esther Maylor (from Heavy Salad) and with production courtesy of Callum Croston and Lewis Jones. Rikki wears his heart on his sleeve and has been sending me snippets of the forthcoming album for some time, always with the promise that it is for Isaac. The first fruits of Unknown Territories came out yesterday, a single called Broken...
Broken is heavy duty 21st century music, the lead vocals of Esther front and centre, underpinned by deep electronic bass and the tsk tsk tsk tsk of hi hats, skittish bleeps and crunching drums. There's more to follow with an album forthcoming featuring both singers and spoken word pieces, and a one off gig at The Eagle Inn, Salford, in December.
Back in 1990 Paris Angels caught the wave of interest in Manchester bands following the explosion of 1988/ 89. The group were from east Manchester, the unfashionable side of the city, out in Guide Bridge and Ashton- under- Lyne. Regulars at The Hacienda and the Boardwalk they were soaking the influences that were in the air- 60s guitars, sequencers, dance rhythms, New Order's late 80s marriage of all those- kaleidoscopic sounds that saw them sign to Sheer Joy and release three singles, All On You (Perfume), Scope and I Understand, before they signed to Virgin for the album Sundew. 1990's All On You (Perfume) is the one everyone talks about (and rightly so) but Scope, released the same year, can also hold its own, both at the time and now, thirty three years later.
Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony's new musical outfit Electric Blue Vision release a four track EP today on Brighton's Higher Love label, making a late dash for those lists that people are busy compiling at this point in the year. Jesse sent me a version of the original mix of Other Skies a while back and I was smitten from first play, the swirly organ intro and warm thud of bass joined by Emilia's whispery vocals, everything a lovely hazy shade of blue but tinged with some yellow and amber.
Jesse has said he was aiming high with Other Skies, looking to Higher Than The Sun and One Dove's Fallen for inspiration. Other Skies has that widescreen, wide eyed ambient/ psychedelic feel, the drums and bass pushing it along but it has a sense of drift and yearning in the vocals too, Emilia singing, 'Can you help me to find my way? Do you know the way back home? I'm ready to go, I said I'm ready to go...'. It's late at night, the venue's closed and moved everyone left at the bar out onto the pavement, the streets are cold and lonely, home is calling. It's a lovely song and I can't recommend it enough.
If you're not convinced by all of that, there are three remixes to turn your head. Balearic Ultras give it some heavy bass, drums and FX, filtering everything through a heat haze stripped back and minimal. The Tambores En Benirras remix goes for shimmer and shimmy, a slo mo thud of kick drum, twinkles of guitar and echoes all over the voices, a few lines isolated, 'up down spin me round', nodding in New Order's direction, and there's a piano line near the end that sends shivers up and down the central nervous system. Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray join forces again as Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown, a dubbed out, melodica led stomp, percussion rattling round and Emilia looped into infinity. The bass of Wobble and the ghost of Augustus Pablo battling it out in other skies.
You can (and should) buy the Other Skies EP is here.
Every Wednesday for the last five weeks my friend Stevie at the Charity Chic blog has posted songs under the title Brothers, Sisters... and every Wednesday morning when I open up the internet and see his posts I hear this running through my head...
'Brothers, sisters, one day we will be free/ From fighting, violence, people crying in the streets...'
The warm pulse of bass and 125bpm drum track follow, running through my mind, the tom tom fill at the end of the 8th bar crash in, the synth strings start to play, the Roland handclaps and cowbells dink in and I'm swept away by Joe Smooth's 1987 single. Promised Land was/ is the song that, as much as any, suggested house music was an open invitation to all, that the dancefloor was a place of inclusivity and openness, where colour, sexuality and differences were swept away by the power of dance music.
In 1987 Joe Smooth was on tour in Europe with Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk and was blown away by the way European audiences had taken to house music. He wrote the song inspired by this and wanting to capture something of the spirit of Motown's classic singles, music as a call for unity and brotherhood/ sisterhood.
'As we walk hand in hand/ Sisters, brothers, we'll make it to the promised land...'
The song was re- released in 1988 and 1989 and as the tide of history turned in Eastern Europe and then South Africa, Promised Land seemed to offer a soundtrack to those events. Lyrically it can't help but reflect Martin Luther King's famous I Have Reached The Promised Land speech too, the one he gave in Memphis the day before he was assassinated. The utopian dream of early house music.
As a song it's a tempting one to cover, dance floor friendly, with two rousing chords, a pumping bassline capable of moving feet and vocals that provide a warm, misty eyed glow. Paul Weller caught the house music bug at the tail end of The Style Council and recorded a cover in 1989. The Style Council's cover is exactly the sort of thing mods in the late 80s should be doing, Paul and Mick on twin pianos, all slicked back hair and loafers while Dee C Lee stomps and dances centre stage. It was their final single- the house inspired album Paul presented to Polydor was the end of the road for them.
In 2006 Findlay Brown covered Promised Land. Findlay's laid back, dreamily nostalgic and melancholic music was based in folk, ambient and pop- his cover of Promised Land was released as a single with a variety of mixes, versions and edits in 2010 including this one by French producer/ DJ Pilooski.
