June 2013 – audio.out

Carnival

This has been on my todo list for a while, but I always had some problems finding the right version of the disc. My discogs adventures would inevitably turn up the wrong version, which was an easy mistake to make as I didn’t know how to tell one version from the other until a wonderful soul noticed a difference on the runout groove. On the bright side I’ve got a few generic Perfecto sleeves if I wanted to paper the wall or something.

Anyway, the track in question is Gary Clail & On-U Sound System – Human Nature. And before you turn and run, the reason for my digging for this is that the track originally didn’t feature vocals from Gary, rather from the firebrand American preacher Billy Graham. Now, I don’t think Billy was too hot on his speech appearing on the original demo with Tackhead and when it came to a commercial release it sample usage was denied. Which was a bit of a shame as I think that the original is more muted and consequently more powerful but Gary & his megaphone probably made for a greater commercial potential.

Billy Graham came to my then hometown of Glasgow in 1991, he had previously condemned it as the most unholy place ever or something. It’s not hard to disagree with that to be honest.

And if GARY CLAIL isn’t your thing, here‘s a lost Lionrock B-Side from an old 7″ single given away with Jockey Slut many moons ago. That’s a disappointingly anachronistic sentence these days.

Mourning

According to

Remastered

Something shorter today. I do hope you’ll excuse the odd indulgence as I’m trying to keep up momentum but don’t always have suitable content at the point of posting.

This was the first single on Heavenly Records. A collaboration between Sly & Lovechild named “The World According To…”. Remixed by the inevitable Andrew Weatherall. Have realised this was made available in a lossless version last year on Richard Sen’s This Is Chicago compilation so I’ll link to that on Spotify instead. BTW, if anyone objects to linking to Spotify please let me know but I’m beginning to find some oddities I’d like to link there instead of using my own bandwidth.

Soul Of Europe

Eh, fuck Spotify. I realise that isn’t a lossless rip, but it’ll do.

I~~n other Spotify news, Simon Reynold’s Energy Flash is now out in an expanded edition and as part of this there is a Spotify playlist to go with it.~~

Hmm, that’s still there acording to the hover text.

Also of possible note, and perhaps posted previously : Big Hard Excellent Fish – The Imperfect List is surprisingly up on Spotify. In all of the Rimming Elvis The Andrew Weatherhall (sic) Way versions.

Part 1

Where were you?

And moving to pretty much the entire opposite side of the spectrum, Sunn O))) have put their back catalogue up on Bandcamp for streaming/purchasing. Just in case you needed your ears deeply cleaned out.

If I Start Believing You

Remastered

Spotify is kind of neat, isn’t it? It takes mere seconds to find Pinball Cha Cha, Nlogax, the Cinematic Orchestra’s fabulous Late Night Tales session or Blanck Mass without having to journey down to the archive. Which is admittedly about 5 steps over there and 15 steps downstairs but it’s the principle that counts. From an artist point of view it doesn’t seem to be all that fair, each play probably nets you about 0.000003 pence per play which is about as much exposure as you get from some guy on the Internet posting the tracks you hoped were in the permanent bin.

(BTW, it’s worth pointing out that there’s a stream of the new BoC album tonight over here. I am kind of looking forward to this and hope it helps remove the disappointing Dad House feeling I got from the Daft Punk album. The Moroder track is pretty great, it’s a wonderfully rewarding labour of love but the rest of it isn’t so much fun. IMO.)

edit, 2023, Spotify turned out to be the devil.

Anyway. Enough complaining. Let’s music.

It’s hard not to get emotional listening to Billy Mackenzie, he had an astonishing voice that I don’t think anyone came close to until Antony Hegarty. And not to mention Billy’s writing, his collaborations with Yello in particular led to perhaps one of their best known tracks with vocal duties fulfilled by Dame Shirley Bassey. Billy sadly committed suicide in 1997, but left a legacy of some work which I’d encourage anyone reading to further investigate. That’s not however the point of this posting, if there is indeed one.

The post today is about an EP released in part to promote a 1990 singles collection, Popera was the album and Poperetta was the EP. The EP focuses on two versions of two tracks, Waiting For The Loveboat & Club Country. All four tracks were remixed by Thomas Fehlmann, a well known staple of the Berlin music scene and frequent collaborator with The Orb.

The promo was issued in the UK on Ost-West Schallplatten with German translated titles. For reasons unknown.

Club Country is one of my favourite Associates tracks, but to be honest, the versions here are not that great. Club Country Club updates the track for a more 90s dancefloor that it didn’t really need.

Landschaftsverein

The Time Unlimited version is a bit of a mashup of Billy Mackenzie with samples of Tricky Disco, maybe also D-Shake – Technotrance, GTO – Pure, and 808 State – Cobra Bora. And a bit of whoo-yeah from Tricky Disco to cap it off.

Alive and Kicking

Waiting For The Loveboat comes off a little better in the Extended Voyage mix which didn’t make it to the compilation. Judge for yourself.

Wink

The Lights Go On

Remastered

It’s probably been nearly two years since I’ve posted anything so I guess it’s about time I changed that. What I wanted to achieve with this blog was to share music that hadn’t been heard in some time or only by a limited audience, so I did that for a while but couldn’t find the momentum to go on and kind of gave up.

So, anyway, here’s something I intended to post a while ago but never got round to it.
Lil’ Louis & The World – Blackout (Original Version)

At the flick of God’s switch.

Lil’ Louis & The World – Blackout (Tempramental Dub)

A World Eclipse

Some might remember these tracks but probably haven’t these particular versions as they was only available on a limited run promo 2x 12″ with I Called U in 1989 and not made available in any other form (that I know of, nor can discogs shed any light on this). There were four version of I Called U & four of Blackout, but only two versions of Blackout (Phase 1 & Phase 2) saw release. The versions here seem to have been expanded into Phase 1 & Phase 2 respectively, but there’s not quite as as much of the dub version used. All of the mixes of I Called U made it to retail as it was the lead single, although the third 12″ in the set of three led with the Over The Edge version of the track and it’s a little under 3 minutes, which wasn’t even the average length of a 7″ single back then. The rest of the single was made up of US version of French Kiss, which seemed a little odd at the time as Blackout was downplayed in favour of I Called U as Blackout was considered by some to be too similar to French Kiss.

As was usual, the corresponding US single was a Maxi running just under 40 minutes (this was before reforms of the single rules for the UK charts which allowed up to 40 minutes on an EP/CD Single) with 5 versions of I Called U instead (some of which are still likely to be hear if one still goes out clubbing or dances round your computer speakers during a boiler room session or whatever kids does these days). Blackout didn’t see a general release on vinyl in the US until 2006 with Phase 3 on Mathematics Records.

See you in another 3 or 4 years!