It's the end of May already. Time keeps flying by. Back in spring 2021 I posted a song by Los Angeleno Tima Christina, a slightly spooked piece of modern, leaving home on a Greyhound bus, Americana called Home Is Where The Heart Is. It came out on Manchester label Blindside, a long way from Los Angeles which ever way you slice it. Tima has now joined forces with Brad Negrotto, a Louisianan, as Vela Noir/e and they've just released a song called Your Funk My Love. Moody synths and atmospherics, a beat that could equally come from a bar in Baton Rouge or something Warp released in the 90s, and Tima's coolly distanced voice. 'The desert makes me cry', she sings at one point, just before an organ picks out a melody line and a finger picked guitar cuts through the layers.
Isaac died six months ago today. I'm not sure what this means- the marking of dates and passing of time have a special significance, I'm always aware of them. On the one hand, six months seems like quite a long time when written down, it's half a year, give it another six months and we'll be about to see December in. On the other hand, it all seems very recent, it could in some ways have happened only a few weeks ago. The thought that just over six months ago we could talk to him, hold his hand, go out for a walk and stop off somewhere for a pint and some chips... it all seems very real and yet, he's definitely gone, we've accepted that. On a day to day basis we can operate and function, we can go out and see friends, do 'normal' things, have fun even. When we go to his grave it all seems very huge, the enormity of it all, his death and his absence. The time we've travelled since he died and the coping with it prove that only time can make the difference and that the Nick Cave quote that I've mentioned a couple of times holds much truth for me. On his blog Nick said 'in time, there is a
way, not out of grief, but deep within it'. Every day, each day we go forward in time, Isaac is a day further away physically, but in lots of ways he's always there. In the end we just learn to live with the grief. So, six months is both significant and also just another day. It still hurts- it always will. We go on.
It seems appropriate to pay tribute to yet another musical passing. Last Thursday news came through of the sudden death of Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode's run of singles and albums from the early 80s and into the 90s is the stuff of synthpop and then stadium electro goth legend and I've grown to appreciate them and their music in recent years. On top of that no- one seems to have a bad word to say about Andy, a genuinely nice man, happy to talk to fans, popular with his peers and seemingly the glue that held the group together.
R.I.P. Andy Fletcher.
A while ago I saw a clip of Depeche Mode performing Never Let Down Again on a TV show and I can't remember what TV programme it was but this one, somewhere in Europe in 1987, will do instead. Huge groove, killer tune, leather jackets, somewhere between industrial, New Beat and synth pop.
And seeing as Rich himself has been sharing this since Thursday I thought I'd help spread it a little further- Rich's own edit of Enjoy The Silence, a recent dance floor oriented update on the 1989 single.
There's been some On U Sound action in various areas recently- a gig in London a month ago that looked superb and the release of Pay It All Back Vol. 8, a sixteen track round up of On U dub/ reggae/ post- punk excellence. By way of a Bagging Area tie in I thought I'd put together an African Head Charge mix, thirty eight minutes of psychedelic dub from Adrian Sherwood and Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah. There's no real way to effectively describe the sounds African Head Charge make, it's best just experienced. Sunday morning vibes taking in deep Jamaican dub, speaker rattling African rhythms and sampled voices from anywhere/ everywhere.
Stebeni's Theme is from the 1981 album My Life In A Hole In The Ground. Asalatua is from the aforementioned PIAB Vol 8. Flim was on PIAB Volume 7, released in March 2019. Hot Pursuit is from 1998's Drums Of Defiance, African Head Charge versus Professor Stretch. Dervish Chant and Cattle Herder's Chant are both from 1990s definitive AHC album, Songs Of Praise, and Hold Some Version is an outtake from that record (which saw the light of day on the essential Sherwood At The Controls Volume 2: 1985- 1990 compilation). From the same time period, Dub For The Spirits is from Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, an album of outtakes and dubs. Off The Beaten Track is the title track of the 1986 album.
Another Saturday, another theme- today's theme is from Johnny Boy, a Liverpool duo from the early 00s best known for their epic 2004 single You Are The Generation Who Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve, a Spector- esque, 21st century girl group/ Mary Chain update taking aim at late stage capitalism.
In 2004 Johnny Boy (Andrew Davitt and Lorraine Hayward) released a CD single called Johnny Boy Theme and on the B-side was this dub version. Starting with a bell being struck and some echo- laden sampled dialogue, suddenly there's lots going on, drums, Lorraine's voice, then a breakdown to bassline and Lorraine, more reverb and FX, a swirl of noise and distant clanging guitar.
More sad news with the loss of two more musicians in the last week. Ricky Gardiner died last week aged 78. Gardiner played guitar for Iggy Pop and David Bowie. That in itself marks him out as remarkable. But even among those two artists and their rollcall of musicians, collaborators and players, Gardiner was special. He played the lead guitar line on Sound And Vision. He played the riff on Speed Of Life and on Always Crashing In The Same Car. He was Iggy's guitarist on the Lust For Life album, co- writing Success. He played drums on Fall In Love With Me. And, most of all, he wrote the riff on The Passenger, arguably the greatest rock 'n' roll guitar riff of them all.
A few days later the death of Cathal Coughlin was announced. Cathal, from Cork, died aged 61 after what was described as a long illness. He was previously the frontman of Microdisney and then Fatima Mansions. I first encountered Cathal and The Fatima Mansions on BBC2's Snub TV in 1990 and this specially shot clip for their song Only Losers Take The Bus. Intense and unforgettable, it made a big impression on me, Cathal tied to a chair firing off surreal lines like 'Churchill was shopping bag' and 'Paris is in India' while claiming he was 'born in hail and flames'.
I've always assumed the song's title was taken from Thatcher's (possibly apochyphal) remark that 'any man over the age of 26 who finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure'.
Brand new from Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 is Thickener, two mixes of deep, techno tinged, dark disco. Psyche- chug from Stockholm, mastered by Rich Lane in Stoke. The Thinner Mix is first up, kick drum and hiss and huge belching synth bass. A chopped up fragment of wordless vocal, rising and falling topline and then on it goes, pumping away.
The Full Fat mix follows, riding in on tom toms and a big groove, a distorted voice and synths pinging about. The bassline buzzes about around the breakbeat and everything gets quite intense before the breakdown at four minutes. Then it all goes off again. You can both at Bandcamp, name your own price.
I'm particularly excited about this release because the cover photo is mine, a picture I took a while ago and shared on social media. Jesse got in touch and asked if he could use it. Here's my original, a shot of a pendant lamp in a cafe/ bar in Altrincham taken from below.
Obviously we now need to start a crowd funder campaign for vinyl, t- shirts, posters, coasters, tea towels, tote bags and all the other merch the image requires.
Pet Shop Boys played Manchester Arena on Friday night- there aren't a huge number of groups who can tempt me into arenas but Neil and Chris are one. The tour is billed as Dreamworld, a greatest hits show, and they do not disappoint, hit after hit, song after song, a perfect demonstration of the art and sheer majesty of pop music. Noel Coward's quote about the potency of cheap music runs through my head a couple of times (not that the Pet Shop Boy's music comes across as cheap in any way) but it is extraordinarily potent. I'm in tears a couple of times- this keeps happening at gigs at the moment, lines and songs triggering me instantly. So much of a Pet Shop Boys gig/ show is about the stage, the set and the spectacle and there's plenty of spectacle here tonight but it doesn't overshadow the songs and ultimately it's the songs that shine.
The duo come on to a full, pretty much sold out arena, in big coats and headdresses. They occupy the front third of the stage, a big screen blocking off the rest of the stage. Under a pair of stylised street lamps on wheels, Chris begins prodding his keyboard and Neil takes us straight into Suburbia. The projections behind them are in a constant state of right to left movement giving the set a real sense of motion, the graphics whizzing by as Neil and Chris largely stand still. Suburbia segues into the thumping dance pop of Can You Forgive Her? and without a pause we're into Opportunities. From thereon in it is clearly going to be nothing but hits, one after the other, usually without any breaks between the songs, a constant seamless flow of words and music. Their cover of U2's Where The Streets Have No Name lights the place up even further, that sequencer line pumping through the giant barn we're in sending waves of energy into the crowd and back again. For some songs, Rent (played early on) and West End Girls (much later), the projections become distorted, chopped up versions of the original videos- the young Chris Lowe with naval hat and duffel bag steeping off the train from the Rent video and the pair of them in the streets of London for West End Girls, a moving ode to the passing of time and youth becoming middle age. The quality and range of their back catalogue is so high- one of their 90s peaks, So Hard, is dispensed early on, Chris' massive rave riff filling the arena and Left To My Own Devices, even bigger than the recorded version with Trevor Horn, that superb line about Che Guevara and Debussy delivered with deadpan aplomb.
The stage gets opened up for the middle section, the screen raised and three extra musicians waiting for them on risers- drums, percussion and keys- and they're straight into the latin rhythms crossed with melancholy of Bilingual and Se a vida é (That's the Way Life Is), the first lump in the throat for me, the line about 'Se a vida é/ I love you/ Life is much more simple when you're young' hitting home. The beautiful Balearic pop of Domino Dancing is followed by some 21st century PSBs- New York City Boy, Monkey Business- and Neil straps on an acoustic guitar for the relationship dissection of You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk. Then we're slung back to the 80s- Love Comes Quickly and Jealousy. From this point it's smash hit overload- You Are Always On My Mind, a superb Heart, their wonderful cover of house legend Sterling Void's It's Alright, Go West and a climatic It's A Sin. For the encore the stage is reduced again, the screen leaving the duo at the front. West End Girls, poignantly backlit by their 80s video and then Being Boring, their masterpiece, the projections whooshing from front to back now, lights receding into the distance and Neil's time shifting lyrics about loss, the passing of time and friendship setting me off again- 'all the people I was kissing/ Some are here and some are missing... But I thought in spite of dreams you'd be sitting somewhere here with me'.
Ten years ago last night I found myself standing in the packed Parr Hall in Warrington along with about one thousand other lucky souls watching the return of The Stone Roses. In November 2011 they announced their reformation at a press conference and then three sold out shows at Heaton Park in June 2012. Suddenly, on the morning of 23rd May 2012 they dropped word that the first 1000 people who arrived at the Parr Hall booking office with a piece of Roses memorabilia (a record or CD or a t- shirt) would get a wristband to the warm up show. If there's one thing the group excelled at first time around it was creating an event, gigs that were out of the ordinary (Blackpool, Spike Island, Ally Pally), a group capable of doing something a little different (blowing the sound up live on BBC, throwing paint around the offices of their former record company, signing to a major label and then seemingly doing nothing for five years). The gig at Parr Hall fell into that kind of territory, for sheer unexpectedness if nothing else.
I was at work and for some reason got home fairly early, opened the email, got changed and straight back into the car and drove over to Warrington, not expecting to get a wristband but at least giving it a go. I parked up near the centre of town and crossing a square heading towards Parr Hall a man younger than me, heading the other way, spoke to me as we passed each other- 'the wristbands have all gone mate'. I nodded and said something in reply. Then he said, 'I've got one but can't go. Make me an offer'. I paused for thought, wondering what he thought was fair/ derisory. I had no cash on me so it would involve a trip to a cashpoint whatever I offered.
'Twenty quid?'
'Done'.
And with that I got the cash, handed it over and he wriggled the wristband off his wrist and I slipped it on to mine.
Standing around the square outside Parr Hall I had a slight sense of disbelief that it was actually happening, that this was some kind of elaborate prank. The pubs around the square began to fill up, people standing outside in the warm May sunshine. It occurred to me that almost everyone waiting to enter the hall had no idea at all when they woke up that morning that they would be seeing The Stone Roses that night. It seemed unreal. I texted a couple of people and then bumped into one of my brothers and his then partner, both with wristbands. Across the square I spotted friend of the band, journalist and Membrane John Robb plus former dancer/ FX man Cressa. It started to seem more likely this was actually happening. The hall doors opened and we filed in. No support band, a DJ spinning house records. The crowd downstairs nodding heads and beginning to shuffle and jig about. The room was full of expectancy, a buzz you could feel. When the DJ played Strings Of Life the energy levels rose again, the crowd upstairs on the balcony bouncing. A camera crew (Shane Meadows it turned out) moved around the room. On stage, a familiar looking drum kit, twin bass drums with lemons printed on the front, a bass amp covered in Toby jugs and guitar amps to the right. The Supremes' Stoned Love began to blast out of the PA and eventually a roar as four middle aged men took the stage, Mani entering like he'd just scored the winner at Wembley, John Squire with his face semi- obscured by his fringe and heading for his guitar, Reni in a home made head dress taking his seat behind the drums, and front and centre Ian Brown, pink Stone Roses t- shirt and jacket, waving and telling everyone to put their phones away, 'You'll miss making the memory of this while you filming this' or words to that effect. Shane Meadows film (Made Of Stone) caught their arrival on stage and the audience reaction, and then the beginning of I Wanna Be Adored. It captures it all very well.
They played for just under an hour, the set largely based around the first album and the surrounding singles and B-sides, kicking in with the long bass- led intro to I Wanna Be Adored and Squire's liquid guitar lines drizzled over the top. As the bassline bumps along the crowd started to bounce with it, instantly picking up on what was happening. At the end of the song, as it faded out in a wave of guitar noise, Ian waved to his parents sitting up in the balcony, a huge grin saying 'look, we did it, we're back'. Then it was straight into Mersey Paradise ,the sun dappled psychedelia of 1989 spinning round the by now manic, hyper crowd, the song and crowd surfacing together to sing the refrain, 'you see it in the sea/ river cools where I belong'. A singalong, beefed up Sally Cinnamon. The epic cool guitar lines of Made Of Stone. The bedsit indie of Sugar Spun Sister and Where Angels Play. It all seems like a dream now- never mind that it was ten years ago, the fact it happened, in a small venue like the ones they played back in '89, seems unreal (moreso given the next time I saw them was with 80, 000 other people at Heaton Park and the one after that in a football stadium- they'd given up on out of the ordinary venues by 2016, taking the safer route). Reni's drumming was less fluid and rolling than it had been back in the late 80s possibly, the drums being played harder and with more punch- two bass drums would do that. Mani was grinning throughout the set, his basslines a key part of so many Roses songs. Squire his familiar inexpressive self, peeling off guitar lines and riffs nonchalantly as if thinking bout something else entirely. Shoot You Down was a pause for breath, the bouncing up and down calming a little for the hushed singalong part, the crowd caught somewhere between disbelief and delirium. Only two songs from The Second Coming made it into the set- Tightrope, subsequently dropped (Ian found it too hard to sing apparently- you can probably insert your own joke here), and set closer Love Spreads. In between the twin highlights of the gig songwise- the dizzying, bouncing, spellbinding psychedelic guitar pop of Waterfall with the crowd singing the guitar line to accompany Squire as he plays it during the end section of the song and then She Bangs The Drums, Mani's instantly recognisable bassline driving the song, guitar chords sprayed out, drums punching along and Ian grinning this way through. They finished with Love Spreads, just eleven songs in under an hour, no Fools Gold, no I Am The Resurrection, no Elephant Stone or This Is The One (all played later on during the massive reunion shows). They had to keep something in reserve I guess. No encore either, lights up straight away and everyone spilling out into the Warrington night, pinching themselves, hugging, unable to quite believe what they'd just seen. I stood waiting for my brother to emerge and a group passing by invited me back to theirs (I didn't go by the way)- it was that kind of night.
A month later they played Heaton Park, three nights of 80, 000 people, all sold out, with full support line ups and fireworks at the end as Resurrection faded out. It was good fun, the band played really well and gave a full set, with a fifteen minute version of Fools Gold, the song twisting and turning itself inside out, and the traditional set closer of I Am The Resurrection with the full on extended funk/ rock outro. The whole thing felt like a celebration. It was great for people who didn't see them first time round to get the chance, a chance for others to relive the glory days of youth (which I suppose is what heritage rock is really or at least partly for), good for the band to get a payday (after being screwed over by Silvertone on album sales especially). At one point at Heaton Park I turned around to look behind me (we were fairly near the stage). There must have been 60, 000 people behind me, stretching all the way back as far as the fence hundreds of yards away. I wondered how much they were getting out out of it, whether seeing bands in big fields where you end up watching the screens as much as the stage, is ever that good. I've no doubt that seeing them at Parr Hall took the edge of Heaton Park for me- it was good, I wouldn't have missed it, but Parr Hall- the unexpectedness of it, the intimacy, the excitement and energy of the crowd and the band- was something else. I hope that doesn't sound elitist, or 'I was there and you weren't'- it's not meant to. I know I really lucked my in to Parr Hall, I could easily have not passed the man who sold me the wristband and moped around for a while before either driving home or deciding to stand outside the venue and listen from there, almost but not quite at the gig.
Today's long song came via a recommendation from Jesse Fahnestock and is from an album called Os Grandes Sucessos released on Friday by Brazillian artist Fériasdasférias, resident of Sao Paolo. Jaca is a thirteen minute trip, bumping straight into life from the first click of Play. Pumping drums, rising and falling synth patterns, some nicely distorted/ droney melody lines in the background, pitched somewhere between the dancefloor and ambient/ home listening. There's a longish section where it all calms down a bit but the growing intensity around eleven minutes, as the synths start buzzing, brings it all back to the fore- and then suddenly the dam breaks and it all goes mellow again. Lovely stuff.
There are plenty of other long songs on the album, three clocking in at nine minutes and another breaking the thirteen minute mark. For contrast, Aquecendo is less than two minutes long- variety is the spice of life as they say. Buy Jaca on its own or the whole of Os Grandes Sucessos at Bandcamp. And thank you Jesse for the tip.
Some Brian Eno for Sunday, mainly focussing on his ambient and/ or soundtrack music but with a more meaty cut from his 1981 collaboration with David Byrne thrown in for good measure, the perfect relaxed start to a Sunday in May. There could easily be another three of four follow ups to this mix without even scratching the surface of Eno.
News came through on Thursday evening that Vangelis had died aged 79. Vangelis' soundtrack to Blade Runner (and all the other aspects of the film) are one of the formative influences on my tastes. Back in 1982, aged 12, the dark sci fi crossed with film noir of Blade Runner had a huge impact on me. Vangelis' synth soundtrack, from the pulsing, swooping Main Titles music through to the subtly epic Tears In Rain scene, is superb, the perfect synthesis of music and visuals. The soundtrack wasn't actually released until the 1992. Due to contractual difficulties an orchestral version recorded by the New American Orchestra came out in 1982, a version which was some distance from Vangelis' soundtrack. To listen to that you had to play your VHS copy.
In the middle of the film replicant hunting Blade Runner Deckard is saved from death at Leon's hands by Rachael (the beautiful and brilliantly cast Sean Young). In a previous scene Rachael had turned up at Deckard's apartment trying to convince him she was human and not a replicant, based on the belief she had memories of her childhood. Those memories, the memories of her creator's niece, were implanted in her. When they return to Deckard's apartment, a single's man's flat in the middle of a futuristic Los Angeles where it rains perpetually, Deckard promises not to track her down and 'retire' her. They kiss and Vangelis' Love Theme plays, lush symphonic synth music with Dick Morrissey's tenor sax taking the lead.
Later on, in the late 80s and early 90s Vangelis' music would enter my musical world again, with the majestic State Of Independence (both the 1982 Donna Summer single and the 1992 cover by Moodswings) and then the mid- 90s revival of some of his first band's music, the Greek psychedelia of Aphrodite's Child, especially the epic Four Horsemen.
Two recent and delightfully disjointed works from Martin Jenkins, first in his The House In The Woods guise, the second as Pye Corner Audio. Where Path Becomes The Stream is a seven minute exercise in suspense, dark, murky synths and sampled woodland sounds, building slowly and uneasily. On headphones it's the quite the experience, especially if out walking. Get it at Bandcamp.
Pye Corner Audio's latest release Dirty Window Of Opportunity is more direct and more obviously dance music, riding in quickly on drums and crashing 808 hi- hats, a bouncing bassline and rippling synths. When the acid line begins bleeping away it's all very exhilarating, enough to take one's breath away under the right circumstances. It's a pay what you want at Bandcamp deal, as per usual.
Queue them up to play one into the other and they can form two halves of a whole, one pastoral but uneasy, the other urban and plugged in. Like this...
A few people have said that the first anniversaries are the toughest following a death- memorably a friend with experience of this wrote in a card to us 'the first everything fucks'. Today is my birthday, my 52nd, and the first in our household since Isaac died. I haven't really been looking forward to it, it feels like it will bring a lot up. Isaac loved a birthday, he always had a list of activities which had to be observed. He insisted on any of our birthdays that the Happy Birthday banner being hung up in the kitchen, that presents be placed in a pile on the kitchen table, that there must be a card with a monkey on it (always, every time) and cake and candles at tea. Having my first birthday without him feels very sad, another reminder of his absence and our loss. It's another thing we have to go through though, there's no avoiding it and I guess there will come a time when it feels less painful.
Today is also the day of two other significant birthdays shared with friends, one (Daisy) turning eighteen and the other (Sophie) turning fifty. Happy birthday to you both (although I'd be surprised if either of them read this).
52nd Street were a jazz/ funk/ r 'n' b band who signed to Factory, active around Manchester when the 70s turned into the 80s. Bassist Derek Johnson is the brother of A Certain Ratio's drummer Donald and after being seen at Band On The Wall by Rob Gretton they became a Factory act. Tony Wilson had them on Granada Reports twice, they recorded at Strawberry Studios and eventually, as major label A&M came sniffing around the group, they were managed by Lindsay Reade (Tony Wilson's wife/ ex- wife and one of the unsung women at the Factory HQ on Palatine Road). In 1983 they released one of Factory's bona fide classic singles of the period, Cool As Ice (although strictly speaking it didn't come out in the UK, being released on Factory Benelux in Europe and the USA). Produced by Donald Johnson with Bernard Sumner programming the synth (and under the name Be Music, the catch all production title for any New Order productions of other groups whether it was Bernard, Stephen, Gillian or Hooky individually or collectively, often with Donald at the desk as well). Cool As Ice is uptempo, dancefloor heaven, synths bubbling away and plenty of '83 electro energy. It's easy to imagine Madonna covering it a few years later. Play it back to back with the other great Factory singles from 1983 and 1984- Marcel King's Reach For Love, Section 25's Looking From A Hilltop, Quando Quango's Love Tempo- and its clear that New Order isn't the only story being written at Palatine Road and on Whitworth Street.
This came out yesterday from David Holmes, Jade Vincent and Keefus Ciancia's' Unloved band, the pithily titled Mother's Been A Bad Girl. It's a very gnarly, echo drenched song- 60s psyche, yé-yé, The Wrecking Crew and some psychodrama fed through a 21st century filter. Available to buy here.
Mother's Been A Bad Girl was on the soundtrack to the most recent series of Killing Eve. We bailed out of Killing Eve a while ago but the soundtracks for each episode and series are superb in themselves with huge quantities of Unloved songs but also songs by influences, kindred spirits and fellow travellers such as Etienne Daho, Fireflies, Brigitte Bardot, The Liminanas, The Velvet Underground, Die Wilde Jagd, L'Epee and Jane Weaver.
Back in 2018 ahead of the Convenanza festival Swedish label Hoga Nord released a five track vinyl EP. Die Wilde Jagd (the musical vehicle for producer Sebastian Lee Philipp) contributed Gleiß K, a fine piece of tense, sparse and spooked psyche.
Red Snapper's new album, Everybody Is Somebody, came out at the start of the month and the band have been touring to support it for the last two weeks. The album is a real return to former glories. Back in the 90s a run of EPs (Swank, Snapper, Hot Flush) and subsequent signing to Warp led to their Prince Blimey album, a glorious blend of jazz, funk, surf, Afro, dub, breakbeat, trip hop and whatever else tickled their fancy, and the superb Reeled And Skinned, live instruments and electronics brought together. The trio of Ali Friend, Rich Thair and David Ayers brought in other players and vocalists as and when required. They split up for a while in the 00s but reformed in 2007 and have been playing and recording ever since (with a detour into post- punk by Friend and Thair as NUMBER in 2019).
The new album sounds like a musical stew where everything they've previously done has been brought to the boil, all the influences and experiences fed into fourteen tracks (ten if you buy the vinyl). Album opener and single last year The Warp And The Weft features a very laid back rap by Natty Wylah, a downtempo start to an album that picks up the pace afterwards- there's a run of songs, largely instrumental, that run through the gamut of the group's styles and influences but it all hangs together, focussed and engaging. It also sounds like they had a lot of fun making it.
Some highlights- Tarzan is amped up funk, parping horns, rattling drums and clipped guitar. Tremble starts out with picked acoustic guitar and jazz bass, then violin and cello, and sweeping strings swooping in before the twin vocals take over. Equals is out there sci fi funk, a piano line over pumping rhythms and electronics, the future funk of the 90s back in orbit. Out Of Focus has a twangy, Bond style guitar line and fantastic live drums with dub horns, not a million miles from A Certain Ratio and their recent noir funk revival.
Black Sea is a psychedelic soundscape, skittering drums over a distorted synth or organ line, rimshots and echoes bouncing round as the wiggy melodies evoke sunsets on Jupiter or jazz clubs in some outpost of a distant galaxy.
The laid back trip hop/ rap returns with the slightly surreal Albert's Day Off. On Detach they head back to the soundtrack, sci fi, jazz, a song that wouldn't sound out of place on Sabres Of Paradise's Haunted Dancehall.
The album, fourteen tracks digitally or the slimmed down ten on vinyl, can be bought at Bandcamp. Highly enjoyable, experimental and accessible, and highly recommended.
Neu!'s Hallogallo was the opening song on their self titled debut album, released in 1972. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger formed Neu! after leaving the proto version of Kraftwerk the year before and began recording as Neu! with Conny Plank at the production desk as a duo, Dinger on drums and Rother on guitar. Hallogallo, all ten minutes of it, pretty much defines what has become known as the motorik/ krautrock sound. The other six songs on Neu! (the album) all have their merits but Hallogallo is the album's truest statement- the relentless, gliding drums, 4/4, uninterrupted and endless ('endlose gerade' according to Dinger- endless straight) with Rother's melodic, soaring, cosmic guitar lines layered on top. Rother has likened his guitar playing to the flow of rivers, the result of growing up and living near rivers. He was born in Munich and spent part of his early life in Wilmslow (not far from here, a Cheshire town on the outer fringes of southern Manchester's furthest reaches) and also in Karachi (where Pakistani music would influence his playing) before returning to Dusseldorf. I always think of Rother's guitars and their fluid forward motion as being like trains or motorways but the river references makes sense to me.
Hallogallo is perfection. If Neu! had recorded nothing else, Hallogallo would be more than enough. When it plays time disappears as Dinger and Rother play their eternal, harmonious groove. I can always click back to the start or return the needle back to the beginning of the record. If ten minutes isn't quite enough for you a helpful Youtube user called faxfaxfax has uploaded a much longer version, a spliced together Hallogallo playing almost endlessly, in a ten hour loop.
The Albert Hall has become Manchester's best gig venue in recent years. Holding 1800 people in a second floor former Wesleyan Chapel (Grade 2 listed), hidden and forgotten about for forty years, it's now the perfect venue for bands- the stained glass windows above the balcony are stunning, especially at that ideal time in the spring and summer when the sun sets just as bands take the stage and the natural light and stage light play against each other. The stage is compact with the old organ pipes visible behind it. It's big on atmosphere and intimate feeling and can conjure up some real magic.
Warpaint played there on Thursday night, a band I've been meaning to see live for years and for some reason never managed until now. They're touring to promote a new album, Radiate Like This, a record I've not really heard in full yet but one which has a poppier, lighter tone than some of their previous albums. The four members arrive on stage just after 9pm and play a mixture of songs from the new album along with older ones- they kick off with Stars from 2009 mini- album debut Exquisite Corpse and follow it with new one Champion. The rhythm section of bassist Jenny Lee and drummer Stella are locked in, the sound is great, guitars clear and bright over the post- punk/ dubby rhythms. The bass is pleasingly loud, felt as well as heard. Jenny often moves to the centre of the stage when starting a song, face to face with guitarist/ singer Emily, eyes locked into each others. Seven songs in they play Love Is To Die, the moment when everything really takes off, slow burning and intense, the song's heavy churn and sweet harmonies really hitting the mark. A little later the four of them come to the front of stage and sing Melting a capella (except for some delicate finger picked guitar from Emily), a sweet moment of calm. Stevie from the new album and Bees follow and then New Song from 2016's Heads Up, a powerful, filled out version of the song, with Emily dancing at the mic, and then they finish with one of their best songs, Disco// Very, a tense, dark and menacing, going off like a slow firework. 'I make room for everyone', Emily sings, 'I make room for everyone/ I... need... to... take... a break!'
The encore gives us Elephants, the song that was the stand out on their debut, thumping drums, squealing guitars, propulsive bassline and threats to 'break your heart'. Beetles, equally old, is next before the final song, a slighter and more delicate song from the new album, Send Nudes. The very mixed age crowd- everyone from sixteen year girls to sixty year old men with thirty- somethings well represented- are happy, everyone's had a good time and Warpaint seem genuinely excited by the reception they received. They're a powerful live band, the songs bursting to life on stage, the four women equally adept at atmospherics, dreamy, stoned Californian post- punk with Mamas and Papas vocals, and hypnotic 21st century dance- rock too.
Today's half hour mix is a Warpaint compilation with a Jennylee solo song thrown in (Never from her 2015 album Right On!). There's a lovely cosmic Richard Norris remix of Disco// Very, the version of Undertow from the re- released version of The Fool (from last year's Record Store Day, the Weatherall mixes of the album that were shelved at the time of the album's original release), No Way Out- a standalone 7" single in 2016 and one of their best songs for me and three of their killer songs- Elephants, Keep It Healthy and Love Is To Die, all played at the Albert Hall on Thursday night.
Dole Drums is an instrumental piece of low- fi, organ- led beat pop, thumping drums courtesy of the titular Wolf Howard, sticksman for Wild Billy Childish And The Musicians Of The British Empire. Dole Drums is from their 2008 album Thatcher's Children, an album that had two stone cold 21st century Childish classic- He's Making A Tape and Back Among The Medway Losers and sleeve art by the legendary Jamie Reid (of Sex Pistols cover art fame).
The song was featured in Andrew Weatherall's Double Gone Chapel Vol. 1, an hour's worth of top tunes selected by Andrew back in October 2008 and hosted at the Rotters Golf Club website. Double Gone Chapel Vol. 1 set the standard in some ways, the perfect sampler for what he was listening to in the first decade of the century- surf instrumentals, rockabilly, post punk, Balearica, solo tracks, remixes and 7" singles that came his way via Rough Trade East. Double Gone Chapel Vol. 1 (Vols 2 and 3 followed in 2009) includes Calvin Cool, The Dawn Breakers, The Tall Boys, Sleaford Mods, S.C.U.M., Lykki Li, Basement 5, Lark, Thee Oh Sees and Billy Childish as its finale. You can find at Mixcloud or here if you want a download to keep forever.
Leeds based label Paisley Dark is releasing a compilation album today- Shelter Me- aimed at raising funds for Shelter. Label boss John Paynter has set the target of £5000, money that will be used to help the homeless and those who live in bad housing. Anyone who has been in any of the country's towns and cities during the last ten years will have witnessed the rise in homelessness. More hidden is the number of people, families and individuals, who end up in poor quality housing, homes ridden with damp and overcrowding, poor facilities and landlords who take the cash and do little more. If that sounds like a description of Victorian Britain, then maybe it's appropriate.
The album has twenty tracks, all donated free of charge, and built around the A Love From Outer Space network of artists and sounds of the travelling chug disco of Mr Weatherall and Mr Johnston (bravely being shouldered solo by Sean now). The list of artists takes in current Bagging Area edit favourites Jezebell, repeat Bagging Area postees such as Duncan Gray, Richard Sen, Shunt Voltage, Matt Gunn, Bedford Falls Players, Man2.0 (formerly Manpower) and many more besides. You can buy the album digitally at Bandcamp. Album opener Beschutze Mich by Steady State (translation- Protect Me) is dark, sleek, cosmic disco, the perfect gateway to the album.
Also present is Leeds DJ/ producer Cosmikuro with a track called Pan In The Flash. Earlier this year Cosmikuro put out a track called Gum (as part of a charity release called Collective Consciousness, raising money for Mind, Trees For Cities and Women's Aid). Gum is a delight, a dubby, tranced out chug through the cosmos, pulsing synths and bassline. This track was also recently part of Jesse Fahnestock's Higher Ground 10:40 mix which is where I first encountered it and which I wrote about here at the end of last month.
Chapel Cottage by Thee Church Ov Acid House remixed by Richard Fearless, dub techno from Hamburg rejigged in East London, out last week. Cavernous echo, drums, distorted squeaks, rattling percussion, whooshing noises, reverb- laden screams, long synth sounds- subterranean rave soundtrack. Buy it at Bandcamp.
While I'm posting Ricard Fearless again it would be remiss of me not to remind of this record from 2017, Sweet Venus, which came out on vinyl (300 copies only). Sweet Venus is to my ears one of the finest pieces of electronic music released this decade/ century, deep and beautiful, building, circling, loopy acid dub techno with some gorgeous keening drones. The build up to the hi- hats joining in at two minutes forty five is almost worth the price of admission alone and the final couple of minutes, everything synced in and pulsing forward is a joy.
Today is the occasion of post number five thousand. When I started this blog in January 2010 I thought I'd give it a year and see how it went. That deadline passed and I just kept going, and here we are today, five thousands posts in. I don't have any songs (that I can think of) about the number 5000 so instead here's some song title maths- five times a thousand. Nothing too difficult- this isn't the number round on Countdown.
The first is from the best band to come out of Burnage, Factory's Stockholm Monsters. Five O'Clock is from Alma Mater, released in 1984, the deliberate greyness of early 80s Factory beginning to be coloured in- a keyboard part and a drum machine ticking away, and some brilliantly untutored vocals.
The second is from 1992 and Pale Saints, the 4AD signed shoegazers who rode in to massive acclaim with their debut in 1990 and the Sight Of You single. Their follow up, In Ribbons, closes with this wonderfully dreamy song A Thousand Stars Burst Open.
Spiritualized's new album, Everything Was Beautiful, as taken up residence on my turntable, a forty four minute, seven song companion piece to 2018's And Nothing Hurt. The songs for this album were recorded at the same time as the ones that make up And Nothing Hurt and could have been packaged as a double but I think breaking the songs into two sets across two albums released four years apart, has worked best, each record having the time and space to reveal itself. They're clearly related works- the two titles are supposed to run together, Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt (taken from Kurt Vonnegut) but they stand alone too. Pain runs through both, emotional and physical, and at time his singing sounds like one long exercise in heartache- but there's masses of beauty in them too.
Reverting to his J Spaceman name Jason has delved into his own back catalogue, referencing the packing of 1997's Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space, with more medication styled art on the sleeve and he's dug deep into his usual influences for the songs too- there's Stooges style rockers, blues guitar riffs, gospel choirs, those wasted, enervated vocals, fuzz guitars and free jazz saxophone, sweet calm and sudden noise, with the mono- like production that balances the huge number of instruments. If he's repeating himself (and I think Spiritualized is an exercise in repeating himself, repetition and refinement are what he does) he's doing it very well. It's got depth and a genuine emotional heft in among the mantras in the lyrics and the sounds. This one opens it, and starts out as Ladies And Gentlemen... did, the album's title spoken by a whispered female voice...
Craven Faults specialise in long tracks, music inspired by lengthy excursions in post- industrial landscapes in northern England made with analogue synths and modular synths. It's a sound they describe as 'Detroit via The Orbit in Morley, 1992. Istanbul, 1967. We travelled by rail with old friends. Vienna, late night café, straight connection. Lower Manhattan, 1966. New Year’s Day in Filey, making mental note of the patterns played out by the church bells. 1991. Revisited several times over. Mutated by the passage of time.'
The EP Nunroyd Works has sold out on vinyl but you can get it digitally at Bandcamp. The first track is Engine Fields, clocking in at a relatively concise seven minutes. The second is the ten minutes trip of Dye And Size. The third, below, is the monumental seventeen and a half minutes of Foddergang, a relentless, intense kosmische synth journey, with rippling arpeggios and a thunderous kick drum.
Some Kieran Hebeden/ Four Tet for this week's Sunday half hour. There's an embarrassment of riches in his back catalogue- the difficult part was narrowing it down to just six or seven tracks. Kieran takes the energy and feel of rave and combines it with ambient sounds, skippy laptop drums and Indian instruments to make something which is very much his.
The mix starts with Teenage Birdsong, one of my favourite Four Tet tracks, taken from his Sixteen Oceans album, a record which reminds me of the first days and weeks of the first lockdown in March and April 2020 like no other. Lahaina Noon is from the Ana Painting EP which came out in 2019, a collaboration with the painter Anna Liber Lewis where he made music and she painted in response to each other. Two Thousand And Seventeen is from 2017's New Energy album. Jamie Xx's remix of Lions came out as part of the Atoms For Peace project in 2014 and Raga To Midi W was part of a collection of unreleased tracks and edits he dropped onto his Soundcloud page in 2020. There's one of his unpronounceable Wingdings tracks on there and it finishes with his epic eight minute remix of Daniel Avery's New Eternity.
Some shops just sell everything you could possibly want don't they? Skulls, £1 crystals, clocks and vases, fridge magnets and lingerie.
Funrama Theme was Fun Boy Three and Bananarama having, yes, fun back in 1982. More groups should write their own theme songs I think. The drum machine, loopy bassline and wonky pianos and horns are a joy in themselves and that's even before Keren, Sara and Siobhan start singing. This came out as the B-side to T'ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It). There was an extended version on the 12" and a remixed one on the album (retitled Funrama 2) but this is the one I have on my hard drive.
We spent last weekend in London, staying with friends on the outskirts and then travelling in on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday morning we headed for the National Covid Memorial on the Albert Embankment, next to Westminster Bridge. Last December, shortly after he died a friend of Eliza's who is at university in London went down to the memorial and added his name inside one of the hearts painted on the wall. The memorial grew organically, started by the bereaved without official permission, with names added as the death toll mounted. It stretches from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth Bridge, half a mile long, thousands of names of ordinary people who died from Covid added with dates and messages by family members and friends.
I expected it to be very moving and it was- Isaac's name, part of this sea of hearts and names, each one an individual loss, and it had us in tears. In a part of London full of official and state memorials, statues of monarchs, generals and prime ministers, there's something very honest and democratic about hand painted hearts and marker pen remembrances. It was emotional. Thinking it still is.
From there we crossed back to the north side of the Thames using Lambeth Bridge, walked up Whitehall and got the tube up to Primrose Hill we we sat in the sunshine, had some food and enjoyed the view.
From Primrose Hill we walked to Camden via Regents Canal, had a couple of drinks in the sun and then headed to Soho where they happen to have four of the best record shops in the country within a few hundred yards of each other (Phonica, Sister Ray, Sounds Of The Universe and Reckless). I somehow managed to take us down Dean Street in Soho, home to the Sabres Of Paradise office in the 90s, where Andrew Weatherall and friends based their operations above a strip club and next door to a house once occupied by Karl Marx. The doorman at Sunset Strip said that the guerrilla Weatherall plaque gets more attention than the Karl Marx one these days. I think both Weatherall and Marx would have been amused by that. We had a couple more drinks in the evening sunshine outside the John Snow pub, Soho filling with Saturday night revellers, and then a tube and train back to our accommodation.
On the Sunday we trained and tubed it back into central London and walked from Baker Street to Hyde Park, stopped in at The V&A for an hour or two, missed out on the Natural History Museum due to the length of the queues, and then headed west, ambling up Portobello Road towards the Westway and then Ladbroke Grove. I was looking, at least in part, for The Clash's London I suppose.
There is nothing quite like walking round London, flitting from one part to another, finding something to see round every corner, road and place names that are familiar from TV and songs and part of the culture we all grow up with. In some ways, London is a different place to much of the rest of the country- in parts of central London it feels like being in a different country altogether. We had a good time, tiring too and with some emotional moments, but it was well worth escaping for weekend. This weekend, we have no plans at all- and that feels ok too.
This song is by The Times, the indie/ punk vehicle for the talented Ed Ball, released on an album of the same name in 1983 on Artpop! Records, a driving, low fi slice of early 80s Londonisms.
For balance and also from 1983 this is Get Out Of London by Intaferon, a single produced by Martin Rushent. Get Out Of London is one of those minor hit/ lost gems, powered by frantic acoustic guitars and a torrent of words, which only slows slightly for the refrain, 'I gotta g-g-ggg-g-g- get out of London', followed by the sound of a train passing, before the tumult kicks back in.
In 1993 Sabres Of Paradise remixed Wrexham dance music outfit K- Klass. In 1991, following a tour as support for 808 State, K- Klass had a hit single with the magnificent house tune Rhythm Is A Mystery. The following year they signed to Deconstruction, a record label with Mike Pickering on board that was home to Bassheads and Kylie Minogue after she left PWL. Andy Carroll (not the long- haired former Newcastle and Liverpool striker) and James Barton were the residents at Cream, Liverpool's soon to be superclub, and Carroll was involved with K- Klass (who he helped sign to DeConstruction)). Andrew Weatherall DJed in The Annexe at Cream regularly (we were often there) and I'm making the assumption that at some point pre or post- club night, Andy or some one from K- Klass asked Weatherall if he and Sabres would do a remix for them.
By 1993 Weatherall had moved from Balearic dance into techno, mining the darker seam deeper and deeper. His sets at Cream were techno with a dash of house. By '93 the remixes were usually more techno- oriented too, partly because that's where his head and listening habits were at, and partly so he could produce remixes that he could play out to a crowd. The two Sabres remixes of K- Klass are a little overlooked but both a stunning pieces of work, very 1993 and all the better for it.
The Sabres of Paradise Mix # starts out with cowbell and hi hats, some hissing percussion sounds and then after about a minute of intro the kick drum begins thudding away, industrial techno ahoy, and a gorgeous squiggly synth topline appears. The snares begin crashing away. The synthlines oscillate and at just under four minutes, some long, descending synth strings chords hit- there's some melancholy in there among the driving rhythms, some of ambient techno's ability to tug at the heartstrings seeping in. On and on it goes, ten minutes of 1993 splendour.
Sabres Mix #2 steps up a notch, opening with blaring sirens- a call when in a club to throw your hands in the air, for the whistlers to whistle and the whoopers to whoop- and then the kick drum, much more distorted this time, threatening your speakers. The squiggles and synths are even wiggier, everything pushed a little further, the knobs turned further to the right and the needles further into the red. There's a breakdown at three and a half minutes, those descending synths chords and an echo- laden hiss, before the drums re- enter and a piano melody starts to tinkle away on top- we're not even at the halfway point yet, there are six minutes still to go- and some classic Sabres percussion and drum sounds brought in (the Sabresonic album was released a month earlier and many of the same sounds are all over that record). More sirens at eight minutes. More drums. That delightful, slightly mournful piano line. Sleek, modern sounds made for dancing to but three decades later still sounding pretty perfect for home and for headphones.
If you're looking for the remixes on vinyl, they can be picked up second hand. Sabres Mix #1 of One Two Three (or 1, 2, 3) can be found fairly easily and cheaply on the 12" and CD single of K- Klass' Let Me Show You (itself a good slice of 1993 house)- there are copies of this release on Discogs from £3.37 upwards. If you want the vinyl release that includes the Sabres Mix #2 you'll need the white label release which will set you back a bit more. It's currently for sale on Discogs for £250 (I'd be surprised if the seller gets that for it but who knows, Weatherall related vinyl prices have skyrocket in the last two years. Copies have sold for anywhere between £20 and £50 in the past).
Back to the Manic Street Preachers, so soon after last week's post- while looking for the Stealth Sonic Orchestra remix of A Design For Life I came across some other remixes which are worth revisiting, two by David Holmes and one by Mogwai. The David Holmes remix of If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, a gorgeous, languid nine minute affair, was posted at The Vinyl Villain recently and I'm sure it's still there. Holmes also remixed You Stole The Sun From My Heart, a 1999 single from the album that came out the years before (This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours). The song describes Nicky Wire's dislike of touring- not playing live, which he loves but the deadening routine of hotels, soundchecks, busses and so forth. Hearing pop stars moan about touring never sits that well with me but I can understand the feeling, the dislocation and the homesickness. The song also doesn't sound like a pop star moaning, more like an existential crisis set to music.
Holmes doesn't do anything too radical with it but it's a lovely version, spacious and lilting with less of James' crunchy rock guitar playing. The name of the remix, A Joyful Racket, sits pretty well and the melody lines he picks out would go just as well on the songs he recorded for his own Let's Get Killed album from 1997 or his Bow Down To The Exit Sign album of 2000.
Mogwai start out with just James' vocal and some guitar parts providing atmospherics, but begin to ratchet up the unease and distortion with static, feedback, rain and loops. It's doesn't ever go full on Mogwai wall of noise but it's none the worse and no less unsettling for it.
Ride were welcomed on stage at The Ritz last Thursday like returning heroes, a 90s indie re- union where the group have made new music that stands alongside the songs and albums of their/ our youth. The gig and tour was postponed from two years ago, a anniversary tour for their 1990 debut Nowhere, and advance clips from elsewhere made it seem that they were on fire, a run of rapturous gigs. Arriving on stage at nine they set about playing Nowhere in full, in order, kicking straight into the full pelt indie/ shoegaze/ Byrds-y assault of Seagull, feedback ringing, drums pounding and vocal harmonies at the centre with that loopy bassline driving it. Nowhere as Andy Bell tells us, 'is a funny album, it starts fast and then slows down'. The band play it like it's new material, energised and enthused by the reaction of the crowd and their own rediscovery and expansion of the songs. If anything, the songs sound better live in 2022 than the early 90s recorded versions- the twin guitars scorching and soaring where they need to, the harmonies spot on and the rhythm section underpinning it all. Loz Colbert's drumming is a sensation in itself and Andy Bell switches between pedals and guitars, noise and melody. Paralysed burns slowly, Dreams Burn Down is an epic bedsit anthem and Vapour Trail is greeted by a mosh pit, and a mass singalong as the song finishes and the crowd take over, something approaching hysteria.
After the album is done they play some songs from the period- the beautiful, 60s/ 90s guitar pop of Taste, the harmonica- led fuzz and feedback of Here And Now and the huge, skyscraping set closer Nowhere, breaking down into feedback and the static distortion of waves lapping against a shore as the band wave goodbye. There's an encore of course, where the old and the new get blended together and the crowd are dancing, bouncing, singing and waving hands in the air, the indie kids of 1990 (now all grown up into middle age) and their children (also now grown up) blasting out the lines together. There are two songs from the re- union album Weather Diaries (Lannoy Point and All I Want), a tour debut for Twisterella (because the support band bdrmm were bugging them to play it), OX4, Kill Switch (from 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place), a delirious Unfamiliar (from 1991's Today Forever EP) and to finish Leave Them All Behind, the eight minute opener of 1991's Going Blank Again and the perfect set closer, twin guitars fed through FX pedals, massive bass and drums and those Byrdsian harmonies filling the Ritz, 'just let it flow/ just let it flow', the sounds spiralling round and round, caught in a loop of noise and harmonics.
