Let The Horse Run Free

Seamus Heaney has been in the air around me recently- an article at The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan, our trip to Belfast two weeks ago, Mike Wilson's 100 Poems, and the quote on Heaney's gravestone that inspired me when we were looking for pointers about how to go about Isaac's gravestone ('walk on air against your better judgement'). I bought a copy of 100 Poems second hand, a self- explanatory selection of Heaney's poems chosen by the Heaney family with the plan that I'd read one a day. I haven't started yet, but will soon. It's always interesting when a second hand book comes with a handwritten inscription...

Questions eh? What happened to Sophie and James? Why did Sophie get rid of this book? Or did someone else? If nothing else, it gives the book a life, a past. 

By coincidence Mike Wilson's 100 Poems have a new album out. Mike named his musical project after Heaney's poetry collection and, a fellow Irishman, is a fan of Heaney's work. Mike took the 'walk on air against your better judgement' as an inspiration for his music, the casting off of concerns and doubts  and just going for it, creating, making music. Last year 100 Poems released three albums, all of which contain some wonderful music, music that lit up 2024- blissed out Balearica, tunes for sundown and sun up, spaced out dub and wide eyed electronic songs. He followed those three with a live album this year. You can find them all at the 100 Poems Bandcamp. 

Yesterday Mike put the first fruits of his latest album onto YouTube a song called My Wicked Son, with an album- Let The Horse Run Free- out tomorrow. Not content to stand still Mike's dug out the acoustic instruments, guitars, fiddles and banjo, and taken inspiration from the Old West, an album of electronic beats crossed with country, cosmic/ Balearic Americana. It's also an album that deals with personal issues, stands up squarely to the past, to the black dog of depression and mental health issues. When the album goes onto Bandcamp tomorrow, any proceeds will go to mental health charities, seven songs are infused with Mike's wide screen sound and attitude. 

Opener My Wicked Son sets Mike's new stall out- distorted vocals, a backdrop of fuzz and FX, the vocal snapping into focus as the singer tells of being on the road again. Harmonica fades in, a guitar squeals, the singer asks for mercy and the bluesy cowboy stomp kicks in. As the drums kick and pound, a synth appears, a 303 whooshes in, the saloon bar piano player picks out a one fingered melody, everything all at once... a song destined for dance floors. 

The album's title track follows, the lonesome wail of a steam train, hand drums and then a slow motion groove with guitars, After the breakdown things go left, the acid and the cowboy yodel playing off against each other, synths building up a head of steam, an eight minute rodeo. Johnny Plays Guitar is a torch song, female vocal and burbling acid house balladry, the Johnny Guitar of the song a nod to the 1954 Joan Crawford film. 

She Don't Want Me Know combines a chuggy stomp and echo- drenched banjo and a croaky vocal from an old timer. It comes after The Ballad Of Josey Wales, a song littered with film samples in the way early Big Audio Dynamite songs were. Sister Rave pounds in with thumping late 60s drums and a vintage sounding vocal, the sound of 60s soul crossed with an acidic 303, hands raised in celebration. At the end we left on Big Dub Candy Mountain, the squelch of the bottom end countered by cowboy blues, Mike updating a 1928 Harry McClintock song, the lyrics from the view of a hobo eternally on the road looking for paradise, a song reverberating down the railway tracks from a hundred years ago to now. 

Barbed, Feathered, Reeled, Skinned, Snappered

Red Snapper have an exciting and busy 2025 ahead of them. The band Ali Friend and Rich Thair started with David Ayres in 1993 celebrate the 30th anniversary of their 1995 album Reeled And Skinned, an album that was one of '95's highlights from Beth Orton's voice on Snapper and the extended ten minute guitar freak out In Deep to the endless groove of Sabres Of Paradise remix of Hot Flush. The re- issue on vinyl and digital is on Warp and expands the album out to ten songs, with the extra track Area 51. The re- issue is out this Friday- find it at Warp's Bandcamp. 

Reeled And Skinned's fusion of electronics with live double bass, drums and percussion, guitar and keys/ synth saw them cross between smoked out trip hop, rocking jazz, funk, Afro, surf, dub, sci fi blues and all points in between. They head out on tour this week, starting in Swansea on Thursday and finishing in Glasgow on the 29th March. I saw them at The Golden Lion two summers ago, a venue they're playing again this time around, and they rocked the house, the full band sound bouncing round the pub, Ali's double bass and Rich's drums always leading the way. 

They also have a new album coming out in April, Barb And Feather. Last year they released an EP called Tight Chest, four tracks led by a collaboration with David Harrow, the superb dubbed out sounds of  Hold My Hand Up...

Those four tracks are going to be on the new album along with four other new ones, recorded by the rocking and raucous Red Snapper live outfit. The breadth and power of the four new songs shows a band not just trading on former glories but in the flow of a creative period, new songs to stand alongside the old ones. Opening track Ban- Di- To is a riot, the sound of 1940s jump blues welded to fuzz guitar, horns and Zoot suits a- go- go, punchy and funky, infectious, pounding rhythms. Tolminka slows things down, basement blues, a cinematic noir sound with echo, sax and spindly guitar. It's followed by Sirocco, the groove coming together slowly, clipped guitar and jazzy percussion and then a wonderful snaking, descending sax line. The EP closes with a cover they played live on the last tour, Bowie's Sound And Vision, the stand up double bass bubbling away, a stew of instruments providing the song's famous melody lines and Ali's vocals playing off against the horns. Lovely stuff. Hear Ban- Di- To and find Barb And Feather at Bandcamp. 

As a bonus here's The Thin White Duke, David Bowie himself, in Tokyo in 1990 playing Sound And Vision, teeth gleaming white and hair in a perfect quiff and Adrian Belew on guitar, for the enjoyment of a stadium of Japanese Bowie fans. 

For Johnny Green And All The Rest...

As has been noted elsewhere the roll call of death has been awful recently, departures of the great and the good on an almost daily basis- Roberta Flack, Rick Buckler, David Johansen, Bill Fay, Gwen McCrae, Angie Stone all gone from the music world. On Monday this week that list was added to by the news of the death of Johnny Green.

Johnny Green was a legend, the road manager of The Clash at their peak, a man who dressed as sharply as the band and who knew what they needed and what was good for them. His book, A Riot Of Our Own: Night And Day With The Clash is perhaps the best book about the band, the one that captures them on the road and in the studio. After hanging up his Clash hat he lived several other lives, a wit and raconteur, for some time the manager of Joe Ely in Texas and was for many years the friend, confidante and manager of the great John Cooper Clarke. When I went to the Apollo in 2022 to see Dr John Cooper Clarke support Squeeze I was as excited when Johnny came on stage to introduce the poet laureate of punk as I was about anything else...

Stay Free (Live at The Lyceum 1979)

RIP Johnny Green and RIP Rick, David, Roberta, Gwen, Angie, Bill and all the others who've gone recently. 

Six Thousand

Today marks post number six thousand at Bagging Area, which is a big number which ever way you slice it. To mark this here's something new and rather wonderful from perennial Bagging Area favorites Saint Etienne. 

At the tail end of last year Saint Etienne released an album called The Night, a record made for misty dawns and murky autumnal days, for headphones at three in the morning and for losing oneself in. Much of it was ambient and found sounds,along with a wash of synths, Sarah Cracknell's voice occasionally appearing out of the haze, suddenly something sharp and clear. It was not really like anything they'd done before, very much a mood piece, an album that you could play and that would act as background noise, every now and then catching your attention. As it might with the song Alone Together, a guitar plinking into life, a lazy laptop drumbeat ticking slowly away, some chords and then Sarah singing. It was very much the most fully formed song on The Night and even then still a very loose, whispery, gauze- like song.

Alone Together

For the record, I loved the album but can see why it split opinion anong the Saint Etienne fanbase. Now the group have remixed Alone Together, released next month as a four track CD/ digital EP and two track 12". There is a remix each from Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley (Bob's with Augustin Bousfield), an extended version of the album track and a Cosmodelica remix by Colleen Cosmo Murphy. Bob's remix, the Hove Lawns Sunset Mix, is a thing of beauty, the sound of summer come early, terraces in the Med at sunset, long days and long shadows, a properly Balearic remix. Shuffly drums, clipped guitar, piano, Sarah and at three minutes some horns that parp away just so... the flutter of strings, the gentle throb of electronic bass, Spanish guitar. It's a summer holiday pressed onto black wax. The video was, I suspect, not filmed in Hove. 

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

While searching through my music folders and files recently I was struck by the number of songs I had that have the word 'dream' or 'dreams' in the title. A rich source of songwriting inspiration. They say hearing about other people's dreams is really boring but I don't think that's always they case. My own dreams have become really vivid and at times quite disturbing in the three years since Isaac died (and also since I started taking statins for high cholesterol a year and a half ago). Waking up having dreamed of Isaac, him being there and talking to me, is always a startling way to start the day (or the middle of the night). It takes a moment for me to realise it was a dream and that he's not there. Sometimes that half asleep- half awake state can be really pleasant and attempting to go back to sleep to go back into a nice dream is something that I'm sure lots of us do. 

Whatever the reason for dreaming, the brain/ consciousness sifting through stuff and pulling things from the dim and distant past into our sleeping state along with bizarre and random, surreal situations, is a rich vein of inspiration for songwriters- both musically and lyrically. Ambient music often seems like an attempt to make music that can soundtrack dreams. The blur and fuzz of shoegaze and psychedelia likewise. As all this percolated through my head on the road coming home from work one evening last week it seemed that a dreams mix was in order. 

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

• Kevin McCormick & David Horridge: Glass Dream
• Kim Gordon: Dream Dollar
• Spatial Awareness: Dream Food (SA Dub)
• Suicide: Dream Baby Dream (Single Version)
• Lunar Dunes: Pharaoh's Dream
• Ride: Dreams Burn Down
• Mark Peters: Red Sunset Dreams
• Sheer: Mezcal Dream
• Spirea X: Chlorine Dream
• Blade Runner Soundtrack: Deckard's Dream

Kevin McCormick is a Mancunian guitarist who released several albums of minimal instrumental music in the early 80s. He met bassist David Horridge in the late 70s and in 1982 they recorded Light Patterns, a minimal, gently psychedelic/ ambient album. Largely ignored, the album and others by Kevin were re- released in 2021. Last year Kevin released a new album- Passing Clouds- which is lovely and can be found at Bandcamp. 

Kim Gordon's solo album from last year, The Collective, passed me by a bit but it's a powerful piece of work, a jolt of electricity, hip hop drums, noise and Kim's NY blank cool. 

Spatial Awareness released Dream Food as an EP last year, an electronic trippy delight with this dub as a dreamy counterpoint. 

Suicide's Dream Baby Dream is one of those songs, an all timer. It came out as a single in 1979, a repetitive synth, drum machine and vocal blur of brilliance, a song lost in its own state of warm, blissful ignorance, the synth patterns circling endlessly. A track that could be loped for an hour and not outstay its welcome. 

Lunar Dunes' Galaxsea originally came out in 2011, post- jazz, post- punk, dubby global tracks 'for truth seekers and interplanetary vacationers'. The band included former members of Cornershop and Transglobal Underground and took the 1960s and 70s West German bands as their inspiration. Pharoah's Dream is at the centre of Galaxsea and rattles along in a cosmische and future jazz way.

Dreams Burn Down was on Ride's 1990 debut album Nowhere, a shoegaze classic, crunching FX guitars, slow motion drums and typically youthful lyrics about lost or unrequited love. Live Dreams Burn Down is massive, a wall of sound and sensation. 

Mark Peters is a guitarist from Wigan. His solo albums, 2017's Innerland and 2022's Red Sunset Dreams, are big Bagging Area favourites. The title track of the second is a rippling ambient instrumental, the wide open spaces of the American West crossed with north west England psychedelia. 

Sheer is Sheer Taft who in 1990 made one of the era's best wobbly Balearic dance records, the mighty Cascades. In 2022 Sheer Taft, now residing in Spain rather than Glasgow, made a follow up, an album called ...And Then There Were Four, a Spaghetti Western album with Andrew Innes and the late Martin Duffy from Primal Scream on board.

Jim Beattie was a founder member of Primal Scream, leaving to form Spirea X who released an album in 1991, Fireblade Skies. The debut release was a single the year before, Chlorine Dream, guitars from The Byrds, attitude from Glasgow, drums and vocals from 1990. 

An expanded, full length version of the Blade Runner soundtrack, The Esper Edition, was unofficially released and has done the rounds as a bootleg for years. The film deals with all sorts of themes dreams being one of them. Deckard's Dream is one minute and ten seconds of Vangelis/ ambient sound. In the film Deckard dreams of a unicorn, the meaning of which has been argued about since the film's release in 1982. 

Soundtrack Saturday

In 1981 the film Escape From New York depicted a nightmare dystopia where Manhattan had been turned into a maximum security prison for the USA's most dangerous criminals. The film was set in the future- 1997 to be exact. Air Force One had been hijacked by anti- governments fighters and crashed the presidential jet into the borough taking the president down with them. Former special forces agent and current felon Snake Plisken is recruited and promised a pardon if he would go into Manhattan and rescue the president in just 24 hours. 

At one point Plisken, played by Kurt Russell, when bargaining about the terms of the deal snarls, 'I don't give a fuck about... your president'. Which, you know, is how many of us feel today. John Carpenter wrote and directed the film,a  reaction  in some ways to the 1970s and Watergate, a criminal president in the White House and trust in leaders at a low. And well, you know, again, that is how many of us feel today. 

The soundtrack was also composed and performed by Carpenter along with Alan Howarth using ARP and Prophet- 5 synths and a Linn drum, as well as more traditional instruments, to get what was in 1981 a futuristic sounding score to go with the visuals and all star cast (not just Kurt Russell but also Ernest Borgnine, Lee van Cleef, Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes and Harry Dean Stanton). It gets regular late night repeat showings and I always enjoy it, it stands up well, good fun, gritty and anarchic despite looking a little dated. The soundtrack is early 80s synth heaven. 

Escape From New York Main Title

In 2014 Maurice and Charles released a 12" called I, Carpenter, which made liberal use of the vocal samples from the film set to a ALFOS friendly eight minute chug with guitar that sounds like it's come directly from one of Talking Heads early 80s albums- a funky dystopic joy. 

I, Carpenter

Field Of Dreams

I've been excited about this EP for some time and it's finally out today. Hugo Nicolson is the man who learnt his trade engineering at On U Sound with Adrian Sherwood, went on to ably assist Andrew Weatherall on his groundbreaking early productions and remixes, and then produced several of Julian Cope's most significant albums (Peggy Suicide and Jehoavakill). He recently moved home from LA and has got an EP out today on Brighton's Higher Love label, a  label that knows its musical onions. Hugo's EP kicks off with his own track, the nine minute extravaganza that is Field Of Dreams. Chanting voices, a big kick drum, tumbling reverb- laden piano, and an amazing snaking horn line, the sound of the souk over a thumping four four. All manner of sonics follow- distorted, buzzing bass, rattling percussion, dancing synthlines... everything swirling around and swaying with those horns and the voices in unison. There's a four minute radio edit which does the job as a taster but you going to want the full nine minutes for maximum joy...

There are remixes, three of them from Bagging Area repeat offenders/ heavyweights David Holmes, Hardway Bros and Rude Audio. 

Holmes' remix judders and spins with an energy all of its own, the beats coming on strong and those chanting voices isolated before they're joined by a kaleidoscopic whirl of percussion and sounds, like being trapped on a rotating dancefloor, giddy and heady fun that threatens to tip over into madness. There's a pause at three and half minutes for a breather, a breakdown and some piano but those horns re- enter, summoning you back to the dance. The chanting section at five a a half minutes is equally hypnotic and then the horns work their magic again. A friend's partner said Holmes' remix made her heart race and made her feel a tad anxious and I can see what she means. 

The Hardway Bros Cosmic Interpolation Mix sets out as Hardway Bros remixes often do, a cosmic disco drum pattern and Sean's trademark s-p-a-c-e-d production. The chanting voices make an appearance in this remix too as Sean keeps things more linear, a propulsive and driving remix that gets on the train tracks and heads relentlessly across the expanses of the desert with the occasional bleepy breakdown and face melting synth whooshes. Like Holmes' remix, it doesn't do things by halves, both clocking in north of nine minutes. 

Rude Audio usually use ten minutes as the standard length for a remix. Surprisingly this one is closer to seven minutes, a blinding dub- dance version with bass that will shake your clothing and rattle your ribcage, synths that ricochet left and right and those chanting voices swirling around while the Arabian horn pulls us back into the dance. The entire EP is a trip, one of this year's best releases thus far, and should be soundtracking many an event. Build it and they will come. 

Hugo Nicolson's Field Of Dreams can be bought and heard at Bandcamp.