Another aurora borealis photo, a bit out of focus but I like the chimney pots in the corner. Today's long song is from 1991 and The Orb and the fifteen minute epic that closes the first half of the Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld album.
Much of the work that went into Ultraworld came from Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty's DJ sets at Paul Oaknefold's Land Of Oz nights at Heaven in London, the long layered multitrack sets with three decks and tape and CD players all linked up, BBC Radiophonic Workshop albums, dub records, sound effects records, NASA samples, very few drums and whatever else they could get their hands on.
Spanish Castles In Space samples the love theme from Spartacus by Bill Evans, the narration from a Soviet Union field recordings album called Звуковые И Биоэлектрические Сигналы Рыб (Audio And Bioelectrical Signals Of Fishes apparently), and Crystal City by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Glynis Jones. It is a long, chilled and very worthwhile trip.
Like much of the rest of the country I was outside on Thursday night taking in the spectacle of the northern lights. To the naked eye not much more than a faint flicker but when seen through a camera on night setting giving us a dazzling display of the aurora borealis. This photo was taken from our loft window by my daughter Eliza and is better than any of the ones I took.
Today's mix has a similar cosmic vibe, seven songs from the bass playing legend Jah Wobble. His back catalogue is so wide and deep that it would take several mixes to pay justice to Wobble's music so this is just a selection of post- PiL Jah Wobble tunes with an emphasis, as always in Wobble land, on the dubbier end of things.
King Of The Faeries (Avengers Outer Space Chug Dub)
Visions Of You (Pick 'n' Mix 1)
Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts)
Post Lockdown Dub
Inspector Out Of Space
Everyman's An Island
Angles is from Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart 1994 album Take Me To God, an album with twelve different vocalists, the voice on Angels belonging to the Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, the song underpinned by one of those lovely fat dub basslines that only Wobble can conjure.
King Of The Faeries is by Dub Trees, a Martin Glover/ Youth project with Wobble and Daniel Romar in 2016 with some loop and beats consultancy by Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh. The Dub Trees album is an excellent collision of dub and folk with a pagan angle.
Andrew Weatherall is also present on the 1992 remix of Visions Of You, a single from 1991's Invaders Of The Heart Rising Above Bedlam album. Visions Of You was the first time Andrew worked with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, a partnership which would lead to Sabres Of Paradise. On the 12" there are three AW remixes of Visions Of You, Pick 'n' Mix 1 and 2 and then The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny, twenty five minutes of dubbed out excellence with the beautiful voice of Sinead O'Connor. Everyman's An Island is also from Rising Above Bedlam.
More Weatherall! This time from Primal Scream's Screamadelica. In an interview for the Classic Albums series Andrew describes sitting in the producer's chair and realising what this version of Higher Than The Sun needed, reaching for the phone with the words, 'Get me Jah Wobble'.
During lockdown Jah released a series of tracks onto Bandcamp, recorded at his home in Stockport (I know! How did Jah Wobble end up in Stockport right?!). Post Lockdown Dub is self explanatory.
In May 2020 Youth and Jah Wobble released an album called Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse, a selection of dub songs with various singers- Hollie Cook, Rhiannon, Aurora Dawn, Durga McBroom- plus appearances from Richard Dudanski, Roger Eno, Nik Turner and some of the beats and programming courtesy of Mr Weatherall and Nina Walsh.
In 2017 Copenhagen's Music For Dreams label asked Mancunian/ Balearic DJ Richard Moonboots to compile an album for them, to pick out some little known gems and chilled tunes that could soundtrack moments of calm and contemplation- moments that could come sitting at a beach bar in the Canaries or at somewhere more urban/ suburban, Ancoats or Chorlton say. We're definitely into autumn now. This week the leaves have begun to change their colour from the greens of summer to the reds, rusts, oranges and yellows of October and November. Moonboots' compilation, Moments In Time, sounds like summer and foreign shores in places but also carries the chill breeze of autumn. Bombay Hotel's Between Leaves for instance, or this one by Matt Deighton...
There's a circling, fingerpicked acoustic guitar part, some wonderfully deep cello, and a woodwind instrument (a clarinet probably) picking out a meandering lead, all beautifully mellow and woody, and yep, all pretty autumnal, and done in under three minutes. There are very much shades of Nick Drake and John Martyn present.
Matt Deighton fronted Mother Earth in the 90s, who were on Acid Jazz. He played in Paul Weller's band in the late 90s and briefly deputised for Noel Gallagher when he walked out of Oasis for a while in 2000. His solo back catalogue is much wider than that brief summary though and his albums and songs are steeped in a 60s and 70s folk sound but go beyond that too. I'm sure I should own more by Matt than I do.
Coincidentally, or not, I reviewed a various artists compilation at Ban Ban Ton Ton this week, a twenty track new release compiled by Luke Una which has a similar feel, songs for astral traveling, songs for long nights of quiet contemplation cherry picked from Luke Una's record collection. It opens with John Martyn's sublime ambient/ folk/ jazz/ field recording song Small Hours, a piece of music from 1978 that really has to be heard to be believed. And felt. You can read my review here.
Stourbridge producer Dirt Bogarde has made some of my favourite electronic/ acid house tracks of the last couple of years- his tracks Heavy Blotter and Backroom Sunrise have both lit up my life and listening sounds along with several others. Earlier this year Dirt released an album called Love, Sweat And Beers, an eight track debut packed with tunes and moments and an album that is in part a love letter to his hometown and a pub, The Mitre, that played a key role in the Stourbridge music scene n the mid- to- late 80s. Get the album here, priced at £0 or pay what you want.
Today sees the release of Come Home, another slice of tip top dark disco/ acid house, nine minutes of enthralling and pulsating synths and drum machines (and not a cover of the James song by the way). The long intro raises the tension, drums eventually kicking in at one minute forty, a mid- paced, throbbing dancefloor monster, synapse twisting toplines and after four minutes a mashed, filtered, backwards vocal that has the bass and FX wrapping themselves around it coming to a close with a lovely drawn out ending. All in all, a hypnotising and transportative way to spend ten minutes. Dirt Bogarde's Bandcamp page is here and Come Home will be there from today.
Also out today is a new EP from Spatial Awareness, which complements Come Home nicely. I posted the previous Spatial Awareness release in the summer, Dream Food which came with a lovely dubbed out remix. The new one, Nocturne, is yet more dark electronic fun, seven minutes of the stuff, with hissing hi hats and a bouncing bassline. At a minute in, the tom toms roll in. There's a breakdown, a wait, the tension rising, and then everything thumping back in. You should be able to find it here.
As with Dream Food, there's a dub version, the Nocturne Spatial Awareness Dub which adds some space and a slightly slower tempo but keeps the intensity and dark delight in place, shifting up a gear half way in a way that might wear out patches of the carpet at house parties.
I can start to feel November's presence bearing down on me. Isaac's birthday was/ is the 23rd and the anniversary of his death comes a week later on the 30th. The first November after he died, November 2022, was awful, the anniversaries coming thick and fast and then going straight into December and everything that that month brings. Last year's November was no better and in some ways maybe worse. The passing of time, one year since he died, then two, and now, in November 2024, it will be three years. In some ways it doesn't seem feasible that it can already be three years since he was last with us but time keeps marching on and he slips a little further into the past every day, getting further away in little ways all the time. Three years on I can think of him and smile now which hasn't always been the case in the time since he died- sometimes it was impossible to think of him and it not be painful so I guess that's some kind of progress- but I'm not looking forward to November and can feel it already casting a shadow.
In September 1998 Mercury Rev released an album which completely changed their world- Deserter's Songs. Coincidentally this was just two months before Isaac was born. Deserter's Songs was the group's fourth album but it brought them success and renown they'd never had before, an album of perfectly played and sung songs that mixed end of the century fragilities and anxieties, the Catskills mountains, whispered psychedelic poetry, the old weird America that Bob Dylan and Greil Marcus talked about, and baroque chamber pop, made by a group recovering from breakdowns, addiction and break ups. It was a rebirth and is one of those albums that never seems to age or fade or lose its power and appeal.
In 2001 Mercury Rev followed Deserter's Songs with All Is Dream, a less fragile and more confident record but one still shot through with a certain amount of dread. It opens with The Dark Is Rising, a song that sets out like a 1950s Hollywood blockbuster with huge sweeping strings and then lonely piano. Jonathan Donahue starts singing in that reedy, upper register voice about dreams and loss and bridges burned. The Dark Is Rising is about a lover who has gone but Jonathan has a kind of certainty in the song, he welcomes the darkness because he can hear them, 'somewhere in this song'. The strings and timpani crash back in and a ghostly voice wails away in the background. It's strong stuff- I recall listening to it in 2001 and being quite freaked out by it.
'I dreamed that I was walking and the two of us were talking/ Of all life's mystery/ The words that flow between friends/ Winding streams without end/ I wanted you to see
But it can seem surprising/ When you find yourself alone And now the dark is rising/ And a brand new moon is born
I always dreamed I'd love you/ I never dreamed I'd lose you/ In my dreams I'm always strong'
My dreams have been all over the place for a long time now, made more vivid and disturbed by the statins I've been taking for over a year now. Isaac has been appearing more and more regularly in them. After he died, when he appeared in my dreams he was always 23, the age he was when he died. Now when I dream about him he's often much younger. I don't what that means or if it means anything. I'm not sure what The Dark Is Rising means for me either but its been playing in my mind a lot as September has turned into October and November has begun to show its face. And as Jonathan sings in The Dark Is Rising, 'dreams don't last for long'.
This is the flipside to yesterday's post, the solo album In Waves from Jamie Xx and its sonic effervescence, exuberance and sheer joie de vivre. Pye Corner Audio's Martyn Jenkins operates from a much murkier place, regularly releasing single tracks onto Bandcamp that sound like postcards from a subterranean world, one where daylight rarely reaches and dark, ominous analogue synths, drones, radio static and hissing drum machines evoke some dystopic otherworld- a dark rave where everyone's dancing on their own. The latest missive from Pye Corner Audio came out last Friday- Noise Inject- and can be found at Bandcamp, a pay what you like deal. Click play/ download and let its five minutes of spectral, gloomy rave come down. I love it by the way- none of this is a criticism.
Martyn's tracks often have highly evocative titles, names that conjure up exactly what the track is going to sound like- Mayday Acid, Rotational Squelch, Quarry Rave, Murk, Fictional Drilling, Eaten From The Inside, Five Years In The Dark, Social Dissonance and Skip Function all give you some idea of what to expect. The exception to these dystopian sounding soundtracks was the album that came out in July 2022, Let's Emerge and its single Warmth Of The Sun. Let's Emerge is a ten track vinyl/ digital album, a response to Covid, lockdowns and isolation, with Martyn writing music to capture a 'collective sigh of relief... new beginnings and a sense of hope'. Andy Bell played guitar on five of the tracks and a shared love of Spacemen 3, tremolo guitars and The Beach Boys were part of the inspiration. A few months later former- Spaceman 3 man Sonic Boom remixed three of the tracks including this one...
Jamie Xx has been drip feeding new songs into the ether for the last four years and finally last month pulled it all together with a new album, In Waves. Baddy On The Floor with Honey Dijon, Treat Each Other Right, Life and All You Children (written and produced with The Avalanches) all preceded it, and a couple of others that have already seen the light of day have been included on a deluxe edition of In Waves- Let's Do It Again and Kill Dem. You might think that this has diluted the album, so much of it being already available. If anything it's done the opposite. In Waves has both familiar and new songs that work perfectly alongside each other and although most of the tracks seem tailor made for dancing, for being played through huge speakers in dark rooms after midnight, it works as an album, sequenced and executed adeptly. In Waves has bangers, exuberant party tunes and massive highs, but also moments of reflection and some highly charged, emotive moments of beauty. It really is very good indeed.
In Waves is packed with guests. Jamie's bandmates from The Xx turn up on the album's most melancholic song, Waited All Night. Pop star Robyn songs on Life. Panda Bear and Kelsey Lu contribute to Dafodil. Single of the summer All You Children is a giddy, endlessly effervescent Avalanches sample fest. Jamie's production is superb, the peaks are high, the rhythms are endlessly danceable and the sounds are, in contrast to the monochrome sleeve, brightly coloured and lit up. The opening pair of Wanna and Treat Each Other Right both sound like they could have been taken straight from pirate radio. Jamie's production skills are legendary and the songs are testament to hours in the studio but at the same time, nothing sounds overworked.
The run of tracks on side two building to the end is exhilarating, songs about the pleasures of dancing and dance music, filleting various sounds from the last three and a half decades but adding something that is completely contemporary too, completely 2024. Breather is one of the tracks without guests, a techno/ machine- made first half with a robotic female voice telling us to let go, that we deserve to be happy, to 'just surrender... erase all the worries... nothing exists... breath in and let go'. Then at three minutes forty the second half of the tune kicks in, there's a sudden shift in tempo and tone, the synths become wiggier, the drums tougher, the topline more intense, everything building in waves (yep), euphoric and strobe lit.
Then there's All You Children which is headspinningly brilliant, more fun and more bounce than almost anything else released this year, and a one minute interlude called Every Single Weekend. and then we're into the closer, Falling Together- rapid, rattling 808 drums and the voice of Oona Doherty, whispering about the dancer, a single dot, surrounded by darkness, the tininess of the world and all the people on it, the sheer cosmic insignificance of us all. The synth chords rise and rise, pushing some emotional button that could easily tip you over that fine line between ecstasy and tears. 'Look again at that dancer', she says, 'What. The fuck? That's it. That's all there is. Us. The lonely speck in the great cosmic dark'.
'Let go, let go, the great let go, look again at that dancer, that's you, that's us...'
Somehow, the combination of Jamie's effortlessly brilliant music, always ascending and enveloping, and Oona's words, make this sound not just inspiring but beautiful too, profound even. The world's on fire. The planet's doomed. What to do? Dance in the face of it all, all of us, together.
