Walking Contradiction

Sunny War is a thirty four year old singer/ songwriter from Nashville, Tennessee who plays folk- punk blues. She learned finger picking guitar from watching a friend's father play the banjo. As a black teenager in the American South she had her life turned upside down when she discovered Crass- the band made her rethink her life and actions, resulting in her running away from home and living for a while on the streets in Venice Beach, California with little but her sleeping bag and guitar. She busked for a living and went viral via a YouTube titled 'Amazing Venice Beach Homeless Girl on Guitar'. At that point she'd also picked up a heroin and crystal meth habit. 

After cleaning up Sunny began self releasing albums and in 2023 released Anarchist Gospel. She's punk as fuck and sees herself in the tradition of the political folk music past of American music- Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, union songs- just as much as in the punk bands of the 70s, 80s and beyond- Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Crass. Her latest album, Armageddon In A Summer Dress came out last month preceded by this superb song, Walking Contradiction, on which she shares vocals with Steve Ignorant, formerly of Crass. 

Walking Contradiction is a powerful song, a loud, roiling punk blues about politics, society, government, social constructions, work, capitalism, war... everything you might expect Steve Ignorant to be in sync with. The album is packed with bluesy, folky, punky songs, thoughtful and political, dark in places but shot with some light and much soulfulness too. On Gone Again she shares vocals with John Doe of LA punks X, a band who fused California punk with country and rockabilly. Their second album, Wild Gift, includes this song, a 1981 gem...

In This House That I Call Home

Are You Feelin' Alright?

Traffic's song Feelin' Alright? is one I think I first heard as a cover by Paul Weller way back in 1992 when he was kickstarting his solo career (it was the fourth song on a four song 12" single, Above The Clouds, the third single from his solo debut album). It's a song that periodically just gets stuck in my head, going round and round for days on end. 

I don't know very much about Traffic, they're not a band I've ever gone very deep with. Steve Winwood, Dave Mason, Chris Wood and Jim Capaldi formed Traffic in Birmingham in 1967 and released their self titled second album a year later. They always felt to me like a band who represented the change in 60s music in late '67, the post- Sergeant Pepper's desire for simplicity and folkiness, of moving out of the city and going to the countryside to 'get my head together'. Progressive, gently psychedelic, jazz inflected English folk rock. Feelin' Alright? has all of that, a two chord, laid back, good vibes sound and Dave Mason's lyric, written in Greece after he had quit the band for the first time, a song about a break up or unrequited love, Dave asking 'Are you feelin' alright?' and answering 'I'm not feelin' too good myself'.

Feelin' Alright?

Monday's Long Song

It's funny how some songs can transport you to a specific time and place. This song, all glorious thirteen minutes and fifty three seconds of it, came out in 2017 courtesy of Richard Youngs and his Glasgow based electronic/ avant disco outfit AMOR (which had Franz Ferdinand drummer Paul Thomson in its ranks along with Luke Fowler and Norwegian double bassist Michael Francis Duch). It's a total joy, the very in the room four- four drums, the beautiful thick stringed bass notes, piano and tsk tsk of hi- hat and then Youngs' gnomic, Zen lyrics...

'All that there is/ Is interconnected/ All that passes me by/ Is communicated'

...and the chorus refrain...

'We're calling from paradise/ Can you get through?'

Paradise

Specifically it transplants me whenever I hear it to driving through Vendee in France towards the Atlantic coast, the sun low in the sky ahead of us, the kids in the back seat, our holiday about to begin, in July 2017. For nearly fourteen minutes as Paradise played and we sped down the autoroute towards the coast, it was the best song and the only song in the world. We haven't been to France since 2019- the last time we went was the summer before Covid and so we haven't been since Isaac died and I have a real hankering for it now. 

AMOR released three other singles and an album, Sinking Into A Miracle, in 2018 and all had their moments but none of them hit like Paradise hits. 

Sunday Mix Trio

Some long form mixes for Sunday, enough to keep you occupied for a few hours if you need some soundtracks for your weekend. First up is David Holmes back at NTS for his monthly God's Waiting Room show, which you can listen to at Soundcloud. No tracklist as yet but the usual excellence in selections- esoteric jazz dub,  sounds, psych and all round good old weirdness. The first thirty minutes covers more ground than some radio shows do in a year. 

Also at Soundcloud is the latest mix from M- Paths and Reverb Delay man Marcus Farley, a forty five minute, 115 bpm mix that starts and ends with Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack. 

• Vangelis: Rachel’s Song
• Shed: The Praetorian
• Christian Loffler: Veiled Grey
• Grouper: Sick
• Moderat: Finder
• Shed: Keep Time
• Rebekah: Intro
• R.Rose: Kneeling
• Marco Lazovic: Untitled 1
• Clockwork: Escape Sequence
• Vangelis: Blade Runner (End Titles)

Thirdly, and once more at Soundcloud, is a six hour and forty minute extravaganza from Daniel Avery and John Loveless playing back to back, one on- one off, live at The Lighthouse, Plotzensee back in February. No tracklist unfortunately- starts out ambient, goes techno via submarine dub and Avery's Cure remix ninety minutes in. 

Soundtrack Saturday

When packing for Marrakech recently I thought about re- reading The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles' 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky. Bowles moved to North Africa in 1947 and lived there in Tangier the rest of his life, eventually dying in 1999 aged 88. The Sheltering Sky is the story of  New York couple who move to North Africa in an attempt to resolve marital difficulties. I read it in 1990 when the Bernardo Bertolucci film version came out, filmed on location in Morocco, Algeria and Niger. From memory it doesn't end well for the couple, Port and Kit Moresby, and there's a load of existential despair and alienation in the book and the film that I thought maybe I didn't need to take with me on my trip to Morocco. 

The film starred John Malkovich and Debra Winger. Port and Kit, travelling with their friend Tunner, pitch up in the Sahara in 1947, Tunner saying that they're probably the 'first tourists they've had here since the war'. 'We're not tourists', Kit replies, 'we're travelers'. I haven't seen the film since 1990 either. The Sheltering Sky received mixed reviews and Paul Bowles wasn't a fan. It did come with a Ryuichi Sakamoto score- The Sheltering Sky Theme is not remotely North African, no Sahara desert guitars or Berber instruments here, but a sweeping, cinematic film theme instead.   

In 1983 Sakamoto provided the soundtrack and score for Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, a World War II prisoner of war drama starring David Bowie. Sakamoto's main theme for the film was a tour de force and the main title theme gained a David Sylvian vocal, a new title and was released as a single. Sylvian and Sakamoto created an early 80s synth- pop/ soundtrack masterpiece with Forbidden Colours, melody and counter- melody and gorgeous synthwork. 

Forbidden Colours

Windowlicking

Friday in late April. How did that happen? In my head it feels like we're only a few weeks into 2025 and yet next week it's going to be May. We got back from Marrakech a week ago today, Easter is gone and there's another four day week on the horizon. My head's still spinning from everything we saw and did out in Morocco, I haven't yet written in any detail about the musicians we saw playing in the desert last Thursday night and there's a post about Brian Jones and the Master Musicians of Joujouka and Sufi desert trance music that's been percolating in my head for a few days. 

Eliza is in Bali- and that's a whole other story- she came back from university last summer and went straight into work, working at the day care club that Isaac used to go to. Having saved up enough money to pay off her student overdraft and finance a bit of travelling she dropped it on us with about ten days notice before departure that she'd booked a flight to Bali and was going off for a month travelling solo- she flew the day before we flew to Morocco. When she was due to land in Bali, me and Lou would be landing in Marrakech, none of us with a working phone, all three of us needing to buy SIM cards and being in completely different continents and time zones. You'll be relieved to know all has been fine in Bali and she's having the time of her life.

Sometimes things just fall into place. This track came to me two days ago, one of those things which shouldn't work but does brilliantly, a track that re- configures an older one into something entirely, wonderfully new- this is an Afro- Beat, Afro house cover version of Aphex Twin's 1999 track Windowlicker by Raz and Afla...

Raz and Afla are a duo. Raz Olsher is a producer from Hackney and Afla Sackey is a musician from Ghana- they style themselves as taking 'a cosmic journey through the African continent and beyond'. Heavily percussive but light on its feet, with wordless and spooked vocal sounds, brightly coloured synths and funked up African guitars, this take on Windowlicker does exactly what good cover versions should- it re- imagines the original, shifts it somewhere else, throwing new light on an old song. You can buy it at Bandcamp.

Aphex Twin's Windowlicker is one of Richard D. James' freakiest, sleaziest and out there pieces of music, heavily processed and filled with gasps and moans, that diverts into various future sounds- a drum 'n' bass intro, a weird, time- stretching middle section, some futuristic alien dub, and a nerve shredding noisy ending.  

Windowlicker 

 

Alone Again

Record Store/ Shop Day passed me by a bit this year- I didn't see anything in the pre- RSD lists that caught my eye, cash was tight, and I avoided going into town on the day itself. We flew to Marrakech the day after so I sidestepped it and as a result missed this, a one sided 12" single, a Four Tet remix of Alone.

Alone was the lead song from last years' Songs Of A Lost World, The Cure's return to the fray. I loved Alone and the rest of the album. I'm a big fan of Four Tet. This remix is both of them spliced together, the skippy Four Tet beats underpinned by Simon Gallop's bass, some lovely synth work and piano, and then eventually Robert's voice, 'this is the end of every song we sing'. 

There's going to be an entire album of remixes in June, Remixes Of A Lost World, with a fairly stellar list of remixers including versions from Four Tet (I'm assuming it'll a different one as this remix is supposed to be an RSD exclusive), Daniel Avery, Orbital, Danny Briotet and Rico Conning, Cosmodelica, Craven Faults, Mogwai, The Twilight Sad, and Trentemoller among others. 

It's Where I'm From

The Moonlandingz are Lias Soudi, Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer. All three have a rich history of music in other projects including Decius and Fat White Family for Lias, Acid Klaus for Adrian, and I Monster for Dean but currently The Moonlandingz is where it's at for them- their second album, No Rocket Required, is lined up for release later this month. Ahead of it, released yesterday, is It's Where I'm From, a single with Iggy Pop singing on it (released a day after Iggy's 78th birthday). 

It's Where I'm At is a beautiful, heartfelt, melancholic number, a ballad for the 21st century, a jazzy lullaby with Iggy at his most rueful, 78 years of hard won wisdom, staring down the barrel of the gun of mortality. Adrian wrote the song fifteen years ago, sitting at home whacked up on morphine following a bike accident that left him with two broken arms and sticking two metaphorical fingers up at the doctor who told him he might never regain the full use of his arms- home studio, one finger and a thumb on the Mellotron and a drum machine. Filled out with live drums and some Gallic sax, Adrian approached Iggy for vox and thankfully, he said yes. 

Iggy likes to dip out of rock and into chanson and jazz from time to time. In 2019 he recorded Free, a sombre, contemplative album of ambient jazz with nods to Lou Reed and Dylan Thomas. In 1999 he recorded Avenue B, a reflective, post- divorce album with several acoustic, jazz inflected, spoken word songs, including the title track...

Avenue B

Desert

We went to the desert twice during our trip to Morocco. On each occasion it was a mind blowing and profound experience. The first excursion was to a pool resort on the edge of the Sahara. We sunned ourselves, had some more delicious Moroccan food and looked out into the desert, looking at the ridges and wadi, the endless shale and rock extending into the distance. My brother- in- law Harvey and I took a wander out of the resort and into the desert. We didn't go too far for obvious reasons. It was pretty humbling...

The second visit was the following evening, a trip further into the Sahara to see the sunset and then have a meal and enjoy some evening entertainment from local musicians. The drive out there was an experience in itself, turning off the road and onto a dust track that went on and on, over bridges that crossed dried out river beds, past camels and quad biking, tents and partially constructed/ falling down buildings, down a dip that I wouldn't have attempted in a minibus, round some tight bends, eventually arriving at our desert destination. The view from my seat through the van's tinted windows presented me this shot...

And then this one with some camel riders appearing over the horizon...

I don't know about you but my childhood was peppered with deserts- Indian Jones films, TV, books, comics, pop videos, Silk Cut and Turkish Delight adverts, Lawrence of Arabia (in 1981 when I was eleven years old there was a fancy dress party. Most of the eleven year olds went as Dr. Who, characters from Star Wars or Adam Ant. I went as Lawrence of Arabia- I was that kind of eleven year old). To be out in the Sahara and see camels (admittedly ridden by tourists) coming into view over the ridge was jaw dropping. The desert provokes a genuine sense of awe- it's vast and ancient, it will be there forever, long after we're all gone, it continues to grow each year (as Manchester's New Fast Automatic Daffodils noted on their epic 1990 single Big)...

Big

Once we arrived at our destination we followed our guide up a hill to a ridge of rocks where we waited for the sunset. Staring out into the desert as the sun began to dip was something else, an experience that's difficult to put into words- the immensity of the desert, the feeling of being a very small part of everything, the lives of people who have survived in this environment for thousands of years, the sense of staring into the past somehow... it was all very moving. As a friend commented on Facebook recently, 'deserts speak'.

I've got loads more photos of the desert, many of which will inevitably appear accompanying posts here over the upcoming weeks. 

In March 2019 Andrew Weatherall played at The Beta Hotel in Marrakech, an event hosted by Faber and involving David Keenan, Bugged Out and Heavenly recordings. Andrew's set was a dub set and I imagine his seriously dubbed out selections would have sounded pretty otherworldly in Marrakech. The set wasn't recorded but Sean Johnston unearthed Andrew's source CDs and shared them with The Flightpath Estate two eyars ago. The tracks were sequenced in the order they appear on Andrew's discs and uploaded to Mixcloud. You can listen to them here, two hours and eleven minutes of Moroccan Weatherdub at The Beat Hotel. 

An Alternative Resurrection

A day late for an Easter Sunday resurrection but bank holiday Monday feels more appropriate- you might remember that in January 2024 I wrote a piece about an imagined alternative future for The Stone Roses, one where after the release of One Love in June 1990 they didn't blow it. You can re- read An Alternate History first if you want to. It was a post that seemed to download itself into my mind while out on a bike ride, a fully formed version of the 1990s where Ian, John, Mani and Reni had better advice, clearer heads and didn't get immediately bogged down in a post- Spike Island slump and court case, a world where they moved on, signed to Heavenly and released a series of singles and EPs, side stepping the drama and overbearing weight of delivering a second album. In my alternate history they end up at the millennium, back where they started in Sale, south Manchester, with an album that delivered on the promise the band had in that space between the release of Elephant Stone in October 1988 and then One Love/ Something's Burning in 1990. 

Elephant Stone

One of the spin offs from the post took place in Stockholm, Sweden. Scandinavia is a place rich in Roses lore. The band toured there in 1987, a bonding trip for the group and then they returned in 1990 for some warm up shows before the big definitive, generational statements at Spike Island and Glasgow Green. There was a memorable article in Q Magazine by Adrian Deevoy who took a trip with the band in their 1990 pomp, playing gigs, imbibing substances and dancing like fish (all doubled down on by United winning the European Cup Winner's Cup in Rotterdam as the interview and tour took place). 

The 2024 Stockholm spin off was from Jesse, the man behind 10:40, who read my post and was inspired to write a new/ lost Stone Roses track, titled An Alternative History. He sent it to me in the middle of last year and for a while there was a plan that I might sing on it but that came to naught (due to me it has to be said). Jesse released his three track EP yesterday, an Easter Sunday resurrection and also his birthday, three versions of his Stone Roses alternative history, under the banner 10:40 presents Retro Fit.

The original version is a five minute song that sounds like John Squire's next step in 1989, a song they band never quite finished perhaps- chorus pedal and chiming guitar, Reni's kick drum and snare and a very familiar voice coming through the line, straight outta Chorlton singing 'She's waiting...'. 

The lead version of the song on the EP is An Alternate History (Retro Fit Resurrection), an eight minute dance mix that spirals through time and space, landing back in the heady days of 89/ 90, the permanent summer of our youth- fringes, love beads, flares, long sleeved t- shirts, nights lost at the indie disco, clubbing and guitar bands clashing on the floor under the strobe light, maracas and wide eyed joy, Jesse's chiming guitar lines and 1990 shuffle lighting up the room... Ian's there, sucking in his cheeks and doing that loose limbed dance, 'There's a time and a place for everything/ I've got to get it through'....

Lavender Mist completes the EP, Squire's love of Jackson Pollock at the fore, evident on the sleeves of all those records and the titles of Roses B-sides Full Fathom Five and Guernica.

Lavender Mist is not just the Pollock Roses but the experimental, backwards tapes Roses too, a backwards effects version of An Alternative History to follow Don't Stop, Simone, Guernica and Full Fathom Five; a heavenly, spun out and blissed out version of the song with loops and echoes, Ian's voice spun backwards and the guitars reversed, the rhythms both forwards and backwards, everything a great, trippy whirl. Isn't it funny how you shine?

10:40 presents retro Fit: An Alternative History is here. Go get it, you'll love it. Tell Jesse I said hello. 

Ourika

Bagging Area's adventures in Morocco part two. Day two in Marrakech saw us up early for a trip to the Atlas Mountains, the ridge of snow capped mountains that separate the Sahara Desert from the sea, spanning Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The part we went to, Ourika, is about 40 km south of Marrakech, and gave us a good idea of the spread of the city out through its suburbs to the mountains, the swarm of traffic giving way to emptier roads. Driving in Morocco, especially in Marrakech but also out beyond the city can be a bit hair raising, motorbikes and scooters weaving in and out among cars and busses, pedestrians stepping out into roads and onto zebra crossings no- one seems to intend to stop for, cars overtaking constantly and everyone honking their horn as often as possible. Once out into the countryside our minibus took us to the foothills of the mountains, heading for the Ourika Valley, beginning to climb and wind our way through Berber villages. Funnily, the only piece of Western pop music we heard all week came on the local radio station as we began to climb the road pictured above, the van's tinny speakers and ever more spectacular scenery making Mr Bowie seem even more otherworldly than usual...

Ashes To Ashes

We stopped on the way for a break. Any taxi ride out of Marrakesh built in a break that involved us admiring a view and then visiting a shop where Berber products were offered to us- pottery, textiles, jewelry, Argon oil. We then re- boarded our bus and headed further into the mountains.

We were up early for the trip, our guide keen to get us to the waterfall as early as possible so it would be quiet. It was worth the early start. We began climbing the route following our guide, a scramble up rocks and mountain paths, over rickety foot bridges and through villages and houses built into the hillsides, all set up for tourists coming through several times a day. 

The local people are the Berber people, who speak a different language to the people in Marrakech (Shilha is the local dialect). They've eked an existence out in the mountains for centuries and today are pretty reliant on tourism. The climb eventually brought us to the waterfall and an opportunity to sit down, drink more mint tea and enjoy the mountain view. 

Our descent took us back to the village and lunch at a riverside restaurant. Yes, it felt touristy but hey, we were tourists, and it was quite an experience, sitting on cushions beside the fast flowing Ourika River, eating the wonderful food while a pair of local musicians played. Across the way, the parking of the minibuses and vans over the river from us was fairly alarming, their back ends hanging out over the drop to the river, Italian Job style. 

                                             

This is Goul El Hak El Mont Kayna by Moroccan singer Najat Aatabou, a song from 1992. If you click play and let it run you'll recognise the riff that comes hits at fifty seconds, an instant blast of Moroccan music that ended up with Ed and Tom Chemical settling out of court after they borrowed it for their song Galvanize. 

Marrakech

Marrakech was amazing, an unforgettable experience and unlike anywhere I've been before. Apologies if Bagging Area becomes a bit of a travel blog over the next few days. I'll try to supply music to go along with the photos and writing and see where things go- this blog has never really planned more than a few days ahead. We landed at Marrakech airport last Sunday morning having flown out of Manchester at 6.30 am straight into the hustle and bustle of Marrakech. My nice had booked our accommodation for the five of us, a four bedroom house (a riad) in the centre of the city. 

The riad was in the medina, down a long, twisting back alley which if we hadn't had a guide to meet us when we got to the top of the alleyway, we'd have thought twice about going all the way to the end of. Once down at the end, past the permanent group of young men hanging out on one of the corners, dodging the scooters and motorcycles that pepper the streets, roads and passageways, we went through a set of grilled gates and to our front door which led us into this...

The riad was central, a ten minute walk from the souk but inside it was another world, an oasis of calm with a roof terrace. Five times a day the sound of the muezzin calling people to prayer echoed out over the city, one of the muezzin starting it and then others joining in, harmonising- an unearthly and very moving sound. 

The souk is a maze of streets and alleyways filled with shops and market stalls selling all the Moroccan goods you can think of- tea pots and glasses for drinking mint tin, spices, leather goods, slippers, scarves, ceremonial daggers, bracelets and bangles, kaftans, earrings, rugs, hats, meat- as well as more modern goods- iPhones, headphones, football shirts- with the vendors constantly offering you prices and telling you to come and have a look. 

Haggling is part of the process for every transaction in the souk- they offer you a price, then drop it slightly, you offer a lower one, they counter, you get a note out which you're happy to pay- it takes some getting used to. The streets are jam packed in places. If you stop for a moment to glance at an item or make any eye contact, you get an offer to buy something. Wandering round the souk was amazing and with no real street names or sings, very easy to get lost in. We managed to track our way back to the riad but got hopelessly lost one evening looking for the main square (Jemaa el-Fnaa). 

We had five days, spending several of them exploring Marrakech- the main square during the day and at night is a world in itself. During the day it's filled with fruit and spice stalls, snake charmers with cobras, men with sad looking monkeys on chains available for photos and women painting henna tattoos. At night, the square has a different energy, rammed with locals and tourists, scores of local bands of musicians and dancers playing Berber music- percussionists with qraqebs (large castanet like instruments) and hand drums surrounding a single guitarist playing a gnawa or gimbri and men chanting and singing. The music was incredible, very rootsy and funky, the riffs played by the guitarists sounding like the basis for so much 20th century guitar music, the blues and the 60s bands onward, with North African percussion and rhythms.

Everyone's looking for money, everyone expects to be tipped. It takes a little getting used to but was a joy to experience and the scare stories you can find on the internet about pickpockets, abusive comments to western women and rip off merchants were unfounded in our experience, and apart from one meal which left me sidelined for a day, the food was incredible. The Moroccan specialty is tagine, chicken and lemon or mince and eggs cooked in tagine pots and served with rice or couscous, lots of spices and flavours. Mint tea and strong coffee. Nutty biscuits and pastries. 

We had a load of other adventures- a day in the Atlas Mountains climbing to a waterfall with dinner on cushions by a river, a day at a pool in the desert and a night seeing the sunset in the Western Sahara which blew my mind- but I'll come to them over the next few days. 

In our several taxi rides to and from places the radio stations were almost always playing Moroccan or African music. Some on the spot Googling and use of Shazam took place. One of the artists that we heard several times and who sounded great while driving out of Marrakech, swerving across lanes and dodging motorcyclists, scooterists and pedestrians, through the suburbs with blocks of flats and corner cafes, petrol stations with queues of scooters and roadside sellers of fruit and mint, was Bombino, a Tuareg singer and guitarist from Niger. This song is Mahegagh (What Shall I Do?), a track from (I think) 2012- eleven minutes of Saharan desert blues. 

Looking At The World Through The Sunset In Your Eyes

No Sunday mix today and no more posts until next weekend either; we're off to Marrakesh, Morocco for a few days, a holiday to celebrate my brother-in -law's 60th. Marrakesh is by all accounts an busy and vibrant city, with plenty of exploring to be done in the Medina, the souks, the palaces and gardens. We also have an excursion to the Atlas mountains planned which should be good. 

Graham Nash wrote this song while on the train from Casablanca to Marrakesh in 1969, a reaction to everything and everyone he saw on the train. The Hollies rejected the song as not commercial enough- Nash was already moving beyond The Hollies and the song became a Crosby, Stills and Nash one, recorded for their 1969 debut. It was also a May '69 CSN single. 

Marrakesh Express

In the interests of balance Iggy Pop has said that Marrakesh Express 'may be the worst song ever written.'

Funtime

Back next weekend. See you then. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Soundtrack Saturday took a two week detour into TV cop show theme tunes with a pair of 80s classics- the Balearic beauty of Mike Post's Hill Street Blues theme and Jan Hammer's day- glo pastel shoot out for Miami Vice. This week's post goes a decade further back and finds Mike Post in the songwriting seat again with the theme to The Rockford Files...

The Rockford Files Theme

The theme tune was released in 1975, co- written by Pete Carpenter and featuring that distinctive guitar solo from session guitarist Dan Ferguson on dobro guitar and electric guitar plus a solo on MiniMoog by Mike Post. As with Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice you're going to want to see the visuals of the title sequence as well as the audio, not to mention Jim Rockford (James Garner) and the famous answer machine message...

The Rockford Files ran from 1974 to 1980 (and then in a permanent loop of repeats on early evening TV in the UK). Rockford was a down at heel private detective, lived in a trailer near Malibu Beach, was always broke and often ended up getting a beating in fist fights. In one of those odd trans- Atlantic cultural exchanges, the theme tune to The Rockford Files became the music Tranmere Rovers run on the pitch to at home games at Prenton Park, Birkenhead. Tranmere are the team of Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit, the man who should the next poet laureate. 

Picking a song from my extensive HMHB folders I found this one, Tommy Walsh's Eco House, which includes a reference in the opening line to another TV detective, this time Medieval sleuth Cadfael...

Tommy Walsh's Eco House

Nigel's taken '90 Bisodol/ He's had enough of Tommy Walsh's eco house... the only bloke from Harpurhey/ Who wasn't at the Free Trade Hall'. 

'While you're capturing the zeitgeist/ They're widening the motorway'. 

Volcanic Tongue

Last year I did a series of posts called Bagging Area Book Club and never got around to writing about any of David Keenan's books, several of which were on a list of potential posts. His appearance at AW62 has given me the prompt I needed to do it and also coincides with the release of an album and a book- both called Volcanic Tongue, both by Keenan.

Volcanic Tongue- A Time Travelling Evangelist's Guide To Late 20th Century Underground Music (the book) is a compendium of David's writing about music- interviews, articles, think pieces and in depth conversations with the likes of Nick Cave, Kevin Shields and John Martyn. It's a big book, in all senses- thick and with a heavy page count but also big in terms of ideas and creativity. 

Volcanic Tongue (the album) is a compilation of songs from bands that passed through the Glasgow record shop David ran with his partner Heather Leigh, also called Volcanic Tongue. The bands on the album, twenty of them, are from the underground, the underground of the underground, bands that self- released small runs of albums, handed out CD- Rs at gigs, put on nights in rooms above pubs and hoped get to enough people through the door to break even, bands that passed through David and Heather's shop between 2005 and 2015. Rock n' roll bands, folk bands, psychedelic bands, ambient outfits, drone duos, bands like Ashtray Navigations (blissed out drone/ folk) and Idea Fire Company (piano ambient/ avant garde), Counter Intuits (scuzzed up and fuzzed up garage rock) and Bronze Horse (acoustic guitar, handclaps and echo). Find it at Bandcamp, double vinyl and digital, a treasure trove of music. 

David Keenan's novels are a wild trip. The first I read was the legendary This Is Memorial Device, a love letter to the world of post punk bands and a fictional Airdrie rock group, Memorial Device. For The Good Times is set in Belfast during the 1970s, a tense tale of an IRA foot soldier, a kidnapping and Perry Como, a book that delves deep into a murky demi- world. I read Xstabeth not long after, a novel with some genuinely breathtaking passages, a story told by a teenage girl from St Petersburg, Russia. Xstabeth is haunted by ghosts and saints, Russian history and literature. Mystical and I found quite profoundly affecting. The fourth Keenan novel I tackled was Monument Maker, a weighty, experimental, time travelling story that has little actual narrative and detours into theology, sex, enigmas, the siege of Khartoum, Medieval cathedrals, the pyramids and God knows what else. It's partly also an exercise in what an author can do with the written page. It's both confusing and inspiring. 

David's partner Heather Leigh recorded an album in 2020, Glory Days- modernist folk music played on pedal steel and synth that sounds like the soundtrack to any and all of the above. 

In Fade

Last Of The Sell Outs

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius and Sandy Denton. They have an album called Charge Of The Love Brigade, a title I wish I'd thought of. Ian Svenonius has been declaring manifestos and making grand statements since his days in Washington D.C. punk testifiers Nation Of Ulysses in the late 80s and their 13 Point Program To Destroy America (a program which feels suddenly very relevant again). Ian and Sandy make similarly great claims for Escape- Ism, including that the band is 'found- sound dream- drama', an 'act of musical vandalism' that will 're- purpose music as we know it', music that will bring bourgeois society to an end and that will be enjoyed by 'musicians, amateurs and non- musicians but also plant life, wild animals and even inanimate object such as rocks'. Who am I to disagree?

This is Last Of The Sell Outs, a song that seems to gain and reveal more with each listen, an organ/ synth chord sequence and drum machine providing low fi backing to Ian's meditation on the creative and commercial process. The gnarly guitar part at the end is a joy too. 

AW62

AW62 was last weekend, a proper gathering of the clans at The Golden Lion in Todmorden, an 18th century stone walled pub nestled into a gap between a hill and the canal, to celebrate the life of Andrew Weatherall on what would have been his 62nd birthday. Andrew's brother Ian, one of the event's key movers, said that it was planned as a party that had 'everything except Andrew'. The line up of DJs and acts was testament to the spirit of the man, a diverse and exceptional bunch of DJs, writers, artists, producers, publishers and bands. 

Some highlights from a weekend packed full of them- this is necessarily a highly selective account drawn from my at times unreliable memories. Everyone who attended will have their own version and highlights but these were some of mine. 

Friday night saw Richard Fearless DJing in the downstairs bar, a vinyl techno masterclass- minimal, sleek, machine music, emotive and huge sounding on the pub's recently upgraded sound system, causing quite a stir among the crowd and packing the space in front of the DJ booth out with dancers. 

I took this picture while Fearless was playing. It may not be in focus or even a vaguely coherent picture but it sums the night up quite well from where I was standing. 

Saturday night was split between upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs Duncan Gray played a house set and then Scott Fraser took over at midnight. Downstairs David Holmes headlined, picking up where Matt Hum left off. David has played The Golden Lion often in recent years. He changes his set every time, saying he doesn't plan it too much, just goes with the flow and the feel in the pub. His set on Saturday night was out of this world, a huge range of dance music, from spangly chuggers to amped up noise, breakbeats and the sudden switching to huge piano tracks. Towards the end of his set, a 2 am finish, I was stuck in a corner by the door, just enjoying the music and the volume. Joe Strummer's voice came out of the speakers, his famous 'people can do anything...' speech from a radio show followed by ecstatic synth noise (an unreleased Holmes and Matty Skylab track, David said afterwards). There was a pause at 2am and then two or three more tunes, one a rumbly, garage band guitar song, one an explosion of synth chords, a wall of noise, and then finishing with the huge, extended Leftside Wobble remix of Tomorrow Never Knows, The Beatles most experimental, most progressive song filling the pub and scrambling heads. Thoughts were indeed laid down and voids were very much surrendered to. 

Saturday afternoon was our turn to play again, The Flightpath Estate DJs given the privilege of being part of the proceedings. Me, Baz, Martin, Dan and Mark played throughout the afternoon and into the evening. At one point I looked out into the space in front of the booth and saw author David Keenan and White Rabbit Books publisher Lee Brackstone  dancing and singing along to a song I was playing, the magnificent One Of Those Things by Dexys, from 1985 (a song even Kevin Rowland eventually had to accept he'd ripped off from Warren Zevon's Werewolves Of London). 

One Of Those Things

I spoke to David Keenan at some point, excitedly telling him about the experience I had reading Xstabeth a few years ago, a book which at several points blew my mind a little. This photo has me and David, me somewhat out of focus, mind probably still blown. 

Saturday afternoon also saw the fabled raffle and auction, Claire Doll's hard work and creativity raising  thousands of pounds for charity, Weatherdolls and Sabres cross stitch and a box of records found in Andrew's lock up when it was cleared out, promo copies of the David Holmes remix of Smokebelch and other delights. Golden Lion landlady Gig conducted the auction action in her own inimitable style. Holmes bid for and won this Gnostic Sonics banner.

Sunday saw the crowds, fans, punters and artists drawn back to the pub and its beer garden, bathed in early April sunshine. Andrew's friends Sherman and Curley played dub and ambient sounds the whole afternoon. Meanwhile the Sunday afternoon literary event came in three parts- a Lee Brackstone hosted discussion with Andrew's partner of seventeen years Lizzie Walker, Two Lone Swordsman guitarist Chris Rotter, Ian Weatherall and The Flightpath's own Martin Brannagan, Lee asking the questions which included 'when did you first meet Andrew?' which drew a range of funny responses. 

The second part was Lee and David Keenan, an interview and a reading from his new book Volcanic Tongue. The third was Keenan interviewing  Adrian Sherwood, a fascinating half hour with one of Andrew's heroes, the main man of UK dub whose reminiscences and thoughts could and should fill a book. David Keenan (and David Holmes, sitting on the front row) unpicking all sorts of aspects of On U Sound and Sherwood's music and career and the nature of dub. Genuinely amazing to sit in on and as much a part of the weekend as the DJs and music. 

Adrian Sherwood The Producers Series #1

This hour long Sherwood mix comes from the Test Pressing blog, published back in 2010. The tracklist can be found at Test Pressing- Creation Rebel, African Head Charge, Dub Syndicate and Doctor Pablo all feature. 

Sunday night finished with the twin attack of The Jonny Halifax Invocation playing live upstairs and Sherwood DJing downstairs. Criminally I missed both- having been at The Lion since Friday night, suffering from a distinct lack of sleep and having to drive home at some point that night, I called it a day at around 6 pm. 

Everyone involved in AW62 should give themselves a well earned pat on the back and maybe have a bit of a lie down- Waka and Gig at The Golden Lion, Ian Weatherall, Claire, Lizzie and Curley with the raffle and auction and merch, all the DJs and bands, Lee and David bringing the literature angle (books and writing were as big for Mr Weatherall as music was). It was a brilliant weekend and event- heart warming and inclusive, packed with energising and exciting music, and filled with great people. The Lion always draws a lovely bunch of punters and AW62 was no exception. And when the lie down is over and everyone's recovered, more please next year...

Weak Sun

Fans of instrumental, dark ambient, psyche rock should step this way. Weak Sun is the debut album from Sonar//Radar, a Leicester four piece, all veterans of other bands from the city of Claudio Ranieri and Richard III, bringing guitars, drums and bass together with synths and piano. The album is currently only digital but sequenced like a vinyl record, a short burst of drone and radio waves/ voices forming the intro to side 1, a track called Intro To Side 1, which then fades away for Baksheesh For Imi, a much longer piece of music, six minutes of synth, piano and a ghostly guitar lines all layered over the rumble of bass and drums. Wolf Eel follows, bursts of feedback from a guitar amp and then a ringing guitar line, a post- rock, Tortoise feel, the guitar taking the lead. Fifty three seconds of gorgeous ambient wobble, Too Many Novels, takes us towards Bad News From Outer Space, what would be side 1's end point- more ominous sounds from the Midlands- radio waves, static/ Velcro being unripped, the tick of the cymbal, guitar notes from the ghost of Michael Karoli's guitar, the sound of something bad coming through the line. 

Side 2 opens up slowly, one and a half minutes of drone and atmospherics and leads into the slightly softer, calmer notes of Barbel Hook, a track which spins around a minute in, the drums suddenly kicking the tempo up and the post- rock guitars and drums are back with echoes of Mogwai. The album's title track Weak Sun is the longest piece of music here, eight and a half minutes, the soundtrack to a sci fi/ folk horror short film, a totally absorbing trip with the synth taking the topline and the guitars, piano, bass and drums creating a dark dreamworld backdrop. The final track is a live track, The Lucky Ones Died First, the post- rock/ psyche rock live and direct from a stage somewhere in the East Midlands/ the outer reaches of space. Get Weak Sun at Bandcamp

Monday's Long Song

I got back from AW62 at The Golden Lion last night having had a wonderful weekend in great company, an incredible line up of artists, some brilliant moments in a truly magical and a concurrent lack of sleep. I'll write a longer, more detailed piece and post it later in the week. In the meantime, here's a long song from Friday night. Rusty and Rotter were playing records in the downstairs bar, the place was filling up nicely with lots of familiar faces and some new ones too and from the Lion's sound system the intense, ecstatic noise of Fuck Buttons began pumping out- waves of sheer joy, oceans of sound, bleeps and ripples, eventually the thud of a kick drum, building and building, repetition and momentum.

Surf Solar was released as a single. It came out on 7", an edited version, but the album one is over ten minutes long- from Tarot Sport, produced by Andrew Weatherall, a job so demanding- the intensity of the music- that he compared it to hard physical labour. What a sound the three of them cooked up though...

Surf Solar

Forty Five Minutes Of Two Lone Swordsmen

At the airport in Belfast they have robots to serve your breakfast. You have to go to the till and speak to a human to order but then the human loads your mugs and plates of food onto these robots and they bring them to your table. The eight year old me reading 2000AD in 1978 would have been beside himself at this aspect of the future but somehow, it just seemed a bit ridiculous. They even give the robot a smiley face to make them seem more human.

None of which has much to do with today's post and Sunday mix- except that the music Two Lone Swordsmen made is still far more of the future, more the soundtrack to 2000AD, than the robots at Belfast airport ever will be. When Andrew Weatherall formed Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood they made it a mission to go further and deeper, to take a more thorough and more purist approach to electronic music. After the sprawling magnificence of 1996's The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate) which went from stoned, paranoid ambience to big beat to two step and back again, they drilled deeper- minimal, brutalist electronic machine funk, ambient techno and glitchy dark electronic dub (with a detour into hip hop on A Virus With Shoes and then an exciting mutation into garage rock and rockabilly). Sometimes the music seemed a bit unfriendly and it lost a few people along the way but this being Mr Weatherall, there's no shortage of gold in among the darkness. 

This forty five minute mix is a celebration of Andrew's birthday today- he would have been 62 today. Many of his friends and family are at The Golden Lion today, day three of AW62 which will end tonight with a live performance by The Jonny Halifax Invocation (who have promised some live band TLS action) and a dub set from Adrian Sherwood. Happy birthday Andrew.

Forty Five Minutes Of Two Lone Swordsmen

• Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) (Two Lone Swordsmen Dub)
• We Change The Frequency
• Cotton Stains
• Lino Square
• Black Commandments
• Untitled Two Lone Swordsmen Remix
• Glide By Shooting
• Hope We Never Surface

Saint Etienne's 2000 album Sound Of Water was a bit of a departure for them. The Two Lone Swordsmen Dub of it's single Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) was a deconstruction, reducing the tune to its minimal dub basics, the wobbly bass a particular treat.

We Change The Frequency is from 1998's Stay Down, sometimes the TLS album I think is my favourite and one which has really grown over the years, lots of short, repetitive mechanical pieces and some gorgeous ambient techno, everything submerged in oceanic depths of bass and echo (like the deep sea divers on the cover). Hope We Never Surface is the opening track and always seems to be like a door opening... or a hatch...

Cotton Stains is on 2000's Tiny Reminders, the furthest and most purist they went, tunnel vision electro Six sides of vinyl, each disc starting with a track made up of static, a tiny reminder, before drilling into the netherworld of basement glitchy electronic bass and techno. Cotton Stains is the real sound of robots serving up breakfasts at airports- just before they declare independence and overthrow the security. 

Lino Square is from The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), a fractured, mechanised but funky little number with a wiggy synth pattern kicking in after a few minutes. 

Black Commandments is from a 7" single that came with an EP, A Bag Of Blue Sparks, released on Warp in 1998, that included the track Gay Spunk (a title borrowed from Peter Hook's bass amp spray paint message).  

Untiled Two Lone Swordsmen is a remix of Ganger's Trilogy, a 12" from 1998, a nine minutes long and dusty with a flicker of guitar running through it. Ganger were from Glasgow, post- rock and krauty.

Glide By Shooting is one of the finest TLS tracks, a track on the double vinyl remix EP Swimming Not Skimming. Depth over surface. Eight minutes of sleek, mesmerising brilliance. 

Soundtrack Saturday At AW62

Today is day two of AW62 at The Golden Lion, a weekend celebration of the life of Andrew Weatherall at one of his favourite places, the day before what would have been his sixty- second birthday. The photo above is from our trip to Belfast in February. We were on a bus going round the city centre, turned a corner and there it was, this mural of the man. Serendipity. 

Saturdays in 2025 have all been soundtrack posts, a year long series of songs and tracks from film and TV. In 1994 the film Shopping came out, a Paul Anderson film about a group of British teenagers into joyriding and ramraiding with some future stars among the cast (Jude Law, Sean Pertwee and Sophie Frost) and some people who were already stars (Sean Bean, Marianne Faithful and Jonathan Pryce). I don't think I've seen it since 1994 and don't remember much about it except that it opens with the jaw dropping, spine tingling, twisted hip hop magnificence of Sabres Of Paradise's Theme.

Theme 

The soundtrack pulls together lots of mid 90s hip hop and rap- The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy, Credit To The Nation, Kaliphz, Stereo MCs- along with Senser, Smith and Mighty, Utah Saints, Orbital, Salt 'N' Pepa, Shakespears Sister, EMF and more. Andrew appears again twice, once with Sabres v James (Jam J Spaghetti Steamhammer) and once as producer on One Dove's Why Don't You Take Me.

Jam J 

Jam J is somewhat overlooked in the Sabres back catalogue, a four track/ remix 12" that becomes a thirty three minute suite of hypnotic dubtronica/ dub techno, James and Brian Eno completely reworked into the Sabres netherworld, the guitars eventually coming through as Andrew, Jagz and Gary take us on a dub excursion. It's best heard as one unbroken piece of music, from Phase 1 to Phase 4. 

• Phase 1 (Arena Dub)
• Phase 2 (Amphetamine Pulsate)
• Phase 3 (Sabresonic Tremelo Dub)
• Phase 4 (Spaghetti Steamhammer)

In 1996 Andrew made a brief foray into the world of film as an actor, appearing as a shaven headed club owner called Buddha in a long forgotten London gangster film Hard Men, in a case of mistaken identity.

AW62 And The Return Of Death In Vegas

Today is the first day of the AW62 at Todmorden's Golden Lion, a three day weekender to celebrate what would have been Andrew Weatherall's 62nd birthday (6th April, Sunday). The line up is a bit of a dream, kicking off tonight with Richard Fearless playing downstairs in the pub, ably supported by Rusty and Rotter, while Fantastic Twins play upstairs. On Saturday David Holmes headlines with Duncan Gray and Scott Fraser both playing, Matt Hum on before David. From 2pm on Saturday through until 8ish, me and my friends in The Flightpath Estate have the privilege of DJing for the afternoon and evening crowds- it's an honour and a joy. 

Sunday keeps the fun going with a Sherman and Curley dub set, a White Rabbit literary discussion (hosted by Lee Brackstone with the Flightpath's Martin joining the panel) and then to finish the weekend off, The Jonny Halifax Invocation playing live upstairs while Adrian Sherwood DJs downstairs. The evening events are all sold out but the Saturday and Sunday afternoon events and sessions are free- if you're in the area, come down and say hello, it'll be great. 

By way of happy coincidence Friday night's headliner Richard Fearless announced the release of a new Death In Vegas album a few days ago with the appearance of a new track- Death Mask. Fearless has been mining an increasingly intense and beautiful techno seam for over a decade now, going deeper and deeper into the techno- earth's core. 2011's Trans- Love Energies and 2016's Transmission albums, 2018's Honey 12", his pair of albums under his Fearless name- Deep Rave Memory and its ambient techno counterpart Future Rave Memory- plus various one off singles on his Drone label such as 2017's mighty Sweet Venus, have all lit up the Bagging Area stereo, streamlined machine music of the highest order that straddles the line between ice cold and emotional overload. Death Mask fits right into that techno continuum, seven minutes of rattly drum machines and thudding kick drum, dub's space echo, slightly anxiety inducing synths, a squeak that nibbles away at the upper end and the sweet rush of momentum. Music to engulf and to immerse oneself in...

The tracks were all recorded inside Richard's Metal Box, a shipping container overlooking the Thames in East London. If any music sounds like it was recorded inside a shipping container, it's the music on Death Mask. Death Mask and the squally and equally intense While My Machines Gently Weep are both available over at Bandcamp ahead of the rest of the nine track album, which comes out in early June. 

Segundo Natureza

My friend in Sao Paulo Eduardo sent me an EP by Oe called Elogio da Segunda Natureza (which translates I think as In Praise Of Second Nature). Oe is one of the many aliases used by Professor Marcus and on the four tracks of the EP he heads deep into the ambient/ drone/ experimental zone. 

The first- Forst 1975- is a tremendous piece of ambient music, one that never rests or sits still but buzzes and hums constantly, a lovely drone of synths and keys, wobbling and oscillating. What sounds like a guitar through a wah wah pedal interrupts at two and a half minutes before the drums return and everything builds back in. 

Sismografia sets out from a similar place, more fractured and ambient with pulses like the sound of something coming from distant stars. 

There are voices at the start of Visagem, coming from a radio that's not properly tuned in. Bursts of static and distortion. Deep synth chords. Rips in the fabric of space and time. Found sounds from somewhere else. 

The final emission is The Wake, opening with rapid skippity drums and a piano chord clanging, then layers of sounds- who knows what, keys, guitars, synths- and a long distorted keening guitar line. The Wake breaks down into piano notes and some calm- then the drums come back, doubling the tempo and pushing on again. Really impressive stuff, rich with detail and very absorbing. Elogio de Segunda Natureza is at Bandcamp.