A few weeks ago an email arrived promising a new album from the duo Ultramarine- it is in fact a new old album, thirteen previously unheard and unreleased recordings from 1996- 7 about to be compiled as Routine and released by Blackford Hill. A single, Sunrise, came out on Friday as a taster and it's been part of my commuting playlist for the past fortnight, three and a half minutes of sunlit synths, keys and a hissy drum machine, and very nice indeed.
Ultramarine were/ are London and Essex duo Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper and back in the early 90s their fusion of ambient/ ambient house and folk was a refreshing and very English pastoral sound. Their best known song, Kingdom, saw them recruit Robert Wyatt on vocals and over the course of several albums they refined their sound and always stayed interesting- 1990's Folk, 1991's Every Man And Woman Is A Star and 1993's United Kingdoms were all essential early 90s electronic/ ambient/ folk and they've made four in the 2010s that have kept the standard high. Routine is available at Bandcamp for pre- order ahead of its release in July. Some of the track titles- Avebury, Crop Circle 5am, Runic Calibration and Astro Navigation- are pure Ultramarine.
I thought a Sunday mix to accompany the new single was in order and revisiting their music this week has been a joy. The tracks below are all from the duo's 90s recordings and are perfect for a Sunday in May even if the weather isn't doing quite what it should be.
Kingdom came out in 1993 with Robert Wyatt on vocals, the nearest they got to a hit. Wyatt's doleful, haunting, double tracked voice singing words of Medieval suffering and protest- 'We're low, we're low, we're rabble we know, mere rabble we know' and 'We're not too low the cloth to weave/ Too low the cloth to wear'. The folky/ Medieval pipes and 90s electronic squelch sound superb together. Goldcrest was the B-side of the Kingdom 12". The album United Kingdoms followed complete Incredible String Band sample. The Badger was also on United Kingdoms, one of several tracks remixed by among others Carl Craig and Fila Brazillia, and the one here by Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H. Kirk.
Hymn is a cover of a 1974 Kevin Ayres song, and came out in 1994, the sumptuous Ultramarine electronic sound and traditional instruments- accordion, clarinet- plus the voice of David McAlmont. The version I've included here has Kevin singing and came out on a remixes EP.
British Summertime was on 1991's Every Man And Woman Is A Star album, an ambient techno/ house classic, the folk influences seamlessly stitched in with early 90s technology, an ambient hippy/ folk crossover. The word pastoral was used a lot in reviews and the folky/ jazzy sound of the late 60s Canterbury scene, John Martyn and Rob Harper, that gentle English psychedelia, was a very strong presence on the album's dozen tracks.
Stella and Interstella were a 1990 single recorded for Belgian Le Disques Du Crepuscule in 1989 (a Factory sister label). They are always together for me, Stella and Interstella, and separating them seems wrong. They were added to the group's first album Folk, also released by Le Disques Du Crepuscule in 1990, an album that crosses boundaries from psyche to house to Balearic and back again, breakbeats and folk. Stella bounces around, bleeps and bass and warm synth chords, the 'You and me together' sample at its heart. Interstella (Stella) in particular is a dream record, ambient house, acoustic guitar and vocal samples, a voice saying 'I can do anything' perfectly encapsulating the feel of the times, when music was infused with the sense of endless possibility.
Sunrise is from the forthcoming Routine album, which is where this post started.
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