Monday's Long Song

KiF Productions are a two man team based in Devon who have recorded a homage to The KLF's legendary ambient house masterpiece Chill Out. The update is titled Still Out and transplants Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond's imaginary journey across the American south to a British road trip from North Yorkshire to North Devon the pair took in 2024. Tom and Will recorded Still Out after finding a copy of Chill Out in Tom's dad's record collection and put it together in a remote cottage in Devon, with no internet or mobile signal. They created an ambient audio collage, cutting and pasting found sounds and musical sounds, inspired not just by The KLF but by Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Andrew Weatherall, The Bomb Squad, Bill Evans and Virginia Astley. It's out at the end of the month, two long tracks either side of a record (the vinyl is long since sold out but the digital is available). 

The first is Swaledale To Blakeney Straits, a long ambient drone and the pips from the radio, a female voice wafts in and there's some crackle, a haze of ambient bliss, everything happening slowly. Organ. A finger picked acoustic guitar, birdsong. An excerpt of Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood. More haze, more slow guitar notes. Then a car door opens and the engine starts and we're off, on the road... 

As in Chill Out there are trains passing by, the car waiting at a level crossing. Warbling and more drones. It's a very British sounding road trip, back roads through the countryside, all the while the ambient drone bathing everything in a warm light. Also as with Chill Out Elvis turns up. After quarter of an hour the ambient synths push to the fore, a gentle wordless choir and chanting voice make their way in, a flute appears and some very Sabres Of Paradise drums clank in, a rattling metallic echo. We shift through different phases, the journey south soundtracked by bubbling water and descending chimes. 

Side two/ track two is Laugharne Estuary To Welcombe Mouth, more wild birdsong and the car's tyres on the road, engine turning over, more Burton reading Dylan Thomas, gulls... then a bassline, some piano jazz and a sax, bleeps and whooshes, drums, double bass and a warm electric guitar for a minute or two, more drones, sunshine breaking though clouds... 

Still Out is more than just a homage to a thirty five year old album, it stands alone in its own right, two inventive and ever changing pieces of sound collage. There are films too to accompany the sounds, shot from inside the car. Everything can be found at KiF Productions' Bandcamp page. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Talking Heads And Friends

Update Sunday 10.00 am. The original version of this post received a sensitive content warning and was put behind a warning message. I think this is because in my description of Azealia Banks' 212, the final track in the mix, I used a word that starts with the letter C and then sounds like honey lingers. I'm reposting the post here with the offending word removed- partly just to see if it now gets through Google's censors. 

I started a Talking Heads Sunday mix a year ago and couldn't get it to work. The early stuff, New York art- rock didn't seem to sit well with some of the later stuff or the remixes/ edits etc I was trying to fit in. Many of the songs I was attempting to segue started and ended very suddenly which was tricky and the whole thing made me quite frustrated so I shelved it. Seeing Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew play Remain In Light at The Ritz recently and the Leo Zero edit of Azealia Banks' 212 which splices Azealia's blinding debut single with Once In A Lifetime got me thinking I should try again. I've left out anything from their first three albums, much as I love all of them, and gone for a Talking Heads mix that is unashamedly dance music with some remixes, edits, side projects and solo works and covers- more an Inspired By Talking Heads mix than a strictly Talking Heads mix. I think it works now.

Forty Five Minutes Of Talking Heads And Friends Mix

• Jezebell: Swamp Shuffle
• David Byrne: My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks)
• Talking Heads: Burning Down The House (Pete Bones Remix)
• X- Press 2 and David Byrne: Lazy
• Rheinzand: Slippery People
• Tom Tom Club: Wordy Rappinghood
• Brian Eno and David Byrne: America Is Waiting
• Azealia Banks: 212 (Leo Zero Edit)

In August 2023 Jezebell released Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1, the first full length album from Darren and Jesse, twenty tracks of 21st century pick and mix/ club culture dance music. It closed with Swamp Shuffle where David Byrne's 'high high high high high' chant (borrowed from Talking Heads song Swamp, off 1983 album Speaking In Tongues) surfaces and resurfaces. Speaking In Tongues doesn't get the respect it deserves I sometimes think- it's the last of the classic run of Talking Heads albums and has a very glossy commercial production, recorded (without Brian Eno unlike the previous three albums, a decision the rhythm section demanded) at Compass Point in the Bahamas, taking aim at the big charts with thumpers like Burning Down The House. It also has the sleeper song, the one that has over the decades seeped into wider popular culture, the wonderful This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) which should be on this mix but isn't.

In 1981 David Byrne released an album, The Catherine Wheel, a score for a Twyla Tharp dance project of the same name. My Big Hands is a sign of where Byrne might go under his own steam, shimmering, juddering art- funk. He'd go there with the other three Heads too but already in 81 he was exploring outside the band. 

Burning Down The House was their breakthrough chart hit (as mentioned above), a song inspired by Chris Frantz shouting the title phrase over a riff the group were playing, himself inspired by Funkadelic and Parliament. This Pete Bones remix, pretty unofficial I think, streamlines it for modern dancefloors. Could be wrong but it isn't, it turns out right. 

Lazy is from 2002- I can't believe this track is already that old, an X- Press 2 single which Byrne sang on after he approached the duo to be his backing band. They turned him down, feeling they were unable to provide him with what he wanted but they got this song out of it, a gloriously catchy housed up 21st century Byrne. David has since then recored a version with an orchestra and played it live- he did it in his American Utopia tour in 2018, a tour I was lucky to see at a very memorable night at the Apollo.

Rheinzand are a Balearic dance act from Belgium who I love. Their debut album came out in 2020, an album released just as the world went into lockdown and with this cover of Slippery People on it, Ghent's finest rejigging Talking Heads into super sleek modern Balearic house/ disco. 

Tom Tom Club were Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz's side project, formed in 1981 because they were pissed off Byrne had gone off to do other things. They recruited a load of players including Adrian Belew, Steve Scales and Wally Badarou and made an album that chimed perfectly with 1981 New York's collision of rap, art, dance, graffiti, and fashion- Genius Of Love and Wordy Rappinghood were both hits which irked Byrne- proving Weymouth and Frantz's point that he should be sticking with them. Wordy Rappinghood was their debut single, a joyous thing with Tina's sisters Lani and Laura on backing vocals and utilising a typewriter, a Moroccan children's song and some French language lyrics about words. 

Also released in 1981 was David Byrne and Brian Eno's truly groundbreaking, visionary sampledelic, worldbeat, Afro Beat, found sound opus. Eno described the album as a 'vision of a psychedelic Africa', something that Adrian Sherwood and African Head Charge were taking note of in the UK. The album opens with America Is Waiting, a track that still sounds like it comes from the future while also rooted in turn of the 80s Cold War, moral majority, advent of Reagan paranoia. The voice is Ray Taliaferro, a US radio show host, taped off the radio.

Leo Zero's edit of Azealia Banks' 212 is one of the most exhilarating things I've heard recently, Azealia's celebration of youth, Harlem, sexuality, and her own prowess riding on top of Once In A Lifetime, some sirens and a rattling drum machine. As the kids say, it slaps. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Talking Heads And Friends

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Soundtrack Saturday

The last two soundtrack Saturdays have been post- Clash solo affairs, Big Audio Dynamite with the song Free from the film Flashback in 1990 and Joe Strummer's songs for Sid And Nancy in 1986. Today's soundtrack is Mick Jones in 1993 and a low budget 1993 film Amongst Friends. Directed by Rob Weiss the film tells the story of three childhood friends who get involved in low level drug dealing, nightclubs and local mobsters, shot on location around the Five Towns of Nassau County (Long Island and Queens). 

The soundtrack is a very 1993 blend of hip hop and alt- rock, with The Lemonheads, The Pharcyde, Bettie Serveert, Tone Loc and MC Lyte all rubbing shoulders, Mott The Hoople jammed in and three Mick Jones tracks not available anywhere else plus Big Audio Dynamite's Innocent Child. This one can be considered something of a lost Mick Jones solo gem, just Mick and a porta- studio, drum machine, understated electronics, softly sung and rather sweet.

Long Island

No Ennio is a soundtrack incidental music, some echo pedal guitar with synth and drum machine

No Ennio

BAD's Innocent Child is from the post- first line up years, Mick recruiting a new B.A.D., calling them Big Audio Dynamite II and carrying on. Innocent Child featured on the new BAD's 1990 album Kool Aid and then again on the reworked The Globe a year alter. Innocent Child is a heartfelt Jones song.

Innocent Child

It would be remiss of me to finish this post without The Pharcyde's Passin' Me By, one of 90s hip hop's best tracks- one of the best 90s tracks in any genre actually- and one that in 1993 I played to death. It samples Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones and Weather Report but the self- deprecating, unlucky in love lyrics and verbal flow are entirely the work of the four Pharcyders. If you don't play Passin' Me By at least five times today I will have failed. 

Passin' Me By

Endings and Beginnings

Today is a big day for me. I'm leaving my current workplace after a long term of service. I moved to a new job in a school in a former mill town north of Manchester back in 2001. I was thirty one. Isaac was three and Eliza had not been born. In 2008 the school was closed and new academy replaced it and I've been there ever since. I didn't plan on staying in one place for so long and within the school I've done several different jobs and held several different roles. Isaac died in November 2021 and in January 2022 I went back to work. I was off work for five weeks in total. I think part of going back to work was partly about getting some routine and familiarity back into my life, which had changed beyond all recognition. Going back was very difficult. I was on a reduced role and timetable. At times I wondered to myself, sometimes out loud, 'what the fuck am I doing?', but I kept going and my closest colleagues (some of whom I've worked with since 2001) were very helpful and supportive. I look back now at those first six months after he died and don't know how anyone manages in such a situation but you do find a way to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. In the summer of 2022 I stepped down from my then role on the leadership team and went back to the job I was doing when I first arrived there in 2001, Head of History, which had a neat circularity to it if nothing else.

Without going into any detail and washing some very dirty laundry in public, my workplace has had a very rough time over the last five years, gone through a number of structural and leadership changes, changes that are still taking place, and it has been at times a very difficult place to work. Schools in challenging circumstances are hard work and working with good people alongside you is the thing that gets you through some days. I'm leaving behind a group of colleagues who are friends and who I've spent a lot of time with. We've been through a lot together. Thank you, you know who you are.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go

I knew a couple of years ago I needed a change, a new start, to be somewhere else, that something had to change and that it had to be change that I chose. We've had so much change forced on us since November 2021 and I wanted to be the one that made a decision, choosing to change my life. Getting out and getting a new job has taken me some time and while living with grief it's taken finding the energy to do it as well. A year ago I thought I was stuck, too old and too expensive compared to the younger and cheaper teachers that were being appointed ahead of me. At the end of May I was interviewed for my new job and got it. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right job, the right place, the right people, to fall into place. 

When I leave at 12.30 pm today I'm leaving a lot behind me and it's going to be a wrench in lots of ways. There will be tears and goodbyes and a sense of leaving something which has been a massive part of my life but also I am really looking forward to being somewhere else, closer to home (you have no idea how much I'm looking forward to not being on the M60 every day this winter), in new surroundings. When I got the phone call in May to offer me the job the sense of relief I felt was enormous, the proverbial weight being lifted. Today is an ending and a goodbye. I have a few weeks off and then a new beginning. Wish me luck. 

Beginning To See The Light (Alternative Version)

Blue Thunder

Blue Thunder is the opening song on Galaxie 500's second album On Fire, the first record I heard by them, my introduction to the band. As calling cards go it's a stunner- the slow burn of the guitars, the hushed sound and Dean Wareham's voice sounding like a man so world weary that 1989 and all its excitements should just disappear- 'Thinking of blue thunder/ Singing to myself'. In the second verse he sings of being on Route 128 and finishes with 'I'll drive so far away', the guitars, drums and bass coming together cinematically, the car's taillights vanishing into the horizon...

Blue Thunder

Galaxie 500 released Blue Thunder as a 12" and this version contains a sax part by Ralph Carney so explosive, so violent, so psychedelic jazz, that it should come with a jump- scare warning. First time heard, it was a total freak out/ WTF moment but after that I grew to love it. Blue Thunder sounds like a lament but the sax makes it something else, something more. 

Blue Thunder (with sax)

All being well our school trip comes to an end today, our coach crossing from Calais to Dover and then carrying its weary passengers- 55 teenagers and 7 staff- up the country and back to north- west England for the final day of the school year tomorrow. 

My World Has Grown Old

The Cure's Remixes Of A Lost World album is inevitably a mixed bag. It's out in multiple formats, twenty four remixes spread across triple CD, double and triple vinyl. I've already written about the Four Tet remix of Alone and the Orbital remix of Endsong, both of which are so good they make me wonder why Robert Smith hasn't done a full remix album or album with either the Hartnoll brothers and/ or Kieran Hebden. There's a Daniel Avery remix of Drone:Nodrone that hits all the goth- slo mo techno spots and a pumping Danny Briotet and Rico Conning remix that could close every indie/ goth disco night from now until the end of time. 

Mogwai, no strangers to expansive, dark emotional soundscapes bring themselves to Endsong, a stuttering noisy affair with a guitar line picked out on top, the band crawling slowly through a ten minute Cure shaped valley of despair, Smith's voice eventually drifting in, singing of being alone, left alone with nothing at the end of every song.

Colleen Cosmo Murphy takes a different approach, shifting the flow of the album (as sequenced on my double vinyl version) and has more in common with some of the dance/ Balearic remixes that The Cure last flirted with on Mixed Up back in 1990. Colleen's Electric Eden remix of And Nothing Is Forever adds a throbbing, sequenced dancefloor bassline, some twinkling synths and a ghostly choir, Robert's voice clear and loud on top- its a sunlit version of The Cure, very much a joyful and upward facing remix.  

Sprechen Fest

Chris Massey's Sprechen label started ten years ago, run out of a spare room at his home in Bolton. Since then it's had a decade of releases and parties, a record label that's become a home for life enhancing, psychedelic/ electronic music that is always interesting, always changing, never standing still. To celebrate this Sprechen are releasing an album called Ein Null: 10 Years Of Sprechen. The album has a really strong line up of artists- A Certain Ratio (with a track, Faster But Slower,  not available anywhere else), Bagging Area favourite Psychederek, The Utopia Strong (featuring former snooker champion Steve Davis), Lena C, PBR Streetgang, Gina Breeze, and Low Pulse. 

As well as this Norwegian producer Lindstrom has joined up with Chris' band The Thief Of Time on a song called Escape Into Neon- a title that sums up much of Sprechen's vibe- with an instrumental and vocal version of the song. The instrumental is available to listen to here, Lindstrom's Scandi-disco synths and The Thief Of Time's 80s indie- pop combining in a flare of light and arpeggios. Ein Null is out on vinyl and digitally and can be ordered here. 

The other track on Ein Null is Walk... Now Walk, a slow mo acid disco chug romp with vocals from RuPaul and Supernature that builds and builds without ever quite exploding, the tension kept in check. 

Also on Sprechen but back in June, was an EP from Ed Mahon called Recreations, a trio of edits and covers. The first is the Poolside Rerub of Voice Of Africa's classic Hoomba Hoomba, the original's beatific piano set over a 98 bpm chug and the chanted vocal fading in. 

Following that there's What You Deserve, a hard edged, uptempo early 80s number from the EBM/ Nitzer Ebb/ DAF sound- sweaty industrial proto- house with a vocal from Snem K. The EP is completed with a version of Corina's Temptation, originally out in 1991, and done by Ed with a vocal from Louise Spiteri, stripped back and full of end of the night/ under the stars love. Get Recreations here. 

Monday's Long Song

I've written before about Richard Norris' long running music For Healing series, a project he started back in 2020 with the specific intention (due to his own personal circumstances at the time) of making music that would work as medicine, an aural balm to block out stresses and to heal troubled psyches. 

I've also written before about how in the days after Isaac died I couldn't listen to any music but needed something to drown out the silence and to give me some relief from my then raging, grief- induced tinnitus. The first piece of music I could listen to was one of Richard's twenty minute long Music For Healing pieces. I contacted him some time after and told him about this and he said it was exactly what he wanted the music to do, to act as relief. He's continued to make these ambient pieces ever since, releasing them on the first of the month. 

This year's theme has been oceans and two weeks ago Oceans 7 dropped into my inbox, subtitled Still Water, recorded in Richard's Lewes studio. This one is a beauty, an ambient/ deep listening dive into warm seas, gentle drones and a treated piano. Press play, sit back, do nothing, float, reflect. Get it at Richard's Bandcamp. 

Ninety Minutes Of Psychedelic Dub From Rude Audio

Rude Audio's Mark Ratcliff is a fan of all things dub and many things psychedelic. He recently put together a psychedelic dub set, a ninety minute chugged up, dubbed out selection featuring some of Rude Audio's own recordings (with Dan Wainwright), some Duncan Gray, GLOK remixed by Hardway Bros meeting Monkton uptown, The Orb, a Richard Fearless remix of KXB, Future Sound Of London, Channel 15,  Tom Waits (!) and many more. Mark's very good at this kind of thing and with the temperatures in Amsterdam (where I am today, on a school trip) and at home in the UK due to top 30 degrees, this is an ideal soundtrack. You can listen at Soundcloud. 

If you're looking for a further Tom Waits/ dub interaction here's the mysterious B:dum B:dum and a punningly titled slice of deep dub, a sound that is all hiss, space and rhythm. B:dum B:dum were an early 90s Manchester outfit- members have since migrated into Marconi Union and Shunt Voltage. There's a 12" single isted on Discogs which contains four tracks, Istanbul, Angel, Check This and Good May Weep. I've no idea where this track came from. 

Tom Waits For No Man

Soundtrack Saturday

Alex Cox's 1986 film Sid And Nancy tells the story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, the doomed punk rock couple who destroyed themselves and each other. The two leads, Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, do their best as the couple and manage to portray a relatively touching love story in the middle of all the noise and chaos of the Sex Pistols. John Lydon was hugely critical of the film and of Cox, its portrayal of the junkie lifestyle and of Johnny Rotten. Others agreed, saying it was wildly inaccurate and filled with artistic licence regarding the death of Nancy. 

It's a film which split opinion on release and ever since- some see it as a welcome corrective to punk nostalgia, 'abrasive, bratty and antisocial'. It's definitely compelling, not to mention wretched, squalid and off- putting. In 2016 Alex Cox said he was proud of aspects of it but the ending was too 'touchy- feely' and that he was more sympathetic to Lydon's point of view than he ever had been before. 

Alex Cox became aware of the contradictions of the film. He said the happy ending was 'sentimental and dishonest', and that they were trying to make a film that condemned Sid and Nancy for their decadence, that punk was a positive movement, it was forward looking and 'you can't be those things if you're 'a junkie rock star in a hotel room'. Asked if he was going to remake it how he would change it, Cox said he'd end with Sid 'dying in a pool of his own vomit'. So there you go. 

Let's leave the film and its problems aside and go to the soundtrack. Cox got Joe Strummer on board (something else Lydon was critical of, his dislike of Strummer and The Clash something Lydon can never leave alone). Joe wrote two songs for the film (and more unofficially and uncredited due to his then contract with Epic). Dan Wool of Pray For Rain was heavily involved as were The Pogues. There are no Pistols or Vicious songs on the soundtrack. Joe's film soundtrack work- Walker, Straight To Hell, When Pigs Fly, Permanent Record- began with Sid And Nancy and Love Kills was his first post- Clash release, a single in July 1986 to promote the film with uncredited guitar courtesy of Mick Jones (Joe and Mick had buried the hatchet by this point and made up). Love Kills is a song about junkie lovers, prison and murder.

Love Kills

Also on the soundtrack and the B-side of the 12" single was this Strummer song...

Dum Dum Club

The Pogues contributed Haunted, sung by Cait O'Riordan, a very lovely mid- 80s indie/ punk love song. 

Haunted

European Tour

I'm off on a school trip today, away for the next six days with six colleagues and fifty five teenagers, on a three country tour of Europe. We're getting the ferry from Hull later today, a night crossing to Rotterdam and then we're in Amsterdam until Monday. Our itinerary includes the Anne Frank house, the Herzongenbusch concentration camp near Vught, a canal cruise and some time in Amsterdam. From there we head to Ypres and the First World War battlefields and cemeteries, the Menin Gate, the Flanders Field Museum, Passchendaele and some chocolate shops. We're also crossing into France to go the Somme. It's a trip I've done before and well worth it, an unforgettable experience for our young people and a good way to finish the school year. Weather forecast is good- too good maybe. I really hope the coach air con is working.

Here's some music from our first destination, the Netherlands. Speedy J is a Dutch producer from Rotterdam whose Ginger and G- Spot albums, both on Warp in the mid-- 90s, were superb spacey, trancey Dutch techno. Pepper was on Ginger.

Pepper

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a review of the new Jezebell album, Jezebalearic Beats Volume 2, a twenty track journey through Darren and Jesse's worlds starting with the slow mo, wigged out Serge Gainsbourg languor of Movimento Lento and then taking in various Jezebell remixes- Andys y Xavi, Pandit Pam Pam, Perry Granville, Pete Bones, Warriors Of The Dystotheque with Joe Duggan and Ian Vale.

As well as those tracks there are some previously released Jezebell hits- The Knack, Concurrence, Trading Places 6am, (Dancing) Not Fighting- and several brand new ones that build to the finale, an epic slice of dancefloor optimism with Yoko Ono in the mix. This is a reminder that you're going to want this album and that you'll end up playing it a lot. Get it here. 

God And Soul

A couple of edits/ remixes of past songs for those of you who are fans of them- I know some people consider some songs to be untouchable and to even attempt an edit or remix is sacrilege. This may be one such case but I love it, a dubbed out, tampered with version of God Only Knows by The Beach Boys from fifteen years ago that resurfaced recently when Brian Wilson made his final voyage...

God Only Knows (Michael Cook Re- Touch)

Much more recent is this Hardway Bros remix of Soul Train by 80s band Swans Way. Sean Johnston often does long and thumpy and this remix is both- eight minutes forty seconds long and filled with acid house drums, sirens and synths, acidic squiggles and the chant of 'it's alright' looped over and over.  

The remix can be purchased here. Sean talks of discovering Swans Way via a performance on Friday night fixture The Tube in 1984 and how they fitted in with he was into at the time- Dexys, The Bunnymen, Prefab Sprout, all of whom had as Sean says 'a sense of outsider glamour'. That live performance on The Tube is a time capsule, a small corner of the 80s captured on film...

I'll Be Out Here If You Need To Find Me

Evan Dando's musical career- sole ever- present member of Lemonheads and a solo album too- has been a very stop- start affair. In the early 90s he crashed into the popular culture with It's A Shame About Ray and Come On Feel The Lemonheads after some under the radar albums as a three piece- their third, Lick in 1989, got some music press attention in the UK partly due to their cover of Suzanne Vega's Luka but they were just another American indie band, a little bit punk, a little bit country, ragged guitars, ripped jeans and Converse. After grunge exploded and their cover of Mrs Robinson gave them a hit they started selling records and Evan hit a rich vein of form. 

Exhibit A) My Drug Buddy from 1992's It's A Shame About Ray

My Drug Buddy

Exhibit B) Into Your Arms from 1993's Come On Feel The Lemonheads (a cover of a 1989 song by Australian band Love Positions)

Into Your Arms

Evan also developed some serious problems with crack cocaine and Lemonheads went on hiatus after 1996's Car Button Cloth. In 2003 he put out a solo album, Baby I'm Bored and a Lemonheads re- union followed in 2005 with a couple of albums and some appearances and disappearances. I've very much dipped in and out but am often curious to hear what he'd been up to. Evan's a talented writer and singer. 

Now living in Brazil Evan has got things back together and an album Love Chant is due in October. In Maya new song, Deep End, came out, three minutes thirty seven seconds of riffing and growly vocals, a song that recalls former glories but also sounds like a new Evan Dando. Julianna Hatfield is back and J Mascis turns up for the guitar solos.

And then two weeks ago another one, In The Margin, short and sweet and on fire, more riffs, more guitars, more choruses and Evan sounding great. 

The Pilina Exhibition

A new EP on the reignited  Eclectics label has been getting a lot of my ear time recently- The Pilina Exhibition by Statues, two original tracks and two remixes, both by North Of The Island. Statues are a duo, Bradley Lucke and Mark Crooks, North Of The Island is Neil Scott. The tags on the EP's Bandcamp page include Balearic, Downtempo and Electronic but what's going on across these four tracks goes way further than that. 

Pilina is a laid back opener, definitely in the Balearic area with those acoustic guitars and long synth chords, slo mo drums and poolside/ beach bar melodies- there's some jazz in there too with a sax carrying the tune forward. Unhurried and very chilled. The NOTI remix strips it back to a haze, the synths and guitars much more of a wash with a wiggly sax refrain that works its way to the fore. The drums kick in after a few minutes and everything snaps into focus. 

Ballet is more intense, a hypnotic rhythm and stuttering synths, finger picked guitar and flutes, a psychedelic version of Balearica. It pushes and pulls, all very dreamy and textural. On the remix NOTI cuts the tempo completely, slowing it right down, a padding drum machine and slow jam guitar, a dubbed out sense of space and that feeling on the dancefloor when time stands still, the lights flash, everything drops out, people are moving in cinematic slow motion and you wonder what's happening. Eventually a voice appears out of the haze, groaning, 'I want your love'. Of the four, this is the one I've been going back to the most, a delightfully tripped out way to spend four and a half minutes. 

The Pilina Exhibition EP can be heard and bought at Eclectics. A very promising way to relaunch the label. 

Monday's Long Song

This week's Monday long song comes from Tokyo and a producer called Gonno. This track, Acdise #2, came my way last week via my friend Spencer, a ten minute trip into electronic sound straddling the blurred lines between house, techno, ambient and cosmische. It starts out with skippy drums and a pulsing synth part and builds and builds, adding layers of sound, becoming very intoxicating indeed. There are synths buzzing like a wasp in a jar, some minor key melody lines, wiggy acidic parts, repeating two note blips, nagging arpeggios, squelches- everything you could want in a ten minute Monday electronic long song. Spencer called it both dreamy and propulsive which is exactly what it is. 

Acdise #2

Acdise #2 is part of an EP released on Bandcamp back in 2020 and originally before that in 2011 which contains remixes including one by Gato Fritto (an artist I haven't thought about for a long time), a dub and two extra tracks. All are worth your time and trouble but Acdise #2 is the one. 

  

Twenty Five Minutes Of Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2

Our second album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate, went on sale for pre- orders last week (as announced here on Monday and on various Flightpath Estate social media platforms). We are pressing 1500 copies. We did 1000 of Volume 1 and sold them all, something that still amazes me although it shouldn't- the music was so good it should have been no surprise we'd sell out. Flightpath and Rude Audio main man Mark Ratcliff has done a taster mix of all ten tracks for Volume 2, deftly sequenced and mixed, with the unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track making its presence known more than once. 

The unreleased version of Lick Wid Nit Wit stands alongside anything else Sabres recorded and released. It got it sole airing when Andrew Weatherall played it as part of his legendary 1993 Essential Mix at the BBC and even then that version is not the same as the one we have. 

As well as that track Mark has mixed in the nine other brand new tracks, music by Richard Fearless, Red Snapper, A Certain Ratio re-worked by Number, David Harrow, Bedford Falls Players, Dicky Continental, Richard Norris, Unit 14 and a cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss by Sleaford Mods. Mark's mix, featuring excerpts from all ten tracks, can be found here. Mark has adeptly brought together mid- 90s dub/ techno skank, 21st century machine techno, Manc noir, North African percussion, chuggy cosmische, thumpy acid house, clattering Notts post- punk and much more into one sequence- you can play guess which track is which.

Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2, double vinyl clad in a beautiful sleeve courtesy of Personality Crisis, can be pre- ordered from Golden Lion Sounds and/ or the GLS Bandcamp. There are still some copies left but don't hang around- as with Volume 1 there will be no repress. When they're gone, they're gone. 

I'll Be Down When You're Down I'll Be Up When You're Up

Sounds Of The City takes place in early July every year in Manchester, a week of gigs at Castlefield Bowl, an 8000 capacity outdoor venue surrounded by Manchester's past and present- the remains of the Roman fort, the Bridgewater Canal and the canal basin, the railway line and the tram, the world's first passenger railway station, and the Beetham Tower. This year's line up included The Charlatans. At the end of last year via the magic of social media, Charlatans front man and all round nice guy Tim Burgess found out that we played North Country Boy at Isaac's funeral and he messaged me with the offer of free tickets when the band next played Manchester. When their Castlefield gig was announced I messaged him to remind him of his kind offer and Tim was as good as his word. 

At 9pm on a warm and sunny Manchester evening and with an up- for- it crowd, four Charlatans take to the stage. Drummer Pete Salisbury starts up on the hi- hats and the band kick in and the sound of 1999's seven and a half minute single Forever builds, the two note organ drone, Martin Blunt's rumbling bass and eventually shards of Mark Collins' guitar. It's three minutes before Tim Burgess arrives on stage, all smiles, striped jumper and big hair, waving and then grasping the mic to sign, the dam bursting at the end of the first verse with the line, 'I wonder what you people do with your lives... once more this will be forever'. 

After Forever's slow burn we are treated to a ninety minute hit heavy set, mainly fan favorites from the 90s with a couple of new ones. Weirdo comes next, the wheezy organ splicing 1966 and 1992, wonderful indie- psyche from their second album Between 10th And 11th.

Weirdo

Then three songs in they rip into the opening chords of North Country Boy. I thought I was prepared for this happening- the song, its connection to Isaac (for me now the boy of the song's title) and the lines that took on new meaning after he died  'Every day you make the sun come out/ Even in the pouring rain/ I'll come to see you/ And I'll save you, I'll save you' for one, and there are several others) and the surge of emotion I expected to feel when they played it- but instantly me and Eliza are in floods of tears, my brother's behind us hugging us and the band are powering through the song's verses and choruses; 'Hey country boy/ What are you sad about?'. It took the next song, Can't Get Out Of Bed, to get ourselves back into one piece.

Tim reminds us its thirty years since the release of their self- titled fourth album, one that in 1995 pushed them back onto bigger stages and they play a mini- set of songs from it- Here Comes A Soul Saver, Toothache and the mighty, emotive Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over, a song about coming home, all tumbling drums, acoustic guitars and piano runs. Released at the height of Britpop, The Charlatans were doing Exile On Main Street. We get a new song, We Are Love, and then a run of big hitters- the huge pounding Chemical Brothers enhanced dance- rock of One To Another, probably tonight's peak in terms of energy and whoomph, Just Lookin', Impossible, Blackened Blue Eyes, The Only One I Know and then the raucous and distorted guitar slashing, Bob Dylan meets Wu Tang Clan torrent of words that is How High, and all that flashing imagery that Tim piled into the words about the lyrics of your life, kissing the sun and pledging my time 'til the die...

How High

They encore just as the sun has dipped out of view with I Don't Want To See The Sights and another new one. Finally, the lysergic spin of Sproston Green starts up, the group's welding together of 60s garage psyche and late 80s indie- dance still burning, Tim at the front singing about an older woman who came and went and took what was his, over and over. It's all life affirming stuff, songs that have become part of the soundtrack our lives played by a band that have known their own tragedies and who have a genuine connection with their audience. Thanks Tim. 

Sally Can't Dance No More

At the start of this year I decided to undertake a trawl through Lou Reed's solo back catalogue. My long standing received wisdom is that it's the definition of uneven, a hit and miss, zig- zag of styles, disappointments and comebacks with a few iffy live albums and a handful of pearls in among the sand. On re- listening, at a couple of decades distance, to the 1980 greatest hits collection A Walk On The Wild Side I found a lot to enjoy and was really taken with some songs I'd not heard since my tape collection got broken up in the early 90s- I had cassette copies of several Lou Reed solo albums from the 70s and  have a few on vinyl and/ or CD, Transformer of course, New York, Street Hassle. 

This is less of a deep dive into Lou's solo albums, more a shallow paddle or a slow meander. I decided that to make this work I needed to pick up copies of the albums on second hand vinyl. I don't know yet whether this will sustain itself into the 80s. The thought of handing over actual money for Mistrial scares me. I've decided too to avoid the live albums- someone lent me Rock 'n' Roll Animal in the late 80s and I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard, dreadful heavy rock/ metal versions of classic songs. I've no need or desire to go back there. 

Since January I've bought, listened to and written about Berlin ('Lou's masterpiece'), his solo self- titled debut ('flawed but with some really good moments') and Transformer ('everyone knows/ has a copy of Transformer- and rightly so'). At this rate I'll be getting to New York in 2030. Recently I found a copy of 1974's Sally Can't Dance second hand. The vinyl plays fine, no scratches or jumps, perfect condition and half a century old. The sleeve smells like it's been in someone 's garage since the mid- 70s however but nevermind. 

I approached Sally Can't Dance with some trepidation. I had it on cassette a long time ago and didn't remember it being that good. It was the first Lou solo album without any Velvets era songs on it and the first recorded in New York. Weirdly it was Lou's biggest solo album and was very much seen as a hit. In 1976 Lou, never the best judge of his own work maybe and not a reliable interviewee at all at that point- contrary is putting it mildly- described it as a 'piece of shit from beginning to end'. It's not. He didn't like Steve Katz's production either and the reviews were critical on release. With some caution I dropped the needle on the record...

Ride Sally Ride comes in with piano and horn and that familiar Lou Reed Weimar/ New York feel, torch songs with a little crooning, tumbling drums and female backing vox. 'Ooh isn't nice/ When your heart is made out of ice', Lou sings, rhymes confusion with contusion as the brass parps away and all is good in Lou Reed world. Relaxed- it's the Quaaludes maybe- and easy. Animal Language follows, Lou's bleach blonde hair from the (horrible) sleeve painting and glam rock strutting to the fore, a song about Miss Riley who had a dog and Miss Murphy who had a cat and their neighbour's complaints. The chorus- 'ooh meow meow, ooh bow wow'- is hilarious, the guitars squeal and Lou Reed is surely taking the piss. 

Next is Baby Face, a slow blues with guitar and bass locked in and Lou singing softly, close to the mic. Lou's voice is so distinctive and very limited really, two notes, a snarl, a drawl or a croon but he always makes the most of it. The voice is Lou Reed. Baby Reed is a snarky song but well worth sticking with. It's written from the point of view of his ex- wife- 'Jim, livin' with you is not such fun/ You're not the only one/ You don't have the looks/ You're not the person you used to be/ There are people on the street that would go for me...'

Side one finishes with N.Y. Stars. It's amazing and refreshing how short albums used to be- eight songs, not much more than thirty minutes. N. Y. Stars kicks in with a gnarly guitar part (David Weiss I think) and then a full band, some echo, a Bowie feel, and Lou turning his caustic glare on the next generation, the '4th rate imitators', with Lou becoming increasingly bitchy. 'I'm just waiting for them to hurry up and die', he sings, the guitars and drums gathering pace. It's sleazy and wired and alive. 

Turn Sally Can't Dance over and side two gives us Kill Your Sons, a key Lou Reed solo song. Crunchy guitar riffs and a processed vocal. Lou's lyric dissects his parents' decision to send a young Lou to a psychiatric hospital to be cured of his proclivities- which included ECT. Lou sneers at the two bit psychiatrists and the electric shocks, the inability to read a book past page 17 because he couldn't remember where he was or what he'd read. He turns his aim at his mum and dad and his sister and her husband (which his sister thought was very funny apparently). As he lists the drugs they put him on the guitars ring out and the song fades into a buzz of feedback and Lou singing 'they're gonna kill your sons...' After that the mood changes with Ennui, another slice of Lou Reed cabaret/ supper club music with a late period Velvets feel and more scores being settled, more aging and waiting for death. 

The title track comes next, Sally Can't Dance, horns and New York cool, guitar solos and one of Lou's character songs, Sally who can't get off the floor and can't dance no more. Lou paints a portrait in a few lines, 'she was the first girl in the neighborhood to wear tie die pants... that had flowers painted on her jeans... now she kills the boys and acts like a son'. It's a groove and a blast, it's sassy and pulls apart a New York face, maybe Edie Sedgwick. It's about decadence and lifestyle choices, regrets and depravity and it being too late to pull back from the flame. 

Sally Can't Dance

After that there's just the five minutes of Billy. Acoustic guitar and sax and Doug Yule on bass, a lovely recording of the bass guitar, the much maligned Doug invited by Lou to play on the song because Lou thought it would suit him.  Billy is a story song. Lou and Billy went to school together, best friends since nine years old. Billy was the football player, Lou the do- nothing. Billy studied hard. They both went to college. Billy went for a PhD. Lou dropped out. Billy became a doctor and then war broke out. Billy went to Vietnam and Lou didn't ('mentally unfit they say'). The sax wails away, needlessly but brilliantly, over the top. The acoustic guitar is scrubbed as much as played. Billy comes back from the war not quite the same and it leaves Lou wondering, 'which of us was the fool?' 

My caution and trepidation were unfounded. There's very little wrong with Sally Can't Dance- mid- 70s Lou is still very much in the driving seat and his talent is undoubted. RCA put pressure on him to repeat the trick, give them another big hit. This annoyed Lou so he gave them Metal Machine Music (an album memorably described by Tony Wilson as 'the sound of your fridge switching on and off'). Lou Reed- contrary much?

The Collapse Of Everything

Adrian Sherwood's The Grand Designer EP that lit up June and continues to get regular plays round here. The lead and title track is a beautifully rich and textured piece of dub, all manner of instruments and FX flying in and out of the mix over a bobbing rhythm and occasional bursts of siren. It's followed by Let's Stay Together, a track in the old style dub tradition of using the same rhythm and some of the sounds but with a vocal drizzled over the top, in this case one b the late Lee 'Scratch' Perry, the Upsetter jutting in and out in typical fashion. I suspect Mr Sherwood has files and tapes filled with Lee Perry vocals just waiting to find a track. 

Let's Stay Together is followed by Russian Oscillator which may (or may not) be based on the same building blocks but distorted and bent out of shape, rough industrial abstract dub. The fourth track, Cold War Skank, is a joy, guitars and rumbling bass, echoes of the desert and Saharan blues. 

The Grand Designer can be heard and bought here. It turns out that the EP is a spearhead, leading the charge for a Sherwood solo album to follow in August, a record called The Collapse Of Everything. The title track and album opener dropped onto the internet earlier this week, old school dub from the On U studio- languorous dub groove, bubbling bass, sounds ricocheting left and right, FX and flow, piano and fuzz guitar. 

The Collapse Of Everything was partly inspired by the losses of Mark Stewart and Keith LeBlanc- the title comes from a Stewart song- and features Doug Wimbish, Gaudi and Brian Eno all making appearances among a cast of sixteen players. You can pre- order the album on vinyl and digitally at Bandcamp. 

How Long Is Now/ Galactic Ride

Sheffield band Pale Blue Eyes released an album earlier this year called New Place. The band are a trio, married couple Matt and Lucy Board (him vocals and guitars, her drums and synths) and bassist Aubrey Simpson. They moved from South Devon to South Yorkshire and embraced the Steel City's love of electronics and synths, making an album that sounds inspire by the krauty sounds of Neu! and Harmonium and the perpetual motion of the autobahn. The album is here. 

A month ago a Richard Norris remix of opening track How Long Is Now came out in both vocal and instrumental form. Richard is no stranger to the cosmische sounds of West Germany in the 70s and set the controls for the heart of the Mittel Europe, a Klaus Dinger motorik drumbeat and throbbing sequenced bassline propelling the song to new speeds with Matt's guitars gone all Rother- esque. All the versions are available at Bandcamp. 

Gordon Kaye has been around almost as long as Richard Norris, DJing in clubs in his hometown of Brighton since the mid- 80s and starting a night at The Escape Club called The Sunshine Playroom that became a lynchpin for South Coast 80s psychedelic/ indie, frequented by Alan McGee, Primal Scream and Norman Cook. Since the late 80s he's DJed all around the world, playing indie- dance and various shades of house and dance music. Recently he's reignited his passion for making music and the first fruits are a nine minute cosmic chug glide called Galactic Ride, synth arpeggios firing off against the burbling bassline and as with Pale Blue Eyes, a sense of perpetual motion, building steadily ever upwards. Listen to it at Soundcloud. 

I Was On The 212

Back in 2011 Azealia Banks announced her arrival into the musical world with the song 212, one of the songs that defined the 2010s. Since then she's become as well known for her political views, mental health issues and feuds with others, and there's no doubt some of her views are pretty extreme and (depending on your own political views) indefensible. But there's no denying the power of 212, the sheer energy in the track and the flow of Banks' delivery, a blur of lines that describe her youth in Harlem, her sexuality, race and power. 

Last week Leo Zero put out an edit of 212, Azealia's voice chopped up and re- arranged over the very recognisable bass and synths of Once In A Lifetime. It's massive, exhilarating and sure to rock a party. Get it here.