The Bagging Area 2024 End Of Year Lists

The end of year list is a bit of an indulgence but also a good way to look back, revisit albums and songs and enjoy again the music that's made my year. People like lists. The exact positions are very arbitrary. What does it matter if I think something was the 26th or 27th best album of the year? It doesn't. But pulling together my favourite releases of the calendar year is always a fun thing to do and a good way to draw a line under the year. Last year I wrote a massive piece with multiple sections, categories, sub- categories and sub- lists, the total number of releases heading up towards three figures. I must have had more time to think about it and to write it last year than I do now. This year I've slim- lined it to two lists, one for albums and one for singles/ EPs/ remixes, each numbering thirty. 

Some years feel like singles years and some feel like album years- 2024 has been a big year for albums, some big hitters and 80s/ 90s bands and artists with big comebacks. I like to think I keep up with new music to some extent and the number of 'old' artists in this list makes me wonder how accurate that is, whether I'm kidding myself about that. But, as they say, it is what it is. Inevitably I will have missed something out from one of these two lists, if not both. Equally inevitably, I will buy an album in the new year that came out in 2024 which should have been in  the top 30. Nothing is ever fixed. Maybe that's the way it should be, a constantly fluid and shifting list. 

Singles, EPs and remixes

30 Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)

29 The Liminanas and Bertand Belin: J'Adore Le Monde

28 Richard Norris: Weatherall's Last Stand

27 Jezebell: Weekend Machines EP

26 Causeway: Dancing With Shadows

25 Hinds with Grian Chatten: Stranger

24 David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson: Revolvalution EP and Rude Audio Remixes

23 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson: Voyager

22 Mick Harvey: When We Were Beautiful And Young

21 Electric Blue Vision: Trance Stance

20 BTCOP: The Custom 88 EP and Rude Audio Remixes

19 Mildlife: Return To Centauri

18 Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)

17 Pandit Pam Pam: Pass A Wish EP

16 Theis Thaws: Fly To Ceiling (David Holmes Remix)

15 Ammomite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)

14 Ride: Last Frontier

13 C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remixes)

12 Acid Klaus: PTSD By Proxy EP

11 Raxon: Your Fault

10 Peak High: Dance Hall Days

9 Psychederek: Alt! EP

8 Iraini Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- animation)

7 Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)

6 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

5 Galliano: Cabin Fever Dub

A limited edition 7" single that was a very timely release with its line, 'don't want to take my country back man/ Want to take my country forwards', arriving to coincide with the Farage race riots in the summer, Galliano making a return to action and being a voice of reason. The song sampled Andrew Weatherall's remix of the band from 1992's Skunk Funk and borrowed Joe Strummer's vocal phrasings from This Is Radio Clash, and was a very unexpected treat. 

4 Amyl and The Sniffers: Big Dreams

As was this, a single ahead of the Melbourne pub punk's third album that showed a different side to the band. Over a picked, circling guitar riff and some spacious production Amy sang a punk rock torch song for all those people stuck in dead end towns and dead end jobs amid a cost of living crisis who want to get out and realise they're another year older and still stuck. The video for Big Dreams, with the band on motorbikes in the desert, was pure rock 'n' roll cool. 

3 Alex Kassian: E2- E4 (A Reference To E2- E4 By Manuel Gottsching)/ Mad Professor remixes

Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds of perfection- pulsing spaced out synths lines that lit up the summer. Not that summer really happened in the north of the UK this year. But when E2- E4 played it felt like it did. 

2 Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast

Tonight In Belfast, Mike Garry's beautifully moving poem and voice over David Holmes' remix of Orbital's Belfast, a re- imagining of the Hartnoll brothers 1991 masterpiece is as good as anything else released this yea. It could easily be my number one. David remixed Belfast for the Orbital 30 project, updating it for the 2020s. DJ Helen got Mike Garry to speak his Tonight poem over the top. Mike's words speak to me in all sorts of ways. When I first heard it, so many of the lines for me were about Isaac, it seemed almost like he'd written it for me. Transcendent and emotional, everything music can/ should be. Magical. 

'Tonight I want to paint pictures of you/ Write poems and songs and novels all about you/I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit'

'I love to speak your name aloud/ Simply 'cos I love its sound/ It feels like I'm kinda calling yer/ It feels like I'm kinda talking to ya/ It feels like I'm trying to break through/ You know across this divide'

'I'll tell you what/ Let's slip beyond the confines of this world/Let's forget every single thing we've learned/ Let's rewrite the way this world can turn'

1 Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

This came out in June, a 12" remix of one of the songs from Fat White Family's latest album Forgiveness Is Yours. The Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix takes Bullet Of Dignity, already a fucked up, sordid and groovy number and spins it further, kicking off with percussion, timbales, early 90s kick drum and then a squelchy bassline that oozes dance floor action. It builds, echoes rattling around and the rhythm gathering steam, some piano stabs and then finally, after a drop out and pause, Lias' vocal comes in, a blur of standout lines and attention grabbing phrases- 'You say you're just thirty one/ What's that in cannibal years?' I have no idea what it's about but it keeps giving with imagery, lines about fatal caricatures and suicidal cassettes, words walking in pairs, and how the dialogue's dubbed. There's a Middle Eastern/ North African guitar line that appears and re- appears. At five minutes it takes off even further, the groove and rhythms bouncing around, moving ever forwards. 

Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

There are a couple of singles that should really be heading up the singles list but they're both going to appear as part of the albums near the top end of this second list, as much for variety as anything. 

Albums

Edit: I've forgotten to include any of 100 Poems brilliant trio of albums from this year- I knew I'd forget something! Out of the three the most recent, Balearic As A System Of Belief, just about edges it. Album number 31. 

30 The Jesus And Mary Chain: Glasgow Eyes

29 Fat White Family: Forgiveness Is Yours

28 Reverb Delay: The Storm Has Passed

27 SubDan: Inhale, Exhale, Repeat

26 Duncan Gray: Five Fathoms Full

25 Saint Etienne: The Night

24 Richard Norris: Oracle Sound Volume Three

23 Khruangbin: A La Sala

22 Mick Head and The Red Elastic Band: Loophole

21 The Woodentops: Fruits Of the Deep

20 Dirt Bogarde: Love, Sweat And Beers

19 M- Paths: Submerge

18 Coyote: Hurry Up And Live

17 Klangkollektor: Dub Tapes Volume 1

16 Various Artists: Virtual Dreams Volume II (Ambient Explorations In The House And techno Age, Japan 1993- 1999

15 David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse Remixes

14 Fontaines DC: Romance

13 Richard Sen: India Man

12 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

11 J- Walk: Broken Beauty

10 Five Green Moons: Moon One

9 Sedibus: Seti

8 Underworld: Strawberry Hotel

7 Four Tet: 3

6 Jamie Xx: In Waves

5 The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World

I had no idea, along with thousands of other people I imagine, that what I really needed in late 2024 was a new album from The Cure. The opener, Alone, released as a single in the autumn, was an exercise in majestic beauty and beautiful gloom, a three minute instrumental intro and then Robert Smith singing as well as he ever has, about life, love, loss, mortality, and 'the end of every song we sing'. Stunning. The album continued in that vein for the next seven songs, meditations on aging and loss, ending inevitably with Endsong.

4 GLOK/ Timothy Clerkin: Alliance

Electronics and guitars, swirling, woozy modern psychedelia recorded remotely after the pair met at Andrew Weatherall's funeral. A collision of early 90s sounds and 2024 trippiness. For some time it was all I played, a totally addictive seven track album. 

3 Bill Ryder- Jones: Iechyd Da

This could easily be album of the year, a January release that I keep returning to. Beautiful songs with acoustic guitars, pianos and grand, sweeping strings, a children's choir from a Birkenhead primary school, Mick Head reading Ulysses, a Gal Costa sample, and amazing stirring production- and then Bill's battered and beaten voice, sounding like a man who's reached the end of the road, has nowhere left to go, broken. The pain he sings about is from experience, the death of his brother as a child (Daniel fell off a cliff while they pair where on holiday, his family forever scarred) and mental health issues ever since. 

Nothing To Be Done

In the end though he gets there and we do with him- 'I'm still lost/ But I know love/ I know loss/ But I chose love'.

2 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Wild God

Wild God was a step into the light, a conscious decision by Nick Cave to choose joy over sorrow- a line that appears in the song Joy where Nick is visited late at night by a ghost, a boy with giant sneakers and laughing stars around his head, who tells him, 'we've all had too much sorrow/ now is the time for joy'. It shakes me when I hear it. 

By this song, the fourth on the album, its clear we've stepped into a new Cave world. The first song, Song Of The Lake, explodes orchestrally Nick muttering 'never mind, never mind...'. It's follow by Wild God, with its heart stopping cry of 'bring your spirit down'. That is followed by Frogs, easily one of the best songs of this year and one of Cave's best, a song where Nick walks home on a Sunday in the rain, amazed at the wonders of the world around him- frogs in the gutter, the rain, Kris Kristofferson. The band sound reborn too. The previous albums were so grief stricken and spectral it was difficult for them to find a way in, Warren Ellis's synths were the core of the sound. Final Rescue Attempt tells of Nick being saved by a woman, and how after that, 'nothing really hurt again/ nothing ever really hurt/ not even real pain'. It's extraordinary stuff, magical, life affirming songs. By the end of side two, when former partner Anita Lane's voice appears (from Nick's answer phone. She died in 2021), we've gone through the wringer and come out the other side, the sheer joie de vivre evident throughout, no more so than in the fade out to Conversion where Nick and the choir sing/ shout, 'Stop! You're beautiful!', at each other.

Both Frogs and Wild God could have been near the top end of the singles list- I've not listened to any songs more than either of those two all year- but now they're fully part of the album as a whole, an album that when I put it on, I play all the way through and one I imagine I'll still be playing long into the future. 

Joy

1 Various Artists: Sounds From The Flightpath Estate

What else could it be? I did wonder whether I could/ should put the album me, Martin, Dan, Mark and Baz pulled together into my list, if doing it was a bit much. But in the end, it has been the album of the year for me. This time last year we were receiving tracks from the artists we'd approached, music from Justin Robertson, David Holmes, Timothy J Fairplay, Richard Sen, Hardway Bros, Sons Of Slough, Rude Audio and 10:40. Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch arriving at the last minute was the cherry on top. An unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track too.  

We knew we had something good, all the music was so strong, everyone had really responded so well to us (a bunch of unknowns let's be honest). But we did not expect what then happened. Selling out 500 vinyl copies in a day. Repressing 500 more and selling all of them too. Three of the tracks being played on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show. Having the window display in Piccadilly Records. 

Giving a copy to Paul Simonon at The Golden Lion was as memorable and surreal as anything else that happened in 2024. Appearing in two end of year lists (Piccadilly records and Uncut). All of it has been unreal and yet, there it is, it happened. It would have been nothing without the music though- from the chunky cosmic chug of Sons Of Slough (recorded live at The Golden Lion) to Tim Fairplay's centurion dub, Justin's weird folk/ dub collision and Richard Sen's massive sounding Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, the dub techno of Rude Audio and 10:40's fairground swirl, Hardway Bros writing our own theme, Theme For Flightpath Estate, and Holmes' magnificent Human: Remains, to Andy's gorgeous cover of Smokebelch, it's a brilliant and beautiful thing and it's my album of the year. To everyone involved, all the artists, my Flightpath friends, Waka, Gig and Matt at the Golden Lion and GLS, Andrew Liles, Rusty for his incredible sleeve art, and the memory of Andrew Weatherall (for whom it is a tribute)- thank you. 

Did someone say Volume 2? Sequels are hard....

Forty Five Minutes Of Sunday Songs

It seemed too obvious for a while but then a few things came together and a Sunday mix of Sunday songs was staring me in the face. I managed to give it a kind of narrative too with a beginning and an end. Not to mention plenty of good music in the middle- Sunday likes its ambient and its electronics. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sunday Songs

• Kris Kristofferson: Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down
• Kevin McCormick: Sunday Farmway
• Sabres Of Paradise: Blackfriars Sunday (Peel Session)
• 10:40: Sunday's Cool
• Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve: Sunday Morning Sun- g
• Sonic Youth: Sunday
• Perry Granville: Cleveland Sunday
• Justin Cudmore: Sunday Lemonade
• Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Frogs

Kris Kristofferson is the starting point for this mix. He died in September at the age of 88. Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down was written in 1969 and was been recorded and released by Johnny Cash and Ray Stevens. Kris' version is the best though. He wrote it and he lived it and felt it. 'Well I woke up Sunday mornin' with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt/ And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert'. Then he finds his cleanest dirty shirt and heads out. There are cigarettes, cans being kicked, frying chicken and 'the disappearing dreams of yesterday'. 

Kevin McCormick is from Manchester and in the early 80s made some wonderful but very lost and overlooked ambient guitar music. Thankfully, Kevin's albums have been rediscovered, dusted down and re- released recently and they are very much worth diving into. Sunday Farmway it from Sticklebacks and you can get it here. I reviewed the latest one, Passing Clouds, at Ban Ban Ton Ton last month- you can read that here. 

In March 1995 Sabres Of Paradise recorded a Peel Session that has never been officially released, three tracks also never appearing anywhere else- Duke On Berwick, Stanshall's Lament and the one here, Blackfriars Sunday, the sound of the Sabres Sunday service. Next year the reformed Sabres Of Paradise live band will perform at Primavera and then hopefully in the UK and elsewhere. 

Sunday's Cool was on of the tracks on 10:40's Transition Theory, one of my favourite albums of 2023. The album was intended as a whole piece, each track segueing into the next and containing the seeds of the next one. Removing Sunday's Cool from its moorings didn't feel completely right but it fits nicely into its new surroundings here too. 

Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve marry 60s psychedelia with acid house, Richard Norris and Erol Alkan experts at both. Sunday Morning Sun- g is from a fairly rare 12" from 2007.

'Sunday comes alone again/ A perfect day for a quiet friend', sang Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth in 1998. Sunday was the only single from A Thousand Leaves. Full on Sunday guitar vibes.

Perry Granville's Cleveland Sunday is from a 2022 EP, a take- no- prisoners acid thumper. Get it and a pair of remixes here. Sundays spent dancing and warding off the horrors of Monday morning. 

Justin Cudmore's Sunday Lemonade came out on New York label Throne Of Blood, as part of a series of releases in 2022 to celebrate their sixteenth birthday. Sunday Lemonade is all bleeps, filters and FX with a kick drum thundering away underneath. Messy Sunday mornings. 

Frogs came out this year, the second song ahead of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' Wild God album. It has followed me round all year, soundtracking my daily life, one of this year's best songs and one of Nick's best too. In Frogs a couple (him and Susie I assume) are walking home in the Sunday rain, having heard the story of Cain and Abel. Nick becomes aware of the Sunday rain and the natural world around him, the sheer aliveness of everything, frogs in the gutter and Nick 'amazed of love and amazed of pain/ Amazed to be back in the water again'. Kris Kristofferson walks by kicking a can, in a shirt he hasn't washed for years, and there we are, back at the beginning. Happy Sunday. 

Murky, Dignity, Surrender

Sean Johnston as Hardway Bros has a new EP out, an unabashed return to house music sounds and a homage to Murk Records (Miami based, formed in 1991). On Murky Sean has called in the vocal talents of Beth Cassidy (of Section 25 and Sea Fever) and she adds a sensual edge to Sean's four four thump, wonky synths and rippling, melodic toplines. A robotic voice demands, 'come follow me bay- bee'. Beth's voice, much more human and sultry, instructs, 'P- L- E- A- S- E me', and 'you'll do it/ You'll say it/ You'll feel it...'. A song dedicated to the serious business of getting down and having fun. 

There's more. Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, Richard Norris and Erol Alkan, are back in the remix game. Their seven minute re- animation of Fat White Family's Bullet Of Dignity is one of the best records of 2024 (vinyl edition limited to 300 copies out now). They've reworked Hardway Bros and Beth, cutting this item of clothing from very similar cloth, a piece of clothing that probably needs to be wrung out and hung up to dry- the Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation of Murky is eight minutes of squelchy synths, insistent rhythms, bongos, sci fi sounds, non- stop propulsion and bounce with Beth chanting away on top. Magical stuff. 

There's a stripped back Coral Way Dub too, named after a street near Miami Beach. All three versions are available digitally at Bandcamp for a few pounds. 

Back to Fat White Family- the Bullet Of Dignity 12" comes with an Acid Arab remix on the flipside, Lias and the boys reduced to a pared down groove, low slung and bottom heavy, Lias' voice joined by a Middle Eastern pipe, a snake charmer wrapped round the lyrics, 'You say you're just thirty one/ what's that in cannibal years/ You'll be the laziest one/ Since words came in pairs'.. 

Coming from a similar start point and heading in a vaguely similar direction are a pair of new remixes of A Mountain Of One. AMOO's album Stars Planets Dust Me was of my favourite releases of 2022 and these remixes add a further twist to the sun-baked, cosmic beauty of the original record. Damian Harris/ Midfield General's Generalisation Dub of Surrender has writhing bass, ticking snare and hi hat, phased vocals, and eventually house piano, and feels like the heat rising from the tarmac in the evening at the end of a hot day. 

It comes with a Jonny Rock remix of Make My Love Grow, frazzled, shattered, broken down dub. You can buy both here. 

Bagging Area Book Club

The first rule of Bagging Area Book Club is, uh, you can talk about it. It's an irregular series of music and literature crossovers starting today and heading into the next few weeks, maybe beyond. Last Monday night I attended Richard Norris in conversation with Dave Haslam at Blackwell's bookshop at Manchester University. Richard recently published his memoir, Strange Things Are Happening, an account of his life and musical journey written as he explained to us in the first person present, a technique that gives the entire book a real immediacy and presents every scene as happening in front of you (Richard says he learned this from Viv Albertine's autobiography Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys. He also notes that that book opened the door for many others to write their memoirs and autobiographies, the generation who grew up with punk and its aftermath, including himself). 

Dave opens proceedings by noting that him and Richard have a number of parallels in their pasts- both ran club nights called The Hangout, Richard in Liverpool and Dave in Manchester, both lost parents at a young age, there were one or two others as well but they escape me now. Both also came to music with at least half an eye on writing about it as well as participating as musicians/ DJs, Dave writing his fanzine Debris and Richard writing one titled Strange Things Are Happening- there's a literate side to both of them that informs everything they've done. Dave dives into the Q&A starting in the middle with The Grid on Top of The Pops firstly in 1993 with Crystal Clear and Mancunian door face Elton on vocals. 

Richard talks eloquently about their experiences on the show, later appearing four times to promote Swamp Thing, a song they wrote as a joke which ended up becoming a smash hit, one which took them all over the world playing to huge crowds, something they eventually became tired of especially when the record company stated to put the pressure on for a follow up. Dave and Richard then go backwards, to St Albans in the late 70s and the nascent punk scene Richard becomes a mover in and the older folk crowd in the town who not only tolerate a group of fifteen year olds but encourage them. Dave says Richard's evocation of the St Albans scene is endearing and inspiring, something that struck me when reading the book- people crating scenes in small towns, across generations, finding places to play and making music. Not long after Richard's band, The Innocent Vicars, make a 7" single and Richard's dad drives him to London where they sell the entire run of singles to Rough Trade and then turn up at Radio 1, ask to speak to John Peel, meet him on the doorstep of the BBC and give him a copy of the record which he plays the following night. From that point Richard is off on a lifelong journey in the music world. 

I won't give to much away- you should read the book if you haven't already. Richard Norris music runs through my record collection like the writing in a stick of rock- from the psych compilations on Bam Caruso to his adventures with Genesis P. Orridge and the acid house album they made in 1987despite not having heard any acid house records at that point- Jack The Tab- to his writing in the NME which switched me onto stuff and his records with Dave Ball as The Grid. In the mid- 90s he wrote and recorded several songs with Joe Strummer, songs which were instrumental in Joe getting a band back together again. Richard is asked from the audience how it ended with Joe- 'badly' is Richard's short explanation, the circles around former members of The Clash not always easy places to navigate. Yalla Yalla is one of the results of that partnership, for my money one of Joe's greatest solo songs. After that episode Richard spirals on making music with Erol Alkan as Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, makes psychedelic acid house as The Time And Space Machine, forms The Long Now and The Order Of The 12 releasing albums both both and then from c2019 and into lockdown and beyond, his long running series of Music For Healing/ deep listening and ambient pieces, a project still arriving on a monthly basis at Bandcamp- Richard says that he sees Bandcamp as a new Rough Trade, the conduit between artist and listener.

Richard reads from his book for us, the chapter on meeting Strummer, the arrival of Joe and his entourage at Peter Gabriel's Real World studio and the ensuing fun and madness which followed. As he reads he causally flings each completed page aside, a piece of stage craft he points out in a tongue in cheek way he learned from someone else doing a reading. 

Richard's book is full of other stories- the time he spent with Sky Saxon, his adventures in New York at the NME's expense in 1986 and his encounters with ecstasy, making a record in Amsterdam with Timothy Leary, a road trip to Mexico in Joe Strummer's Cadillac with Shaun Ryder and Bez, and more, a life well lived with music at the centre of it. At the Q&A Richard does pause at one point to question what it's all about, what the meaning of it all is. He recounts a trip fairly recently to Spain, hiking with Penny Rimbaud of Crass. Penny, Richard says, is a wise man, someone who surely knows what the meaning of life is. He asked him and was told sagely, 'to serve'. 

Dave Haslam is a great host, asking the right questions, clearly interested and alert and who has also lived a life with music at the middle of it. Dave has just finished writing and publishing a series of mini- books through Manchester publishers Confingo. These are short, essay length books on very niche topics, each book small enough to fit in your pocket and short enough to read in one sitting. He had a list of topics to cover and felt a series of small books was the best way to do it, not for making a pot of money but for the joy of the writing them and then publishing them. The series tackles a variety of topics starting with Dave's decision to sell his entire record collection (something Richard has done in recent years too), then exploring specific periods of people's lives: Keith Haring and 80s New York; the semi- mythical months Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in 1982; Sylvia Plath's sojourn in Paris; the Angry Brigade cell that existed in Moss Side in  the late 60s; the life and times of Cresser, Manc face, and Stone Roses dancer; Picasso's time in early 20th century Paris; and the night Grace Jones almost recorded Houses In Motion with A Certain Ratio and Martin Hannett at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in 1980. All of these are tales worth telling and tales well told (ACR will almost certainly appear at this blog again later this week). You can get all eight here or buy them individually here.  

Back to Norro, as Joe Strummer christened him- in 2016 Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve released this song,a gloriously melancholic piece of electronic pop, drums that patter away like Spacemen 3's Big City, synths like mid- 80s New Order and Hannah Peel's wistful vocals. For the full effect, go to the 12" version. 

Monday's Long Song

Back in 1992 Flowered Up, the London band whose live shows were seriously off the wall featuring dancer Barry Mooncult in a leotard and giant flower outfit, released Weekender. In some ways it was the group's last gasp. Their debut album A Life With Brian had been released to mixed reception despite good press coverage, and their label London Records turned Weekender down. They went back to where they started, Heavenly, a label who know a good thing when they see it. 

Weekender is a thirteen minute epic, a rampaging baggy groove, guitars, synths and horns and singer Liam Maher regaling the listener with his criticism of those people who only go out at the weekend. The 12" single came complete with a photo on the front of a hotel room that Sid Vicious had smashed up. On Weekender the band seemed to be combining everything they'd done for the previous two years- everything- into one song on one side of vinyl, Pink Floyd meeting Happy Mondays at the set of  Quadrophenia (two samples of Phil Daniels are on the song) as the mother of all comedowns kicks in. It's 1992. The party is almost over- but Flowered Up have got it together for one last spin round the floor. It was followed by Weatherall's Weekender, a pair of Andrew Weatherall remixes that twisted, extended and bent the original into all kinds of new shapes and places. 

'Weekender, whatever you're doing, just make sure what you're doing makes you happy', Liam concludes, making some kind of peace with those who can't live the lifestyle 24/ 7/365. 

A full length film video was made to accompany the song, a piece of art in it's own right, made by Wiz.

Flowered Up have lost several of their members over the years- sadly Liam and Joe Maher died within three years of each in 2009 and 2012 and Lee Whitlock, the star of the Weekender video died last year. Heavenly have just re- released Flowered Up's sole  album, it's first re- issue since  accompanied by Andrew Weatherall's remixes and various B-sides and versions and the group's contribution to the Fred EP. It also comes with a brand new remix of Weekender by Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, Richard Norris and Erol Alkan reanimating the song for 2024, a version that subtly breathes new life into the song. 

Monday's Long Songs

It's April already and I have the prospect of two weeks off ahead of me with various things to look forward to next weekend. Ahead of that here are today's long songs, both with the hands of Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve behind them, Richard Norris and Erol Alkan having re- united as BTWS for some recent remixes. The first is a seven minute version of Iraini Mancini's Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation), a lilting, sumptuous, gently psychedelic pop song that has several moments where everything melts and there are the aural equivalents of sighs. Jagz Kooner was producer and co- writer of the song and of Iraini's debut album, also called Undo The Blue. Richard and Erol's remix and instrumentation coupled with Iraini's voice are the perfect soundtrack to the spring bank holiday Monday.

If you go to Bandcamp you can buy the BTWS remix along with one of another song, Sugar High, by Saint Etienne which is a lovely remix too. Get both here. 

The second Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve remix out recently is this seven minute re- animation of Bullet Of Dignity by Fat White Family, which is a different vibe altogether, darker, messier and more basement club oriented, the low slung groove and congas riding along as synths and guitars pick up. Singer Lias Saoudi points the finger while uttering lines about cannibal years. Squelchy. 

Forty Minutes Of Tracey Thorn

A January 1995 episode of Top Of The Pops came up on the repeats on BBC4 recently including this performance of Protection, Tracey Thorn and Massive Attack in imperious form. Protection is one of the 90s best songs, a genuine jaw dropper on first and subsequent listens and a song its impossible to turn off once it starts. Tracey's voice is perfect for the song, her singing a perfect blend of strength and hurt and her lyrics, switching the gender around mid- song, spin the song around. Protection, the album, came out in  September1994. Following up Blue Lines was never going to be easy but Protection mainly manages it with the title track and others- Karmacoma, Sly, Better Things, Three and Spying Glass, some of their best songs. The cover of Light My Fire less so maybe. But Protection is the towering achievement, a song that even mid- 90s Top Of The Pops can't ruin. 

Tracey's songs and recordings outside Everything But The Girl, both solo and with other people, are many and various. I thought, having listened to Protection a few times and then heading to the Andrew Weatherall remix of Tracey's Sister from 2018, that a Tracey Thorn solo/ collaboration mix might work. And it does. 

Forty Minutes Of Tracey Thorn

• Protection (Brian Eno Remix)
• Raise The Roof (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix)
• Sister
• Sister (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Moving Dub
• Night Time

Protection came out in 1995, one of the singles/ songs of the 90s. The 12" came with this Brian Eno remix, a ten minute ambient affair. It had already been the lead song on the album Protection, released in 1994 and an obvious choice for a single. 

Raise The Roof was a 2007 Tracey Thorn single, and on her solo album Out Of The Woods. Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, Richard Norris and Erol Alkan's psyche outfit, twist it into new shapes and spaces.

Sister was the lead single from Tracey's 2018 album Record, a song with Corinne Bailey Rae and Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa on board. Tracey sings the line 'And I fight like a girl' and makes it sound like the toughest, most menacing line she's ever sung. Andrew Weatherall 's remix (and the dub version too) are ten minutes of late period Weatherall brilliance, chuggy, dubby remix splendour. 

Moving Dub is from No Protection, the Mad Professor dub version of Massive Attack's Protection. Moving Dub, with Tracey on vocals, is Better Things sent through the dub blender. 

Night Time is a cover of a song by The Xx, released as a standalone solo EP in 2011. It has husband Ben Watt on guitar. The Xx asked Tracey to cover it for a compilation of covers of their songs by their favourite artists they were planning. It never happened except for Tracey's cover. Drums, programming and production were courtesy of Ewan Pearson. 

Isolation Mix Seven

An hour and a minute of stitched together songs for Saturday. This one caused me a bit of a headache at times. It was an attempt I think at first to try to join some dots together in terms of feel or sounds, with a nod to Kraftwerk following Florian Schneider's death last week. There was an earlier version that went quite techno/dance for the last twenty minutes but I then went back and did the end section again. I'm still not sure I got it quite right, and think I may have tried to cover too many bases stylistically, but my self imposed deadline was approaching so 'publish and be damned', as the Duke of Wellington said. Although he wasn't dealing with the business of trying to get spaghetti westerns, indie dance, shoegaze and leftfield electronic music to sit together in one mix was he?

Ennio Morricone: Watch Chimes (From ‘For A Few Dollars More’)

David Sylvian and Robert Fripp: Endgame

Talk Talk: Life’s What You Make It

Saint Etienne: Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)

Spacemen 3: Big City (Everyone I Know Can Be Found Here)

Beyond The Wizards Sleeve: Diagram Girl (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Re- Animation)

My Bloody Valentine: Don’t Ask Why

Jon Hopkins and Kelly Lee Owens: Luminous Spaces

Kraftwerk: Numbers

Death In Vegas: Consequences Of Love (Chris and Cosey Remix)

Chris Carter: Moonlight

Simple Minds: Theme For Great Cities

Durutti Column: It’s Wonderful

I have a significant birthday fast approaching. A few months ago we had planned that today would be a day of celebrating with anyone who wanted to join us, starting with lunch and few beers in town and then a tram pub crawl southbound out of the city centre towards Sale, stopping off in Old Trafford (maybe) and Stretford (definitely) before some drinks locally in the evening. That obviously isn't happening. I'll have to re-schedule for my 51st. 

Re- Animations

In 2009 Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve released a compilation album rounding up their remixes and re-animations of a bunch of artists- The Chemical Brothers, Franz Ferdinand, Late Of The Pier, Peter, Bjorn and John, Tracey Thorn, Badly Drawn Boy, Goldfrapp, Midlake, Dust Galaxy, Real Ones, Simian Mobile Disco and Findlay Brown. At the same time that album was released Erol Alkan and Richard Norris were asked to mix all their versions together into a single, hour long set for a special download edition. They went back to their versions, took some of them apart again, re-assembled them and then stitched the whole thing together. A decade later it has re-appeared online for your enjoyment, an hour of psychedelic, electronic, time shifting, retro- futuristic exploration. There should be something in this for everyone to enjoy.

June

It's June, June already. How on earth did that happen? Summer has arrived in the north west of the UK recently and long may it continue. I spent most of yesterday pulling up the wooden decking from our back garden, ten years old and rotten and collapsing in places (but really well secured in others, hence every single part of me aches today. I ache in places I didn't know you could ache). We're replacing it with gravel. Gravel doesn't rot and doesn't need maintaining.

In 2008 Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve put out this track, Winter In June, a 60s psychedelic inspired adventure, a re-edit of The Mystic Astrologic Crystal Band's 1967 song Flowers Never Cry.

And yes, that is the voice of Percy Thrower.

Winter In June

Ulysses

To  follow on from yesterday's post, at least Pixies got two albums and the opening mini-album out of me. I bailed out of Franz Ferdinand after the first. The follow up single Do You Want To was met by a resounding no from me. Their debut was a blast, good fun with some cracking songs but I didn't need any more. Since then they have been remixed well more than once. In this version of Ulysses Richard Norris and Erol Alkan reanimate the song into a lengthy, tripped out dance-floor belter.

Ulysses  (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re-Animation)

Bounce

Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve's album The Soft Bounce has been getting regular listens round here, loads of good stuff on it. The title track has been remixed by Daniel Avery and it sounds like this...



Insistent techno drums and percussion with some droney keys and pulses. Uplifting and gently euphoric.

Creation Magik

Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve are shaping up for what is promising to be one of the summer's best releases (album The Soft Bounce due soon). I've already posted the beauteous single and remix of Diagram Girl. The follow up, Creation, has vocals from Jane Weaver and Hannah Peel and has been remixed and stretched out here by Psychemagik in a lovely, percussive and spaced out manner.

Beyond

Drew and I agreed on Twitter the other night that Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve's own re-animation of their recent single Diagram Girl is a thing of beauty, one of those records that sounds like summer should. Six and a half minutes of wobbly bass, washes of synth, blissed out vox and hazy modern dance-oriented psychedelia. Just wonderful stuff from Richard Norris and Erol Alkan with an album to follow.



If you like that you should go find Richard Norris' other current project, Circle Sky (a duo with Martin Dubka), and a 12" called Reveal/Interstellar, two massive sounding cuts recorded live using the Moog System 55 modular- analogue acid house achieving lift off for 2016. Annoyingly there don't seem to be any full length listens anywhere but these two preview clips give you enough to be going on with.

Diagram Girl

This is shaping up to be a good few weeks for new music- here's a dreamy new song from Beyond The Wizards's Sleeve (Misters Richard Norris and Erol Alkan) with an album to follow. A slow and stoned vocal over washes of synths and skittering drums. Woozy, like Spacemen 3 but without the paranoia. Very nice indeed.

New Energy

I'm caught in an electronics groove right now and this is blindingly good. Recent postee Daniel Avery remixed by Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve team of Norris and Alkan. After a slow, hazy intro everything suddenly snaps into sharp focus- like a beam of white light trained right between the eyes... and then it all becomes very t-r-i-p-p-y indeed. There's some old school electro in here to, to keep you moving.

Year's End

Here's a round up of a few things from 2014 as the year dribbles to its conclusion. I missed this from earlier this year; a Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve re-imagining of New Energy, in three phases- some 60s backwards psychedelia followed by the more familiar beat driven techno and then the wonderful drone section. There's loads more Avery stuff, remixes, radio sessions and so on, at his Soundcloud page.



There's also the trippy Roman Flugel remix of All I Need which has all the right things in all the right places.



Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman was 20 years old and the re-issued box set was 2014's possibly best bet if you were buying just one big box of music you already own. It cemented in my mind the view that dubnobass... was the best album of the 90s. This video was chosen by the band as the winner in a competition.



The stand out music book of 2014 was Viv Albertine's autobiography Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys. Totally honest, warm and funny, uncomfortable in parts but fascinating and written entirely in the present tense which gave it real immediacy. If you haven't read it, you should read it.



And I'm just beginning to listen to FKA Twigs. There's something going on here...