The Custom 88

The tidal wave of new music continues today with a four track EP on Tici Taci from BTCop and Rude Audio- I've been waiting for this one to be released for some time, it contains two new tracks and two remixes all from the top drawer. The Custom 88 has a pair of new BTCop tracks- Sabre 540 and the self referential B.T.C.o.P. with a Rude Audio remix of each. Sabre 540 is a slow starting, ambient wash of sounds and whispers, a full two minutes of build up before a drum makes an appearance, backwards sounds and enveloping melody lines dragging the listener in ever deeper. Truly gorgeous ambient house. 

The Rude Audio remix adds the thump of a kick drum, a juddering synth line and the space of dub techno, turning Sabres 540 into an entirely different beast- it blasts off at one minute eighteen with some classic Rude Audio rhythms, with the melody lines and synth strings adding some twinkle to the euphoric, widescreen dub- chug. 

B.T.C.o.P. is a heavy duty and slightly moody track, with thundering bass and drums, slo mo dancefloor stuff with vocals that swirl around at the edges of the mix. It thumps onwards gathering pace and intensity, breaking down and taking off again. The Rude Audio remix takes the dubbier parts, loops them, messes around with them and then springs into a rapid chug a minute in. Rude Audio don't tend to do things by halves or in small doses and the remix of B.T.C.o.P. sticks at it for nine minutes, the thumping rhythms, long synth chords and sparkling melodies, pushing and pulling at each other.  Likely to cause dancers to wear the carpet out at parties. 

The Custom 88 EP is out today at Tici Taci and you should be able to find it here. I'll update the link later on today and add any YouTube versions if they materialise. 

Edit: no Bandcamp for this one but you can buy at Juno. 

The BTCop tracks and Rude Audio remixes are represented at Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures radio show, three hours of top quality music broadcasting out of Glasgow earlier this week. Joseph kicks off with the first part opening with Therapy? as remixed by Sabres Of Paradise and working his way through to Coyote with Rude Audio's remix of Sabres 540 visited along the way. Stephen Haldane takes the middle slot, an Andrew Weatherall dub- slanted selection (including The Asphodells, Andrew's remix of Steve Mason, the TLS dub of Saint Etienne's Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) and an Unloved remix) and then Joseph returns to the mix with more BTCop/ Rude Audio, the recent David Harrow and Little Annie smash (again remixed by Rude Audio) among others. It's a fine way to spend three hours of listening time. You can hear it here. 

Saturday Sessions

Keeping up with all the music that is being released is a full time job, one I don't always have the time to devote to it. There are albums and releases from last year I still need to explore. All the while, more and more music comes forth via the magic of the internet with radio shows, sessions and mixes. This is a round up of some recent shows and mixes, some I've enjoyed in full and some I've only got partway through and will go back to. If you listen to all of these today, you'll finish sometime this evening, exhausted maybe but replenished. 

First up is Justin Robertson and his bi- monthly Temple Of Wonders. This episode is fresh off the press, broadcast three days ago on 10th January, a two hour jaunt through Justin's record box taking in a typically eclectic range of music- psychedelia, dub, ambient, global, setting out with Pilot Voyager and concluding two hours and thirty eight tracks later with Tim Hardin. Listen at Mixcloud. 

On New Year's Eve Sean Johnston stayed home and broadcast to those staying in and to those who'd bene out and came back to find Sean still at the decks, seven hours and forty five minutes of chuggy cosmic ALFOS tunes, starting out quite slow and trippy and getting increasingly propulsive and dancey. Excellence as standard. Listen here. 

Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony's music was a repeat attraction at this blog last year, their Electric Blue Vision EP, Jesse's 10:40 album, a slew of Jezebell tracks and various other releases, lighting up 2023. Jesse and Emilia sat in with Brighton's Balearic Ultras and Music For Dreams playing music and chatting, an hour of laid back discussion, and perfectly pitched and seamlessly sequenced music, telling the stories of what lies behind the Electric Blue Vision EP. Both Jesse and Emilia have great voices for radio- it's a lovely way to spend an hour. Listen to it here. 

Lastly on New Year's Day Nina Walsh appeared on the long running Sonic Treasures radio show, Brother Joseph's Glasgow based radio show that transmits via radio Magnetic, a trove of the leftfield and eclectic, ambient, electronic and psychedelic. Nina played a perfectly sequenced two hours of music, some unreleased tracks done with Andrew Weatherall, plenty of music from her Fireflies band (as heard on Killing Eve), some WRF and some unreleased Andrew Weatherall remixes of Fireflies. Find it at Soundcloud. 

While we're talking about radio, transmissions and new music, the death of legendary radio DJ Annie Nightingale was announced yesterday. Annie was BBC 1's first female DJ and a tireless and endlessly energetic advocate for new music, leftfield sounds and underground music, not least much of the music that has featured here over the last fourteen years. She died aged 83. RIP Annie. 

Edge Of The Edge

Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures is a repeated listening highlight, broadcasting on Radio Magnetic from Glasgow, Brother Joseph in the mix joined by Stephen Haldane and an all star cast of guests- David Holmes, Sonic Boom, Nina Walsh, Andy Bell/ Glok and Chris Rotter have all spun in guest mixes. 

Sonic Boom has recently released an album, Reset, with Panda Bear, a collaboration combining their love of early 60s pop with their own psychedelia. In making Reset they sampled various artists from the Kennedy/ Kodachrome years and constructed their own songs around the samples- The Troggs, Eddie Cochrane, The Everley Brothers, The Drifters and Randy And The Rainbows all turn up in the songs, recognisable but submerged too. The effect is a brightly coloured, woozy, layered, head spinner of an album where everything sounds both new and old at the same time. The loops and samples make the songs exist in circles, spinning permanently on a Sonic Boom/ Panda Bear jukebox- the appear, play and disappear, one after another, harmonies and handclaps and reverb drenched drum tracks rotating, seemingly forever. This one Edge Of The Edge , sampling Randy And The Rainbows' 1963 song Denise, sounds like the most early 60s Beach Boys song since the Beach Boys themselves were an early 60s band. 

Brother Joseph invited Sonic Boom back to Sonic Treasures and Sonic put together a Reset mix, the source songs and the Sonic/ Panda songs together in a seamless fifty two minutes. The full four hour show with Brother Joseph playing an hour of ambient/ psyche/ country with some new Chris Rotter magic, Stephen Haldane with a half hour delight including Django Django, Andrew Weatherall and Syd Barrett, Sonic Boom's Reset mix and then Joseph back for the outro section is at Soundcloud. 

Sonic Treasures For Isaac

Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures went out two weekends ago, a six hour radio show on Radio Magnetic and dedicated to Isaac. I wrote yesterday about the tribute to Isaac in the first half hour recorded by Brother Joseph. That opening section of the show includes two of my favourite songs, Otis by The Durutti Column and the Beatless Mix of Smokebelch by The Sabres Of Paradise, and hearing them in the show and in the immediate aftermath of everything we are going through was deeply moving. 

Joseph uploaded the show (in seven sections) to Soundcloud yesterday. You can listen to it here. 

After the tribute to Isaac there is some mighty dub from Stephen Haldane, some ambience, psychedelia and cosmic splendour from Joseph, lots of those dreamy pedal steel guitars and analogue synth sounds, more from Stephen and then Chris Mackin's guest mix which starts with his special reworked version of 86'd for Isaac and then Chris' song selection, a beautiful mix of ambient and western taking in Gene Clark, Dennis Wilson, Link Wray and Chris Bell among others. Here's Chris' handwritten tracklist. 

Chris signed off with a quote from Nick Cave, no stranger to grief and loss. Nick's son Arthur died in 2015. Nick wrote a lengthy piece on his blog about grief (I glanced at it a few days ago but haven't read it in full yet, it seems too soon. I will though). He finished with this and Chris put it in his message for his mix- 'In time there is a way, not out of grief, but deep within it'. 

Sitting here now, typing this, that seems hopeful. While writing this post last night I found an interview with Nick Cave from 2017 and in it there was something that resonated very strongly with me-

''A lot is said about grief, especially the conventional wisdom that you do it alone. I personally have found that not to be the case. The goodwill we received after Arthur’s death from people who I did not know, especially through social media, people who liked my music and kind of reached out, was extraordinary...'' I've definitely found this to be true. 

More Treasures

On Sunday I posted David Holmes' set for Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures, a radio station beaming delights out of Glasgow. October's show opened with a ninety minute mix from Glok (Andy Bell, guitarist and singer from Ride and more recently a solo artist responsible for some of the best songs of the last couple of years). Glok is a sleek, kosmische, synth based outlet for Andy's music. The first Glok album- Dissident- came out in 2019 and the follow up called Pattern Recognition is due this year (currently another victim of the crisis affecting vinyl pressing plants). Andy's mix for Sonic Treasures is a perfect way into the Glok world, gliding between several Glok tracks (Day Three, Invocation, Kolokol, Closer, Pulsing), Andy's Indica (remixed by Pye Corner Audio and then remixed by Glok- yes, Andy remixing a remix of himself), his Glok remix of Hermann Kristofersson from earlier this year, an unreleased Andy Bell song called Drone, some sublime ambient techno courtesy of The Primitive Painter, Freur's Doot- Doot (proto- Underworld from 1983), Roisin Murphy, Sensate Focus and Porter Ricks. It's a lovely trip, chilled and hypnotic. Find it at Soundcloud. 

Glok's return with Pattern Recognition was led back in March with the release of That Time Of Night, a warm, throbbing synths and electronic shimmer, the voice of Shiarra celebrating the collective experience of losing yourself in the crowd and on the floor- 'in the heat and the light and the flashing/ Being a small part of the whole crowd of people'. The version below is an edit, the full length one is nine minutes long and together with a Darren Emerson remix can be gotten here. 

The entire six hour broadcast of Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures for October- Glok, Joseph, Stephen Haldane and David Holmes- can be found at Soundcloud, handily chunked into seven sections. 

Treasures Within

Brother Joseph broadcasts a radio show out of Glasgow, Sonic Treasures, a feast of mixes from guests and a regular slot from Stephen Haldane (a man who knows his musical onions, spinning anything from far out psyche country to dizzying dub). In the past Sonic Treasures has hosted guest mixes from the likes of Jagz Kooner, Justin Robertson, Nina Walsh, David Harrow and Alex Knight and recently a beautiful, psyched out, shapeshifting mix from Sonic Boom. Last weekend Brother Joseph secured a sublime triple bill in the form of Andy Bell (in his Glok guise), Haldane's half hour and closing the six hour show David Holmes. 

Holmes' mix is ninety minutes of  headspinning, transporting delights- long, repetitive kosmische, slices of psychedelic abandon, weird and wonderful turns and several versions of Holmes' recent single Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (including remixes by Die Hexen and Daniel Avery) along with Love Is A Mystery, another song by David and singer Raven due out on Golden Lion Sounds whenever the vinyl pressing backlog clears. David's mix a total joy, an entrancing, hypnotic and forward thinking hour and a half, completely in the audio and spiritual area that used to be occupied by Andrew Weatherall- further proof if it were needed that Mr Holmes is one of our brightest talents (and has been since the early 90s). You can listen at Soundcloud. 

This also gives me the perfect excuse to repost Hope Is The Last Thing To Die. I posted it recently but then the video hadn't been released, a video that makes abundantly clear the call for change in the song- personal change and political change. It's on you/ us. 

David and Raven's single has been reverberating round my head and listening devices constantly over the last couple of weeks. Single of the year? Possibly. 

The Glok/ Andy Bell section of Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures is a thing of wonder in itself and thus deserves its own post. Rather than tack it on the end of this post and risk over-facing you I'm going to return to it in a few days time. David Holmes' sonic treasures are more than enough to be going on with. 

Sonic Treasure, Sonic Booms

Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasure Show broadcasts out of Glasgow via Radio Magnetic, weaving a mix of cosmic, psyche, ambient, downtempo and dub. This one, Sonic Treasures Part Six, went out two weeks ago. At the start of the year there was a superb two part adventure through the world of Woodleigh Research Facility. Tonight Joseph presents a three part show featuring himself, the talents of Stephen Haldane and a one hour forty minute mix courtesy of Sonic Boom. Now based in Portugal, Sonic Boom (Pete Kember) has pursued analogue synths, space rock and electronic drone with a single minded devotion from Spacemen 3 to Spectrum to E.A.R. to his 1990 and 2020 albums under his Sonic Boom name and through productions and remixes of a bunch of like minded artists, including Dean and Britta, Cheval Sombre, Moon Duo, Yo La Tengo, Panda Bear and Beach House. Having had a taster in advance Sonic's mix for tonight's show is a blast, a trippy glide by through his back pages with productions for Beach House, Deakin, Dean and Britta (a very blissed out cover of I'm So Bored With the USA), Moon Duo and Cheval Sombre, remixes of Ghost Wave, Vola Tila and some of his own songs from last year's All Things Being Equal album and much more, ebbing and flowing, waves of spaced out, forward thinking, psychedelic sounds. Well worth tuning into if you've had any interest in Mr Boom's work from Spacemen 3 and beyond. You can find the show at Radio Magnetic from 9.00pm tonight.  

Sonic Boom's album Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough is out later this month, with remixed and reworked versions of songs from last year's album plus  two songs previously not released outside Japan. This song, Tick Tock, one of the songs released in the Japanese market only, is a masterclass of repetition and warm drones and tones. 

Sonic Treasures From Facility 4

On New Year's Day Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures radio show featured two special long form pieces from Nina Walsh's Facility 4 (the recording home of Woodleigh Research Facility, the musical vehicle of her and Andrew Weatherall in recent years). These two pieces were lined up to be played on Weatherall's Music's Not For Everyone but in February tragedy intervened, took Andrew away and the monthly radio with him. The first piece, C-Pij01 Facility 4 Day, is an hour of wonderful ambient wash, a combination of harmonium, synth, flute, cello, guitar, viola and trumpet and some voices (played by Nina, Franck Alba, Anita Hurst, Chris Cornetto and Marcos Alegria- this line up includes the players on Andrew Weatherall's Convenanza album as well as the W.R.F. records and I don't know for sure but I wouldn't be surprised if the Fort Beulah N.U. project is to be found within it's ranks too). 

Day can be found at Soundcloud here. 

The second part, Night, is two and a half hours long, introduced by Brother Joseph and then fading into distortion and noise, echoes and bangs before a song starts to take shape, guitar chords. Then back to ambient sound, FX and washes, drones and voices coming through the mist and the wandering trumpet floating on top. After an hour and ten minutes it dissolves, Brother Joseph returns and then the guitar/ bass/ drums kick back in, an 80s post- punk bassline with a lovely synth topline... and then there's more, twists and turns, musical sections mixed together, one segueing into another. Magical. 

Night can be found at Soundcloud here. 

Nina and Andrew's monthly Woddleigh Research Facility e.p. releases finished at the end of December. The final one was a single track, twenty three minutes long, called A Walk With Bill and Bob, Vol. 4. It's a trippy, experimental sound collage, almost a megamix-  a drum machine intro with some bursts of static and a dippy synthline. A lovely Peter Hook- esque bassline. Some woodwind and dislocated voices. Various vaguely familiar sounding motifs surface-  some of the elements from Andrew's Moton 5 e.p. appear and then disappear again. The drum machine keeps pushing onwards, 'in the here and now'.