And It Feels Like I'm Coming Home

I've had an LCD Soundsystem renaissance this year, starting back in the early summer, kickstarted by their performance at Glastonbury, and have found all sorts to revisit and enjoy in their music. By happy coincidence James Murphy has put the group back together again and the first fruits of LCD Soundsystem 2024 came out eleven days ago with a single called X- Ray Eyes. What does it sound like? It sounds very much like LCD Soundsystem- vintage synth arpeggios, hissing drum machines, dead pan vocals from James from a space somewhere between ennui and anxiety, No Wave dance music for the middle aged...

In 2005 LCD Soundsystem followed the release of three groundbreaking singles (Losing My Edge, Give It Up and Yeah) with a self titled debut album that gave us more of the same and took LCD into some new places too. The razor sharp New York post punk/ disco of Daft Punk Are Playing At My House opened the album and this song closed it, not what I was expecting when I first played it, a gorgeous, sleepy eyed sunset/ sunrise tune, drum machine in the echoey distance and big Balearic piano chords with James dewy eyed and coming down after all that strobe lit dancing and nervous energy- 'And it feels like it won't come on/ And it takes like you're full of love/ Still the time never to pay on/ Still the time never to pay on/ And it feels like it's coming home/ And it feels like it's full of love/ Still in time is the great release'

Great Release

Monday's Long Song

Back to work after a week off today. The darkness of November looming. 

This was sent to me recently by my friend Spencer, a reliable source of weird, wonderful and cosmic tunes. It's six minutes forty nine seconds long so qualifies for the Monday slot and came out on DFA in 2017, Futur Parlez by Essaie Pas. Spencer described it as having 'smacky Blade Runner vibes with a spoken word French vocal', to which I replied, 'what's not to like?' I'd like to add that the church organ sound coupled with ominous synths is electrifying, and there's a snare at five minutes twenty that is nerve shreddingly perfect. A supercharged, French speaking Vangelis experience. 

The video is no less persuasive, fire, traffic, night into early morning, a city falling apart, people who've been up all night stumbling round, glitchy graphics, close ups of robotic faces....

Essaie Pas ('Don't try') are from Montreal, a wife and husband duo of Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau. In the text that accompanies the song at Bandcamp Marie and Pierre say that the track was built around Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly and the future world Dick imagined of 'surveillance and drone cameras,  abstract digital landscapes, and facial recognition software'. 

Monday's Long Song

More LCD Soundsystem long song Monday action. In 2005 DFA released a single CD titled Holiday Mix, nine DFA tracks over fifty minutes, almost all remixes of DFA artists by others. Black Dice, LCD Soundsystem, The Juan MacLean, Delia Gonzales and Gavin Russom all appear with remixes from Loumo, Booka Shade, Cajmere, X- Press 2, Soulwax and Tiga. When playing this in the car recently this pair stood out...

Tribulations (Tiga Remix)

Tiga, a producer, programmer and DJ from Canada, ramps up one of the key songs from LCD Soundsystem's self titled debut album, nearly eight minutes of uptempo, messed up, four- four dance floor mayhem. James Murphy doesn't appear until three minutes in, with a very New Order- esque vocal line- 'Everybody makes mistakes/ But I feel alright when I come undone'. Tiga keeps going, turning the knobs, synths and drums piling in, and there's a tension building breakdown at four and a half minutes, just Murphy and a bassline, before the snare and kick drum core- enter and everything gets full on and whizzy again.

As this is a mixed CD the next track segues in at seven minutes, the Soulwax remix of Daft Punk Is Playing At My House, and then unfortunately it comes to a very abrupt end. But you can cue this up to take over straight away and let it frazzle your senses. Soulwax pull no punches, everything in the red and overloaded. 

Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (Soulwax Shibuya Remix)

Monday's Long Song

Back in work today after the summer holiday and, oh, is it painful. There's got to be a better way of making a living than working. 

One of the albums I listened to during a long- ish drive recently was DFA Compilation #2, a triple CD from November 2004 crammed full of early 21st century dance- punk from James Murphy's stable. The opening track on CD 1 is by Black Leotard Front...

Casual Friday

'Do you wanna wear the overcoat?', is the opening line. After that follows fifteen minutes of DFA dance- punk brilliance, relentless four four drums, synth squiggles, Shaft guitar, a chant of 'Bonjour/ Bonjour/ Bonjour/ Bonjour/ Comment allez vous', punk funk bass, and eventually the voices getting to the lyrical heart of the matter, 'I put on my overcoat/ It's written across my chest/ You love me you must confess/ You passed the test'. 

Black Leotard Front were Delia Gonzales, Christian Holstad and Gavin R. Russom. I guess once they got the groove started on Casual Friday there didn't seem much point in stopping it, the electro- indie/ disco just kept going on and on, the lyrics kept flowing, the drop out in the seventh minute invited an extended hand drum re- entry, more wigged out synths and a further seven minutes of fun. 'I was leaving the office/ I took off my dress/ I put my overcoat/ To surprise you in the flesh/ It's written all over my chest/ You love me you must confess/ You passed the test'. 

I like the idea of the DFA offices having casual Friday. After a long working week making electro- indie and dance- punk, all buttoned up in suit and tie, dress down Friday must have been a relief and an ideal way to meet the weekend.  

Monday's Long Song

Back to 2001 and Le Tigre, Kathleen Hanna's Riot Grrl/ electronic rock outfit remixed by turn of the century wise guys DFA. A remix that is tense and funky, expansive and focussed, disco and rock. Kathleen asks all the key questions that you want the answers to when you're under the strobe and the mirror ball, 'who took the bomp from the bompalompalomp? who took the ram from the ramalamadingdong?', while the guitars, cowbell and handclaps do their thing. 'Wanna see me disco?', she asks.

How did a record which seems so recent, come out so long ago?

Deceptacon (DFA Remix)

Over at Twitter Anthony Teasdale posted a thread about the impact LCD Soundsystem and DFA had on a bored, staid early 21st century music scene- the wallop and knowingness of Losing My Edge, the cowbell dancefloor mayhem of House Of Jealous Lovers, some of DFA's remixes (the one above, the one of Soulwax, their version of M.I.A.'s Paper Planes) and the timeless, emotive brilliance of Someone Great. All of which sounds like a Sunday mix waiting to happen. 

James Murphy gets a mention in the new single from Galliano, Circle Going Round The Sun. Galliano have long been residing in the 'where are they now?' file and now they're back.

I've always had a massive soft spot for Galliano, loved their early 90s releases on Acid Jazz. I saw them at The Hacienda in the early 90s, a gig nowhere near to sold out but Rob Gallagher, Snaith, Valerie Etienne and Mick Talbot played like it was crammed to the rafters. The new song is a stream of beat poetry and influences with references to Andrew Weatherall, Murphy and Gil Scott Heron (also name checked in Losing My Edge) over a pulsing bassline and live percussion. A welcome return to the fray.  

Mars, Arizona

Long time reader Spencer got in touch last week with a proposal- he picks a tune and sends it to me. I write about it. 'Start with how it makes you feel', he said, 'then it could be a memory... or the visceral sense of hearing it for the first time'. 

I said I was game, it's an interesting idea for an irregular series and we can see where it goes. Then he sent this, a remix of a 2005 Jon Spencer Blues Explosion song...

Mars, Arizona (DFA Remix)

I knew it but hadn't heard for years- I can't remember the first time I heard it but as I clicked play it came flooding back. At the point it came out DFA were riding the crest of a wave, reinventing post- punk and indie dance in a post Twin Towers New York (DFA was formed in 2001 after James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy met while working on David Holmes' Let's Get Killed album. Murphy went on to put together LCD Soundsystem in 2002 and release their definitive and debut single Losing My Edge later that year). 

DFA don't do things by halves and don't spare the senses either. This is a ten minute slab of noisy mid 00s dancefloor action. It kicks in instantly with fuzz and static and then a crash of a piano falling over. Drums and shaker are dropped in and we have a groove, with more bent out of shape piano stabs and a gnarly bassline, the sort of bassline you can feel. It's tense and urgent but aimed at having fun, making people twitch and dance. 

The voice Jon Spencer eventually appears, singing/ howling his 21st century blues, 'I wanna tell you everything I'm thinking of/ Well I can't talk now with my mouth full of love'. The piano bangs away and the bassline writhes, a storm gathering, before the breakdown at five minutes thirty, a long piano chord fade out and then we're into the second half, the drums come back and a distorted synth sound takes over, knobs being turned all the way round the dial and back again and again and again... It's a glorious, hot, noisy mess, the soundtrack to nights of sticky floors, lost jackets, a pre- smoking ban world, missed buses, drunken kisses, ripped jeans, The Fall fed through a synth workshop in early 21st century Brooklyn. 

Monday's Long Song

It's become one of those things you see on the internet, that since David Bowie died in January 2016 the world has gone to pieces, and while the two may be coincidental rather than related you can't help but feel some grand cosmic imbalance was created when David Jones breathed his last breath and that we've been sinking into the abyss ever since. The five years since 2016 seem to have passed very quickly too, events hurtling at us at a rapid speed, leaving us no time to get to grips with things before some other calamity strikes us. 'News had just come over/ five years left to cry in', the man himself wrote and sang in 1972. 

In 2013 James Murphy, the LCD Soundsystem man I posted about last week, got his hands on one of the songs from Bowie's comeback album The Next Day. He cut and looped some clapping from a Steve Reich track, sampled the synth from Ashes To Ashes and created a monumental remix, minimal, sleek and modern. Bowie sounds superb too, back in touch and vital, 'your country's new... but your fear is as old as the world'. The full ten minute version is the one you want obviously, a long remix that you don't really want to come to an end. 

This the edited version. It's worth mentioning that the 12" release was a beautiful artefact, white vinyl, die cut and embossed sleeve. The hole in the centre was square rather than circular.

Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix By James Murphy For The DFA Edit)

The Next Day was trailed by Where Are We Now?, Bowie's nostalgic tribute to the years he spent in Berlin in the mid 1970s. He recorded it (and the whole album) in secret in autumn 2011 and released the single onto the internet without fanfare on his 66th birthday. 'Had to get the train from Potsdamer Platz/ You never knew that I could do that', he croons, a man looking back at his youth, 'just walking the dead'. Time passes, everyone ages, nothing stays the same. The Berlin of 1975 and the Berlin of 2011 are as different as a city could be. David Bowie of 2011 was not the same man he was in 1975. And though he and we didn't know it then, he had just five years left, almost exactly to the day. 

We Pack And Deliver Like UPS Trucks

Another Clash sampling delight, possibly the pick of the bunch, is M.I.A.'s masterpiece Paper Planes. Producer Diplo sampled Mick Jones' guitars from Straight To Hell, bent them about a little and allowed M.I.A. to do her thing. The gunshots and cash registers on the chorus are perfect and the song is a blast from start to finish.



The DFA remix is alright too.

Paper Planes (DFA Remix)

A Big Hand Please

I didn't put this in my 2013 list. I can't imagine how I missed it when I listen to it now.

Clinic 'Tomorrow'(DFA Remix)

Clinic, from Liverpool, have been around for about a decade, chucking out great little records. Velvets style organ, two chord stomp, and Ade Blackburn's nasal vocals. Their first single was the brilliantly titled IPC Sub-Editors Dictate Our Youth. They always make an effort with stage clothes- surgeon's outfits, Sgt Pepper jackets with surgeon's masks, Hawaiian shirts with surgeon's masks. When I stumbled across them soundchecking last year they were in their home clothes. Most strange. You like to think they'd wear the masks for a soundcheck. This is Tomorrow off last year's Do It! lp, bent into new shapes by James Murphy's DFA (LCD Soundsystem), came out on 10" vinyl. Very good.

Tomorrow_(DFA_Remix).mp3