Shopping List

All those guitars this week have been good but they've left me wanting something more soothing for the weekend. Test Pressing is a website promoting all things Balearic, mainly the music and its attendant culture. It's here. If you dig around in the Mixes tab you'll find scores of downloadable mixes from the likes of Phil Mison, Leo Mas, Apiento, Gilles Peterson and Toby Tobias- more blissed out, chilled tunes than you can shake a flip flop at.

One that I've been enjoying has gone up very recently, an hour long mix called The Shopping List, tracks out in June 2019 that come with the Test Pressing recommendation. It's slowed down, electronic and dubby, experimental and ambient, available to listen to or download and very good indeed. There doesn't seem to be a way to embed it but you can find it here.

Tracklist

• The Balek Band – Tometsi (Beauty and the Beat)
• Lexx featuring Asé – Eye 1-2 (Phantom Island)
• Wilson Tanner – All Hands Bury the Dead (Efficient Space)
• MØZAIKA – Crepuscule (Public Possession)
• River Yarra – Toad Charmer (Antinote)
• James Booth – Locus (Growing Bin)
• Brainwaltzera – Marzipan Rhombus (Birthday edit) (Emotional Rescue)
• Yu Su – Little Birds, Moonbath (Second Circle)
• International Noise Orchestra – Muezzin (Emotional Rescue)
• Lord Tusk – Tell Me (Otis)

Monday Long Song

I found this on Friday night, an ALFOS road tested release fresh out on Phantasy. Terr is a Brazilian born, Berlin based DJ and producer. Her original track Tale Of Devotion is a wide eyed homage to the disco-synths of Georgio Moroder, a seven minute pulsing joyride with swooping strings. The Prins Thomas Diskomiks is nine minutes and four seconds of undulating cosmic disco with Terr's vocal layered over some wild synth action, guaranteed to pick you up and spin you round. Single of the week (as they used to do in the NME/Melody Maker).

Raining Tears Of Blood

I have come to the conclusion that three day weekends would dramatically improve my life. People say productivity would be affected and blah bah blah but I'm not sure I'm that bothered about productivity at the moment. Three day weekends beat productivity hands down.

After reading Cosey Fanni Tutti's autobiography and then some of the comments here from friends the last time I posted some of her work I downloaded a few Chris And Cosey albums from eMusic (Songs Of Love And Lust, Heartbeat and Take Five) plus Chris Carter's Mondo Beat. I've ended up over-facing myself and need to spread them out, let them sink in and get to know them properly but there's some undoubtedly some outstanding music contained within them. This song is pioneering stuff from Chris and Cosey back in 1984, a melancholic four and a half minutes of forward thinking electronic music with a great big squelchy bassline and an icy vocal from Cosey.

Raining Tears Of Blood

Future Love

Ride's second life has taken a lot of us by surprise. I wasn't a huge fan first time around, a few songs notwithstanding, but age, time and experience have given them something either they didn't have then or that I didn't notice. They also prove that re-unions need not solely be for nostalgia or money, making an album (Weather Diaries in 2017) that had several very good songs on it and then followed it with an excellent e.p. (Tomorrow's Shore in 2018).

This new song was released onto the internet last week, ahead of an album in August. Future Love is Rickenbacker led indie disco gold, the guitars and harmonies improving on each subsequent play, with Erol Alkan back at the controls and on production. A good way to start May.

Next Worlds

Something weird and a little bit wonderful from Los Angeles for Wednesday (courtesy of David Harrow, formerly of West London in the 90s). Oicho have given us an ep of dubby delights peppered with eastern instruments and melodies, four tracks well worth two of your quid/dollars. This sort of chuggy, cross pollination thing is really on a roll currently, a bit of a balm for the Brexit blues.

Opal

Bicep's Opal, a track from last year's debut album, has been remixed by Four Tet. This isn't a full scale overhaul or re-working, but more of a subtle job- some tweaks, some filters, the whole thing stretched out with some of the melodies pulled to the fore.

December's Not For Everyone

Music's not for everyone. Usual drill, usual excellence. Plus Weatherall's forthcoming remix of Noel Gallagher.

High Over Blue

Back in 2013 when Moon Duo released their Circles album, a full on psychedelic blast of bright light and drones, they gave away this song- firstly as an iTunes only bonus track, then as a one sided 12" single and finally as a free download from Soundcloud. You can still get it for free from the player below. High Over Blue is a twenty minute excursion into space and time- phased out sounds, chuggy rhythms, droplets of guitar, reverb laden vocals, slow burning with FX all over the show. Probably more s p a c e d  o u t than anything else you'll start today with.

Paradise

Something even longer than yesterday's eleven minutes plus extravaganza from The Early Years is this from Glasgow's AMOR (and played by Weatherall on his Music's Not For Everyone show last week). Paradise is a hypnotic and joyful musical exploration, this side of disco and that side of experimental. It came out at the end of February this year, has an irresistible groove and is beautiful in every way.

I Heard Voices

This is a b-side from an obscure London band released as the third track on a cd single called All Ones And Zeros back in January 2006, recorded at Death In Vegas' Contino Rooms by DiV's Tim Holmes. The Early Years put out several records around this time, then disappeared for a few years and came back in 2011 with a single called Complicity and then back again last year with an album called II. That's the facts out of the way.

This song, I Heard Voices, is a long and expansive trip. It starts out with some noises and a lone repetitive guitar part. A krauty groove comes in. A voice starts muttering. There's an organ adding some drones and textures. The guitars are spindly and psychey, painting their way through the first part before really coming to the fore in the fifth minute. By the ninth minute things are way up and beyond, the drums thumping and the guitars taking it on and on, in a loop but doing something different too. At ten minutes thirty seconds there's a shift and the whole thing is driving itself home, guitars grinding their way through and to the end at eleven forty. This could easily be overdoing it in terms of length and focus but the band avoid that, keeping the interest and the drive, with the rhythm totally locked in, the playing compulsive, building something new.

I Heard Voices

Greater Reward

Talking Heads yesterday, Severed Heads today. Severed Heads are/were an Australian electronic/post punk outfit formed in 1979 and operating on and off with a revolving door of personnel from then until now. In 1989 their Greater Reward single was remixed in a variety of versions and mixes and the following year The Grid turned in this rather nice and very 1990 version, house piano to the fore at first, then beats and bass and handclaps before the pianos return.

Greater Reward (The Grid Remix)

In The Trees

In The Trees by Faze Action was a 1996 funky house single with disco undertones, sweeping strings headed for summer (made by brothers Simon and Robin Lee in Buckinghamshire). They went on to make plenty of other singles and albums but In The Trees is the one that they are known for.



In 2007 Carl Craig fed it through his Detroit techno/science fiction remix machine, starting out with a rhythmic buzzing sound and then adding layers and layers on top. The kick drum arrives after a couple of minutes. The synths rush in from stage left. By the time the strings hit you, the ride is all consuming and you're completely sucked in, heading for the black hole.

In The Trees (Carl Craig C2 Remix 4)

Waltz Around Her

Another long song but one that seems to shoot by far quicker than yesterday's expansive Screamadelica is Bang Bang Machine's Geek Love (also a favourite of Drew's but I don't think he's posted it this year). Bang Bang Machine, from Evesham near Worcester, never really found much success outside the indie ghetto and self financed this 12" which was also a favourite of John Peel and his listeners, who made it their Festive Fifty number one in 1992. The song starts out as indie rock but at a couple of minutes in becomes something dancier and stays there in, a dance-shoegaze groove with a totally hypnotic drum pattern and entrancing vocals, building further until finishing just after nine minutes. Lovely.

Geek Love

Magik

There is an absurd amount of music to explore at Psychemagik's Soundcloud page and their Bandcamp page (where they've just archived eight years of tracks for a fiver).  Like Steve Cobby's recent six disc re-issue of How About Some More Ether? it's a question of getting stuck in and seeing which ones make the ears prick up the most and then getting to know the rest better over time. This song, Chimera, is very good, a laid back blend of drums and strings...



And I'm also quite taken with this remix the duo did for Roisin Murphy two years ago, a throbbing synth led dancefloor thing...

Every Morning I Walk Towards The Edge

I was reminded of this song on social media the other day and it re-awakened the song for me. Hyperballad swoops in from somewhere else, from Bjork's imagination and Nellee Hooper's fingertips, picks you up and carries you off for a few minutes, somewhere else entirely. Not so much a song, more a force of nature. There's nothing ordinary, prosaic or run-of-the-mill about Hyperballad. Bjork's own explanations of it, about being a few years into a relationship and making it feel alive and 'the art of not forgetting about yourself' add to the song (sometimes when artists explain what I song is about I wish they hadn't bothered). The music sweeps by in a rush of rhythms and textures, brilliantly and beautifully.

Hyperballad