Solstice Saturday/ Soundtrack Saturday

Today is the 21st of June, the summer solstice. The sun will rise in the UK at 3.42 am and won't set until 21.42 pm (later the further north you are). Marking the solstices is a nice tradition, a link to a much earlier time. Five years ago Rich Lane released a track for June 2020's summer solstice- we were all deep into lockdown in June 2020, the world was a very different place in all sorts of ways. Five years on that period is half- forgotten by many people and some don't want to be reminded of it. Rich's Solstice comes in four versions, 12", 7", ambient and instrumental. All/ any of them are highly recommended- the Ambient Mix comes with a dawn chorus, ethereal chanting, long synth chords, a shimmering drone and then Rich's sweetly sung vocals. 

In February 2021 Belgian duo A Winged Victory For The Sullen released an album called Invisible Cities, a gorgeous and affecting thirteen track dark ambient/ neo- classical record which contained this short but emotive piece of music...

Every Solstice And Equinox

Most Saturdays this year I've been posting about film soundtracks. The solstice film that came to mind was the 1973 folk horror classic The Wicker Man although the climax (spoiler alert) in which Edward Woodward is burned alive inside a giant wicker man as the locals on the remote Scottish island of Summerisle dance around singing an old Middle English song Somer Is Icumen In is actually on May Day not Midsummer's Day but the pagan, folk high summer feel of the Wicker Man and its legendary soundtrack get it the nod today. The songs for the film were written and recorded by Paul  Giovanni and Magnet and many of them were sung by the film's cast. Willow's Song is the best known, mesmerising, haunting, a siren's call and a lullaby (not to mention some erotica/ filth in the last verse, lines about a maid milking a bull, 'every stroke a bucketful'). Willow's Song is apparently not sung by actress Britt Ekland but by Rachel Verney. 

Willow's Song has been covered by loads of artists- in the 90s Sneaker Pimps did a version and Doves recorded it as a B-side. Sean Johnston's Summerisle Trio recorded a version for a Golden Lion Sounds 7" single in 2021. Last year Katy J. Pearson recorded it and there was this very tasty Richard Norris remix, a dub folk crossover that hits all the solstice spots. 

Willow's Song (Richard Norris Ritual Mix)

The Wicker Man's soundtrack was heavily built around versions of existing folk songs. The opening song (sung by actress Leslie Mackie) and the song Corn Rigs are arrangements of Robert Burns ballads, nursery rhymes crop up and old English, Scottish and Irish folk songs provide tunes and melodies for many of the instrumental parts of the soundtrack. For some early 70s innuendo and Summerisle discomfort here's the Summerisle pub faithful singing The Landlord's Daughter... Happy solstice.

Forty Five More Minutes Of New Order And Friends

This is a follow up to last Sunday's Your Silent Face mix which veered into their New Order's back catalogue and those of some adjacent artists- Galaxie 500, The Liminanas, Ian McCulloch, Gorillaz, The Times, Mike Garry, Joe Duddell and Andrew Weatherall. This one starts off with another Power, Corruption And Lies song, Age Of Consent, and then heads off with some covers, some 80s NO, another Weatherall remix and some recent edits. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of New Order And Friends

• New Order: Age Of Consent
• Iron And Wine: Love Vigilantes
• Thurston Moore: Leave Me Alone
• New Order: Dreams Never End
• New Order: Lonesome Tonight
• New Order: Regret (Sabres Slow 'N' Lo)
• New Order: Vanishing Point (Rich Lane Edit)
• New Order: Blue Monday (Newly Reordered Remix)

Age Of Consent is the opening song on New Order's 1983 album Power, Corruption And Lies, a day- glo, lysergic rush of guitars, bass, drums and synths, Bernard sounding more comfortable as vocalist. His choppy, rapid Velvets guitar breaks are a joy too. A peak New Order album song. 

As is Love Vigilantes, the opening song on 1985's Low Life, forty years old this month. Bernard's Vietnam ghost story lyric is up there among his most off the wall, and the band, Stephen Morris in particular, are on it, the classic New Order sound perfected. Iron And Wine's 2009 Americana acoustic cover is a low key beauty, Sam Beams tripping the song down to the country that lies at its core. 

Thurston Moore's cover of Leave Me Alone, another Power, Corruption And Lies song, is from the B-side of a 7" single from 2019, recorded in Salford with 'local musicians and local pints', to quote Thurston. 

Dreams Never End is from Movement, the 1981 New Order debut that saw them trying to will themselves out of being Joy Division and into becoming something else. Hooky sings Dreams Never End, his bass and Bernard's guitar wrapping around each other, inching away from the shadow Ian's death cast of them. If a compilation of the band's 10 best album tracks were put together this song would be on it.

Lonesome Tonight was the B-side to Thieves Like Us, a superb 1984 single. Lonesome Tonight is its low key flip, melancholic, stripped down, beautiful, self- produced song that any other band would have given A- side status to and promoted to the world. The band's limitations forced them to experiment, to use their heads and the studio, and Factory put few, if any, demands on them to be commercial. From this they made truly great records. 

Regret was their 1993 comeback single, an indie- pop guitar riff with a singalong chorus. Sabres Of Paradise got to work on it and turned in a pair of epic remixes. Andrew Weatherall's genius is evident in both, especially the first remix- take the bassline, slow it down and find acres of space, loop a little guitar part and a line of vocal, and hey presto, turn New Order's indie- pop into Lee Perry style dub.

Vanishing Point was an album track, another one, that could have been a single, off 1989's era- defining Technique. Rich Lane's edit takes all the best bits, pumps them up and sends it off flying.

There are times when I think I never need to hear Blue Monday again. The band may feel the same. A few years ago Jack Butters, a friend of Rich Lane's, made an entirely unofficial edit that goes all thumpy and acidic, finding a new story inside the song, making it worth hearing all over again. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of Edits

In recent weeks I've done two Sunday mixes made up of edits. Part One is here and Part Two is here. Today is Part Three, another forty five minutes of edits, this one largely dancefloor oriented and with an 80s feel. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Edits Mix Three

• Can't Cope (Cotton Bud Re- Master)
• No- Thing
• M&M Hardway Bros
• Swamp Shuffle
• Never Let Me Down (Hunterbrau Edit)
• Jackie (Cotton Dub)
• Longed

Can't Cope is from Jezebell's Jezebellaeric Beats Vol. 1, a dubbed out and spaced out way to enter into the mix, our friend the Archdrude Julian H. Cope sent spinning even further out into the cosmos than he was previously. Safesurfer is from 1991's epic Peggy Suicide, the start of Julian's imperial period. Swamp Shuffle is also from Jezebellaeric Beats Vol. 1, the closing track, this time David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison and Chris Frantz given the treatment by Jesse and Darren. 

No- Thing is from Resident Rockers, the in- house edit team at Eclectics. Heroes. Twin Peaks. Moby. Acid. No- thing will keep us together. 

The M&M Hardway Bros edit takes Sleaford Mods Mork and Mindy, a song from 2020's Spare Ribs, with Billy Nomates on guest vocals, a tale of a childhood spent in colourless suburban council estates, Action Man and Cindy and mum and dad being out, long afternoons with nothing to do. Sean monkeyed about with it and turned it into an ALFOS at The Golden Lion moment. 

Hunterbrau's edit of Depeche Mode's 1987 classic Never Let Me Down came out on Paisley Dark, dark disco/ slowed down sleek goth.

Rich Lane's Cotton Dubs are second to none. His edit of Sinead O'Connor's Jackie (from her debut, the Lion And Then Cobra) repurposes Sinead with an 808 while losing none of her power. 

Longed is an edit of All Day Long from New Order's 1986 album Brotherhood. The chopped, looped and edited version here, largely instrumental, is from an intriguing project I was tipped off about on Bandcamp, a highly unofficial edit service by Follytechnic Music Library. Longed is from a collection of New Order edits called Ordered 86- 93 but there's waaaay more there than just one album of nine New Order edits. Have a dig around, see what you can unearth. 

Monday's Long Songs

Rich Lane has been producing music under his Cotton Bud name for ten years- delicious, space age chug straight outta Stoke- on - Trent (or Newcastle- under- Lyne more accurately). In his spare time he disappears into the woods with just a rucksack, some Belgian beer, a stove and a tarp and camps under the stars. His edits and remixes of tunes from the 1980s and 90s are stunners- see his versions of New Order's Vanishing Point, Sinead O'Connor's Jackie, The Bangles' Walk Like An Egyptian, Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence, Love Corporation's Give Me Some Love and LFO's LFO (that last one was totally rebuilt from scratch if I recall correctly). 

His own productions are all worth checking out too- the Chug Norris EPs, Coyote Tan, Camo, Hooky Street, Solstice, Barry Island, and City Of Culture in particular. To celebrate the ten years since the release of the first ever Cotton Bud Originals, Rich has remastered and remixed the first ever Cotton Bud track, a beauty called Shelves. The original has been remastered for 2024 and he's remixed it as Chug Norris. Both versions of Shelves 2024 are at Bandcamp. 

The Chug Norris remix is nine minutes of Balearic Cotton Bud synth chug, kicking off with washes of synth chords, a melody line picked out on melodica (or harmonica or keys, I'm not sure), thudding four- four drums and then a synth stab chord sequence that gives it a stars bound lift off. The vocal is the icing on the cake. 

Ten years ago Rich filmed himself jamming Shelves live using 202, 303, 606 and 707. Compare and contrast. 

Walk On Air Against Your Better Judgement

Some uptempo positivity for Friday and two new releases that should encourage some head nodding, foot tapping, beers in the garden and a general feeling that all is well. Back at the start of the year 100 Poems released a seven track album called Everything's Balearic When You Believe, an irrepressible album from the eternally upbeat Mike Wilson, the man behind 100 Poems. Mike is from Ireland and dropped the first 100 Poems album onto an unsuspecting internet, the sound of soul, psych, pop, funk, Balearic pop with a dash of acid house/ dance music. He followed it last week with a follow up, Everything's Possible When You Balearic, seven more slices of sun drenched sonics and forward facing music (six new songs and a rmeix of Tambores En Benirras' Generadora De Rayos). The album kicks off with applause, a crowd clapping and then long synth chords before a big voice takes us into Gettin' Down With George, 80s soul funk guitar licks and images of neon lit Top Of The Pops. 

All remaining five originals are filled with Mike's signature touches. Believe (Everything Is Possible) is a slow paced sundowner, two voices, one whispering, the other oohing, acoustic guitar, padding drums and horns- ascending, life affirming horns. 

Mike's song titles and sound are perfectly synced- Into The Light, When Night Begins To Shine, and Warm Breeze On Our Face (Like A Hot Summer Sigh) all sound like they should. It's got moments of joy, an album to play in the car with the sun out and the windows down. Available at Bandcamp at a Pay What You Want deal with any proceeds to Jigsaw and Shelter. 100 Poems is named after the collected poetry of Seamus Heaney, the most celebrated Irish poet and playwright. On his headstone is the epitaph, 'Walk on air against your better judgement', a line about throwing off inhibitions and abandoning caution, something which I think Mike does with each song he records. 

Also out recently, yesterday in fact, is the latest EP on Duncan Gray's Tici Taci- Tail Feather by Rule Six. There are two versions, the original version of Tail Feather and a Meat Katie remix. The first is a slow motion chugger with bass and guitar, rim shots and descending synth notes, squiggles and bounce. 

The Meat Katie Remix is lower slung and squelchier, ideal for playing an hour or two later than the first, when the floor's packed and everyone's forgotten themselves a little, inhibitions left behind and cares forgotten for a while.  

Five Fathoms Full

Out today, Five Fathoms Full, a full length, twelve track album from Duncan Gray. It has soundtracked much of my weekly commute to work recently, a sleek, cosmische, dub disco album that chews up the miles and eases the low level pains of travelling on our roads. Everything is extended, all the tracks allowed to play out over six or seven minutes minimum, analogue synths, drum machines, basslines of both the dubby, Hooky and propulsive variety, guitars sent via FX pedals, the constant chugging ALFOS- esque disco groove that sends shards of flickering lights flashing round the space you're in, everything mastered by Rich Lane at Cotton Bud. There's loads to enjoy in Five Fathoms Full, as individual tracks and as a full album that unfolding over something close to one hundred minutes. The track titles alone promise a trip- Full Trip, Astronomy, Greenville, Medicinal, Shark Bumps, Hot Jupe, Two Cold Volts....

Duncan has put together a 57 minute DJ mix of the songs from the album as a taster and a musical experience in its own right. You can find that at Soundcloud. Full Fathom Five is available digitally at Bandcamp. 

If you missed it Duncan's back catalogue is full of moments of chuggy joy. In March 2022 he put out a collection titled Emergency Transmissions, eight slices of dub disco as played on Sean Johnston's lockdown Friday night EBS system. You can get that here. 

In 2015 Duncan was one of a handful of artists who saw their music released on Andrew Weatherall's vinyl only Bird Scarer label. Duncan's EP, No Safe Word, had four tracks including the acid joy of Kick Intrusion. 

Fifty Four

I am 54 today- and all of a sudden the mid- fifties have arrived. I have tried to put together a number 54 based Sunday mix. It turns out 54 isn't a particularly popular musical number. As so often happens Mr Weatherall came to my rescue along with The Clash and a very famous and debauched New York nightclub and a blinding reggae song. This mix is as a result somewhat varied stylistically and gets even more random towards the end- maybe that's a metaphor for one's 50s.

Forty Five Minutes Of Fifty Four

• Grace Jones: Nightclubbing
• Tom Tom Club: Genius Of Love
• The Clash: Ivan Meets G.I. Joe
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Shack 54 (Joe Mckechnie Remix)
• Patrick Cowley and Sylvester: Menergy (Rich Lane 'Too Hard' Cotton Dub)
• Big Audio Dynamite II: The Globe (Studio 54 Remix)
• The Velvet Underground: I Can't Stand It (2014 version)
• The Rolling Stones: All Down The Line
• Toots And The Maytals: 54- 46 That's My Number

Studio 54 was a New York nightclub located at 254 West 54th Street, midtown Manhattan. It was converted from a theatre to a club in 1977 and for a while was the world's premier disco nightclub, a place with a famously loose approach to sex, drugs and extravagance. It had apparently the world's most difficult entry policy but once in 'the dancefloor was a democracy'. A list of Studio 54's celebrity clientele includes Grace Jones, Woody Allen, Bianca Jagger, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Bowie, Cher, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Lou Reed, John Travolta, Margaret Trudeau, Divine, Farrah Fawcett, Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicolson, Liza Minelli, Rick James and many more. Some of those people were thusly shoehorned into my mix above. Chic famously were turned away at the door and went home and wrote Freak Out, a disco track which started with the phrase 'Fuck You!' chanted as the chorus instead of the eventual title. 

Grace Jones, a Studio 54 devotee, released her album Nightclubbing in 1981, an early 80sunk/ reggae/ post- punk/ new wave/ disco masterpiece, recorded at Compass Point in the Bahamas. The title track is a cover of Iggy Pop's 1977 song, an ode to numbed out nighttime adventures on the floor. It's Grace's birthday today as well- happy 76th birthday Grace.

Tom Tom Club's Genius Of Love is also from 1981, a brilliant slice of New York post- disco/ synth- pop/ art rap that nods its head to a cast of black musicians- James Brown, Sly and Robbie, Hamilton Bohannon, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Bob Marley- and was a big tune at Studio 54. Its creators, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz only went a couple of times, they claim, preferring the Mudd Club or Danceteria. 

The Clash went to Studio 54 once and Joe Strummer said they were observed by the Warhol crowd like animals in a cage. Joe wrote The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too about the experience. Ivan Meets G.I. Joe is from Sandinista!, and includes the line 'so you're on the floor at 54', imagining the Cold War as a competition on the nightclub's dancefloor, a Soviet- America disco face off, sung by Topper Headon. It's not my favourite Clash song but it fits this mix. 

Shack 54 was on Two Lone Swordsmen's Wrong Meeting Part 2, a 2007 album with Weatherall and Tenniswood by this pint deep into live rock 'n' roll/ garage rockabilly territory. It was great fun, Andrew once again turning on a sixpence and wrong footing people who expected him to keep doing the same thing. This remix of Shack 54 by Joe Mckechnie is I think unreleased. 

Patrick Cowley and Sylvester were both Studio 54 attendees. For his Cotton Dub edit Rich Lane ramps up the campness and Hi NRG to the max on a song that wasn't exactly lacking in either. 

Big Audio Dynamite II's The Globe was the best single the second incarnation of the band released, a  1991 single that samples Mick's most well known Clash riff. It was a Mick Jones and Gary Stonnage co- write and produced by Mick and Andre Shapps (making both of them related to current Tory Minister Grant Shapps, a man I sincerely hope loses his seat and his deposit come election day).  The Studio 54 remix adds some disco strings and keys and has never been officially released but is on the bootleg series The B.A.D. Files. 

The Velvet Underground have Studio 54 connections via Lou Reed and Andy Warhol but there's a big disconnect between the sound of the Velvets and Studio 54 so really this was just an excuse to shoehorn in this 2014 version of a Lou reed song that should be played daily by everyone, Lou and Sterling taking the Bo Diddey beat and rhythm guitar to its logical limit. The part where Lou counts down from 8 is among my favourite moments on any song. 

Bianca Jagger once rode into Studio 54 on the back of a white horse, an eye- opening way to celebrate one's birthday (a party for Bianca thrown by fashion designer Halston). Bianca later said she didn't ride the horse to or in the club, she just sat on its back once it was already inside. I was going to say, with a knowing smirk, hey, we've all been there- but then I remembered that at the Golden Lion last November at the end of a night David Holmes played at the pub there was a horse at the bar having a pint with its owner, so actually, maybe we have all been there. Bianca was married to Mick from 1970 to 1978, a period The Stones made their final absolute classic album, 1973's Exile On Main Street from which All Down The Line is one of four superb songs that make up the album's fourth side. 

Toots And The Maytals released reggae classic 54- 46 Was My Number in 1968. 54- 46 was Toots' prison number when he was jailed for possession of marijuana and for the next 365 day trip around the sun, 54 is my number. 

Further Galloping Remixes

David Holmes' remix project continues to gather pace, an almost bewildering number of remixes of songs from his 2023 album Blind On A Galloping Horse being released (and this week Heavenly putting some of them out on vinyl). So far the roll call of artists who have taken David's songs from the album and reshaped them takes in Daniel Avery, Die Hexen and Ruth Bate, Timmy Stewart, Darren Emerson, Lovefingers and Heidi Lawden, Working Men's Club, Hardway Bros, Skymas, Decius, Phil Kieran, Robin Wylie, Lovefingers (again), Sonic Boom and Panda Bear, X- Press 2, Jordan Nocturne, The Vendetta Suite, Horse Meat Disco and Colleen Cosmo Murphy. Last week three new remixes saw the light of day, the first being Rich Lane's remix of Yeah x 3...

Rich's remix is an unashamedly acid house banger, the bassline burbling away with the instantly recognisable sound of the 303's drum settings, the 303 deployed to fine effect, while Raven sings of the power of positivity, personal freedom and that love is a mystery. There's a turning up of the heat in the last two minutes, acid bleeps at the fore, bassline pulsing and intensity rising. I'm particularly fond of this remix- this blog played a part in connecting David and Rich in the autumn of last year following a post in the aftermath of Sinead O'Connor's death which led to David suggesting Rich remix Yeah x 3. There's a Rich Lane Dub too which strips Raven back and pushes the acid even further to the front. 

Hardway Bros return to the remix frontline with a remix of Too Muchroom (Too Much Acid Dub), a heavy duty seven minute Sean Johnston dubbed out dance remix, the vocals turned into a ghostly echo whispering away behind the insistent throb of the bass and drums and bounce of the synths-'If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room'

Finally, for the moment, unless David has another slew of artists ready to further deconstruct his album, there is a GLOK remix of Agitprop 13. Andy Bell's recent GLOK remixes have been wide ranging affairs, taking the GLOK sound into deeper waters. This one is a slo mo pounder, disembodied and backwards vocals bouncing round the mix, synths as pulses, basement sounds (as his remix of C.A.R.'s Anzu at the tail end of last year stated) ending in a rather lovely and low key as the tinkling music box melody repeats to fade. 

An Hour Of Music Inspired By David Holmes At The Golden Lion In November 2023

Last November I wrote a post about the launch party held at The Golden Lion for David Holmes and Raven Violet's album Blind On A Galloping Horse, a memorable night in all sorts of ways. Refresh your memory here if you like. Not long afterwards Jeff Barrett of Heavenly Recordings got in touch out of the blue. Heavenly have just launched  a zine, HVN zine, a beautifully put together and produced magazine with art, photos, lists, articles and ephemera by and from various people at Heavenly. Physical products are nice and the production of an A5 zine in a digital world feels like something worthwhile. HVN zine 1 was published in the autumn with the second lined up for January 2024. Jeff said that some people from Heavenly were at The Golden Lion that night, one of them had read my blogpost and said I captured the vibe of the night and could he publish it in HVN zine 2. Which I didn't need to think about for very long, obviously. 

You can buy it at Heavenly's Bandcamp for the princely sum of 50p or get it free with any purchase from them. It's a beautifully put together magazine, lovely to look, nice paper stock (these things are important) and made by people, who care about pop culture and more besides. 

Today's mix is an approximation, a version of some of what David played at The Golden Lion back in November. It's inspired by rather than an attempt to recreate- some of the tracks may not be the actual ones played but it pulls some of what happened that night together. 

An Hour Of Music Inspired By David Holmes At The Golden Lion November 2023

• Golden Bug ft. The Liminanas: Variations sur 3 Bancs
• Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Prince: Sign O' The Times
• Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?
• Roe Deers ft. Wolfstream: Can't Remember
• Pete Shelley: Homosapien
• Decius: Masculine Encounter
• David Holmes and Raven Violet: Yeah x 3
• Sinead O'Connor: Jackie (Rich Lane Edit)
• Roberto Rodriguez: Mustat Varjot
• Radio Slave Vs Audion: Mouth To Mouth

Variations sur 3 Bancs, a collaboration between Golden Bug and The Liminanas came out in 2021. The EP came with remixes by Pilooski and Superpitcher and this one, the original mix. This wasn't the first record David played that night, he played some spaced out sax jazz but this came on fairly early. 

Jo Sims Bass- The Final Frontier was a 2023 release on Pamela Records. One of my favourite 12"s of last year, for what it's worth. David's remix is supercharged sci fi house.

Prince's Sign O' The Times was a 1987 single and the title track of the studio album of the same name, a Fairlight synth, simple drum machine and clipped, blues guitar riff and Prince's take on the issues troubling the USA in the 80s- gangs, drugs, AIDS, poverty, space shuttle explosions, hurricanes, nuclear war. 

Khidja's Do You Know This Record Marius? came out in 2023 as part of an EP called Transmissions 1. I'm not anywhere near bored of it yet. I'm not 100% sure that this is the Khidja track David played at The Lion but he's played it twice at NTS since then so I think there's a good chance it is. 

Roe Deers and Wolfstream's Can't Remember came out in 2022, on an album I reviewed at Ban Ban Ton Ton. I'm not sure if this is the track David played but it fits in this mix well enough.

Pete Shelley's Homosapien was a 1981 single, a groundbreaking solo single for the former Buzzcock. I don't think this is the Pete Shelley song David played, I'm sure I would remember if this had been pumping out of the Lion's sound system, but I've got it digitally and again, it fits in pretty well here. 

Decius' album Decius Vol 1 was one of 2022's highlights, a basement/ bathhouse/sauna riot of electronic sounds and beats. I don't think Masculine Encounter II was the track David played but I can't remember which one he did play- just as likely it was off one of the three 2023 Decius Trax EPs.

Yeah x 3 is from David's Blind On A Galloping horse album, a hymn to positivity, family, friends and life and love set to a kosmische/ pop electronic/ Spector musical backing. There were a bunch of excellent remixes by X- Press 2, The Vendetta Suite, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom and Jordan Nocturne. 

Jackie was on Sinead's 1987 debut album The Lion And The Cobra, a song narrated by a ghost, written when Sinead was just fifteen. Rich did his edit to play at a gig. David heard it when I posted it here following Sinead's tragic death last year. 

Mustat Varjo is from 2012 and a House Of Disco four track compilation titled On The Latch. Classic 2010s nu house/ disco/ dance music, finding itself somewhere in the space between ecstasy and melancholy.

Radio Slave remixed/ re-worked Audion's 2006  minimal techno floor filler last year and it goes on and on, tension building, bassline buzzing, freakiness freaking, for over ten minutes. 

Seraphim

Out today on Evil Plans Records is this six track EP from Man2.0, four new tracks and a pair of remixes, all dedicated to the art of acid bangers. Opening track Paperclip Theory opens with some intent, the hammer of a synth joined by the harder hammer of a kick drum and then a hi- hat. Various wigged out, synapse busting acid synth squiggles writhe around, everything streamlined and pointing in one direction. It's followed by Seraphim which doesn't let up and takes even fewer prisoners, bursts of siren- like bleeps and filters riding over four four drums. A robotic voice picks up, spelling things out. 

Seraphim is present in remixed form too, Blavatsky & Tolley on remix duties, a slightly less acidic , more electro- chug version, the robot voice pitched further up and sounding more unhinged than it did in the original. The Blavatsky & Tolley remix chugs on for seven and a half minutes without ever outstaying its welcome, synths and sequencers repeating their endless patterns. 

Blavatsky & Tolley, if you needed a reminder, remixed BTCop's Just A Disco at the tail end of 2022, a barnstorming, slow mo version of the original with a single vocal line, 'Just a fuckin' disco', inspired by an Andrew Weatherall interview where he pointed out that dancing in dark rooms to repetitive music with coloured lights and some was just that, but also so much more. 

                                               

The Seraphim EP continues with Vantablack, five minutes of acid wonkiness, and then You Turn To Stone, exhilarating raved up acid madness. The EP is completed by Ed Tomlinson's remix of Vantablack which lulls you into a false sense of security before everything loopy with wiggly synth lines, huge bass and cymbal crashes. An 808 acid squiggle and some laughter kicks in, more ascending synths, more cymbals, more drums, more laughter, more rave, more acid....

You can listen to and buy the whole thing here.

Too High Too Low

Some new songs to distract from the customary end of August dread that starts to sink in around this point of the year. If you like dark, intense, chuggy acid thump, this pair should be right up your alley. First up for today is the latest from Rich Lane, this time back with his Chug Norris hat on. The Dark And Sweaty EP has two tracks, Black Mass and The Ceiling. Coming in with a thudding kick drum and some acid whooshes, The Ceiling is designed for a dancing, specifically in dark, hot sweatboxes. After a minute of build up an impossibly deep voice interjects- 'You're drenched in sweat'-  and then the bassline takes over, grinding and bumping. A soulful voice joins in, Sheila Kerr singing about sweet reverberations and perspiration dripping from the ceiling. Machine music coupled with human voices, metronomic beats and emotional vocals. 

The Ceiling is available at Bandcamp. The Dark And Sweaty EP is there too. 

The second song for today comes from the combined talents of Sleaford Mods, Billy Nomates and Hardway Bros. Sean Johnston has done an unofficial edit of Mork And Mindy, a song from Sleaford Mods' 2020 album Spare Rib, one of Jason Williamson's transmissions from failed state UK, this one starting off on a council estate in the early 80s with Action Man and Sindy getting it on on a Sunday afternoon while his parents are out. Billy Nomates guests, singing 'Too high too low/ It doesn't make a difference I know'. Sean switches the vocal parts around and pumps up the drums and the acid, bringing a new slow burning, thumping energy to the song. The M&M Hardway Bros Acid Edit is a track that works extremely well in a hot, sweaty, low ceilinged building. You can get it at Bandcamp as part of a four track EP of edits, Beyonders Present: Case Edits Vol 1. All four are worth the price of admission (£3.96), Sean's especially. 

The video for the original version of Mork And Mindy is memorable, Jason, Andrew and Billy in a house with a box of toys and some musical equipment, the smell of Sunday afternoons in the 80s drifting through the screen.

Jezebellearic Beats

Jezebell's end of summer album hits the digital shelves today, a twenty track monster titled Jezebellearic Beats Volume 1- the artwork for the album borrows/ pays homage to the original Dave Little sleeve art for the classic 1988 Balearic Beats album. The music Darren and Jesse make as Jezebell shifts between boundaries and blurs lines, between club and poolside, between dancefloor banger and early evening livener, between sunset and sunrise, and between sampling and editing. All these can be found on Jezebellearic Beats Volume 1. About half of the tracks have been released previously and some have featured here in the course of the last two years- the eight minute summer 2022 epic Jezebellearic, the twelve minute soft- rock/ soul dreamscape of Jezeblue from earlier this summer, the beatier Concurrence, the low slung, just setting out fun of Trading Places (11AM) and its more upbeat, more up for it cousin Trading Places (3PM), the spaced out dubby Balearic chanson of Jezebell et Moi, Can't Cope's echo- laden swirls and early 90s trippiness. 

Within this album there are traces of other people, samples of vocals and instruments; Laurie Anderson, Beastie Boys and Money Mark, DJ Alfredo, Max Berlins, Herb Alpert, Julian Cope, Talking Heads, and David Byrne and Brian Eno are among those who show up, making themselves known within Jesse and Darren's chuggy/ cosmic/ Balearic/ indie- dance grooves. There are Rich Lane re- masters and a pair of remixes too, their blissed out remix of D:Ream's Pedestal and the Jezebell version of Red Shift by Man 2.0. There are many new tracks as well, not least the closer Swamp Shuffle, which is perfectly named. 

Jezebellearic Beats is infused with the spirit of acid house, the irreverence of an anything goes attitude coupled with a love of the music and a respect for those who came before. When I posted Jezeblue back in July I suggested that the slowed down and blissed out summer groove of the song was as much about memory as about music, about the way that memories make us who we are. Jesse said that all music is (for him) about memories that are just out of reach- 'not personal memories but... a collective memory just out of everyone's reach'. That feeling can be found all the way through this album- there are plenty of feel good, uptempo moments too, music for dancing and for parties but they're alongside something that feels much more fluid and less tangible, music that skips between boundaries and limits and leaves you in a different, better place from the one it found you in. 

Jezebellearic Beats Volume 1 is available at Bandcamp from today, pay what you want/ for free. 

Mostly Remixes

Matt Gunn's album Mostly Fiction came out earlier this year, ten tracks of electronic goodness that closes with the rippling, bleepy, ambient euphoria of Learning Through Loops. 

The first of a set of remix EPs came out at the start of the month- Mostly Remixed 1 features a pair of remixes, the first an Al Mackenzie remix of Learning Through Loops and the second a Matt Gunn remix of the epic Space Drohne. Al hits the button marked 'thumper', the drums kicking in from the off with blasts of synth, rumbling bass, rattling percussion, rising chords and eventually sirens and melodica- a widescreen/ sci fi/ house remix that make rainy summer days feel good. Find it at Bandcamp. 

Play it alongside this for maximum fun- Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes remix), one of 2023's best remixes so far, a seven minute David Holmes remix of Jo Sims, one of four songs from an EP that came out on Pamela records in July. I wrote about the EP at Ban Ban Ton Ton last month.  

Matt's remix of Space Drohne, the Floor Mix, is eight minutes of action in a similar sphere, drum machines, space synths, rave synths, breakbeats, synth arpeggios, synth bass, the machinery of Behringer, Roland and Moog in full effect. 

Al Mackenzie is a member of D: Ream and also puts out work under his own name. His latest release, a two track EP called Hold Your Own, came out on Field Of Dreams at the start of August. Get it here. The title track is my pick of the pair, nine minutes of thumpy, wiggy acid house. Music that sounds good in the dark. 

Download all the above and stick them all together in one playlist/ on one CD for maximum enjoyment, a late summer mixtape. 

I'll Walk The Seas Forever More

Sinead O'Connor's funeral took place earlier this week, an outpouring of sorrow and loss for a woman who clearly had a huge impact on many people. David Holmes dedicated his monthly God's Waiting Room radio show for NTS to Sinead, a two hour tribute with Sinead songs scattered throughout- I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, Black Boys On Mopeds, Jah Nuh Dead, Trouble Of The World, Troy, Don't Cry For Me Argentina, Silent Night and David's superb splicing of Nothing Compares 2U with his own remix of Orbital's Belfast. Alongside these songs are others courtesy of Grian Chatten, Bob Dylan, The Clash, John Lennon, Sly and Robbie, Keith Hudson and Janis Ian. It's a stunning way to spend a couple of hours and a beautiful tribute to Sinead. You can listen to it at Mixcloud and find the full tracklist at NTS. 

David was part way through recording an album with Sinead, titled No Veteran Dies Alone, eight songs completed including Trouble For The World (which came out on Heavenly in 2020). He'd introduced himself to her at Shane McGowan's 60th birthday event and on his Instagram page described recording her vocals as being in the presence of greatness, 'like recording Nina Simone, Billie Holiday or Karen Dalton'. 

More Sinead- Rich Lane created his own unofficial remix of Sinead's Jackie, a song from her debut The Lion And The Cobra. Rich made it in 2016 to play at a gig in Dublin. It's not available to buy or download (more's the pity) but you can listen to it here, an electronic throbber with 808 blips and cowbell and Sinead's voice on top.

In 1994 Sinead made an album called Universal Mother. Fire On Babylon, produced by Bomb The Bass's Tim Simenon, was released as a single and appeared on Top Of The Pops to promote it. The grooves/ bytes/ TV studio seem almost to small to contain the power and intensity of her vocal, not to mention the huge dub bassline that underpins it. Sinead is singing live and the moment at three minutes where she comes back in singing 'Fire!!!' is both breathtaking and bone chilling. 

Lyrically Fire On Babylon deals with Sinead's mother and how Sinead was treated as a child. The video for the song didn't hold back, a film made by Michel Gondry (who also made videos for Bjork's Human Behaviour and Protection for Massive Attack) and which depicted Sinead's childhood. It's a fierce, intense and mesmerising video and song- like the woman herself. 

Midsummer

Today, 21st June, is the summer solstice, the midpoint of the year and the time at which it's lighter longer and later than at any other point- something worth celebrating. It therefore also has to be noted that we start crawling back after tonight, we can't have one without the other. Something Rich Lane noted on his chuggy, slow mo Balearic classic from 2020 titled Solstice. 

According to the Christian church midsummer is officially 24th June, six months before/ after Christmas, but given that any midsummer celebration almost certainly pre- dates Christianity let's go with today. 

In 1990 Saint Etienne's glorious second single, their shuffly indie- dance cover of The Field Mice's Kiss And Make Up was remixed twice by Pete Heller, the Midsummer Madness and Midsummer Dubness versions, both versions arguably superior to the original single. They didn't release the remixes until October 1990 which seems a missed opportunity. Both are full of the spirit of the times, that joyous sense of freedom and possibility that the period had- although maybe that's partly because I was just twenty and everything was in front of me. The world was changing though. Thatcher gone, people power across the eastern Europe contributing to the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Nelson Mandela's release. Let's kiss and make up.

Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)

Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Dubness Mix)

Room for one more? This is Midsummer's Dream by DJ and producer Massimiliano Pagliara, southern Italian by birth but resident of Berlin. This track, seven minutes of thumping drums and trancey synths and acid toplines, came out last year and sounds much more Berlin than Lecce. 

Midsummer's Dream 

Acid Bangles

You didn't know you wanted, no, needed, an acid house reworking of Walk Like An Egyptian by The Bangles did you? You'd never listened to the song in all its Los Angeles 1986 glory and thought you needed it redone in huge acid chug style but, as they say, here we are- and you do. Thank Rich Lane who produced just such an artefact for a DJ gig he had a couple of weeks ago at The Evil Acid Barons Weekender in Devon. You can find it here- it was available for a limited time as a download but I think Rich may have switched that off due to potentially problematic copywrite issues. 

I think this is the ideal opportunity to post this snippet of video heaven- the Susanna Hoffs side eye. 

Written by Liam Sternberg the song was first offered to Toni Basil, then Lene Lovich (who recorded a version but didn't release it) before The Bangles got to record it. In September 1986 they played it while appearing on Whistle Test. The decision by producer David Kahne to have drummer Debbie replaced by a drum machine for the song caused ructions within the group and they didn't work with him again. It may have Rich's job a little easier though. 

Forty Minutes Of Depeche Mode

I recently watched 101, D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film from 1989 that showed the group preparing to play the 101st gig and final leg of their world tour the year before. It was good fun, a time capsule peak into the world of 1988, with a van of radio competition winners travelling to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to see DM with live snippets of the group interspersed. 

It's fair to say that I'm a fan of some of Depeche Mode's songs rather than an outright fan of the band. Their story is interesting, electro- pop boys from Basildon who survive the departure of their songwriter becoming a pop sensation and then a stadium size electronic rock group. The death of Andy Fletcher last year showed a fairly unique aspect of the group too- Fletcher was the man who made the group work but whose contributions weren't predominantly musical. For the mix below I've concentrated on the late 80s/ early 90s era of the group, mainly singles with some remixes. I seem to have omitted Personal Jesus which is an error on my part. 

Forty Minutes Of Depeche Mode

• Happiest Girl (Orbital Mix)
• Never Let Me Down Again (Tsangarides Mix)
• I Feel You (7" version)
• Enjoy The Silence (Rich Lane A&E Cotton Dub)
• Blasphemous Rumours
• Barrel Of A Gun (Underworld Soft Mix)

From 1990 The Orb's remix of Happiest Girl confusingly titled as the Orbital Mix (how both The Orb and Orbital mist have wished the other had chosen a different name). The remix is typically Orb- like, downtempo ambient house with Dave Gahan's words on top. As well as a 12" single in 1990, it came out on The Orb's compilation of their own remixes in 1996, alongside a welter of other remixes- Pop Will Eat Itself, Erasure, Killing Joke, Primal Scream, Yello, Innersphere and Wir all feature. 

Never Let Me Down is a throbbing, growling, druggy electro- rock single from 1987 and from their Music For The Masses album. The Tsangarides mix is from the 12", a remix by Chris Tsangarides. My favourite DM song, one that has worked its way into my musical world in recent years. 

I Feel You was a 1993 single, screeching tyres, glitter stomp and blues guitar riff. 

Enjoy The Silence was a 1990 single and from their massive 1991 album Violator. Synths, monochrome gloom, a lush darkness made for those sunset moments in stadia round the world- along with Personal Jesus it's the 90s Mode in excelsis. The version here is a re- edit by Stoke- on - Trent's Rich Lane, a man who knows his way round a re- edit better than most. 

Blasphemous Rumours came out in 1984, a song about suicide, survival and religion that baited the religious, including those in the band. The crunchy synth sound and industrial drums show the way ahead. 

Barrel Of A Gun was a single in 1997, the lead song for their Ultra album. Underworld's remixes, three of them, showed the two sides of late 90s Underworld- the Hard Mix is nine minutes of thumping, hard and fast drums that don't let up. The Soft mix (included here) is Underworld in dreamy, floaty mode and proof that Underworld were still capable of great remixes and of creating some lovely, low key, intimate moments.

Monday's Long Song

Rude Audio made one of my favourite tunes/  EPs of 2021, the summer sounding skank- chug of Railton Ruckus. They've now returned to do the summer of 2022 a massive favour with a new track and EP, Big Heat. The title track is six and a half minutes of chuggy electronic dub house, the metronomic drums pushing ever on while the synths rise and fall and the timbales clatter around. There's a terrifc piano line that gradually works its way to the front of things.Big Heat is a proper groover, ideal for dancing to in dark basements or back gardens. 

The EP comes loaded with a pair of remixes, an eight minute one from Bedford Falls Players and a slightly shorter Rich Lane remix. 

The Bedford Falls Players remix extends it out and strips it down, focussing on the rhythm track and those timbales, then bringing the acidic squiggle of the 303 to the fore. The remix gets split in the middle by some samples, Hollywood coming to South London, before cutting back to the action.

Rich goes more laid back, steel guitar and washes of bliss, and then all dubbed out. 

All three versions of Big Heat plus two further Rude Audio treats, Rudely Fresh and Dust Devil remixed by Al MacKenzie, can be bought at Bandcamp, forty minutes of dubbed out house sounds for summer for just £4. 

Six Months

Isaac died six months ago today. I'm not sure what this means- the marking of dates and passing of time have a special significance, I'm always aware of them. On the one hand, six months seems like quite a long time when written down, it's half a year, give it another six months and we'll be about to see December in. On the other hand, it all seems very recent, it could in some ways have happened only a few weeks ago. The thought that just over six months ago we could talk to him, hold his hand, go out for a walk and stop off somewhere for a pint and some chips... it all seems very real and yet, he's definitely gone, we've accepted that. On a day to day basis we can operate and function, we can go out and see friends, do 'normal' things, have fun even. When we go to his grave it all seems very huge, the enormity of it all, his death and his absence. The time we've travelled since he died and the coping with it prove that only time can make the difference and that the Nick Cave quote that I've mentioned a couple of times holds much truth for me. On his blog Nick said 'in time, there is a way, not out of grief, but deep within it'. Every day, each day we go forward in time, Isaac is a day further away physically, but in lots of ways he's always there. In the end we just learn to live with the grief. So, six months is both significant and also just another day. It still hurts- it always will. We go on. 

It seems appropriate to pay tribute to yet another musical passing. Last Thursday news came through of the sudden death of Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode's run of singles and albums from the early 80s and into the 90s is the stuff of synthpop and then stadium electro goth legend and I've grown to appreciate them and their music in recent years. On top of that no- one seems to have a bad word to say about Andy, a genuinely nice man, happy to talk to fans, popular with his peers and seemingly the glue that held the group together.

R.I.P. Andy Fletcher. 

A while ago I saw a clip of Depeche Mode performing Never Let Down Again on a TV show and I can't remember what TV programme it was but this one, somewhere in Europe in 1987, will do instead. Huge groove, killer tune, leather jackets, somewhere between industrial, New Beat and synth pop.

And seeing as Rich himself has been sharing this since Thursday I thought I'd help spread it a little further- Rich's own edit of Enjoy The Silence, a recent dance floor oriented update on the 1989 single. 

Enjoy The Silence (Rich Lane A&E Cotton Dub)

Thickener

Brand new from Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 is Thickener, two mixes of deep, techno tinged, dark disco. Psyche- chug from Stockholm, mastered by Rich Lane in Stoke. The Thinner Mix is first up, kick drum and hiss and huge belching synth bass. A chopped up fragment of wordless vocal, rising and falling topline and then on it goes, pumping away. 

The Full Fat mix follows, riding in on tom toms and a big groove, a distorted voice and synths pinging about. The bassline buzzes about around the breakbeat and everything gets quite intense before the breakdown at four minutes. Then it all goes off again. You can both at Bandcamp, name your own price. 

I'm particularly excited about this release because the cover photo is mine, a picture I took a while ago and shared on social media. Jesse got in touch and asked if he could use it. Here's my original, a shot of a pendant lamp in a cafe/ bar in Altrincham taken from below. 

Obviously we now need to start a crowd funder campaign for vinyl, t- shirts, posters, coasters, tea towels, tote bags and all the other merch the image requires.