Fifty Minutes Of Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros came together in the late 90s. Joe started working with Richard Norris and Pablo Cook and the Mescaleros formed around that trio. In his memoir Strange Things Are Happening Richard Norris recounts how Joe and a cavalcade of cars turned up at Real World Studio in Wiltshire. Richard was sitting on a grass bank as the convoy arrived and Joe leapt from a vehicle brandishing a drum machine and shouting, 'does anyone know how to make this thing work?'. Richard raised a hand and said he did. Joe, Richard and Pablo wrote Yalla Yalla, with Anthony Genn coming on board to mix. They went on to write Techno D- Day, Tony Adams and the beautiful From Willesden To Cricklewood. Richard Norris Joe wrote Sandpaper Blues, Diggin' The New and the late career rock/ reggae/ acid house classic Yalla Yalla. All those songs became part of the first Mescaleros album, Rock Art And The X Ray Style.

The Mescaleros grew from there with Scott Shields joining (bass and guitar), Martin Slattery (keys and guitar), Richard Flack (various instruments) and Steve 'Smiley' Bernard (drums). Genn hung around for a while but eventually left. In 1999 Joe and the Mescaleros recorded Rock Art And The X Ray Style having played a load of gigs including Glastonbury (where Joe smashed a BBC camera during the broadcast with a mic stand). In Strange Things Are Happening Richard tells the story of his departure from being Joe's creative partner whilst out in LA- the circles around Joe and the former members of The Clash come across like the worst aspects of Succession, in crowds and out crowds and hangers on all jostling for elbow room and access to the top table. At an audience with event I went to Richard was asked how it ended with Joe and he replied, 'badly'. A rueful silence and some regret. 

In 2000 Joe hooked up again with Tymon Dogg, a former 101er and Clash guest. Tymon joined the Mescaleros for Global A Go- Go and the band toured the UK, US and Europe, playing festivals and small gigs, combining Clash songs and Mescaleros songs in fine style, gigs awash with beer flying, and reggae, rock, dub and global sounds, joyous celebrations of Joe's music and life. I saw them twice at Manchester Academy in the 1999- 2002 period and on another occasion at Nynex Arena where they supported The Who in a largely empty arena. They were superb, a life affirming blast of energy and punk rock righteousness. Joe never gave less than everything, the band gave their all too to match him and there was no reason to think it shouldn't carry on for some time. Joe died suddenly at home on 22nd December 2002. 

There are three Mescaleros albums- 1999's Rock Art And The X Ray Style, 2001's Global A Go- Go and the posthumously completed Streetcore from 2003. Between them they show a reborn and revitalised Joe Strummer, writing and recording and having the time of his life, making music that stands as not just the best of his solo career but alongside his songs in The Clash too. In the last year of Joe's life he'd been writing with Mick Jones again, songs that Mick assumed were for an upcoming Mescaleros album. Joe apparently thought they were for a new Clash album. 

Fifty Minutes Of Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros

• Punk Rock Warlord
• Yalla Yalla (Norro's King Dub)
• Fantastic
• At The Border, Guy
• Burnin' Streets
• X- Ray Style
• Ocean Of Dreams
• Johnny Appleseed
• Sandpaper Blues
• Arms Aloft
• Coma Girl
• Without People You're Nothing

Yalla Yalla was released as a single in 1999 ahead of the Rock Art And The X- Ray Style album, Joe and Richard Norris summoning the spirits and the radio. Joe described the song as 'an ancient British folk song written in the year 1999'. Live at Manchester Academy they segued Yalla Yalla into Bankrobber, Joe disappearing offstage and returning with a child on his shoulders, arms in the air and red lights strafing the stage. Yalla Yalla is total Strummer- world with dubbed out references to Kool Moe Dee, The Treacherous Three,  Brownie McGee, Ladbroke Grove, Ragga FM, Tae Kwon Do and the kebab shop. The Norro King Dub was on the 12", a Richard Norris dub of the original. According to Richard no one had ever called him Norro before and from that point only Joe did. 

Fantastic came out in 2022, a posthumous release tied into a box set re- release of the three Mescaleros albums and fourth disc of outtakes and demos. It was recorded at Rockfield in Monmouth in December 2002, the month Joe died. Fantastic is an early version of Ramshackle Day Parade from Streetcore. Streetcore was completed after Joe died by various Mescaleros. Joe's vocals are guide vocals, not finished ones- this alone shows how much Joe put in to recording. The guide vocals for Fantastic, Arms Aloft and Coma Girl (among other Streetcore songs) are more impassioned than many singers manage ever. While we'll never know what Streetcore could have been and what other songs Joe might have written for it, the seven songs that the band finished for the album all stand up next to the rest of the Mescaleros back catalogue. 

There are three other songs on Streetcore- Redemption Song, Silver And Gold and  Long Shadow- that date from different sessions. Redemption Song and Long Shadow were done with Rick Rubin, intended for Johnny Cash to record, and were included on Streetcore at Lucinda's request (Joe's widow). The video for Fantastic is a lovely thing, footage of Joe from The Clash, solo and his family life spliced together.   

At The Border, Guy is from Global A Go- Go, a seven minute freewheeling dub tune with scratchy guitar, organ and Joe singing about town planners, the Dow Jones and Leek town hall. Wonderful stuff, the genre hopping spirit of Sandinista! continuing long into Joe's solo career. 

Burnin' Streets is from Streetcore and has a nice lyrically throwback to 1977 and London's Burning. Arms Aloft is a rocker from the same album. In the song Joe sees his (younger) bandmates on tour complaining about being tired and out of gas partway through a tour. Joe, ever the livewire and motivator, shouts at them, reminding them of their duty to rock 'n' roll, the audience and playing the gig, and how only a few nights before they were 'arms aloft in Aberdeen'. It's one of several songs on Streetcore that have a hint, a foreshadowing, of Joe's mortality. 'They say the stars can't see their rays/ Nor can they count the number of days', he sings near the end. At the start there's some cosmic Joe too with the line, 'Sometimes there's no stars shining/ Scouting the edge of the universe/ Sometimes you can't see a horizon/ Between the ocean and the earth'. 

X Ray Style is a beauty, the title track from 1999's Rock Art And The X Ray Style (the cover was painted by Damian Hirst, a version of Neolithic cave art. Joe spent every summer from the mid 80s onward in Granada, Spain and in the nearby Nerja area there is a cave complex discovered by five school boys in 1959 containing the world's oldest known cave art- maybe this was the inspiraiton for the sleeve). The song X Ray Style is an acoustic guitar tune with a bongo groove, Joe singing about the stars and the hopes of a soul, Be Bop guns, rockabilly trains and how 'there's some people living who ain't got no heart and they never had none'. He finishes with the line, 'I want to live and I want to dance a while'. His voice ever sounded better. 

Ocean Of Dreams came out on the 2022 box set, an unreleased Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros song dating from the Rock Art And the X Ray Style sessions with ex- Ex Pistol Steve Jones on guitar. It's got a lazy, laid back feel, Joe improvising and following his nose. In 1999 Anthony Genn had told him, 'You're Joe Strummer, you should be making an album!'. Other people had told him this at points in the decade between 1989 and 1999 but in 1999 the time was right. 

Johnny Appleseed is the lead song from 2001's Global A Go- Go, a solo peak and a song that demonstrates everything that was great about the man. Acoustic guitars, massed backing vocals, old friend Tymon on violin and Joe singing about Martin Luther King and Buick 49s, and how if you want to get the honey you don't go killing all the bees, a line that could be about the environment or it could be about capitalism. Whenever I need to hear some solo Joe, I often start with Johnny Appleseed. The video is very Joe too, Joe and the Mescaleros wandering the streets of London as the public come and go...

Sandpaper Blues is a Richard Norris co- write. Joe's love of what used to be called World Music is all over the Mescaleros songs. On Sandpaper Blues there's Caribbean vibes married to Country and Western and Mariachi. 

Coma Girl is the lead song from Streetcore, rousing Strummer three chord, Clash style, electrifying guitar rock. In the song Joe describes his walk through the outer areas at the Glastonbury festival, wandering round the stages as the rain comes in and the oil drums clang, while singing to his daughter Lola, the coma girl, who didn't want to get out of bed. Coma Girl is as good a final song as Joe could have wished for in many ways, a song that summons the vision of him on stage, his left leg twitching away as he bashed out the chords and sang at the microphone stand. 

Swamp Thing

I've been revisiting Alan Moore's Swamp Thing over the last few months. Between 1984 and 1987 Moore took over as the writer on the DC Comics series Swamp Thing. He was relatively unknown at the time, having done some writing on British comics (2000AD, Marvel UK) but the big time was the US comics industry and the twin giants of DC and Marvel. Swamp Thing was a minor character, way down the DC priorities and close to being cancelled. Moore took his developing and highly distinctive writing and outlook and plotted a run of thirty six comics that would take a man- monster into new areas and helped create comics that were marketed as being 'For Mature Readers'. Watchmen, Dark Knight et al started with Swamp Thing (and Frank Miller's run at Daredevil too). 

Moore turned Swamp Thing into a true monster, a sentient plant creature, a swamp organism with a human consciousness. He then plotted a series that went into Southern Gothic, horror, science fiction and environmentalism, episodes of psychedelic and hallucinogenic exploration, an inter- speices love story between Swamp Thing and Abby Cable and a meditation on what it means to be human. At times the writing is so good, so strong, you could remove all the artwork and visuals and just print the words. The artwork, by a variety of comics artists including Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, becomes increasingly out there too, matching Moore's singular vision. In some issues the artwork spins around, the reader having to rotate the comic book to follow the story, with graphic renditions of the hallucinogenic trips, Swamp Thing's consciousness and cosmic, existential battles between heaven and hell. 

The horror elements are truly horrific- there are traditional gothic horrors with werewolves and zombies and a terrifying creature with his head sewn on backwards and a scene at Mornington Crescent tube station that kept me awake for a while after reading it. There is an ecological strand, pioneering for comics in the mid- 80s, and the nuclear/ industrial poisoning of local small town America.  Swamp Thing's partner Abby is arrested and he turns a city into a green wilderness in response, he visits the Parliament Of Trees, is blasted into space and bounces around other worlds and eventually returns to earth with the knowledge he needs- be aware of your power, be wary of anger. 

There are music references all over the place. The character John Constantine is based physically on 80s Sting. The are issues with song titles as their titles- Loving The Alien, Another Green World. Abby's friend Chester is a 60s hippy fond of quoting Bob Dylan and blasting out The Grateful Dead. 

Alan Moore has disowned most of his 80s comic book work. He deconstructed the form with Swamp Thing and then the superhero completely with Watchmen. He felt that everyone misunderstood want he was doing and that film studios and comic book companies missed his points completely. There's an interview here  for more on that and also Moore on writing , literature, fiction, magic and nostalgia. 

I'd like to think he retains some residue of love and affection for Swamp Thing, a forty year old comic book character that retains a lot of power when read today. You can pick up the anthologies, all six of them republished as Saga Of The Swamp Thing, cheaply second hand- very much worth a trip.

In 1989 Pop Will Eat Itself knew the score...

Can U Dig It? (LP Version)

As did The Chameleons three years earlier...

Swamp Thing

And it took The Grid to Top Of The Pops...

Monday's Long Song

Mid- June brings more treats from Sprechen, this week in the shape of Richard Norris remixes of Birds Of Pandæmonium, a track called Days Go By. Indeed they do- it seems like only a few weeks ago it was the New Year and now we're almost half way through the year. Last July I was standing photographing this church in Ypres, my last school trip at my old workplace, as the evening sun hit it and that doesn't feel like it was eleven months ago either. 

But, back to the music, Days Go By comes with four versions, two remixes- a vocal and a dub of each. The Rooms Of Percussion Mix is long and low slung, a chuggy monster with a bassline that writhes and buckles, some tripped out FX and a reverb drenched vocal. Slo and lo psychedelic cosmische that sounds like it would have fitted perfectly in an Andrew Weatherall DJ set a decade ago. 

The Stripped Mix is every bit the equal, trippier too with backwards parts, FX spiraling round, a nagging thudding rhythm and guitars. Dark dub disco, ideal for mirrorball situations. All four versions can be bought/ listened to at Sprechen's Bandcamp. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Emphasise difference.

I responded to this with Iggy Pop's journey from 1973 to 1977, from Death Trip to Lust For Life and with The Clash who went from White Riot in 1976 to Death Is A Star in 1983. 

Someone pointed out this week when commenting on the race riots in Southampton and Belfast that they didn't think this was the kind of White Riot Joe Strummer was talking about which is indeed true. Joe would have been appalled by the rise of far right politics in the UK. But I digress...

The Bagging Area OS squad came up with some great replies emphasising difference- Martin Carthy covering Slade, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood's very different voices, Thomas Dolby and Prefab Sprout, Talk Talk, Cindytalk, Rodney Allen's Happy Sad, Paula Abdul and a cartoon cat...

... Elvis, Propaganda, Donny and Marie Osmond, Tonio K, and Boogie Down Productions. Thanks everyone- Chris, Walter, C, Khayem, Ernie, The Swede, Jase, Al G, Rol and Beerfueled as ever for your considered contributions.

This week's card says this- Ghost Echoes.

Just a few days before I turned the card over I finished Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids. It was published in 2010 and I've no idea why I only got a copy recently but I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful, powerful and poetic account of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti promised Robert she'd tell his story as he lay dying from complications due to AIDS. She attempted to do this with The Coral Sea but was often unable to get through a reading of the poem. Twenty years after his death, she felt able to write their story down. Her use of the written word is beautiful, as you might expect- she's a wordsmith if nothing else. The book is gripping, open and honest, with versions of their two childhoods and then their chance encounter in New York. She writes about her move to New York as a nineteen year old, an intense and slightly damaged young woman in love with Arthur Rimbaud, inspired by The Doors and Bob Dylan. Her early life in the city is a life of penury, of living hand to mouth and sometimes sleeping in doorways. Eventually she meets Robert (he rescues her from a predatory middle aged man who has taken her out for a meal and now expects something in return) and they live together as lovers and as artists, a completely bohemian life, inspiring each other. Robert is clearly struggling with his sexuality during this period and eventually they split but remain together. Their move to the Hotel Chelsea and the people they meet there changes both their lives and their relationship and their art. Just Kids tells their story up to the release of Horses, Patti finding her calling as a poet and then merging poetry with rock 'n' roll- and then to Robert's death in 1992. 

The copy I have has extra material at the book, and Robert Mapplethorpe's ghost is present there in photos and drawings, in poems and art. He haunts the pages as he undoubtedly still haunts Patti. In a sense though, in the pages that make up the bulk of the book, the story of Robert and Patti, he is very much alive; she brings him (and a lost world, New York in the late 60s and early 70s) to life. In the book, after speaking to a very ill Robert on the phone in 1992, a conversation she knows will be their last, she wakes up a few hours later and intuits his death.

Land (Part One: Horses Part Two: Land Of A Thousand Dances)

There is no shortage of songs with the word ghost in the title- step up The Gun Club, Andrew Weatherall, The White Stripes and Tegan and Sarah, Fine Yong Cannibals, The Fall and R. Dean Taylor, Daniel Avery, Broken Chanter, The Jam, Reverb Delay, Kristen Hersh, The Orb, Burning Spear, The Replacements, The Vendetta Suite,  Denise Sherwood, Hollie Cook, Trentemoller and The Style Council among others.... on and on we could go. 

This 2019 song from Circle Square though seems the one that has both ghosts and echoes contained within, Richard Norris and Martin Dubka's Ghost In The Machine,  a voice trapped inside a machine, echoing on and out for as long as the machine is plugged in.

Feel free to drop your own Ghost echoes into the comment box. 

River's Song

Richard Norris never stops, a endless flow of music coming from his monthly subscription at Bandcamp via his studio in Lewes. The latest piece of music is River's Song, the first fruits from a forthcoming album. Richard acquired some clips of 8mm film and then asked on social media for people to send him any further pieces of film they might have. The album, titled 8mm, is a musical response to those flickering images, past lives clicking and flickering by, captured by 1960s cine cameras on Kodak film. 

River's Song is a tremendously affecting and evocative piece of music, three minutes of treated piano/ keys very much in the Hauntology arena, the ghosts of people and lost places preserved on an obsolete film format several decades ago. River's Song is a version of lost futures idea of hauntology, as expounded by Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher, captured in three minutes of piano. 

Seventy Minutes From GL11

Back in February Todmorden's Gold Lion pub celebrated its 11th birthday with a weekend of entertainment with Hot Chip's Joe Goddard on the Friday night and on Saturday Deeply Armed playing live upstairs and David Holmes downstairs. The afternoon also had us playing, The Flightpath Estate, from 2pm through until the evening. We had plans to recreate our entire set but for various reasons that hasn't happened but I'd pulled my parts of the set together and it occurred to me that rather than them sitting unused I may as well sequence them together as one piece and share them here. So this is a twelve song selection of what I played at The Golden Lion- Dan, Martin, Baz and Mark's tunes are all missing I'm afraid- keeping track of  what I played is hard enough- and maybe one day we'll sort the full setlist out and post it.

Adam's Flightpath Estate Set From GL11

• Arrival Ft. Kevin McCormick: Common Place (Thought Leadership Remix)
• Cluster: Zum Wohl
• Captain Beefheart and His Magic  Band: Observatory Crest
• Cowboy Junkies: Sweet Jane (Mojo Filter Junkie Re- Love)
• A Mountain Of One: Innocent Reprise
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Warpaint: Disco// Very (Richard Norris Remix)
• X- Press 2: Witchi Tai To (Two Lone Swordsmen remix)
• Doves: Kingdom Of Rust (Prins Thomas Remix)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Tarantula
• Secret Soul Society: See You Dance Again
• Mark Lanegan: Ode To Sad Disco

Arrival's 12" single came out at the start of January, the year's first essential release for me, two tracks from the Stockport duo with the wonderful guitar playing of Kevin McCormick at their core. Thought Leadership, also a guitarist and also from Stockport, remixed Common Place pulling many different threads into one piece of music. 

Cluster's Zum Wohl is from their 1976 album Sowiesoso, a favourite of mine, an album where Cluster and Conny Plank regrouped in rural West Germany and made pastoral ambient electronic/ synth cosmische. 

Captain Beefheart's Observatory Crest made a late jump into my digital record box for the Lion's 11th birthday. I fond myself humming it in the week leading up to the event and it fell into the afternoon vibe I was aiming for. It came out in 1974 on his Bluejeans And Moonbeams album, an uncharacteristically accessible and mainstream sounding record for the good Captain. 

Cowboy Junkies' cover of Sweet Jane came out in 1988 on their majestic Trinity Sessions album. It gained Lou Reed's approval, the song done the way it should have been back when The Velvet Underground made Loaded. Cowboy Junkies have spent the last two week's touring the UK and they played Manchester last Sunday. I was really tempted to go but also tickets were £53 plus fees and it felt like a lot of money. Mojo Filter's Balearic edit is from 2015 and he doesn't do too much to it, just add a subtle electronic undercarriage and a bit of a sunset sheen. 

Innocent Reprise is from A Mountain Of One's EP2, originally out in 2007 and then compiled with EP1 as Collected Works. Lovely sunbaked Balearic folk. 

Asperitas is from an album Thurston Moore put out in early February this year, six long guitar instrumentals inspired by skyscapes of the British Isles, an album called Guitar Explorations Of Cloud Formations. Asperitas is several guitar parts, some controlled feedback and a primitive drum machine. It's a really good album ranging from chilled and krauty to noisy and if by any remote chance he's reading this, vinyl please Thurston. 

We played in rotation at GL11, three tracks each and then handing over to the next Flightpather. Richard Norris' remix of Warpaint came later on in the afternoon, the pub filling up a bit and I can't remember who went before me or what they played but it must have inspired me to turn the bpms up a little and go into dancier territory. Back in 2014 Warpaint were very much a going concern, their California post- punk/ dub sounds getting lots of attention. Richard's remix is one of his best- an indie rock gone Balearic monster.

Two Lone Swordsmen's remix of X- Press 2 is from 2006, Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood heading into the garage rock/ rockabilly sounds that would come to fruition on 2007's Wrong Meeting. Witchi Tai To is a Native American chant that Jim Pepper turned into a hit single in 1971. Recorded in 1969, peyote jazz fusion. 

Doves Kingdom Of Rust was from the 2006 album of the same name. The Prins Thomas remix of the song is a beauty, the guitars and bass circling round each other, Jimi's windswept vocal nailing a certain type of Mancunian melancholy with references to black birds and cooling towers and then the strings swoop in...

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo. His cover of Colourbox's Tarantula came out in February this year. The wandering trumpet line and bubbling bass dance around each other.

Secret Soul Society's edit of Neil Young's 1992 song Harvest Moon dropped into my inbox a few weeks before GL11, the line 'I wanna see you dance again' going round and round, a dub/ disco version of 90s Neil Young.

Mark Lanegan's Ode To Sad Disco always works. New Order- esque dance/ rock from 2012's Blues Funeral, a throbbing sequencer bassline, synths and guitars and packed with very visual lyrical imagery- one of those songs that always hits the spot for me. 

Ambient Friday

Ambient music is enjoying something of a heyday. During lockdown many artists took a turn towards it, the restrictions of that time preventing people from meeting and possibly also some were sharing spaces where other members of their households were working from home meant that making quieter music was necessary. Ambient sounds, synth drones and long gentle pieces seemed to fit the unreality of lockdown too. Richard Norris had already begun making ambient music/ deep listening as part of his Music For Healing series, music designed to aid concentration, contemplation and mental health and his ambient series thrived during 2020/ 2021 and is still going strong today. Ambient music as therapy. Ambient music to replace tinnitus. Ambient music to aid relaxation. His latest monthly long ambient track, Patterns 5, came out a few days ago. It's here. 

There's an elemental aspect to ambient music too, a sense that it is connected to nature, that it can be a response to or soundtrack too the natural world. In his book Monolithic Undertow Harry Sword traces the long history of drone music, from Neolithic burial chambers in Malta to 20th century Ladbroke Grove and beyond. The drone is a central part of ambient and its appearance and reappearance throughout human history adds to this feeling that ambient music is not just elemental but a core part of the human musical experience. Brian Eno's conception of ambient music was formed while recovering from an accident, bedbound, and had been given a album of harp music. He put the record on the stereo and hobbled back to bed and then realised he'd left the volume too low. He was too tired to get out of bed and turn the volume knob and as he lay in his bed he tuned in to a new way of listening to music- low volume and a part of the household sounds, internal and external, rain falling and pattering on the window, the letterbox rattling, a dog barking down the street. Music that blended in and became the background to life. When recovered he went on to record a number of landmark ambient albums. This is from Ambient 4: On Land from 1982. 

Unfamiliar Wind (Leeks Hill)

Another spur to the creation of ambient music is the recent availability of cheap technology- copies vintage synthesisers and new machines at accessible prices means that buying a couple of synths and recording the sounds is easy. Making something interesting that other people want to listen to is maybe more difficult but the old punk instruction 'here's a chord, here's another, here's a third, now form a band!' is rewritten for ambient experimentation and musicians- 'here's a synth, here's another, here's a digital recorder, now make an ambient album!'.

All of this is a long winded preamble to two new ambient albums that are worthy of your attention.

Yulyseus is a Glaswegian ambient/ drone artist with a new album out today, Nothing Under Heaven. Ringing drones, layers of synth noise, the sound of a violin bow, field recordings, rand falling melodies that soar and swell, almost in sync with whatever you're doing- walking with headphones in, lying on the sofa and scrolling on your phone, washing up, driving, staring at the sun as it sets behind the trees in the park. It works as Eno's background music but is also totally rewarding when listened to closely. Yulyseus says that the album 'reflects an ongoing search for clarity and meaning in uncertain times' and it can definitely accompany that feeling even if the uncertain times are still there when the album is over. You can listen to or buy Nothing Under Heaven at Bandcamp. 

From Glasgow to Leicester. Harvey Sharman- Dunn's newest album is an ambient work called The River At Ælla's Stone, seven tracks recorded using a variety of analogue synths that trace a journey from the flood plain of the Soar Valley to the south coast of Malta and a Neolithic site called the Megalithic Temples, a site that predates Stonehenge, the world's oldest free standing stone buildings. Harvey has sequenced the seven tracks as a vinyl album, the first side starting with The River, bubbling synths and water droplets, leading into The Packhorse Bridge and then the heavier drones of Ælla's Stone, seven minutes of slowness. Side two ends with Mnajdra, an ambient response to the Neolithic temples of Malta (the starting point of Harry Sword's book). It's easy to imagine the drones and oscillations of Mnajdra as music created by our ancestors five thousand years ago. You can hear and/ or buy The River At Ælla's Stone at Bandcamp. 

Fifty Minutes Of A Mountain Of One

A Mountain Of One recently called time on the band, a four piece that in two bursts of activity, once in the 00s and then again in the 2020s, made some beautifully sunkissed psychedelic Balearica. They produced a sound that had a tinge of darkness to it, songs that had been left out in the sun too long and was now a little feverish, the result of a night out on holiday that ended up in a strange place that you could never find again. There are echoes of 70s and 80s bands, of weird Europop summer singles, of psychedelia and late 80s/ early 90s acid house, of guitar bands lost in the outer fields at summer festivals, yacht rock where the yacht is taking in water. 

The group put out three albums (2009's Institute Of Joy, 2022's existential Balearica Stars Planet Dust Me and a 2023 Ricardo Villalobos remix of SPDM), a compilation (2007's Collected Works) and various EPs and singles, which provide rich pickings for a mix- this one has a nice flow to it I think. 

Fifty Minutes Of A Mountain Of One

• Here Comes Nothing
• Innocent Reprise
• Surrender (Generalisation Dub)
• Star
• Star (GLOK Starlight Dub)
• Stars Planet Dust Me
• Ride (Time And Space Machine Remix)
• Can't Be Serious

Here Comes Nothing is from Collected Works, a 2007 CD that compiled the five songs from EP1 and the five from EP2 plus two extra ones- Here Comes Nothing and Brown Piano (which was also a single). Acoustic guitars and electric ones, swirly production, piano, wordless backing vocals- a heady stew. 

Innocent Reprise is from EP2, released in 2007- a psychedelic folk instrumental with a solid dance groove and some lovely guitar and electric piano melody lines. The choppy, fuzzy rhythm guitar part towards the end is nicely frazzled. 

Surrender was on 2022's Stars Planet Dust Me, an eight song, double vinyl downtempo masterpiece, one of my favourite records of that year. In 2024 Damian Harris remixed Surrender with his Midfield General hat on bringing some dubby funkiness. 

Star is from Stars Planet Dust Me, one of the key tracks on it. Laid back with a soulful vocal and an 80s Mediterranean beach bar piano part. Loafers, no socks, Euro- hippy braids and bracelets. Andy Bell's GLOK remix is a superb drawn out dub version, electronic drums and chuggy rhythms, the female backing vox recurring and the bass and FX reverberating all over the place. 

The Stars Planet Dust Me album's title track was an appropriately cosmic excursion, choral vocal and organ, very spaced out production and wide eyed questions. Proggy. 

Ride was a 2008 single and opening song on the Institute Of Joy album, and was remixed by Richard Norris during one of his Time And Space Machine phases. Ibizan acoustic guitars, rattling percussion and propulsive bass with Richard Norris setting the psychedelic space rock controls for the heart of the sun. 

Can't Be Serious is from EP1 from 2007, off kilter 80s Balearic pop with a distorted spiraling guitar solo, and a vocal that answers its own question. 

Monday's Long Song

This is new on the Group Mind label, Richard Norris' home for deep listening and ambient music. Deep Earth Network's Land album is just two long tracks, twenty two minutes each (one on each side of very green vinyl that arrived through the letter boxes of Norris subscribers last week). The cover art is nicely retro- futuristic, a triangle and an eye inside it, reminiscent of a 1960s Penguin paperback. 

Land starts off with one of those voices from 1950s BBC radio, a man saying, 'there's nothing to do now but wait for nature to perform its miracle in its own good time'. Bells and chimes drift in. The sound of water running down a rockface. Another voice, birds, some percussion. A drone and whistling. A woman's voice mentioning the landscape. More chirruping. A church bell with a deep drone underneath. Harps and hiss, more water, found sounds, more voices, the drones grow stronger, bagpipes (maybe), musical boxes and chimes, keys, a church organ perhaps. It's a gentle, ambient psychedelic trip, in a place where pastoral and cosmic come together, a cousin of The KLF's Chill Out but out in the wild on its own too. 

D.E.N. (Deep Earth Network) is Danny Hammond. You can listen to Land 1 at Bandcamp. Land 2 arrives in early March. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's card said Into the impossible. I went with an instant response, The Drum by The Impossibles (the Andrew Weatherall remix from 1991). Ernie agreed and mentioned his 7" copy of the original by Slapp Happy from 1974. Ernie also had Peter O'Toole singing in The Impossible Dream in the 1972 film Man Of La Mancha. Walter went with Medicine Head in 1973 with a mathematical impossibility, One Plus One Is One. Anonymous consulted a search engine and got Into The Impossible by Saint Profane and another Anonymous (or possibly the same one) suggested Impossible by The Charlatans. Khayem came up with Kylie's Impossible Princess and Bon Iver's cover of Talk Talk's I Believe. 

Spendid commented that there were several ways to take the suggestion Into the impossible and settled on Jessica Curry's So Let Us Melt, a computer game score that captures the 'impossible wonder of childhood... but comes closer to describing the aching loss of adulthood'. Indeed. Jessica's album is here- it's well worth your time. 

I did wonder, as a response to Spendid's comments, if I should be resisting the temptation to go with gut instinct when turning over the card, not just go for a song or artist name that the card suggests, but be a little less literal and a little more more lateral- surely what Eno and Schmidt intended.

Today's Oblique Saturday card is this...

Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place

I slept on this. Extreme music is an interesting one. Artists that go to extremes are often admirable and worthy of our respect but they don't always make for fun listening experiences. I'm sure you can think of your own examples. 

I often think of Gnod as an extreme band- a Manchester collective with a rotating cast of players, born from a scene in the 00s around Islington Mill in Salford. They work with sound and light artists to create fully immersive experiences. They have played at a night called Gesantkunstwerk (German word, translates as 'whole arts work'). They cite Kurt Vonnegut as being as important to their music as any musical influences. So it goes. 

In 2017 they released an album called Just Say No To The Psycho Right- Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine (as statement even truer now than it was then- the psycho right- wing capitalist fascist industrial death machine is out of control in the USA right now). Gnod's music is loud, everything into the red, sludge powered psyche- rock. Maybe it's difficult to be extreme while making guitar music in the 2010s/ 20s but Gnod do it and do it well. 

Real Man

Early Husker Du- the Land Speed Record Husker Du- are extreme too, a live album from 1982 that flies through seventeen songs in half an hour, breakneck, amphetamine hardcore punk. By the time they hit 1984 and their double album concept opus Zen Arcade, they had an album that ended with the fourteen minute long jazz- hardcore punk instrumental Reoccurring Dreams. In between the two they opened 1984's New Day Rising with the title track, a coruscating wall of buzzsaw guitars,, breaking glass and thumping tinny drums, just three words repeated over and over...

New Day Rising

I then thought about going into the industrial techno area, the 'full on panel beaters from Prague' (quoth Andrew Weatherall) of the 90s, the sound of a metal bin being kicked, or Belgian hardcore and Dutch gabba, dance music taken to its extremities. Weatherall himself visited this area with Dave Hedger as Lords Of Afford, gratuitously hardcore techno as heard on this 1994 remix of Steve Bicknell...

Untitled (Lords Of Afford Mix)

Taking the word Extreme literally threw up Extreme Noise Terror, the extreme noise band from Ipswich. In 1992 they appeared on stage with The KLF (a duo who definitely took things to extremes) at the Brits, a noise metal version of 3am Eternal that ended with Bill Drummond firing a machine gun (firing blanks) at the assembled Brits audience. Then they dumped a dead sheep outside the venue. 

The KLF v Extreme Noise Terror 3am Eternal (Top Mix)

It occurred to me that extreme music can sometimes become a competition, a band racing to take their sound to the nth degree, the furthest point it can go. In 1989 Napalm Death recorded You Suffer, their speed metal/ grindcore reduced to a song that is 0.03 seconds long, released on 7". The lyrics apparently are, 'You suffer/ But why?'

The first half of the Oblique Strategy card is Go to an extreme... The second half is ...move back to a more comfortable place. I'm not sure I like the idea of music being comfortable- comfortable sounds dull and easy, like a sofa or a pair of elastic waist trousers. I've nothing against either, trousers and sofas are important parts of life, but I'm not sure art and music should be seen as such. 

There's a fairly well known phrase, 'art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed'. Banksy has used it but it's attributed to Cesar A. Cruz and a 1997 poem with the same title, a poem about the horrors humans inflict on each other- imperialism, war, capitalism, bigotry- and suddenly we're back at Gnod again. 

But comforting the disturbed is important, music as medicine and as a means of relief, as transportation. I know that music can do this- it's been incredibly important to me in the time since Isaac died in November 2021 and I've written before about a long Saturday afternoon, a week after his death, an afternoon where it seemed like it never got light and that it might go on forever. My physical symptoms were appalling, not least raging tinnitus. I hadn't been able to listen to any music since he died, nothing seemed to be what I wanted to hear. But I needed something that afternoon, if nothing else just to mark the passing of time and drown out the noise in my ears. I put on one of Richard Norris' Music For Healing EPs, probably the December 2021 release, two twenty minute ambient tracks and they did the trick, some aural balm, just enough to make an impact on me. I followed it with some ambient Americana by SUSS and somehow the music helped. A few weeks ago, to mark Martin Luther King Day, Richard released The Corn Is Coming, a four minute ambient track, made in an hour as part of the Mutual Defiance/ In Place Of War campaign. It's here. 

Feel free to make your own Oblique Saturday suggestions in the comment box. 

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

This is my third and final Sunday mix pulling together some of my favorite tracks from 2025 (the first one, ambient and instrumental, is here and the second, dub and dance, is here). This one starts out folky, strays from dub to cosmische and Balearic, and picks from the past too with two covers, some Stone Roses inspiration and Mazzy Star, songs borrowing from the years 1971, 1989, 1993 and 1999. Going back to go forwards. 

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Summer Song
• Coyote: Battle Weary
• Stereolab: Flashes From Everywhere
• Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U Pt. 4 (Jupiter/ Reprise)
• Saint Etienne: Alone Together (Hove Lawns Sunset Mix)
• Pale Blue Eyes: How Long Is Now (Richard Norris Remix)
• Red Snapper: Ban- Di- To
• Five Green Moons and Brix Smith: Boudica
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker
• 10:40 Present Retro Fit: Lavender Mist
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Joao Leao is a Brazillian- Canadian artist. This cover of a Nick Drake song came out on 7" in February on Toronto label Local Dish, a lovely, slightly tropical and ever so sweetly melancholic version of the original. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's solo album Lunga was a 2025 highlight, an album with some songs that date back to his teenage years growing up in Todmorden and the flipside to Syd's main job as leader of Working Men's Club. Lunga is downtempo, personal, acoustic guitar based with echoes of Syd Barrett in the singing and Nick Drake in the playing. Summer Song is reflective, a little lost, the sound of the end of summer. 

Notts Balearic veterans Coyote continue to drip feed new songs and tracks. 2025 saw a six track mini- album, Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, a collaboration with Peaking Lights and two singles including the one here, the dubbed out sounds of Battle Weary with the vocal sample iterating, 'Sufferin' is a poor man's crime'.  

Stereolab returned after a long gap with a new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film, an album stuffed full of vintage synths, motorik rhythms, wit, invention and (crucially) good songs. Flashes From Everywhere starts out like an easy listening track and then goes krauty and flirts with being poppy. 

Stretford's Psychederek released the four track EP Thinkin' Bout U in August, four different versions of the song, covering everything from Pacific State style dance to broken down, beach bar Balearica (Pt. 4, the one I've included here), kind of proving there's no such thing as a definitive or final version. You can always find another way to do something. 

Saint Etienne released four versions/ remixes of Along Together (a track from 2024's The Night). The Hove Lawns Sunset mix re- imagines West Sussex as a Mediterranean island, slo mo beats and sunset by the pool vibes. Bob, Pete and Sarah then announced an album that would be their last and a tour this year that will be ditto. I think we'll miss them when they're gone.

Pale Blue Eyes are from Sheffield, an indie/ krauty trio. Richard remixed the song as a cosmische autobahn trip, soaring away from South Yorkshire and into 70s West Germany.

Red Snapper were all over my 2025. A tour in March to celerbate the 30th anniversary of Reeled And Skinned, a new album Barb And Feather, and an appearance on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 with the percussion mayhem of Qraqeb. Ban- Di- To is amped up jump blues done 2025 style. 

Five Green Moons second album, Moon 2, was a second strong dub/ folk set from Justin Robertson, who is really in a purple patch at the moment. Brix Smith appears on Boudica. Surviving The Fall/ leading an uprising against the Romans- similarly troublesome I'd imagine. 

Raz and Afla released their cover of Aphex Town's Windowlicker, an Afro- futurist dancefloor bomb that repositions Aphex Twin somewhere new. 

Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 released An Alternative History back in April, a track Jesse made inspired by a post here at Bagging Area where I imagined an alternate history of The Stone Roses, one where they didn't mess it up after June 1990 but kept going and recorded singles, EPs and albums all the way through the 90s culminating in a gig at Raglan Road scout hut in Sale, up the road from me, where Ian and John first rehearsed way back. You can read that post here. Jesse fired up his studio, sampled Ian and built a new/ imaginary Roses track. The third version, Lavender Mist, went all backwards and is named after Jackson Pollock's painting of the same name. For a while Jesse had the idea that I might provide the vocal but I bottled it. Probably for the best. My singing voice hasn't been the same since I gave up smoking. I always planned to include Lavender Mist on an end of year mix but Mani's death in November added an extra poignancy to everything Roses related. You may have seen the photos from the funeral of his former bandmates carrying his coffin out of Manchester cathedral. A very sad loss. 

Four Tet's Mazzy Star sampling Into Dust (Still Falling) was my favourite single of 2025, a lush and slinky tune that (as I said elsewhere) sounded like summer in the summer and sounds like winter in the here and now. Kieran Hebden can do little wrong for me- his album with William Tyler was as good an album as any other released in 2025 and as Four Tet has been on a roll of superb albums in the last decade with New Energy in 2017, Sixteen Oceans in 2020 and Three in 2024.  

Wildflower Glow

Richard Norris has a work ethic second to none, continually creating and producing new music. His latest venture- Moon Dust - is a project with Lol Hammond (of The Drum Club and Slab) and their sole release so far is a three track EP, a trio of versions of a track called The Glow. On the main version Lol plays piano and Richard produces, applying filters, sounds and layers of ambience. It's very much part of Richard's exploration of Deep Listening and ambient sounds, a furrow he's been ploughing for several years now. The two further versions are self explanatory and add more ambience and beauty to something already rather lovely- the Ambient Mix adds a warm drone as a backdrop and halves the piano while the Slowed + Reverb Mix drops an octave or two, slows it right down and adds acres of spacey reverb. Find The Glow at Bandcamp. 

Gulp are a Welsh two piece, Guto Pryce (a Super Furry Animal) and Lindsey Leven. Richard has remixed their single Wildflower, the duo's psychedelic folk pop repurposed as an Ibizan sundown moment, Balearic beats and bouncy bass, lovely piano chords, horns and Lindsay's vocal re- imagined as classic Balearica, everything coming together like peak A Man Called Adam. The EP with original, remix, instrumental and a Ben Chatwin mix is here. 

Back in 2018 Richard remixed Gulp's Morning Velvet Sky, a throbbing electronic disco folk extravaganza. The dub is a supercharged, percussive, repetitive delight. 

Morning Velvet Sky (Richard Norris Dub)

Still Feel The Rain

This record, Still Feel The Rain by Stex, was released on 19th November 1990, thirty five years ago yesterday. 

Still Feel The Rain (The Grid Remix)

It rolls in on a very danceable, very 1990 breakbeat. There's a clipped, funky guitar riff, the spirit of Nile Rodgers has been conjured into acid house. A bumpy bassline, sounding like The Orb or The Grid. And then a vocal, a female lead joined by a male on the chorus, 'I still feel the rain now the storm is over/ Still the cold when you open the door'. Wonderful uptempo house/ pop. 

Stex briefly promised to be a Sly Stone for the 90s. it wasn't to be- an album, Spiritual Dance, didn't follow until 1992. Still Feel The Rain got some music press coverage and should have been a smash hit. The press coverage came via two factors- the single was remixed by The Grid and the guitar was played by Johnny Marr. 

Richard Norris and Dave Ball were just starting out as The Grid in 1990- singles like Floatation and A Beat called Love and an album, Electric Head, saw them flying their flag high. It's easy to see why Johnny Marr was happy to play on Still Feel The Rain. He was post- Smiths, Chic had always been an influence on his guitar playing and in 1990 he was perfectly placed to enjoy acid house. He was repositioning himself away from those Smiths fans who still blamed him for breaking up the band, playing on a slice of good time, acid house pop, grooving in the video with hair cropped short and wearing white with a gold necklace. Johnny's moved on writ large. 

It didn't work out for Stex- there was an album and a handful more singles. Better to have made one great single than none at all and this record is a perfect little time capsule,a postcard from 1990. 

November

This rainbow appeared when I went to the cemetery yesterday to see Isaac, a full arch overhead- it was nice for a moment, this natural display lighting up the grey skies overhead. I try to go every weekend and at least pop by, leave some flowers and say hello. These small acts of remembrance have become important and it feels OK now, funnily it actually feels like we're going to see him in a way. 

November is a fucker. Isaac's birthday is the 23rd (he was 23 when he died and would have been 27 this month had he lived). He died a week after his birthday on the 30th November 2021. Those two dates, so close together, make November really difficult. Last year, the third anniversary, was as bad as the two previous ones- oddly, the actual days themselves weren't too bad- we went to see him and then went and did something with the day that seemed to be fitting. But the build up to his birthday, the next three weeks, and then the week between the two- they're really hard and I think we can all feel that coming again now the calendar's ticked over into November. The day after the anniversary of his death it's December with everything that that month brings. 

I was hoping that this year might be slightly better, a little easier but at the same time I'm not expecting it to be. A friend with experience in these matters but a good few years ahead of us said to me recently that, 'everyone assumes grief is linear and it most certainly isn't'. Which is very true. I'm also in a new workplace where people on the whole don't know my story yet- it just hasn't been easy to drop it into conversation so far- and that adds a new dimension to November. 

As ever music helps. Here are some November songs. 

I can't remember who tipped me off to Bathhouse by Steven Leggett. It came out in 2018, an ambient/ neo- classical, electronic tribute to the Turkish baths in Newcastle- upon- Tyne. Andrew Weatherall played some of it on Music's Not For Everyone so maybe it was one of many hundreds of Weatherall tip offs. 

It's a beautiful album, very much a singular piece of work. You can get the whole thing digitally at Bandcamp. November is the album's penultimate track, it fades in slowly with found sounds (recorded in Crete) and drones and then cello. There's the low end rumble of a single dull thudding drum and the sound of water lapping against the sides of the baths. The ambient sounds and musical instruments drift in and out, the drum comes and goes, and there's the swell of something choral. Quietly stunning. 

November

The only other song I have in front of me with November as its title is a 2009 Echo And The Bunnymen B-side, the flipside to Think I Need It Too (from the album The Fountain). Ian McCulloch had been recording with three musicians in London, trying to do something different. The results still sounded like the Bunnymen so Ian invited Will to go into the studio and they worked on the songs that became The Fountain. The Bunnymen duo of 2009 do indeed sound a little re- invigorated by this and their song November is decent enough. 

November

There are other November songs- November Has Come by Gorillaz, Vashti Bunyan's Rose Hip November, Sandy Denny's Late November, Tom Waits' November, The National's Mr. November and Folk Implosion's Fall Into November could all find a place here but instead I'll go wth the latest in Richard Norris' ling running series of monthly ambient releases, Music For Healing. Richard releases a new twenty minute track at the start of each month. The latest one which arrived in my inbox on 1st November was written by Richard in the aftermath of his bandmate Dave Ball's death, using the synths and instruments that the pair of them used in The Grid- a Minimoog, some Roland, Oberheim and Waldorf machines and was recorded at Richard's studio in Lewes. Deep Down (In B) is most certainly a memorial for Dave, a musical eulogy. You can listen to it here.  

Dave Ball

I don't think this will be the only blog celebrating the life of Dave Ball today and marking his death (Wednesday, aged 66). Dave was a pioneering musician in many ways. He was born in Chester and grew up in Blackpool, surrounded by Northern Soul. His keyboard and arranging skills delivered in style with Soft Cell's cover of Gloria Jones' Tainted Love. Dave met Marc Almond while at Leeds Polytechnic and they became the archetypal 80s synth duo- attention grabbing frontman and psychotic looking synth player. Marc faced all kinds of threats from audiences and Dave would happily weigh into the crowd to deal with anyone who was going too far. Soft Cell wrote many fine singles and songs and were early adopters of the 12" mix, making great use of the extra running time. This 1982 single is a highpoint of the period and genre....

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (12" Extended Version)

Dave's Korg synth is central to the song, a lush and rich piece of synth pop coupled with some wonderfully mournful keyboard runs, woodwind, and Marc's bittersweet vocal, 'Standing in the door of the Pink Flamingo/ Crying in the rain'.

Bedsitter is stunning too, innovative and experimental pop, written from real life and creating mini- films with the music and words. 

Bedsitter (12" Extended Version)

Soft Cell embraced confrontation, Marc's stage presence a visible provocation to 80s homophobes. The pair thrived off it. Dave loved industrial music, a fan of Throbbing Gristle and Suicide, bands who forced you to pick a side. 

After Soft Cell split Dave moved on, playing with Genesis P. Orridge. He played with Psychic TV and through these connections met Richard Norris. They made the Jack The Tab album and at the end of the 80s they became acid house duo The Grid. Richard wrote a long, heartfelt post on social media about Dave yesterday. By coincidence The Grid recently re- released their 1990 single Floatation, a summer of 1990 ambient house classic (which gained a massive Andrew Weatherall remix, the Sonic Swing mix, which added John Squire's guitar from Waterfall to the end). 

To celebrate Floatation's thirty fifth birthday The Grid commissioned some remixes. This one, the Mark Barrott Ibiza Sunrise '90 Rework does exactly what it promises, Dave and Richard's 1990 music repurposed for 2025. 

The Grid had huge success with Swamp Thing and played around the world, a second bite at the cherry for Dave Ball. He produced, played and wrote with Kylie, Gavin Friday, Erasure and remixed David Bowie. Soft Cell reunited. The Grid played again this summer. He died in his sleep on Wednesday after some periods of ill health, one of modern music's unsung heroes, a man who in his words 'lurked in the background' but who did much more than that really. 

RIP Dave Ball. 

Monday's Long Song

I've written before about Richard Norris' long running music For Healing series, a project he started back in 2020 with the specific intention (due to his own personal circumstances at the time) of making music that would work as medicine, an aural balm to block out stresses and to heal troubled psyches. 

I've also written before about how in the days after Isaac died I couldn't listen to any music but needed something to drown out the silence and to give me some relief from my then raging, grief- induced tinnitus. The first piece of music I could listen to was one of Richard's twenty minute long Music For Healing pieces. I contacted him some time after and told him about this and he said it was exactly what he wanted the music to do, to act as relief. He's continued to make these ambient pieces ever since, releasing them on the first of the month. 

This year's theme has been oceans and two weeks ago Oceans 7 dropped into my inbox, subtitled Still Water, recorded in Richard's Lewes studio. This one is a beauty, an ambient/ deep listening dive into warm seas, gentle drones and a treated piano. Press play, sit back, do nothing, float, reflect. Get it at Richard's Bandcamp. 

Twenty Five Minutes Of Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2

Our second album, Sounds From The Flightpath Estate, went on sale for pre- orders last week (as announced here on Monday and on various Flightpath Estate social media platforms). We are pressing 1500 copies. We did 1000 of Volume 1 and sold them all, something that still amazes me although it shouldn't- the music was so good it should have been no surprise we'd sell out. Flightpath and Rude Audio main man Mark Ratcliff has done a taster mix of all ten tracks for Volume 2, deftly sequenced and mixed, with the unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track making its presence known more than once. 

The unreleased version of Lick Wid Nit Wit stands alongside anything else Sabres recorded and released. It got it sole airing when Andrew Weatherall played it as part of his legendary 1993 Essential Mix at the BBC and even then that version is not the same as the one we have. 

As well as that track Mark has mixed in the nine other brand new tracks, music by Richard Fearless, Red Snapper, A Certain Ratio re-worked by Number, David Harrow, Bedford Falls Players, Dicky Continental, Richard Norris, Unit 14 and a cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss by Sleaford Mods. Mark's mix, featuring excerpts from all ten tracks, can be found here. Mark has adeptly brought together mid- 90s dub/ techno skank, 21st century machine techno, Manc noir, North African percussion, chuggy cosmische, thumpy acid house, clattering Notts post- punk and much more into one sequence- you can play guess which track is which.

Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2, double vinyl clad in a beautiful sleeve courtesy of Personality Crisis, can be pre- ordered from Golden Lion Sounds and/ or the GLS Bandcamp. There are still some copies left but don't hang around- as with Volume 1 there will be no repress. When they're gone, they're gone. 

How Long Is Now/ Galactic Ride

Sheffield band Pale Blue Eyes released an album earlier this year called New Place. The band are a trio, married couple Matt and Lucy Board (him vocals and guitars, her drums and synths) and bassist Aubrey Simpson. They moved from South Devon to South Yorkshire and embraced the Steel City's love of electronics and synths, making an album that sounds inspire by the krauty sounds of Neu! and Harmonium and the perpetual motion of the autobahn. The album is here. 

A month ago a Richard Norris remix of opening track How Long Is Now came out in both vocal and instrumental form. Richard is no stranger to the cosmische sounds of West Germany in the 70s and set the controls for the heart of the Mittel Europe, a Klaus Dinger motorik drumbeat and throbbing sequenced bassline propelling the song to new speeds with Matt's guitars gone all Rother- esque. All the versions are available at Bandcamp. 

Gordon Kaye has been around almost as long as Richard Norris, DJing in clubs in his hometown of Brighton since the mid- 80s and starting a night at The Escape Club called The Sunshine Playroom that became a lynchpin for South Coast 80s psychedelic/ indie, frequented by Alan McGee, Primal Scream and Norman Cook. Since the late 80s he's DJed all around the world, playing indie- dance and various shades of house and dance music. Recently he's reignited his passion for making music and the first fruits are a nine minute cosmic chug glide called Galactic Ride, synth arpeggios firing off against the burbling bassline and as with Pale Blue Eyes, a sense of perpetual motion, building steadily ever upwards. Listen to it at Soundcloud. 

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.

Norris Triptych

Richard Norris is over forty years into a career and life in music and shows no signs of slowing up or losing inspiration. His Bandcamp subscription service pays off every month with the continuation of his Music For Healing series, a long running ambient/ deep listening music monthly release that is specifically designed to help listeners find peace and calm via twenty minute ambient pieces, all recorded live and in one take at 98 bpm. For 2025 the Music For Healing series has moved into oceans. March 2025 release is called Southern Deep and starts out with Mariana trench style depths followed by waves of synth chords. Find it here. It might help deal with the daily madness coming from the USA.

Richard's Oracle Sound dub outlet is up to volume four, an album out at the start of April with three slices of deep modern dubwise sounds released last week. The Oracle series has grown with each album, out digitally and on vinyl, and the latest is no slouch. Connected Dub is fractured, broken dub,slow motion drums and snakey bass and a very messed up vocal. Earthsea Dub goes slower and deeper still, waves lapping on the shores and a melodica wending its way. Flying Crane Dub is my favourite of the three cuts so far, a long sonorous piano note repeating over bass and drums dredged from the depths of the ocean. Oracle Sound Vol 4 is here. 

As if to prove he can do any electronic style easily and at will Richard has another release lined up for release next week, this one under the name of Dr No with Una Camille on vocals. Let Yourself Go is four four house, a main room banger with bass and bleeps that force the feet to move and Una's vocals rich and deep delight. Early 90s Manchester- style house music vibes. The EP comes with two Richard Norris mixes and a pair of Leo Zero remixes, one electro and one acidic, that do exactly what they promise, deep and dark fun, the Acid Mix particularly. Get Let Yourself Go here.