Crooked

Uptempo feelgood dance music for Friday from the current queen of that kind of thing. Roisin Murphy's Machine was one of 2020's highlights, an album that ran the gamut from house to disco, Roisin's vision and entire temperament over four sides of vinyl. The man she made it with, Richard Barratt aka DJ Parrot also aka Crooked Man, has now remixed the whole album and turned it into one of 2021's highloghts. Like the source material the tracks are strong enough to standalone as dancefloor smashers and designed to be listened to at home, the songs segued into one another. 

The opener takes Machine's Kingdom Of Ends, a song which was a masterclass in barely controlled tension, which threatened the biggest drop but held it back like a dam constantly about to burst. Kingdom Of Machines takes the tense synths and brings in a bleepy bassline before the kickdrum starts hammering away.

Crooked Machine's closer Hardcore Jealousy employs a rave hoover and a breakbeat, the sound of 1989 in 2021- not in a revivalist or nostalgic way, just in a Roisin/ Crooked way. 

Goldenrods

On the side of what used to British Home Stores in Stockport there is a full length set of murals, five concrete panels with tiled pictures illustrating the history of the town, commissioned in 1978. The murals/ mosaics were the work of two designers, Joyce Pallott and Henry Collins. BHS shut down many years ago, the building currently empty and at an unloved end of the Merseyway shopping centre. The panel pictured above, photographed last weekend when the sun came out briefly,  shows Stockport's coat of arms (on the right) and then three figures- from right to left, a Cheshire farmer, Samuel Bamford (radical reformer of the 19th century from Middleton, north Manchester) and Richard Cobden (main picture. Cobden was a Manchester resident, manufacturer and radical MP who stood as candidate for Stockport, a free trade advocate, and anti- Corn Laws, anti- Opium Wars and anti- slavery campaigner). I hope that as Stockport redevelops itself they are not lost- a 2016 campaign to have them listed failed.

One of my favourite albums from 2019 was Calming Signals by Nashville artist Rich Ruth, a marriage of noise and ambient music,-drones, synths and guitars, equal parts crystalline jazz freak out and meditative listening experience. This song, Coming Down, was the opener. 

Coming Down

Rich is back with a new album called Where's There Life, six tracks written during the early months of the pandemic. This is the prelude to the album, an instrumental ambient experiment called Goldenrods. 

Forbearance

The photos show the car park above the Merseyway shopping centre in Stockport and it's magnificent concrete screen wall (designed by Alan Boyson). One of the upsides of lockdown has been deserted public spaces and the opportunity to explore them with no cars or people around.

Back in April I posted Jah Wobble's first lockdown recording, an meandering jazzy dub instrumental he called Lockdown, recorded in his home in Stockport. Since then he has added several other new recordings, Lockdowns 2- 5 (all available at Bandcamp for  a pound each). This one, Lockdown 5 (Forbearance) is my current favourite, a bit ambient, a bit dub, a bit some of those jazz sounds he's been experimenting with.



Jah has making the best of it and his time adding Lockdown 6 (End Of Lockdown) and Lockdown (Reprise). Sequenced together on a playlist/CD the seven songs make for a good mini- album. Stockport vibes are good for the soul.