Keep The Mystique

The Secret Soul Society operate out of South Wales, the name for the music of Cal Gibson. Cal relocated to South Wales from Nottingham after spending much of the 2000s making music as half of Neon Heights. He picked up and plugged back in after some time away from music and now has a new album out on Hell Yeah!. Keep The Mystique is fifteen tracks long exploring a variety of styles and sounds, each track a contrast to the one that came before it. There's an off kilter nature to The Secret Soul Society, a wonky, psychedelic edge to the songs, music that draws from dub, house, jazz, soul, reggae, Afro- funk and various points in between. There are snippets of songs/ samples/ sounds dropped in and out that give the album a kaleidoscopic quality; there's always something always going on on the edges that makes the ears prick up. 

Keep The Mystique opens with a smooth one- two, the songs Cards On The Table and The Island gliding by. Third track Searching steps things up a gear, a slightly faster pace and dubby bassline pushing on, while a guitar twangs away and a voice repeats the line, 'I've been searching for you everywhere'. 

The second half of the album has a run of songs that struck chords with me, songs that are trippy, wigged out fun. Freak Scene (not a cover of the Dinosaur Jr song of the same name) is bouncy and percussive, equal parts tropical dance music and dubby house.

Whoop Whoop is a joy, several minutes of loopy, cosmic Balearica, a lighter than air feeling bottled and played over a driving two note synthbass, with splashes, whooshes and other found sound exotica dropped in and out. 

Bang The Bongo is bongos (obvs), rattling rhythms and hand drums joined by synths, keys and chanting. Keep The Mystique can be bought and listened to at Bandcamp. 
 

Forty Five Minutes Of Hardway Bros Remixes

After A Love From Outer Space at the Golden Lion in Todmorden last night and yesterday's ALFOS post I thought Sean Johnston in Hardway Bros mode would be a good subject for a Sunday mix. I first attempted it weeks ago but for some reason lost the mix- the lost mix is always the best version. Then, trying again more recently, I tried to bite off more than I could chew, including remixes old and new and some of Hardway Bros original music, while trying to keep it around forty five minutes (much of Sean's music, remixes and original, comes in at ten minutes long). I went back to the drawing board, decided to only use remixes this time around and sling together a bag of cosmic chug, house/ disco/ dub and indie- dance- there's a transition in this which is a bit untidy but I've left it as it is. There are so many more remixes that could have been included here. Something to come back to at a future date. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Hardway Bros Remixes

• The Secret Soul Society x Hardway Bros: Yo We've Landed (Hardway Bros Remix Redux)
• Islandman: Godless Ceremony (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Out Cold: Lovin' Arms (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Peak High: Was That All It Was (Hardway Bros Remix)
• Aimes: A Star... In The Sky (Hardway Bros Remix)

The Secret Soul Society Yo We've Landed came out in 2021, one of many remixes Sean did that year, Secret Soul's Cal Gibson's head spinning psychedelia bent into disco- dub shapes. 

Islandman's Godless Ceremony came out earlier this year, psychedelic Turkish folk/ dance music turned into wobbly, chiming indie- dance. 

Marshall Watson and Cole Odin's Just A Daydream Away came out just a few weeks ago, another slice of indie- dance Hardway remix heaven. 

Out Cold's Lovin' Arms came out back in 2013. Out Cold is Simon Aldred who was also Cherry Ghost. When I posted this remix about a decade ago Sean saw the post and said he'd forgotten he'd even done the remix. Classic house sound and feel on this one. 

Peak High's cover of the Jean Carne's disco classic Was That All It Was came out at the tail end of last year and I played it and both of Sean's remixes to death including on a car journey at Christmas where my daughter Eliza said she'd heard it, all three versions, so much she never wanted to hear it again. 

Aimes' A Star... In The Sky was a 2020 release about which I know very little other than it came out on 12" and Sean's remix kicks like a mule- dark, spaced out cosmic techno. 

Yo, We've Landed

We were in Liverpool for a couple of days at the end of last week, a city I know well having been a student there between 1988 and 1991 and being a fairly regular visitor ever since. We spent some time wandering round, looking at streets and places almost unchanged in the last three decades and other parts of the city pretty much unrecognisable. Liverpool has an edge to it, a stubbornness, and I like the fact that no matter how much gentrification takes place and how much money gets thrown at various parts of the city centre, it refuses to play ball completely. 

On Rodney Street there is a graveyard next to St. Andrew's Church containing this pyramid tomb, supposedly the last resting place of William MacKenzie who died in 1851. McKenzie was a gambler and according to legend he left instructions that he be buried sitting at a card table, a winning hand clutched in his deceased paw. Further stories say that his body was interred, an attempt to cheat the devil out of attaining his soul that he forfeited in a game of cards. Naturally, or rather supernaturally, the rumours persisted that his ghost haunts the graveyard and wanders round Rodney Street late at night. More info here . 

Yo, We've Landed, a collaboration between The Secret Soul Society and Hardway Bros has been released digitally with a Hardway Bros redux remix, a chugging, dubby, disco- tinged adventure, layers of noise like strata in rock formations- its all quite psychedelic and (in a good way) messy, head spinning sounds with a foot on the floor. Buy here.