Monday's Long Songs

The first new release of 2026 to get excited about is out now on Jason Boardman's before I Die Records, a 12" from Stockport and a duo called Arrival- two tracks, each with a remix and involving two of my most listened to guitarists of the last year, Kevin McCormick and Thought Leadership.

Arrival deal in quietness and calm, something we could all do with at the moment. On the A- side there is One, six minutes of pattering rhythms, soft bass and Kevin's wonderful and melancholic guitar lines. The Underbank Mix (named after a part of Stockport, old Victorian lanes and streets, staircases and bridges, which is becoming a centre for art and culture with cafes, record shops and bars). The second version is the Solstice Mix, which opens with ambient and found sounds, voices and the clatter of people, and then Kevin's guitar echoes out of the ambient backdrop. It's quiet and atmospheric, like listening to a live performance in a cafe on a Sunday afternoon while taking shelter from the rain. 

Side B offers Common Place with a Thought Leadership remix, more atmospheric ambient guitar sounds. Slow music, unfolding at its pace. A drum machine turns up eventually, the thud of a kick drum and then some hi hats. Synths add some colour and the guitar continues to wind its way onwards. On the non- remix version of Common Place the guitar is even more in the foreground, chords and notes with some distortion, surrounded by an ambient haze. Single of the year so far and highly recommended. Stockport on the rise, quietly. Get it at Bandcamp. 

Manchester Stockport Tokyo Ancoats

Ban Ban Ton Ton is Dr. Rob's Tokyo based music blog covers everything Balearic/ acid house and beyond. I've been writing guest reviews for some time. Two weeks ago I wrote about Ace Of Swords, the second album by Thought Leadership, a guitarist from Edgeley, Stockport. Stockport, people round here keep saying, is the new Berlin (a student of mine told me this week that Eccles is going to be the new Didsbury- I await this development patiently). 

Thought Leadership's music is entirely instrumental, just guitar FX pedals, some bass and synths and a drum machine- ambient, with detours on the latest album into Balearic Jazz. The spirit of Vini Reilly hovers close by. I loved the first album- Ill Of Pentacles- and love the second too, an album about to get a limited vinyl released on Be With Records. My review is at Ban Ban Ton Ton here. This is XVII, six and a half minutes of ambient soundscapes and echo and chorus laden guitar playing. 

Thought Leadership is shortly to find a home on a 12" by Jason Boardman's Before I Die label, a Manchester based independent with a growing back catalogue. Arrival features the guitar playing of Kevin McCormick (another ambient guitarist and another artist I've written about at Ban Ban Ton Ton). The 12" is going to include a Thought Leadership remix among its four tracks. More news to follow.  

A month before that post I wrote about Ein Null: Ten Years Of Sprechen, a celebration of a decade of music coming from Chris Massey's Manchester based label, an album that is packed with exclusives and one offs. A Certain Ratio appear with a track that you won't find anywhere else, the Martin Hannett referencing Faster But Slower, percussive Manc- funk noir. 

Ein Null includes tracks from The Utopia Strong, Psychederek, The Thief Of Time, Low Pulse, Lena C and Gina Breeze and Massey and Supernature's Walk... Now Walk. Lots to enjoy. My review is here. 

Yesterday Rob posted a piece to celebrate the soon coming 30th anniversary of Bugged Out, a 90s Manchester nightclub institution that spread its wings beyond its birthplace, a scuzzy former mill in Ancoats called Sankeys Soap. Bugged Out's 30th birthday includes the publication of a very nice looking book. As someone who attended Bugged Out nights at Sankeys on many occasions in the 94- 97 period including memorable nights that Andrew Weatherall and Carl Craig headlined, Rob asked me to pen some of my memories of the times which you can read here. The music on the post is heavy on mid- 90s techno, as Bugged Out at Sankeys was, with tracks from Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, Green Velvet, LFO, Dave Clark, Ron Trent, Carl Craig and Der Dritte Raum. This twenty minute documentary came out ten years ago for the 20th anniversary...

Thirty Minutes Of Ambient Guitar Music

I'm not sure what it says about where my head is at right now but I'm being drawn back once again to the sounds of Vini Reilly's guitar and with that to the idea that guitars can make ambient music. A couple of albums have come my way in the last year that slot right into this- Kevin McCormick's Passing Clouds and Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles. It may be no coincidence that both of the guitarists behind these albums are from the Manchester area (Kevin is now residing in Mobberley, a village not far south of Manchester and whoever Thought Leadership is lives in Edgeley, Stockport). Vini Reilly's guitar and echo and chorus pedals have been making their hard to pin down but spellbinding sounds since the late 70s when he was placed into a room with Martin Hannett and they came up with The Return Of the Durutti Column. I first heard Durutti Column's music in 1987 and it's been close to my stereo ever since. Vini has retired, his health poor since having three strokes back in the late 00s but his legacy as one of Factory Records' true geniuses is secure. 

This mix pulls together some Durutti Column songs ('silly little tunes', according to Vini) along with Kevin McCormick and Thought Leadership and the former Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie who has been releasing ambient guitar tracks onto his Bandcamp page for some time. A chilled and slightly melancholic autumnal ambient guitar mix for late September 2025. 

The world is a shitshow and a bin fire. Trump and Netanyahu lie and deceive from the stage at the United Nations. Farage lies about immigrants. Starmer follows Farage down a path that can only be a dead end. Racists hoist flags from lampposts and paint roundabouts. Life seems to get a little bit worse every day. But we still have music- and we will have it long after Trump, Netanyahu, Farage and all the rest of them have shuffled off the stage and disappeared. 

Thirty Minutes Of Ambient Guitar Music

• Durutti Column: Sketch For A Manchester Summer 1989
• Robin Guthrie: Mountain
• Kevin McCormick: It's Been A Long Time
• Kevin McCormick: Alone In A Crowd
• Thought Leadership: III
• Durutti Column: A Room In Southport
• Durutti Column: Royal Infirmary
• Michael Hix: Pure Land

Sketch For A Manchester Summer starts with the rain falling, taped from the door of Vini's West Didsbury home thirty six years ago. It rains quite a lot in Manchester- you might have heard. The synth that bubbles away with the rain is joined by Vini's guitar and for a couple of minutes a rainy Mancunian summer is the only place to be. The song is tucked away on an album of rarities, sessions and unreleased recordings, The Sporadic Recordings- some of them were done at Sporadic Studios, Manchester. CD only, now fairly rare. 

Robin Guthrie's guitar lit up Cocteau Twins and for the last few years he's released all sorts of music onto his Bandcamp page, including lots of ambient guitar pieces. Montain was recorded in Brittany, France in 2022, a track Robin refers to as an 'orphaned track', one which didn't find a place at the time. Released on Bandcamp a year ago, September 2024.

Kevin McCormick made several albums of guitar music in Manchester in the late 70s and early 80s. His work was lost for decades and then rediscovered and re- issued in 2021 on the Smiling C label. In 2024 Kevin released a new album, Passing Clouds, one I can't recommend enough. It's Been A Long Time is from it. Alone In A Crowd is from an album recorded with David Horridge, Sticklebacks, polished at Stockport's Strawberry Studios after initial recordings on Kevin's  four track home studio. 

Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles came out on cassette and digital in 2024 and then on vinyl via Be With this year (all gone, I missed out too). It's a wonderful album, recorded at home in Edgeley, Stockport and other than that there's very little information. It was recorded in January 2024 with guitar, pedals and drum machine and the tracks are numbered I to X. 

Snowflake is from Short Stories For Pauline, a lost Durutti Column album recorded in November 1983 that could/ should have been Vini's fourth on Factory. A Tony Wilson A&R oversight saw it shelved in favour of Without Mercy (the song Duet from Short Stories was expanded into Without Mercy). Tony got it wrong- Short Stories is a Durutti Column masterpiece that finally saw the light of day on Factory Benelux in 2012. Worth the wait. 

Royal Infirmary is from 1986's Circuses And Bread, Vini and drummer/ manager/ friend Bruce Mitchell joined by John Metcalfe on viola and Tim Kellett on trumpet. The piano/ guitar interplay on Royal Infirmary is next level Durutti Column beauty. 

Michael Hix released an album as Wonderful Aspiration Of The Source, a guitar only ambient/ cosmic instrumental ten track album that came out two weeks ago. Hix is one of the founders of Nashville Ambient Ensemble. Find it here. 

Over At Ban Ban Ton Ton And At The Golden Lion

I've been reviewing records over at Ban Ban Ton Ton again, Dr Rob's Japan based Balearic and electronic music one stop, most recently on Monday of this week when the newest Coyote mini- album came out. Coyote (Timm and Ampo) have been in a rich vein of form in the last few years, releasing a slew of 12" singles, albums, six track mini- albums, edits and remixes. In May there's the prospect of a collaboration EP with Peaking Lights, a 12" called Love Letters on their own Is This Balearic ? label. In the meantime, hot on the heels of last year's six track mini- album Hurry Up And Live, comes Wailing At The Yellow Dawn- a record which evokes all sorts of things but mainly for me music as a soundtrack to dreaming. My review at Ban Ban Ton Ton is here. 

A week before that I reviewed an album by Thought Leadership, an album called Ill Of Pentacles that is about to get a vinyl release on Be With Records. I knew it was familiar and realised while listening to it that my friend Spencer sent me a link to it last year when it was released as digital and on cassette- getting re- acquainted with it second time around was even better. Thought Leadership is a mysterious musician living in Edgeley, Stockport armed with nothing  more than a guitar, some FX pedals, a drum machine and a home studio. The music, ten tracks of it, is entirely instrumental, FX affected pieces of guitar music with occasional drum machine backing. It's a wonderful album, still available at Bandcamp. The most obvious comparison in sound is Vini Reilly but other post- punk and indie guitarists are in there too- John McGeoch, Robin Guthrie, Johnny Marr and Maurice Deebank of Felt. My full review is here. There's a second album too, Ace Of Swords which was recorded in the middle of last year, at Bandcamp. 

It put me in mind of another Mancunian guitarist whose music I reviewed for Ban Ban Ton Ton, a pair of  re- releases from the early 80s by Kevin McCormick together with a new one called Passing Clouds. I wrote about Passing Clouds last October and I didn't share it but you can find it here. This is It's Been A Long Time...

Meanwhile, over in Todmorden at The Golden Lion Jezebell have a weekend takeover, a line up of DJs, musicians and chancers playing on Saturday and Sunday. The DJs are Darren and Jesse (from Jezebell), Jamie Tolley, Martin Moscrop from ACR, Nessa Johnston, Stuart Alexander, Kim Lana, Adam Roberts and FC Kahuna. The musician playing live is OBOST (Bobby Langfield). The chancer is me. I'm on at 4pm on Sunday afternoon, playing after Jesse's afternoon set. 

Both days should be great fun, the Sunday session maybe a bit more chilled than the Saturday, it's free all weekend and it'll be great to finally meet Jesse and Darren after featuring so much of their music here since 2021 and only ever chatting online. 

Out a couple of weeks on Berlin's Nein Records is an EP by Parvale (Ian Vale and Neil Parnell) with the track Breaker City complete with Jezebell's Nice And Slow Remix, a cut 'n' paste, jerky breakbeat anthem for dancefloor action. The EP is here.