Attention Attention! Mesdames Monsieurs

Andrew Weatherall has done two remixes of a song from Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds' latest album, It's A Beautiful World, with both being released on 12" as part of RSD 2018 along with a pair fun piano house remixes from Mike Pickering and Graeme Park. I picked up a copy online without any bother or paying over the odds and without having to queue up at dawn outside Piccadilly Records.

The dub mix is super space age dub, electronic drums and fuzzy synth bass, a bit of Noel and Charlotte Courbe's spoken word part. It builds over ten minutes, gathering pace and intensity, and is a lovely job. It has upset the Dadrock fans however. Some of the comments over at Youtube are a treat-

'Dear Andrew Weatherall, Please Stop. Regards, Everyone'

'Noel really lets Andrew do anything, huh?'

'Noel Is my favorite artist but this Is.. so not biblical...'

'This is the worst of the 3 remixes. I like the other two but not this one'

'What a piece of garbage'

'this is shiiiite'

And my favourite from a Youtube user called Marco...

'My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined'



The vocal remix has a 'real drums' rhythm track and is a bit looser than the dub, some shimmering wobbly parts and more of Noel's vox. It works well back-to-back with Weatherall's remix of Mark Lanegan done last year, dark, foreboding and rocking.



You might think the feathercuts would be more into this one...

'I can’t find any reason to listen this song. Original song is better in every aspect'

'Noel is biblical but this is God awful I'm afraid'

Marco appears over on this one too, he really doesn't like remixes...'My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined'.

'Awful drums'

And...

'Fucking rubbish'

Anyway, as you were, as someone is wont to say.

Hello This Is Gorgeous, Does Anybody Out There Read Me?

More from Primal Scream- this is what I was actually looking for when I got distracted by Echo Dek. Kill All Hippies was the opener to 2000's war on vowels XTRMNTR album. It was an album on heavy rotation (as they used to say) round here. I bought the vinyl for home listening and a copy on cassette for the car. Kill All Hippies samples the voice of Linda Manz (from Dennis Hopper's 1980 film Out Of The Blue) and eventually winds itself up, kicking into a distorted riff and a drum loop, a filthy bassline from Mani and some heavily processed electronics. Bobby consoles himself with a falsetto explanation of art v commerce.

Cool video.



Two Lone Swordsmen chipped in with a couple of remixes, pioneering the use of the hashtag as well as putting even more numbed out, dislocated electronic funk into proceedings than the original track  had.

Kill All Hippies (Two Lone Swordsmen #2)

Duffed Up

I was listening to Primal Scream's Echo Dek album on Monday as the sun started to heat the day up and blue skies appeared for the third day running. In 1997 Bobby and co. gave Adrian Sherwood the tapes to their Vanishing Point album and let him do what he wanted to them. Echo Dek is largely stunning, full of thundering bass, heavy rhythms, static and hiss, echo and delay and door bells ringing. The second track on the album is a reworking of Get Duffy, a Martin Duffy keyboard led groover from the source album. Duffed Up heads into a dub/skronky jazz soundtrack area with a horn section and harpsichord. Massive Attack and Mad Professor's No Protection pulled off the same trick in 1995, experimental mid 90s dub funded by major labels (and the Oasis millions).

Duffed Up

Stop Wasting Time

Sunday night ended up with a bit of an impromptu gathering in our garden due to it being a bank holiday Monday the following day and very warm and sunny. The drinking started at about 5pm and carried on through til late. The neighbours were all given the benefit of various albums and compilations playing from inside the house out into the garden, starting off with the Mastercuts Classic House comp (vinyl, sounding a bit crackly and worn in places), then the first four sides of Sandinista!, with the switch from Voodoo Ray to The Magnificent 7 working very well indeed. Sandinista! works really well on cd, and Mick Jones' remastering on the Sound System edition is spectacular, revealing new delights with almost every listen.

Side 2 of Sandinista! is essentially a Clash mixtape, opening with Rebel Waltz, a much overlooked moment of brilliance, a Mose Allison cover, some sweltering Simonon dub (The Crooked Beat), a blinding rock song (Somebody Got Murdered) and then The Clash and Mikey Dread kicking it out in a proper reggae style with One More Time and it's dub sister. One More Time is Strummer's depiction of ghetto poverty and the civil rights movement of the 60s, with the band on fire in the Electric Ladyland studio. It is followed by Mikey Dread's heavier dubbed out version.

One More Time
One More Dub

Worker's Playtime

May Day is a worker's holiday, first established in the UK in 1978. In 1988 Billy Bragg gave us his most perfect song, Waiting For The Great Leap Forward, a song written from personal experience of an 80s vision of revolution, benefit gigs, fanzines, activism and t-shirts. Billy is a wordsmith but words can be easily missed if the music isn't good enough. Thankfully Waiting... has a tune good enough to complement the lyrics. I could try to pick the bones out of the lyrics and give some analysis but they're best presented as you hear them, as a rush of Billy's thoughts, scribbled on the back of a beer mat...

'It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathize with her but he thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner  

In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr. Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle
In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of someone stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the great leap forwards

Jumble sales are organised
And pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the great leap forwards 
One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?
Here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole
If no one seems to understand
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman
In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room
So join the struggle while you may
The revolution is just a tee shirt away
Waiting for the great leap forwards'

Have a good bank holiday everyone.  

Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards

Now So Much Waste How We'll Be Teased

It is the 50th anniversary of the events of May 1968 where students and workers in Paris staged a series of strikes and demonstrations that very nearly brought the government down, tapping into and inspiring a year of revolution and turmoil. Back in May 1988 it was the 20th anniversary and I remember watching an excellent Channel 4 documentary about it and reading various articles and features while I was supposed to be revising for my A Levels. 

A year later, May 1989, The Stone Roses released their debut album which was peppered with references to May 68 (along with a regicide fantasy) which made The Roses seem like a political band, revolutionaries maybe, a view of them that has been lost over the years. On Bye Bye Badman Ian Brown sings about the smoke and choke of tear gas and the neutralising effect citrus fruit has on  CS gas (something an old man told them in a pub according to interviews). The lemons on the album cover and T-shirts repeat this. 'I'm throwing stones at you' Ian croons, to the policeman in the picture above, the cobblestones of the streets of Paris underneath which would be found the beach. Ian would return to May 68 on solo songs (Corpses In Their Mouths was a Situationist slogan of the time). 

Bye Bye Badman

The song on that sparkling debut album that precedes Bye Bye Badman is the one I can keep coming back to, that hasn't become over familiar. Don't Stop is Waterfall backwards. It's an easy studio trick, reverse the tape and see what happens- trippy whooshing sounds, stoned, Satanic vocals and a 60s vibe. But Don't Stop is much better than merely a lazy studio mucking about session. John Squire's backwards guitar riff is a joy, sucking the distortion and lead lines into new shapes and Reni's new rhythm track puts it in touch with another revolution, the one of 1988-90 that was taking place in nightclubs, warehouses and fields. For the words John listened to the backwards Waterfall vocal and then wrote down what the lines suggested, resulting in something close to poetry.

'Don't stop, isn't it funny how you shine?
Here the sea spray give
I was with her
We're under the ship so get me over
Now that was me, listen
Now she fishes now, listen
There was no one out there we used
There is the news for me useless
Now so much waste
How we'll be teased
Don't stop, isn't it funny how you shine?
Don't stop, isn't it funny how you shine?
Oh won't you just ask me you're an imbecile
What's the matter for everyone I feel
Pain, blues singer
He's playing just a guitar from the top
I wake I still look I feel loose
We're all here now who's the first ease into my heart
He must be one of us'

Don't Stop

Let The Music Use You

The Summer of Love, 1988 version, is being celebrated in many places at the moment, not least at Mixmag. Two veterans of the scene and Boy's Own alumni, Terry Farley and Pete Heller, have put together a mix of records that were big that summer. This could easily be accused of being a total nostalgia trip if the tune selection from the Boy's Own duo wasn't so great, including This Brutal House, Adonis, Ralph Rosario, Tyree, A Guy Called Gerald, The Night Writers, Turntable Orchestra, The Beloved, Marshall Jefferson and Ce Ce Rogers. Get Farley and Heller's words on the records are here. It is a bank holiday weekend here and this is an ideal soundtrack to three days off.

White Rose

I am in a bit of a Moon Duo/Wooden Shjips groove right now and have been returning to the pair of albums Moon Duo released last year, Occult Architecture 1 and 2. The first volume was closed by a final track that was a scorching, repeating and hypnotic delight, White Rose. While digging on the internet last week I found some live versions that are superb. This one was filmed for a session with KEXP and is a masterclass. Once that drumbeat sets off and the drone gets going it could quite happily go on and on and on...



And then I found this one from a festival called Endless Daze held in South Africa last year, which is like the other one but even more so, especially Ripley's reverb drenched guitar playing.

Dreamworld

This is a track off an obscure 12" released in 1990, 5 tracks inspired by house music and the warehouse party scene, made by Matt Gray under the name Westworld (a name already in use in the 80s by the Sonic Boom Boy band). Dreamworld opened side AA and is simplicity itself- a rising and falling synth sound, washes of strings, some percussion and then a thumping kick drum, an Italo-house sequenced bassline and a piano riff to raise arms in the air. The sort of track that makes complete strangers hug each other ask the key questions- what's your name? and where are you from? and what are you on?

Dreamworld

Last month Gerd Janson released a re-edit of The Slam, a track from the A side of the original 12"- sirens, cowbells Mantronix style, wailing vox and a rolling piano riff, out now on vinyl should you wish for a fuller, deeper audio experience.

How Soon Is Dub

You may think that the recorded works of Morrissey, Marr, Rourke and Joyce are so sacrosanct that they shouldn't be mucked with. I don't as it happens, I'm more than  happy for people to rework and remix almost everything and anything if it's done well. Plus, seeing as Morrissey sees fit to spew shit all over his legacy there's no reason why the odd bootlegger and remixer shouldn't (and given his 'all reggae is vile' comment back in the 80s this seems even more fitting). This is a dub version of How Soon Is Now, using the original track, especially Johnny Marr's wonderful guitar parts, and adding the dub elements in increasingly as it rides on. As a bonus there's precious little Morrissey involved in it too.

How Soon Is Now? Dubweiser Remix

Smile

I discovered recently that there is a piece of rock 'n' roll history right under my nose, here in sleepy Sale. This advert for Smile Recording Studios, 'the friendliest in the north west' no less, used to operate in the cellar of a house near where I live. As in, I can see it from where I'm typing this and with a good throw could hit it with a tennis ball. In 1975 Manchester's premier punk band recorded a demo there, 4 tracks of high octane proto-punk from Slaughter And The Dogs. Only £6 an hour too. I have been tempted to go and speak to the owners and ask them if I can have a look in their cellar for the distant essence of music history, to see if any lingering remains can be found.

Slaughter were a formative influence on members of Joy Division, The Smiths and The Stone Roses to name but three local bands fired up by Wayne Barratt, Mick Rossi, Brain Grantham and Howard Bates. Run by Steve Foley, who started in his parent's home in Salford on a two track, Smile relocated to Upper Chorlton Road, Whalley Range, a couple of miles away. What do we get for our trouble and pain? Whalley Range. On a comment thread somewhere, Steve lists the bands who recorded using the facilities at one of his studio set ups- Salford Jets, The Alarm, Frantic Elevators, Fast Cars, Gerry And The Pacemakers, Martin Hannett and St Winifrid's Choir (although a user of Smile reports that the studio drum kit was 'truly shit'). But, still, Slaughter And The Dogs, across the road from my house. Wonderful.

Cranked Up Really High

The Overview Effect

Historically Tross were the camp followers of German mercenary regiments of the 16th century, mainly women, wives and children, who carried baggage, laboured, brought the supplies to the soldiers and performed various support roles. From Tross we get the word dross.

Tross is the name of a band signed to Gothenburg's Hoga Nord Rekords, home to many interesting artists and records. Tross's new album, The Overview Effect, is no exception. Album opener Synthesis sets the tone, an instrumental inspired by the West German groups of the 1970s. From there on in over the course of ten tracks they delve deeper, exploring dance rhythms and spaced out guitars, always light on their feet and looking forward.

April's Not For Everyone

Another month, another run round the block with Mr Weatherall, with plenty in this month's episode to excite and enthrall. It sounds like some of these unreleased Woodleigh Research Facility tracks aren't going to stay unreleased for too long.



Here's the tracklist...

• TONY CONRAD + GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE - DEMILITARIZED ZONE
• KAVUS TORABI - FOLD 4
• DIE WILDE JAGD - STANGENTANZ
• TROSS - PYRAMID
• JESSE - PORTALS
• HENRIK RYLANDER - 2-7-4-8-8-2
• DOLLKRAUT - BONNIE SAID OTTO REMIX
• WARDEN CA - ELEMENTAL
• CHRIS CARTER - BLISSTERS
• SCORTILLA - YHW
• ECHOPHASE - CONTINENTAL SHIFT
• EYES OF OTHERS - LUST FOR UNREQUITED DUB (SORDID SOUND SYSTEM REMIX)
• WOODLEIGH RESEARCH FACILITY - UNTITLED
• PRIMAL SCREAM - KILL ALL HIPPIES TWO LONE SWORDSMEN MIX NO 1
• COSMIC FORCE - HAUNTED BY MY PAST
• NEURAL CIRCUS - EXIT
• DELTON SCREECHIE - MIX UP DUB
• SAM BRAMWELL - IT A GO DREAD INA BABYLON (& DUB)
• ART SCHOOL CHICKS - PENETRATION
• PHEW - MAPPING
• COIL - ANOTHER BROWN WORLD
• CRAIG FORTNAM - FOLD 13

Contact

Listening to and posting the rather excellent new song from Wooden Shjips, Staring At The Sun, made me go back to some of their other releases. I dug out their 2011 album West, a noisy, psychedelic San Franciscan monster, only seven songs long, but what a stretched out, trippy, echo laden seven songs they are- not just monotonous one chord grooves either but beautiful repetition coupled with melodies and riffs. Ripley's monotone, numb, half asleep vocals float over the top. Perfect driving music I've rediscovered. Black Smoke Rise was the album's opening song/vibe...



At this point it is worth spending some time being reminded of Andrew Weatherall's superb remix of Crossing (also from West), one of a series of remixes that showed that back at the star of the decade he was properly back in the game. His remix of Crossing has a kind of grimy grandeur feel to it, San Fran via East London.

Crossing (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

And as an bonus weekend extra, a couple of years ago Wooden Shjips released a limited edition two track 12" on white vinyl, one side being a suitably stoned cover of Serge Gainsbourg's Contact, eight minutes of fuzz and awe.

Contact

Make Your Way To The Edge Of The World

I've just realised this has been a week of posts made up entirely about new releases. It wasn't planned that way, it just happened, but we may as well finish ahead of the weekend with another one. The Tracers is the new single from Johnny Marr, blazing a trial ahead of his new album Call the Comet. Johnny has put out two solo albums in the last few years. The first, The Messenger, came out in 2013 and had some good songs on it, Upstarts especially. It was accompanied by some gigs- the one I attended at The Ritz sticks in the memory as he ploughed his way through his back catalogue (The Smiths and Electronic) as well as a cover of I Fought The Law. The second solo album didn't make the same impact, some of the songs were OK but a few were a little forgettable and but it didn't really achieve lift off.

The new one, thankfully, sounds like a step forward again- a rush of guitars, a driving bassline, some judiciously added 'woo hoo's' and a sense of urgency. Marr seems to have gone back to the music that preceded The Smiths, the post-punk groups of the early 80s. The video looks like it was filmed up on the moors above Manchester where Yorkshire and Lancashire meet, a bit bleak and deserted (and with plenty of pylons).

Doughnuts Forever

The Orb have a new single out ahead of an album in June, titled Doughnuts Forever- which makes it seem a bit throwaway- and the track seemed a bit lightweight at first but repeated listens have revealed its charms. It works its magic slowly, bringing the bass in over piano chords, then heading into Avalanches territory.



The Orb are celebrating their 30th birthday this year, Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlman and whoever else they can get into the studio with them. For this album, No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds, Alex has brought together a stellar cast including Youth, Roger Eno, Hollie Cook and Jah Wobble all of which makes it look like it might be worth looking out for.

Personally I think doughnuts are overrated. Even Randy's.

That Hit

Flash Atkins is here with some uplifting, locked groove, slinky, tech-house, and there's some lovely soulful vocals from Charlie Sinclair- waiting for that hit. Night time music.



The single comes with a remix by Hardway Bros, Sean Johnston bringing the buzzing bass to the fore, stretching it out and sending it into sci fi techno territory.

Momentum

If you like modular synth sounds and repetitive grooves and techno- and I do- then you might find something to enjoy in this collaboration between Carl Craig and Klauss, an Argentinian electro-acoustic ensemble who have been making music in Buenos Aires since the 1980s. Two tracks have been released on Planet E, Carl Craig's legendary Detroit electronic label. Momentum runs to over 12 minutes, a looped synth part setting it going and staying there throughout as the tension builds, some oscillation and a big kick drum. Momentum was the result of an improvised jam and in some ways it sounds like it- but there's plenty to enjoy here, in the sounds and the loops and propulsion.

Dimanche

Yes, I know, wrong day. Today is Lundi.

Dimanche is on this year's Shadow People album by French duo The Liminanas. It's well worth getting hold of if you haven't already- ten tracks recorded at Anton Newcombe's studio, taking in Velvet's fuzz and rhythms, thumping drums, sunglasses and black leather and a guest spot for Peter Hook's bass. Dimanche, with guest vocals from Bertrand Belin, has been remixed by fellow Frenchman Laurent Garnier and it is very good indeed, Garnier adding some clubby dynamics, looping some parts, drawing out the ringing feedback and a sticking a massive kick drum and snare underneath. I think this came out on 12" for Record Store Day.

I Don't Give A Fuck About Your War... Or Your President

I was channel surfing the other night and discovered the Sy Fy channel, somewhere I don't think I'd been before. I became distracted by Escape From New York, already about 45 minutes in, but the combination of John Carpenter's synth score and Snake Plissken's mission to find the President in Manhattan, a walled in maximum security prison in the year 1997,  kept me from switching over for a while. Escape From New York is always a joy. It occurred to me that if real life had intervened Snake would have been rescuing Bill Clinton.

It put me in mind of this 2014 release by Maurice and Charles, a chunky, moody, acid funk track peppered with dialogue from the film along with some very Byrne-Eno guitar riffs and rhythms.

I, Carpenter

Stop Bajon

This sudden burst of decent weather- sunshine, in April, uh?!- demands something sunny and suited to beer garden/cafe bar terrace/ghettoblaster in the park/beach at sundown. This 1983 track from Italian drummer/singer Tullio De Piscopo is ideal. It's a crossover record- Italian disco, a minor hit in the UK in 1987, a record played by Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles in Chicago house clubs, by Alfredo in Ibiza, at Shoom and Phuture, by Theo Parrish and at countless other broadminded establishments.

Stop Bajon

Sleepwalk

Celebrate the arrival of Friday and the weekend with this- a free download of an Aron Ya reworking of Moon Duo's Sleepwalk (if trancey, psychedelic, repetitive, acid drenched drone rock is your bag. And if it isn't, why isn't it?)

Well It Seems So Real

More from Manchester's musical back pages (and not Morrissey who makes it worse every time he opens his mouth right now- just when you think he can't sink any further he does. Pretty soon it will be impossible to listen to The Smiths without visions of racist, far right fuckwittery). I overheard the opening to Why Can't I Touch It? coming through from the TV and stopped in my tracks to let it go on. Whatever programme it was didn't let it go on very long but it sounded superb, the reggae feel to the drums, the opening riff, all angular and jerky, followed by Pete Shelley's high pitched frustration and confusion (I've always assumed this song is about sexual frustration). The twin guitars stalk around each other while the bass and drums play a kind of Mancunian dub version of Can. Why Can't I Touch It? was released in 1979 and while it doesn't necessarily sound very modern or 2018 it also doesn't sound like it is nearly 40 years old.

Why Can't I Touch It?

This Too Shall Pass Away

I found myself humming this song to myself while at work earlier this week- not sure what that tells you. This Too Shall Pass Away was on World Of Twist's 1991 album Quality Street, the 3rd track in after the magnificent opening one-two punch of Lose My Way and Sons Of The Stage. Fading in on some studio chatter and tons of echo and a bubbling bassline, it is a gently sung, swirly piece of psychedelic pop, FX and atmospherics courtesy of producers The Grid. This Too Shall Pass Away is a cover, one of two covers on the album along with their terrific cover of The Stones' She's A Rainbow (and also Sly Stone's Life And Death on the cd version). It was originally by 60s pop combo The Honeycombs, who had a million selling number one with the Joe Meek produced Have I The Right?

This Too Shall Pass Away

Quality Street is often seen as a 'lost' album, a record that slightly missed the boat. The band lost momentum and broke up. Part of this was down to the failure of the album (and not having a massive hit single) which led to the band being dropped. The Manchester wave crested and broke. But it was partly down to the album itself (not that there is anything wrong with the songs or the production). It's the mastering of the volume. It's too quiet. Tony Ogden, who died in 2006, was interviewed about the record and said 'We wanted to make the greatest psychedelic dance rock album ever and there was a lot of coke and E in the studio. But the album came out at half normal volume. We'd spent £250,000 making an album with the smallest bollocks in pop history! The band just fell apart. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast and that led to communication problems. I didn't wanna sing, the guitarist didn't wanna play. When the company didn't get a hit they threw us in the bin. I was devastated - I spent four years on smack watching Third Reich movies because the good guys always win. I'm really sorry for letting our fans down. But I'd ask anyone to play that World of Twist album 20 times with every dial on full. If it doesn't rock, come and smash it over my head.' 

The Laser

There's a lot of new music out now or imminently. Hardway Bros will put out a new ep at the end of May, 4 new tracks led off by this one- Friedman Feedback Loop Revision- where Sean Johnston loops some magic over a hi-hat and some drums and then lays waste to your speakers.

Sean's ep releases over the last few years for New York label Throne Of Blood have been uniformly excellent, especially the Pleasure Cry 12" from 2016 (with Argonaut being among the best tracks of the year to Bagging Area ears). If you want to catch up with the back catalogue you can get it all digitally at Bandcamp.

I Want More

I recently acquired a copy of a 1993 12" single by Ege Bam Yasi- thanks Ctel by the way- and have been coming back to it fairly frequently. Ege Bam Yasi was from Inverness, born James MacDonald, an early adopter of acid house and has been making records since 1986. He took his stage name from the famous Can album and in 1993 put out a cover of Can's only hit single I Want More, recorded with Edinburgh's Finiflex. There are 3 mixes on the 12", each one based to a greater or lesser extent around the Michael Karoli guitar riff, and clearly intended as much for the floor as for home listening. This one has a vocal sample, the instruction 'everybody listen', that choppy riff, some flute and a crunchy Finitribe/Finiflex rhythm. After one minute thirty-ish it becomes increasingly acid house.

I Want More (Malcolm Eggs Mixegg)

Second Surfer

A new two track release (digital and 12") from Toby Tobias, Second Stimulus and Syncro Surfer using up all the S alliteration. Second Stimulation is an eight minute journey through staccato synths and a machine pulse with intermittent bass. Syncro Surfer is a Detroit-esque rush of sirens and hi-hats, clattering percussion and bleepy pulses. This sort of thing is really pushing my buttons right now.

A Vision Of Duncan Sharp

Fireflies are Nina Walsh and Frank Alba and have recorded some weird, spooky folk music in the recent past. This song is something else though, a post punk bassline and some electronic atmospherics over which author Gareth E. Rees gives a compelling spoken word performance, a vision of Duncan Sharp, becoming increasingly intense over its seven minutes. The track was recorded live at Weird Shit in Hastings last year and is as good a way to disturb your Saturday morning as any.

Rain

I got in from work yesterday to an email from Bicep promoting the release of a new ep. The first two songs are Rain and an edit of Rain. Rain was on their their debut album from last year but it's always a treat to hear it- a few minutes of euphoria. Luke Wyatt has produced a new video for it, a mix of film footage, glitches and effects. It is very trippy and in places may/will freak you out.



The ep comes with a new track called Helix- a big kick drum, washes of warmth and modular synth bleeps. Listen on the Bandcamp player and then buy here.

I Got Some John Coltrane On The Stereo Baby, Make It Feel Alright

In which our guide and house dj Mr Weatherall plays some songs in a field at a festival somewhere outside Milan last summer. Over the course of this 50 minute film he makes it all look very effortless indeed and makes spinning a nine minute mid-80s psyche-rock epic from The Dream Syndicate followed by Moon Duo and then AMOR look like the best way, in fact the only way, to move a crowd of youthful and well-lit Italians. Avanti!

Weekend

I was over in Liverpool last week, at the Tate Gallery. There's a show on currently curated by Ken Simons, the art handling manager at Tate Liverpool since it opened in 1988, who recently retired. In the gallery is this Mark Rothko painting, which was hanging in the Tate when I went to university there in September 1988, thirty years ago and which made a big impression on me. So things tied together quite nicely there.

I was scrolling through my downloads folder recently finding tons of music I'd forgotten about and some I wasn't sure I knew anything about. In there was this Richard Norris remix, a well Balearic take on an ode to the timespan between Friday evening and Sunday evening by Molly Wagger (from Edinburgh, moved to London, mixed up disco, indie and shoegaze). This came out back in 2010, followed by an album in 2011. Their Twitter and Facebook accounts don't seem to have been updated since 2016 so I'm guessing they've called it a day. This remix is very good, nicely suited to these lighter evenings we're getting and if it's a few days early, then maybe we should all try and be a bit more weekend on a Wednesday.

Weekend (Richard Norris Balearic Remix)

Kime Ne

This is a piece of Turkish psychedelic folk, from Insanlar, the in-house band at Istanbul's club Minimuzihkol (led by Baris K and Cem Yildiz). Kime Ne originally came out in 2013 and was then re-released by Honest Jon's in 2015 but I only discovered it recently thanks to a recording of Weatherall and Johnston playing their A Love From Outer Space night at Zukunft back in January. This is seriously good, a proper 'woah, rewind that and play it again' track.

Be Careful Out There

Back to work today after two weeks off. Not ideal. Two weeks is long enough to get out of the habit and really not want to get back into the routine.

I saw a day or two ago that Steven Bochco had died. He was the man behind loads of US TV series. The one that meant the most to me was Hill Street Blues which I got into around 1986 or 87, watching it on Channel 4 on a big box style TV, bought second hand, in my bedroom. Genuinely groundbreaking TV, with a big ensemble cast, a gritty realism to its story lines and a documentary feel in the way it was filmed, it weaved dozens of stories and narratives, nearly overloading the viewer. By the time I started watching it it was well into its run, having started in 1981, but I didn't get the feeling that it had mellowed or gone off the boil. I've never been a big fan of cop shows either but Hill Street made a massive impression.

Hill Street Blues also had a very good and very recognisable theme tune written by Mike Post, who was responsible for many TV theme tunes and had already written a classic with The Rockford Files. The opening piano chords are wonderful and then the dramatic descending part before the piano kicks in again (watch out for that guitar solo from Larry Carlton though in this full length version, it can be a bit too much for some tastes). I have this on 7" in a very battered sleeve. Now I need to watch Hill Street Blues again, starting right at the beginning I suppose.

Theme From Hill Street Blues

Sunday Style

This two hour set Sean Johnston did at his kitchen table for Diggers Directory at Stamp The Wax is a delight- a slow motion but building selection of cosmische, cosmic disco, New Beat and ALFOS styled chuggers, controls set for the heart of the, um,  kitchen. Kitchen dancing is the best.

Music For Airports

In 1978 Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music For Airports, an album designed to take away the anxiety of waiting to fly. Divided into four sections, each one layering tape loops of different lengths, it was one of the starting points for what became ambient music. The four tracks were meant to played in a loop and are all distinct from each other. In 1/1 a piano part is repeated and other instruments fade in and out, falling into and out of sync with each other, sounding very planned but no doubt full of happy accidents. Pleasingly, this week London City Airport has been playing the album in tribute to its fortieth birthday. Back in the late 70s Lester Bangs said the album had a 'crystalline, sunlight-through-windowpane quality' and I'm not going to do any better than that as a description.



Jez Kerr, bassist and singer of A Certain Ratio, posted this earlier this week, a very slowed down, time stretched version of the Music For Airports that lasts not for 48 minutes but for 6 hours. You will likely never play it through in its entirety but it is totally absorbing and demands your attention even though it is supposed to be background music.

Love Leaks

Theresa Wayman is the latest member of Warpaint to make a break for it and release some solo stuff outside the band, under the name TT. This song came out a month ago, a long, dark and sinuous song that has bags of atmosphere but not at the expense of the tune. Album to follow.

The Visitor

Dr Alex Paterson of The Orb has been doing a short dj tour recently, playing small venues, promising a smattering of Orb tunes in his set. I went to Night And Day last Thursday night to see him. There can't have been more than 40 or 50 people there, several of them middle aged men on their own (like me). It was good fun, Alex playing Perpetual Dawn (Ultrabass II),  Little Fluffy Clouds and A Huge Evergrowing Brain...., dropping in all sorts of stuff and mixing parts of the songs in and out. Little Fluffy Clouds breaking down briefly into God Only Knows, that sort of thing. The dancefloor got busy fairly quickly and stayed that way until the end (an early curfew of 10.45). Good fun.

The Orb are blessed/cursed with an array of bootlegs, demos and alternative versions and mixes. This track, dreamy ambient dub starting out at NASA mission control, came on The Best Of Volume- Wasted and is also on a bootleg album called The Visitor.

Reefer Spin In The Galaxy

Let Your Love Shine On

While visiting Ikea last week I took this shot from the car park, looking west towards Manchester city centre through a kind of letterbox. It reminded me of the letterbox format that videos and dvds used to have, supposedly the connoisseur's choice for watching films.

And while looking for something else (A Man Called Adam's Easter Song, a boat I have missed, for this year at least) I found this- William Orbit's The Story of Light. From his 1993 Strange Cargo III album and the second volume of the Cafe Del Mar compilations, this is a rich, sumptuous piece of 1990s positivity. It might make your day a little better.

The Story Of Light

Obfuscation For The Nation

In a similar lyrical vein to Russ Litten's spoken word work with Steve Cobby (posted yesterday) come Leicester's Echolocation, back for another round, grappling with the truth. The vocals tackle (as Cobby and Litten did yesterday but more opaquely) life in Brexit Britain and the impact of Trump with songs like Post Truth and Alt-Facts but also offer a more surreal and impressionistic version of the 21st century (see Day Of The Dads and Death Threats). On previous albums the sound was more democratic with a variety of instruments and a widescreen, soundscape approach. On Obfuscation For The Nation the guitars are centre stage, riffs and distortion to the fore, riding on top of driving drums and bass, with synths and keys adding texture. They recently performed with Damo Suzuki as his band when he played Leicester- Suzuki uses local groups as 'sound carriers' when he plays live. 'Can you read between the lines?' Echolocation ask, 'Do you know your own mind? Can you make up your own mind? Stay on topic!' Worth considering I say. Buy it here.

Easter's Not For Everyone

On Easter Sunday I took the train over to Liverpool to an event in The Merchant advertised as An Afternoon With Andrew Weatherall. When we arrived Bernie Connor and a friend were playing a set of blues, ska and dub beforehand. Weatherall played a collection of tunes that redefine eclectic- rockabilly was the starting point but it went to all kinds of other musical and geographic places during the subsequent two hours, in a nice bar to an appreciative crowd. And as the picture shows, I had my photo taken with him. There are all sorts of things you think you might say in these circumstances, all sorts of comments that could be made, to a man whose musical journey I've been following since 1989. In the end I probably just came across as a bit of a bumbling idiot. When I approached him he said 'we've met before haven't we?', which I don't think we have apart from a time in Cream back in the mid 90s when I shook his hand after he'd finished raising the roof a little. So either he mistook me for someone else or he has a very good memory for faces.

At the end of last week Weatherall was back for his monthly show at NTS, Music's Not For Everyone, which apart from the usual broadminded record selection includes a new dub he's done for Django Django and a new one from the man himself with Nina Walsh and Andy Bell (from Ride).



Acid house dj encounters continued when we got back to Manchester. We got off the train at Oxford Road and headed into The Refuge, where Richard Norris was spinning a very danceable set of cosmic disco. So...

I have to report that leaving an hour or two later we didn't bump into any further acid house djs. I was kind of hoping David Holmes or Terry Farley might be spinning records/cds as we passed some local pubs and that I could get a triptych, but it was not to be. As a day out it was all kinds of fun. Happy Easter.

£-shop Communism

If you're at a loose end this Bank Holiday Monday and have 99 pence (or more) to spare you could do a lot worse than download the new album from Hull pairing Steve Cobby and Russ Litten. Spoken word and poetry from Litten, a state of Brexit Britain address and response to Trump et al, set against the electronic funk, house and soul of Cobby. Innovative, inspired and on the money.

Can I Draw Your Picture?

                                                       Portrait of Space, Lee Miller, 1937

Back in 2009 Andrew Weatherall remixed Can I Colour In Your Hair? by Lark and apart from appearing on Soundcloud it has been unreleased ever since. The remix is a rocking dub version, bouncing rhythms and echo, a wiry guitar part and repeated chants of 'fire!' It operates in the same space as the pair of remixes Weatherall did of Steve Mason's Boys Outside at around the same time. Top quality stuff. At some point in the next few months it will be released on 7" vinyl by Care In The Community Recordings and it is definitely a case of better late than never.