The New Dawn Will Come

Some new music for Sunday, downtempo, blissed out and chasing the Balearic beat. Joe Morris is a Leeds based DJ and producer who has created two new tracks quickly during the lockdown and they are a perfect sounding pair, bass and drums padding away and some lovely optimistic piano.



Dan Wainwright is on a creative roll, producing one new thing after another. Peace Of Mind is a slowed down, cosmic, synth voyage, like sunshine coming through the trees, a feeling of contentment and the knowledge that whatever comes tomorrow can be dealt with.



Get High is more direct and built for dancing, wonky, off kilter new beat.

Isolation Mix Six

I got this dramatic shot of the sky over the Mersey on Thursday night. One habit I hope I manage to maintain once this is all over, whenever that is, is taking regular walks. You miss so much sitting inside and even the most familiar and mundane places can look different when caught at a particular time. This week's Isolation Mix is a dubwise and post punk excursion from The Clash, some dubbed out Joy Division covers, Bauhaus, The Slits, Killing Joke remixed by Thrash, a bunch of Andrew Weatherall dub versions and some On U Sound from Dub Syndicate.



The Clash: The Crooked Beat

Steve Mason: Boys Outside (Andrew Weatherall Dub 2)

Jah Division: Dub Will Tear Us Apart

Jah Division: Dub Disorder

Bauhaus: Bela Lugosi’s Dead

The Slits: I Heard It Through The Grapevine

Dub Syndicate: Ravi Shankar Part.1

Sabres Of Paradise: Ysaebud

New Order: Regret (Sabres Slow ‘n’ Lo)

Lark: Can I Colour In Your Hair (Andrew Weatherall Version)

Killing Joke: Requiem (A Floating Leaf Always Reaches The Sea Dub Mix)

We Have Brandy And Half Corona

I wrote this, went back to it, re-wrote it, nearly deleted it and then went back to it again and decided to go with it.

Today is a bank holiday in the UK. The traditional May Day bank holiday that should have been on Monday moved to today- not that it matters very much at the moment, almost everyday's the same anyway. Today's bank holiday celebrates the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe, the defeat of the Nazis and the end of the Second World War in Europe. This day will be celebrated by some with bunting and socially distant street parties and cosy 1940s vibes, speeches by Churchill and a general sense of national satisfaction. It is a Daily Mail, Tory Party, Brexit, picture postcard version of 1945- cheerful British crowds, Spitfires, the King and Queen waving from the balcony, cucumber sandwiches. I'm uncomfortable with it because it is based on a number of lies and distortions.

The Blitz brought untold suffering to the people of Britain. Two million houses destroyed, 32, 000 people killed and 87, 000 seriously injured by bombs. Cities were flattened. When it began there was no real plan at central or local government level for how to deal with bombing or its aftermath. When the first air raids wiped out whole streets, the local authorities had to invent a response. Clearing bomb sites, digging out survivors and bodies, providing medical care and shelter. Blackout, evacuation, fire wardens and so on were all put in place. Whole families and entire streets were lost. There's a memorial in Stretford cemetery, just up the road from here, to the residents of Lime Road where multiple houses were flattened by a bomber returning from delivering it's load to Trafford Park. The wall records the names of fifty people and 'seventeen unidentified persons' who were killed in their beds at Christmas 1940, in some cases every member of a family. The trauma that these raids brought is generally overshadowed by the so- called Spirit of the Blitz. Counselling didn't exist. Dealing with PTSD wasn't a priority. People buried didn't talk about it. Even at the time the Spirit of the Blitz was a myth, a propaganda campaign conducted by Lord Beaverbrook, the Daily Express newspaper owner brought into the National Government, to keep spirits up and help win the war. Crime increased during the Blitz. The black market flourished. The King and Queen were booed and jeered  by ordinary Londoners when they visited the East End. Evacuees were often resented by communities and many were treated badly. Public air raid shelters were not widely used, they were often cheaply built, water logged and had a reputation for collapsing. Many people, the poor in the cities, had little or no access to shelters anyway. All in it together?

Newspapers that supported left wing parties were banned under wartime legislation. Churchill wanted to extended the ban to include the Daily Mirror when it published a cartoon critical of his policies in 1942 (above). Under Beaverbrook the newspapers staged photographs of milkmen delivering the daily pint over the wreckage of a bombing raid to keep spirits up. They'd already had to spin the defeat at Dunkirk into a victory. The war was almost lost before it began, 350, 000 troops retreating from the oncoming German army and trapped between them and the sea. This is not to deny the bravery of the men involved but the Dunkirk myth is one of the biggest propaganda spins the British media has ever created. This isn't to say that keeping spirits up and raising morale aren't an important job during wartime but the lie has become the truth, officially repeated and that's the version of the war that is being celebrated today.

During the war some members of the government began to plan for afterwards and there was a growing view that things had to change. The poverty of the 1930s, unemployment, children going hungry, slum housing, no security, were all seen as the old way. There was talk of a new world, of doing away with the old guard and getting it right. Win the war and then win the peace. People started to talk of a welfare state and Sir William Beveridge was asked to write a report. He said that Britain could afford a welfare state and had to afford it, for the national good. Churchill was against it and he began to be seen as the man for the war but not the man for the peace. The British people agreed, removing him from office at the first post- war general election. Ernest Bevin, the trade union leader who was brought into the Wartime Cabinet and in charge of the Ministry of Labour, argued strongly for a welfare state and for post- war security for all, the idea that poverty should be eradicated and that government and the people had a duty to build a fairer society. After all, what was the suffering for, if not this? This has been successively undermined from the 1970s onwards by the right wing press and right wing politicians, with repeated stories of benefit cheats, dependency culture and dole dossers, a concerted campaign to forget that the welfare state was a reaction to the absolute poverty of the 1920s and 1930s and a commonly held desire to provide security for people who had none, who could not afford to visit a doctor, who died because they could not afford medicines, who went hungry when they had no work. The Daily Mail and the Tories who want us to celebrate V.E. Day are the same who want to undermine and override the Second World War's most long lasting social impact in this country. The causes of the welfare state- war, poverty, inequality, injustice- are ignored in favour of sentimental flag waving and a notion of togetherness. The real togetherness, if it existed, was the sense among politicians and people in 1945 that when Hitler was defeated there had to be fundamental changes in the way the UK and society were organised and the way it treated people. In this new world there was no place for Winston Churchill who was against it anyway. Our current PM's hero is Winston Churchill. The talk is that he wants to loosen the lockdown, get the economy going again, and that he will announce this on Sunday- backed up by the flag waving Tory press. Many feel that this is too soon. If Johnson sees this as his Churchill moment he may find that a resulting second wave of Covid infections becomes the equivalent of the V2 flying rockets that destroyed neighbourhoods in London 1944 and 1945.

The V.E. Day celebrations also add to the idea of British exceptionalism, that 'we' won the war. Yes, the Battle of Britain was a significant moment, Hitler's plan to invade Britain postponed, but it was his decision to invade the Soviet Union that the war hinges on militarily. The Russian people fought street by street, house by house, cellar by cellar. Russian women served at the fontline. They lost 20 million people as a result. The Red Army, the defence of Stalingrad, the horrors of the Eastern Front and the advance towards Berlin turned the tide of the war. In the west the D- Day landings started to squeeze the Nazis out of France. U.S. soldiers make up two thirds of the 10, 000 casualties from the landings. None of this is adequately represented by the Spitfires, sandwiches and bunting portrayal of V.E. Day.

The newspapers and politicians who want us to celebrate this parochial, one eyed view of the past are the same ones who want to take us out of Europe, who want us to prioritise business over human lives by lifting the lockdown and who want to turn back the clock to a land that never existed. Jon Savage tweeted a comment earlier this week and it's something that I've felt for some time. Jon's Tweet reads-

'Have suddenly focussed on the fact that the usual May Day holiday on Monday has been moved by this shower of shit government to next Friday for VE Day: this country has been totally infantilised. GET OVER THE FUCKING SECOND WORLD WAR'

And who can disagree?
Actually loads of people would disagree I'm sure.

Anyway, that's my take. I'll inevitably end up feeling like the V.E. Day Grinch when the genuine sense of community down our road that has been fostered during lockdown becomes a socially distanced street party later on today, people drinking and waving flags in their front gardens and there's some communal Vera Lynn and Churchill broadcasts.

Here are some London Irish trad- folk punks singing a song in 1988 about the serious business of public holidays in Almeria.

Fiesta

Gone

This came as a slap in the face yesterday, the news that Florian Schneider, co- founder of Kraftwerk and as a result one of the most influential musicians in post- war Europe, has died at the age of 73. Kraftwerk's importance cannot be overstated. Their pioneering music, use of machine rhythms, synths and keyboards, vocoders more or less invented the genre of electornic music. That they then popularised it with a mass market and continued to experiment makes their achievements even greater. Their influence on other artists from the 1970s onward is immeasurable. Florian Schneider met Ralf Hutter when both were students in Dusseldorf. It was Schneider who first purchased a synthesiser and said that was the direction they should pursue. Autobahn. Radio- Activity. Trans- Europe Express. The Man Machine. Computer World. Tour de France.

I saw them play at the Apollo in March 2004, one of the most memorable shows I've ever seen, from the four men- machines in lit up suits at their work stations across the front of the stage to the films projected onto three giant screens behind them, to the run through their greatest songs and the robots appearing from behind the curtain for the encore.

This is an impossibly beautiful song, the topline melody is heartbreakingly gorgeous. It is even better sung in German.

Neonlicht

R.I.P. Florian Schneider.

Equally sad (and equally pioneering) Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen died on April 30th of Covid 19 symptoms. I meant to do something about him sooner but things kept getting in the way so I'll pay tribute to him here. His work with Fela Kuti in the 1970s combined his Nigerian native music, Juju, with jazz and highlife. Fela's music and stance became increasingly militant especially with the Africa '70 group which Tony was the bandleader of. Brian Eno and Talking Heads were in awe of him. This one is from 1973 Tony drumming with Fela Kuti. I can't really do this music justice with a simple description. Just listen to it.

Jeun Ko Ku (Chop And Quench)

In recent times he worked with Damon Albarn in his The Good, The Bad And The Queen supergroup, his Africa Express project and Gorillaz. Following his death Damon released this Gorillaz song in honour of him, Tony Allen still the bang on those rhythms aged 79. This quote was put out with it-

“I want to take care of youngsters – they have messages and I want to bring them on my beat.” Tony Allen

R.I.P. Tony Allen

Icon

Some re-worked Detroit techno for you on this Wednesday in May in lockdown. Around 2015 Vince Watson was invited to re- work Derrick May's Icon, a Rhythim Is Rhythim  track from 1996. It came out in 2017 backed with another re-working on the B-side, an updated version of Derrick's co- write with Carl Craig, Kao- Tic Harmony. Vince treats both tracks respectfully, rebuilding them without taking away the original feeling or energy. Some added drums, some strings maybe. Retro Techno/Detroit Definitive- Emotions Electric was the title of a 1991 compilation of the early Detroit techno and it fits this just as well. Dance music for the heart and the head as well as the feet.

Icon (Remixed and Reconstructed)

Planet Caravan

Brand new from Moon Duo is this ten minute odyssey, a very chilled psychedelic cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan. It appears on a tribute album called What Is This That Stands Before Me?, a compilation of covers of Sabbath songs by bands on Sacred Bones Records. If you like Moon Duo (I know some of you do, and if you don't, you should) you'll love this. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Duo Blissed Out Duo. This is so good and so beautiful it practically works as medicine.

Monday's Long Song

I posted this photo on Twitter last week, the contents of a box I found in the loft. These cassettes have survived numerous house moves and various culls. I was happy to find them, the Proustian rush was enjoyable. Many of them date from the late 80s when it was in lots of ways a different world and I was a different person. Someone called Jon Fugler saw the photo and commented 'good haul, the ladybird is my favourite...' to which I replied 'Fluke', a useful piece of information I thought as the band's name isn't on the front of the cassette. It was then pointed out to me by @AcidGrandads that Jon Fugler was the singer in Fluke. Sometimes you just have to give a virtual shrug, smile and face palm.

Fluke were ace, an acid house/ electronic band who crossed all the genres from techno to house to ambient, guitars, synths, samples, drum machines and vocals. Their song Pan Am Into Philly is one of the great lost ones of the era and the version on Creation's Keeping The Faith, Philly (Jamourphous Mix), is superb and a real personal favourite from that time. The album with the ladybird on it is from 1991,a live album from a time when people doubted whether this type of band could really perform live- the band doubted it as well as the computers weren't always reliable enough to survive a gig. Nevertheless the album, Out (In Essence) is a great snapshot of the group.

Garden Of Blighty (Out/In Essence)

What makes my inability to recognise Jon Fugler even worse is that in my final year at university I knew Hugh Bryder (who was Fluke's tour DJ and friend of a friend, and Hugh was supposed to be DJing at my wedding in 1995 but was stuck on a train).

Canción Mixteca

Playing around with the Harry Dean Stanton monologue from Paris, Texas when I was putting yesterday's Isolation Mix together last week caused me to play the entire soundtrack through a few times. It's not a very long album, only ten tracks and if it wasn't for 'I Knew These People...' which clocks in at over eight minutes it would be much shorter. Ry Cooder's guitar playing, all slide guitar, delicate finger picking, reverb and atmosphere, perfectly matches the moods and look of the film- the dust of the desert, the longing of the characters, the melancholy and loss of Travis and Jane. Ry Cooder said in 2018 that director Wim Wenders caught the ambience of the south west of the USA with the use of ambient microphones which picked up the sound of the desert and the wind, which he discovered is in E♭. So for the soundtrack they tuned all the instruments to E♭. That's the kind of detail I like, tuning your guitar to the key of the wind.

This song, Canción Mixteca, is ne of the highlights of the soundtrack and is little more than Ry Cooder's echo laden guitar, some piano and Harry Dean Stanton singing. The song is a Mexican folk song, written between 1912 and 1915 by Jose Lopez Alvarez. He wrote it in Mexico City suffering from homesickness for Oaxaca, his home. Since then it has been adopted by many Mexican exiles who long for their hometown.

'So far am I from the land where I was born!
Immense nostalgia invades my thoughts,
and, to see myself, as lone and dismal as leaf on the wind,
I would that I'd weep ‒ I would that I'd die ‒ out of sorrow!

O land of sunshine! I sigh for‐to see you.
Now that, far from you, I live without light ‒ without love.
And, to see myself, as lone and dismal as leaf on the wind,
I would that I'd weep ‒ I would that I'd die ‒ out of sorrow!'

Canción Mixteca

Isolation Mix Five

Five weeks into these isolation mixes already- doesn't time fly when you're socially restricted? There is a higher BPM count on this mix but also some folky darkness and post punk dread from Nick Drake and A Certain Ratio respectively, some dance grooves from Ellis Island Sound and Scott Fraser, the ultra Balearic vibes of Richard Norris' Time And Space Machine remix of A Mountain Of One, some 1990 class from World Unite when Creation Records went all E'd up and dancey, Andrew Weatherall remixing Moby and Wayne Coyne in epic style, half of The Clash with Frank Ocean and Diplo plus the West Los Angeles Childrens' Choir (brought to you in association with Converse) from 2014 and a very long Seahawks remix of Tim Burgess, some headspinning ambient noise set against Harry Dean Stanton's monologue from Paris, Texas. 'Yep, I know that feeling'.

Tracklist:

Nick Drake: ‘Cello Song

A Certain Ratio: Winter Hill

Ellis Island Sound: Intro, Airborne, Travelling (Scott Fraser Remix)

A Mountain Of One: Ride (The Time And Space Machine Remix)

World Unite: World Unite

Moby Ft. Wayne Coyne: Another Perfect Life (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Frank Ocean, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Diplo: Hero

Tim Burgess: A Gain// Stoned Alone Again Or (Seahawks Remix) v Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Ry Cooder: I Knew These Two People, Paris Texas soundtrack

Montego Bay

In November 1982 The Clash arrived in Jamaica to play at the World Music Festival, held in the Bob Marley Performing Centre, Montego Bay. The grandly named arena was apparently not much more than a gravel car park with a stage at one end. The line up looks incredibly impressive all these decades later. As well as Ladbroke Grove's finest, The Beat, The Grateful Dead, Squeeze, Joe Jackson, the B- 52s, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Toots And The Maytals, Black Uhuru, a touring version of The Beach Boys, Rick James, Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight were all booked to play. The Clash had sacked Topper Headon by this point, his heroin use pushing him out of the band (a move that Joe admitted years later was the start of the end). Terry Chimes had been drafted back in, on the basis that he at least knew all the early songs. Clash history has treated Terry a little unfairly, his re- naming on the sleeve of the first album as Tory Crimes, his unwillingness to get on board with the band's political stance and self confessed desire for a Ferrari. Admittedly, he wasn't as good a drummer as Topper, but who was? The sets he played with the group in 1982 and 1983 show he was more than capable of filling the drum stool as they slogged their way round stadia (supporting The Who), arenas and festivals.

At Montego Bay problems with the running order and set timings meant The Clash didn't take the stage until very late on the second night of the festival, about 4.00am. Feelings were running high and people were pissed off. There's a story about the band demanding $200, 000 in cash to play and being the only band that refused to be filmed. Joe was unhappy about ticket prices excluding the locals from attending. The audience, not unsurprisingly at that time of the night/morning were a bit subdued, Joe trying to whip up some atmosphere on a couple of occasions including threatening to send The Grateful Dead on in their place. The set has been widely bootlegged, recorded from the sound desk. The Clash, according to people who were there and the evidence of this recording, were pulling out all the stops and gave it their all from opening with London Calling and then onward. The middle section of their set, from Junco Partner through to Bankrobber sounds particularly good. It's Friday. Red Stripe. Jerk chicken. The Clash.



London Calling
Police On My Back
Guns Of Brixton
The Magnificent Seven/ Armagideon Time
Junco Partner
Spanish Bombs
One More Time
Train In Vain
Bankrobber
This Is Radio Clash
Clampdown
Should I Stay Or Should I Go
Rock The Casbah

Straight To Hell
I Fought The Law

Stranger On The Shore

Michael Smith, writer and poet, worked with Andrew Weatherall in 2016. Weatherall had been offered the post of artist- in- residence at Faber & Faber. One of his projects was to provide an ambient soundtrack over which Smith read extracts from his novel Unreal City, his Hartlepool accent very striking over the soundscapes made by Andrew, Nina Walsh and guitarist Franck Alba. There was a limited edition book with Andrew's handwritten notes in the margins, a CD of the soundtrack (six long ambient pieces with Michael Smith speaking over the top) and a 10" record remixing one of the tracks, all released in one lovely package.

ONDON

Lost

Michael Smith moved to St. Leonards, a down- at- heel seaside town near Hastings and with Maxy Bianco made three films about three seaside towns, liminal places where the land meets the sea, where the rules are slightly different, and the people that live there. Andrew and Nina again produced a soundtrack. This is the Hastings and St. Leonards one....



The other two films explored Whitby, North Yorkshire and Grays in Essex. You can watch them at the BFI's website.

Dreaming

Things are weird at the moment- it goes without saying really- but despite now having got into a routine during the lockdown period and the weekly events becoming ways to mark the passing of time (weekends free of virtual and online/video work, Tuesday putting the bins out, Thursday night clapping) there are moments when the sheer otherness and scale of what is happening hit home. The community that is being fostered, especially on streets like ours where people live close to each other and while the sun has been shining people have been socially distancing in their front gardens, talking to each other across walls and hedges, is a definite feature of 2020. But there are times when it's all a bit much. The silence outside. The absence of the people you'd expect to see every day. The strange atmosphere in supermarkets. The crossing the road to avoid people when out for a walk. The new normal seems normal and then something happens that makes you remember how un-normal this all is, how far from normal we are.

As I type this a hearse with a coffin in it and just two cars following has driven past my window.

 I've seen several links to newspaper articles about people experiencing more vivid or more lucid dreams during the lockdown and I have found myself waking up suddenly, in a jolt, from some very vivid dreams. I don't think the dreams themselves are especially strange- often they seem to be work dreams- but they do seem to be very real.

In May 1991  Creation's dance act Hypnotone remixed The Lilac Time. Hypnotone remixed other Creation artists, memorably Primal Scream and Sheer Taft and had several great records at the time themselves. The remix of Dreaming is a lovely piece of dance pop, warm and open, ambient and bleepy, and the voice repeating 'all the people on this earth... I am talking to you'. A record totally in tune with the shift that had taken place at that time.

Dreaming (Hypnowah Mix)

Night

Kelly Lee Owens was about to release her second album Inner Song, the follow up to her 2017 debut, but has pushed it back in light of the current situation. She put this up last week though saying...

'From me to you, here is a song from my album. It's called 'Night'. This wasn't really supposed to be a single but with everything that is happening right now I wanted to reach out x'

Night is a wonderfully emotive piece of electronic pop, a song with a softer edge than the techno of previous single Melt! and with a pulse that anchors it. It builds too, becoming quite explosive. Very nice indeed.

Monday's Long Song

The new album by The Orb, Abolition of The Royal Familia, has been a bit of an opinion splitter. For some it's a return to the halcyon days of Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld and U.F.Orb, a sprawling four sides of vinyl, dub house odyssey. There are, for some people, some issues with the running order and the first few songs which seem very out of step with the rest of the album but on the whole it's been very well received. One thing is certain for me- the penultimate song, the twelve minute bliss of The Weekend It Rained Forever- Oseberg Buddha Mix (The Ravens Have Left The Tower)- is something that I cannot get enough of. It has some recurring echoes of and themes from the Blade Runner soundtrack and Roger Eno's piano playing is perfect. My only concern is that it will forever in my mind be associated with the lockdown and everything that goes with it.

Immersion

I posted the first two instalments in Richard Norris' Music For Healing series back when lockdown began and make no apology for returning to the latest ones. Richard has now put out five episodes of Music For Healing, twenty minute long ambient pieces, minimal deep listening, designed to calm the mind and slow the circulation. All work incredibly well as therapy but are equally good as pieces of music in their own right, a perfectly judged combination of repetition, ambience and minimalism, lit up by small, chiming melodies and soft drones, recorded live and in real time. This one, Music For Healing 5 is only £3 and Richard is donating the monies raised from the sales to the mental health charity MIND



Here's Music For Healing 4 where you can float away on some beautifully blissed out drones.

Isolation Mix Four

A bit of a change again for this week's hour long isolation mix, this time a trip into more psychedelic and psyche areas, some guitars, a couple of cover versions, some remixes and a re-edit of an 80s alt- classic with an eye, a third eye maybe, on the cosmic and the blissed out. One of the segues is a little bit clumsy but I can live with it. I've had to move the host over to Mixcloud as I'd used up all my available space at Soundcloud without going to the paid for service.



Tracklist-
The Durutti Column: Otis

Wixel: Expressway To Yr Skull (Long Champs Bonus Beats)

Moon Duo: Stars Are The Light

Curses: This Is The Day

Le Volume Courbe: Rusty

Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End

Mogwai: Party In The Dark

The Liminanas: The Gift (Anton Mix)

Goldfrapp v Spiritualized: Monster Love

Julian Cope: Heed Of Penetration and the City Dweller Head Remix by Hugo Nicholson

Edit Service 8 by It’s A Fine Line: The Story Of The Blues (Talkin’ Blues)

The Early Years: Complicity

Tactical Support

Two remixes by artists of each other's work from the tail end of the 20th century for today. Two Lone Swordsmen remixed Kenny Hawkes, the Brighton based DJ and producer who kickstarted Girls FM, an important London pirate radio station, and who played at several London club nights including Space at Bar Rhumba. Sadly, Kenny died in 2011 following an illness.

Ashley's War opens with some amusing vocal samples at the start the TLS remix of Ashley's War settles into a laid back, languid groove with no particular end in sight, just some downtempo head nodding from late 1999.

Ashley's War (Two Lone Swordsmen Mix)

In return Kenny remixed a track from Two Lone Swordsmen's Stay Down album, their 1998 experimental, dub techno excursion into underwater minimalism. Kenny's remix appeared on a 12" single Two Lone Swordsmen Receive Tactical Support which coupled Kenny's remix with the C-Pij remix of Big Clapper (C-Pij being a Nina Walsh pseudonym) and Silicon Scally's remix of Black Commandments. Just another obscure and high quality release hidden away in the Andrew Weatherall back catalogue. Kenny's remix of Hope We Never Surface is propelled by a clattering drum beat and some dark synths along with the crackle and hiss of late 90s Two Lone Swordsmen.

Hope We Never Surface (Kenny Hawkes Remix)

Already!

Bushpilot were an early/mid 90s Leeds- based band whose sound shows the influences that fire their tremendous racket- Krautrockers like Can, US punk and post rock groups such as Slint, the tough grooves of James Brown and Funkadelic. Trebly guitars, sharp riffs, punk funk bass and loud motorik drums, energy and spirit in abundance, and songs with titles like Big Quaalude Thunder Nothing and Jesus Loves That Rock N Roll. I'm not saying they should have been massive but there is plenty going on here and there are multitudes of bands circa.1994/5 who sold many more records with far less going on. Their recordings have recently been re-issued on vinyl and digitally by God Unknown Records.

Bedrock City

Here's Joe Strummer, sometime in NYC, in a Bedrock City t- shirt. Joe had a thing about cities. His solo career has songs named after at least three (imaginary) cities. To Joe, cities seem to have existed as a state of mind or a condition. With The Clash he spent time in Clash City and Innoculated City.

Trash City came out in 1988, Joe backed by The Latino Rockabilly War. The song was one of five done for the soundtrack to Permanent Record and came out as a single too. Trash City is fantastic, one of those chugging railway guitar riffs and there's some terrific Joe imagery in the lyrics, American junk culture over a clattering rhythm. It sounds like it could have been written and recorded in five minutes and none the worse for it.

Trash City

Forbidden City was on the first album Joe did with The Mescaleros, 1999's Rock Art And The X Ray Style, acoustic guitars and bongos, a song for the people of China and a 'dream of freedom'.

Forbidden City

Bummed Out City is from his second album with The Mescaleros, 2001's Global A Go Go. Bummed Out City is where Joe resides following a bust up with his wife. 'It was me/drove off the off- ramp/ of the sweetheart highway' he sings at the star and then in chorus follows up with 'we're in bummed out city/ that signs says/ I plead your mercy and your pity'. A gentle apology over acoustic guitars and a fiddle.

Bummed Out City

Bedrock City was the home town of the Flintstones, 'the modern Stone Age family'. My 'research' shows that there were two Bedrock City theme parks, one in Arizona (which opened in 1972) and one in South Dakota (which opened in 1966). It looks like both are now closed. Whether Joe's t- shirt came from a trip to one of the two theme parks I don't know but it paints a nice image in my mind, Joe with leather jacket, quiff and family trawling round some Yabba Dabba Doo rides.

In 1986 Joe's ex- Clash mate Mick Jones put out Badrock City, an electro/ dub version of their rocking C'mon Every Beatbox single, seven minutes of cut and paste samples, sirens, drum machines and bassline. The single led BAD's second album, No. 10, Upping Street, a record which Joe produced and on which he co- wrote some of the songs with Mick.

Badrock City

BAD also provided a song for the soundtrack to the 1994 Flintstones movie, a song called Rock With The Caveman. It pens with roaring dinosaur sounds and Fred shouting 'Wilma, I'm home!!!' before heading into rock 'n' roll pastiche territory, covering a 1956 Tommy Steele song (actually the first British rock 'n' roll record to enter the UK top 20, a fact which apparently has pissed Cliff Richard off over the years). You'll probably only need to listen to this once.

Rock With The Caveman

Pounding System

Not far to the north of where we live lies the River Mersey. The riverbanks on both sides are walkable and when you cross by the footbridge up near Ashton- on- Mersey golf club there are a maze of paths that wind their way through floodplains and fields, either east to the water park and then Chorlton or west through to Urmston. Much of this land is known as an Ees- Stretford Ees, Chorlton Ees and Sale Ees. Ees is an archaic word meaning a piece of land liable to flood or water meadow. The footpaths cut their way through the Ees, surrounded by trees, hedges and meadows. The M60 and its link roads are all interwoven but are very quiet at the moment. Usually from our back garden you can hear the M60. At the moment you can hear the birds and the occasional rattle of the tramline, a mile in the other direction. Our daily bout of exercise sometimes takes us along the riverbank, especially in the evening when it's much quieter and social distancing is easier and less fraught, and through these lanes and pathways. As the sun dips out west beyond Irlam and Warrington you can sometimes get to witness a spectacular sunset. This is one of the positive things lockdown is giving us- finding local moments of beauty, even in our fairly unromantic and ordinary parts of south west Manchester, and this is now life in 2020- taking the time under these restrictions to appreciate what's on your doorstep.

Here is some dub splendour to match the sunset above from Dub Syndicate, a key part of the On U Sound stable. I was going to post the majestic, far out sounds of Ravi Shankar (Pt 1) but it turns out I've posted that before, back in 2017. Pounding System was the opening track on their 1982 album The Pounding System. The bass and drums/percussion are so precise but so loose in Sherwood's hands. The horns seem to rise up from the mixing desk, levitating. Skanking guitar parts pop in and out. Every element in it's own space and with room to breathe.

Pounding System

Monday's Long Song

This song isn't particularly long, not by the standards of some songs in this series, but it feels long- and not in a bad way. In 2008 Goldfrapp released a second single, Happiness, from their Seventh Tree album. J Spaceman's remix/version came out on the CD #2 (back when record companies got you to buy two CD singles by spreading the remixes and B-sides out). There is a very good Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation too, a very 60s European sounding re-working, boulevards and the Champs Elysee, but the Goldfrapp v Spiritualized song, Monster Love, is something else. Strings, drone, bells, a lazy tambourine, a wheezy organ and Jason's numbed out vocal just drifting, sighing 'everything comes around', repetition and seemingly endless. It's only five and a half minutes long but feels like an eternity.

Monster Love

Barry Island

This is new from Rich Lane, Newcastle under Lyne's Balearic chug overlord, and it's a beauty. Laid back and easy going, slinky and filmic in scope, it hits the spot from the moment those synths fade in at the start and the windwood brings the melody.

A friend on Facebook said it sounds like driving down the Amalfi coast in a convertible, wind in the hair, sunglasses on, sun dipping in the sky, the tide coming in, the evening ahead of you. It's all those things. And even though all those things are imaginary at the moment the music makes them almost close enough to touch. There are two top class remixes, the Long Champs dub is lovely, an unwinding and stripped down take on the original while Duncan Gray Ambient Mix is gorgeous, opening with the sound of the tide coming in and some synth bleeps before the strings take over. Buy all three for £1.50.

Isolation Mix Three

It's over halfway through April already. The weeks seem to be flying by even though some of the days seem very long. This is Isolation Mix Three. I thought I'd do something different from the ambient, blissed out, opiated sounds of the first two mixes and this mix is something that I first wrote about doing in a post here about three years ago. This is an hour and three minutes of spoken word and poetry and music. Andrew Weatherall features in various guises and with various poets, the Beat Generation and The Clash are represented, there's some reggae and the unmistakable voice of John Cooper Clarke.

Jack Kerouac/Joe Strummer: MacDougal Street Blues

John Cooper Clarke: Twat

Misty In Roots: Introduction to Live At The Counter Eurovision

Linton Kwesi Johnson: Inglan Is A Bitch

The Clash (and Allen Ginsberg): Ghetto Defendant (Extended Version)

Allen Ginsberg/ Tom Waits: Closing Time/America

Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: The Deep Hum (At The Heart Of It All)

Joe Gideon and The Shark: Civilisation

Woodleigh Research Facility and Joe Duggan: Downhill

Fireflies and Joe Duggan: Leonard Cohen Knows

BP Fallon and David Holmes: Henry McCullough (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Mike Garry and Joe Duddell: St Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H Wilson (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Allen Ginsberg: I Am A Victim Of Telephone

Titan Shuff

Rich Thair and Ali Friend have spent the best part of three decades as the co- founders and rhythm section of Red Snapper. In their downtime recently they've formed Number, a group built around themselves as the core with a floating cast of vocalists and pushing a tough funky post- punk energy, the wired dance floor sound of ACR, Talking Heads, New York's No Wave. The album, Binary, is a nightclub riot of percussion, disco bass, scratchy guitars, some electro, a generous helping of dub and some lovely, wonky horns. It is out at the end of the month. In the meantime here's Titan Shuff, a science fiction intro, silky, dubbed out vox and a tremendous mutant groove.

I Don't Know No Shame

Sinead O'Connor's Mandinka arrived in my head at the start of the week, going round and round. It was a very welcome blast from 1987, Sinead's voice up against those beefed up indie- rock guitars and crashing drums. She was going against the grain from the start, signed to a major label and shaving her head when they suggested she wear miniskirts and grow her hair long.

Mandinka

The follow up to 1987's The Lion And The Cobra took her into the mainstream courtesy of the Prince cover that went to number one in every country it was released in and that video. There's lots to love on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got aside from Nothing Compares 2 U, an album that has contributions from ex- Ant Marco Pironi on guitars, Andy Rourke, Jah Wobble, Kurt Wallinger and Nellee Hooper. The culture clash of I Am Stretched On Your Grave, a 17th century Irish poem over the Funky Drummer. The anger and confession of The Emperor's New Clothes, and what could be her mission statement in the summer of 1990, 'I will live by my own policies/ I will sleep with a clear conscience'. The video for this one is memorable too...



At Glastonbury in 1990 Sinead played on the Saturday afternoon, either just before or just after De La Soul if memory serves, clad in leather biker jacket and a Viz Fat Slags t- shirt and the darkest sunglasses. The Emperor's New Clothes was the one that caught fire that afternoon, crashing guitar chords, the rousing chorus and Marco Pironi's windmilling.

Sinead saw politics as part of what music was for. The song Black Boys On Mopeds was a denunciation of the police and their treatment of young black men, specifically Colin Roach who died of a gunshot wound inside Stoke Newington police station in 1983 and Nicholas Bramble who died in May 1989 being chased by police who assumed the moped he was riding was stolen. It wasn't, it was his. He crashed and died. The culture of policing in London in the 80s was one of stop and search, cover ups, institutional racism, wrongful arrest, police brutality and racial harassment. Sinead opens up pointing the finger at the very top...

'Margaret Thatcher on TV'

Before delivering the sucker punch...

'England's not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It's the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds'

And this one too....

'These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave'

This appearance on The Late Show, BBC 2's late night arts and culture show is stunning. Viva Sinead.

Lockdown

Jah Wobble is using his time in lockdown in Stockport usefully and has recorded and released a meandering jazz dub tune for your enjoyment.



The pressure to use lockdown purposefully is something I don't think any of us need. There are all sorts of lifestyle gurus and influencers saying we should be making the most of the time, learning a new language or developing cookery skills but for a lot of people, three weeks in and counting and with no end in sight, the ability to get from one day to the next while keeping children or teenagers occupied and on an even keel is more than enough. There's so much time at our disposal but for many of us being able to concentrate for extended periods just isn't happening, we're just skimming and scrolling, browsing, distracting ourselves and taking our minds off things. Maybe that's as much as we can expect. At the front line, in hospitals and care homes, people are dying and the staff are putting themselves in harm's way every day. Avoiding the non- stop news cycle seems to be good for our mental health- the constantly increasing body count and the evasive, slippery rubbish coming out of government, make us anxious and feel out of control. Turning it off is self- defence. I keep seeing the suggestion and the hope that things will change fundamentally in various ways once this is over. I hope so.

Avril 14th

Avril 14th is a beautiful piano piece by Aphex Twin. It was originally released on his 2001 Drukqs album, a double album only released after Aphex left an mp3 player on a plane and was worried that they'd be discovered and bootlegged. There are several other versions of Avril 14th, some of which surfaced at a Soundcloud page belonging to user18081971 (a pseudonym for Ahex Twin/ Richard D James). This one is gorgeous, the use of reverb and delay creating a completely self contained world.

Avril 14th (altdelay)

User18081971 uploaded some new songs last week including two slow, haunting synth pieces. The post was dedicated to his father who had recently passed away along with this, a piece of music called qu 1.



This one too, s8v1 [brooklyn] Both are still available to download. The rest of user18081971's free track archive is here.

Bank Holiday Monday's Long Songs

Andrew Weatherall's back catalogue (his productions, own material, remixes and collaborations) is so vast that I keep re- discovering things I'd forgotten about. In 2017 he remixed an Australian duo called Heart People, Rachel Rutt and Ryan Grieve. The internet doesn't give much away about them- an interview with i-D Magazine in 2015 and a handful of releases in 2017. Weatherall's remix is a fast moving, sci- fi affair, lots of rattling snare drums and acid squiggles and bleeps with Rachel's vocals layered over the top. Weatherall remixed fellow Australians Confidence Man at the same time (twice in fact, Bubblegum in 2017 and ecstatic Out The Window a year later). He took an annual DJing jaunt to Oz around that time so I'm guessing the Heart People connection came via one of those trips. The remix has bags of energy and should kick start your morning if you're looking for something to plug you back in.

Voices (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

In 2014 while still during his Asphodells project with Timothy J. Fairplay they remixed She Lies, a  Berlin post- punk disco band- the internet again offering up little more in the way of information or background. This sounds very like a version of Berlin in the early 80s but with Weatherall and Fairplay's trademark drum machine rhythms and some lovely wobbly synth sounds and pulsing bassline. Waves of hypnotic sound and chilly, detached vocals. Sehr gut.

Needed You (Asphodells Remix)

Bringing Me Back To Life

I posted this last Easter and I'm doing the same again today, perfect music for playing while sitting in your garden/ on your balcony/ sticking your head out of the window, to catch some of the sunshine we've been getting. A Man Called Adam's Easter Song came out in 1998, a beautiful, gently unwinding piece of late 20th century balm, Sally singing 'you're bringing me back to life' as the synths and drums pad away underneath.

The special edition at Bandcamp is a digital version of the original late 90s vinyl release and adds various downtempo, found sound and dubby versions- the North Star Dub, The Gospel Oaks FX, African Flute And Beats version, the Hi Tech and Speaking in Tongues mixes and the original Cafe del Mar eight minute version. Taken together as a package they make a mini- album that you should give to yourself as an Easter gift this year while staying in.

Isolation Mix Two

A second Bagging Area mix for lockdown, an hour of tunes starting out ambient, taking a turn toward the Balearics and some fizzing electronics before the jetstream sends it back into more ambient, melancholic lands with waves and seagulls. Having the time and space to think about putting these together is one of the upsides of social distancing and isolation.

Private Mountain: Coming Back Home v Eric Cantona ‘When the seagulls follow the trawler…

Nils Frahm: Over There, It’s Raining

Steven Leggett: Bathhouse

Seahawks: Rainbow Sun

Peaking Lights: Beautiful Dub

Circle Sky: Ghost In The Machine

The Neil Cowley Trio: Echo Nebula (Vessels Remix)

Fila Brazillia: Midnight Friends

Mark Peters: Jacob’s Ladder (Ambient Innerlands Version)

Jan van den Broeke: Memories

A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Gospel Oak FX)

Bjorn Torske: First Movement

How To Have A Bath

As our lives are restricted the simple pleasures become more important and everyday task that previously were automatic and functional become more significant and central to our lives, the part of our days we can look forward to and get excited about. Cooking a meal suddenly takes on a new centrality twice a day. People have been praising the benefits of slow living for some time- slow food, slow TV and so on- and now it's enforced we can all see the benefits.

Dan Wainwright's How To Have A Bath (Parts 1- 4) is a bit of downtempo, Balearic fun. I shouldn't think he intended it to coincide with life in lockdown Britain when he wrote it but it seems to fit with the new pace of our lives. Dan's put quite a few tracks and e.p.s out in the last few weeks and much of it is available at 'name your own price' at his Bandcamp page at Oddball records.

Kissing The Cotton Clouds

Shari Denson, friend of mine I've never met but know on Facebook, is a photographer and has taken loads of great pictures of bands playing in and around Manchester. Last year she put on a one- off exhibition in a slate park under the Mancunian Way which I missed but looked really good. A week ago on Facebook she posted this picture, a shot taken at Cotton Clouds festival a couple of years ago. Shari asked 'does anyone recognise either of these gorgeous folk?'

It is a stunning photograph, a moment in time caught. I don't know which band the couple are watching, it looks like daytime so presumably a band lower down the bill. They're a good looking couple, photogenic and sexy and they embody that freedom you have when you're young. He is caught up in the performance happening to the left of the picture, she has noticed the camera and glanced at the shutter, looking straight at us. Both are in the moment, together but with a different focus. Some of Shari's friends said the woman looks a bit like Madonna and the man like Jeff Buckley. Another suggested it could be from an 80s film, this one maybe...

Shari said that if she were her, she'd want the picture printed and on the wall, ready to show her grand-kids in several decades time. This generation have so many photographs of themselves, they document themselves and their lives constantly almost without thinking about it. I've got very few photos from my teens or twenties. We only really started taking photographs regularly when we had children. Selfies weren't really a thing until phones and cameras became brought together in one object.

Since the original thread a week ago I think the man has been identified but on the night she posted it another friend Karen said that in some ways she hoped they wouldn't be found, that she liked their anonymity, she didn't want to know who they were- 'Mystery is everything sometimes, right?' In some ways I agree- without names they are a kind of every couple, young and unfettered.

Karen said that when the couple who were in the famous photo in Times Square at the end of World War II were named and their stories known it ruined the photo for her. Both lived into their nineties. The woman, Greta Friedman, said that the sailor, George Mendonsa, didn't ask to kiss her, he just grabbed her. According to Greta it wasn't romantic, more a drunken celebration, and today that strikes a very different tone.

More happily, the couple from the sleeve of the Woodstock album were found forty years later and happily were still together.

It also made me think of this photo taken in New York in the mid- 1940s,a snapshot of Hal Chase, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs near Columbia University. One of the books I've read about the Beats, it might have been Carolyn Cassady's autobiography, wrote about this picture and said that the only person who is in the moment is Jack, meeting the gaze of the lens. Hal is looking at Allen, Allen has his eyes closed, frozen slightly, Burroughs too. Jack is there, alive and looking back at us, tuned it. Shari's photo is similar- a better photo too- him intensely looking elsewhere and her looking down the camera at us.

Cotton Clouds takes place, or took place, at Saddleworth near Oldham and has been played by The Coral, Sugarhill Gang and Nick Heywood in 2017, Sister Sledge, Starsailor and The Orielles the following year and Peter Hook, Alabama 3, The Wailers and Tim Burgess last August. I think the promoters have since gone into administration and it probably wouldn't have happened this year anyway.

I'm assuming that Cotton Clouds was named after the line in Elephant Stone, a song that is one of The Stone Roses finest moments. I'd take Elephant Stone over the entire Second Coming album, it's unaffected, weightless and heady-

'Burst into heaven
Kissing the cotton clouds
Arctic sheets and fields of wheat
I can't stop coming down'

Elepahnt Stone is a technicolour burst of northern psychedelic, the words and guitars in a rush to unfold and Reni's drums driving everything on, the sound surfacing only for a breather with the 'seems like there's a hole/in my dreams' before diving back in again.

Elephant Stone 12" Mix

Stones And Steel

Today (Wednesday I think but who can be sure?) I have three songs from Danish producer Kenneth Bager that make up a new e.p (priced at thirty kroner, about £3). The first, Stones And Steel, is a dreamy song with vocals from Findlay Brown, that starts out like a Balearic ballad but picks up the beat. Cocktails at sundown on the terrace. Crickets chirruping.

Stones And Steel is followed by JLP Smoked A Doobie, a slowed down, chilled out affair with a violin and woodblocks. Dusk has now fallen, the stars are coming out.

Last up is Bager's tribute to Andrew Weatherall and an emotional ten minute dancer called Late Night Symphony with that A Love From Outer Space chug and a huge bass wobble. Shake that blanket off and hit the floor- it's either your living room or kitchen floor admittedly but it's still a floor.

The Sky Is Turning Grey

Killing Joke's calling card from 1979 was Turn To Red, their debut e.p. and its title track, a piece of monumental dub/post punk. Youth's heavy bass playing over the top of the locked groove is the bedrock. Over this Geordie Walker plays scratchy, delay- laden guitar. Sounds bounce around and fire off the walls of the recording. Jaz's vocal is covered in echo and the lyrics tell of dread, the coming apocalypse and everyday horrors-

'Chaos for breakfast
There's something in the air
Everybody can feel it
Red sky in the morning
4-minute warning
Turn to red'

Turn To Red