I Know The Place And I'm Going Home

Back at the start of lockdown in March, when the evenings were chilly and it was still going dark early and no one really knew what any of this was going to be like, I listened to an upload of an interview Nina Walsh did with an internet radio station (a Brighton based radio station I think). The interview was a couple of years old and some of what she discussed and played was put into stark light by the then recent passing of Andrew Weatherall. Some of what she played also struck a chord with me as I was finding bits and bobs of folk music were suiting the days and the times really well- Nick Drake for one which I wrote about here.

This song really grabbed me and I went and ordered a copy of the CD almost straight away. In 1992 Buffy Sainte- Marie, 60s folk and psychedelic pop singer and life long advocate of the rights of North America's indigenous peoples, had entered artistic semi- retirement and spent much of the 1980s raising her son. Buffy was an early adopter of computers in home -recording and making art and her 1992 album was recorded at her home in 1990 and then sent to London for some further production and mixing via something called the internet, using something called a modum. The album- Coincidence And Likely Stories- her first for sixteen years, makes use of sequencers, programming and keyboards but is also an early 90s folk record, some traditional instruments, some New Age element and some early 90s sonics too. In places it is stunning, a moving and emotional comeback, with songs that deal with the plight of the Native Americans (Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee), politics, greed and big business. There's nothing fey or timid about the album, Buffy's songs are hard hitting, modernised folk music. Some of it sounds a bit too stuck in the early 90s now but this song made a deep impression, especially back in March when we were suddenly confronted with lockdown and everything it brought with it.

I'm Going Home

Vacancy

Neil Young's new/old album Homegrown came out last month. It was recorded in 1974 and 1975 and then Neil shelved it, despite the quality of the songs and the presence of both Crazy Horse and his other rotating cast of musicians including the likes of Ben Keith, Emmylou Harris and Robbie Robertson. It was too personal for Neil, some of the songs dealing with his recent breakup with Carrie Snodgrass and the pain and anguish it caused him.

A handful of the songs recorded for Homegrown made it onto other albums- Star of Bethlehem, White Line, Little Wing and Love Is A Rose all turned up elsewhere throughout the next decade and a half- but seven of them sat in Neil's house unheard and unshared, until Neil's decision to release Homegrown as he intended it to be back in 1975 but in 2020. This one has been worth the wait. Vacancy sounds as fresh as it was the day it was recorded, the band crunching their way through a mid- paced, twin guitar, stomp with Neil's voice floating over the top, 'I look in your eyes/ and I don't know what's there...'. The way the guitars lock together after the verses and the ringing guitar solo at the end is wonderful, pure Neil Young in '75.



The only moment on Homegrown that misfires is Florida, a two minute soundscape with Neil muttering over the top about cities and gliders but if you're on the homegrown there's a good chance some stoned ramblings will occur. Even so, it somehow works in the context of the album.

Homegrown should have been released after Harvest, when his acoustic guitar, singer- songwriter star was at its highest. Instead it lay in the vault for forty five years and he put out On The Beach (an album that deals with Charles Manson and has songs called Vampire Blues and Revolution Blues) and Tonight's The Night (and album recorded in the direct aftermath of the deaths of roadie Bruce Berry and guitarist Danny Whitten, Neil shaken to the core by both). Having shelved Homegrown for being too raw, he released two of the bleakest albums he ever made. That's where Neil was in 1975.

For The Turnstiles was on On The Beach, a sparse but sprightly banjo moan, Neil lamenting the price of fame and the artistic costs of arena rock via the metaphor of baseball.

For The Turnstiles

Life Comes In Phases Take The Good With The Bad

Back in the mid- 90s when the Beastie Boys were the best band in the world they release a run of albums- Check Your Head, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty- that were effortlessly brilliant. Mixing rap, funk, punk, dub, scratching and sampling with live instruments, adding Money Mark on keys and their own particular, cockeyed worldview- anything from science fiction films, late 60s/ early 70s fashions, golf visors, ramen, the mullet hairstyle, Lee Perry- they had a golden streak where it seemed like everything they did was a brilliant idea and that you were in on the joke even if you only got 25% of the references. Anyone else from the same period that could be considered for the 'best band in the world' title had nothing on the Beastie Boys.

Their golden phase was heralded in 1989 by the album they made when they took themselves away from Def Jam and off to Los Angeles and re- thought everything they did. Hooking up with the Dust Brothers (the real Dust Brothers) they rented a villa with a pool and the owners wardrobes, stuffed full of 70s clothing, and made Paul's Boutique. This album showed they were not the one- joke frat boys of Licensed To Ill and that they were not going to be one hit wonders. Paul's Boutique is a rich, complex- but- simple, layered record, samples from one hundred and five different records sprinkled over backing tracks The Dust Brothers had already created. On top of this multi- coloured, vibrant album where songs are constructed with split second timing, the three Beasties placed their three way rhymes, adding another layer to an already dense record. Not that it sounds too dense, it's all done with amazing beats, a sense of humour, innovation and a lightness of touch that draw you in from the moment the needle finds the groove (and this is very much an album that should be listened to on vinyl).

Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun is one of the most straight ahead songs on  Paul's Boutique, a dusty rock drum beat (borrowed from Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band and their song Last Bongo In Belgium) rumbles away for a couple bars before the heavy guitar riff comes in, sounding like it's on a turntable that is slowing down, and then the Beasties and their whining NYC rapping and smothered in echo describing the stupidity of violence...

'Rolling down the hill snowball getting bigger
An explosion in the chamber the hammer from the trigger...'

There's a Pink Floyd sample in there, the piano chord from Time, clanging away. The super heavy Black Sabbath rock vibes continue through til the tension snaps at one minute fifty...

'Looking down the barrel of a gun
Son of a gun son of a bitch
Getting paid getting rich'

A pause, then the drums beat doubles and a guitar chord crashes in- both stolen from Mississippi Queen by Mountain- and the second half gets underway. Rambo, Bruce Willis, Son Of Sam and Clockwork Orange get name checked and the crunching riff and rolling drums carry us through...

'You’re a headless chicken chasin’ a sucker freebasing
Looking for a fist to put your face in
Get hip don’t slip knuckle heads
Racism is schism on the serious tip'

The vocals finish at that point but there's still a seriously deranged guitar riff to deal with, circling down the plughole, before the drum beat comes to dead stop.

Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun

Ennio Morricone

I've posted music by Ennio Morricone recently, back in May as part of a tribute to his Spaghetti Western soundtracks and the sampling of them by various bands (which you can find here) and also as part of at least two of my Isolation mixes. His death was announced yesterday. Ennio died aged 91 in hospital following a fall a few days earlier. It's fair to say that his soundtrack scores for Sergio Leone's Man With No Name trilogy redefined what a composer could do in cinema and Morricone went on to score over 500 films. In a lot of ways, for people around my age, his work was one of the sounds of our youth- the whip cracks, the whistling, the twangy guitars, the sweeping strings and the chanting. The songs stand alone too, as pieces of music to listen to away from the brilliance of Leone's films. A pioneer. RIP Ennio.

Watch Chimes  (From For A Few Dollars More)

Monday Long Song

This is Albert Bridge House in Manchester, an eighteen storey office building with lower level ones around it- check out the wave roof on the building at the fore in my photo, overlooking the River Irwell. It's housed various government departments over the years and has been described as 'the best modern building in Manchester' and 'an outstanding example of what good proportions and straightforward design'. Obviously it is currently under threat of demolition. Manchester City Council bend over backwards for anyone with money who want to demolish anything that is 'outdated' or 'ugly' and replace them with enormous glass towers that offer 'mixed use' development (this is usually un- affordable housing plus restaurants and/or a huge hotel). Recent reports have detailed how the planning committee has been meeting behind closed doors, as a response to Covid, and has been waving through developments that would have been held up to greater scrutiny otherwise. I've said before, I don't think that cities can or should be preserved in aspic and that cities are organic and change, buildings are put up, taken down, replaced and demolished, but the rate of change, kowtowing to private enterprise and lack of coherence in Manchester is out of control.

Here's some totally unconnected music for the Monday long song slot. In 1993 a single was released by the Peace Together project, a charity aimed at raising funds for cross- community activities for young people in Northern Ireland. The Peace Together single, Be Still, involved a huge cast of musicians and characters including Sinead O'Connor, Jah Wobble, Clive Langer, Nanci Griffiths, Feargal Sharkey, Peter Gabriel and Therapy? The CD single had remixes of Be Still by Robin Guthire with Liz Fraser on vocals and this epic Sabres Of Paradise remix.

Be Still (Sabres Of Paradise Remix)

This is one of the lost/overlooked Weatherall remixes from the 1990s, a twelve minute tour de force of Gaelic dub, tin whistles, echoing rimshots, bodhran, descending bass from Wobble, waves of synth and long, sustained keyboard chords and some of those trademark Sabres production touches from Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner. This remix often gets missed out of the round ups and retrospectives and it's a mystery to me why it does because it's Sabres Of Paradise at their extended dubby best.

17:44:58

This recent release from Apiento and Tepper is a three track triumph despite it's functional title 17:44:58. The opener 3030 Dog is a beauty, all warm electronic bass, precision hi- hats tsking away and waves of synthesised sound, a merging of Balearica and deep house. It's followed by the abstract bleepy Bash and completed by House Bells, which opens with whoosshing sounds and distorted vocals and heads into repetitive, ghostly slow techno territory. Sunday sounds that both comfort and increase the weirdness.

Isolation Mix Thirteen

Lockdown ends today- at least, that's how the government and the media have been portraying it with occasional reminders that social distancing and a 2 metre gap might be important. The government have largely dropped the daily infection figures and death toll from their bulletins. You don't want to be depressing people at this stage of proceedings with doom and gloom, not when there are pints to be drunk! The media have been splashing stories about Super Saturday, Independence Day and the End Of Hibernation. It does look like they deliberately chose July 4th so they could call it an Independence Day. Meanwhile, Leicester is in lockdown, the R rate in London is apparently creeping above 1, there are Covid hotspots around the country, the deaths are still well over one hundred every day, and lots of people are talking about a second wave and a second spike without the people in charge actually wanting to do anything about it. We are still shielding, the medical advice we received this week is that due to our son Isaac being in the extremely vulnerable category we should stay in isolation until August 1st. Despite a few minor changes to our lockdown lives, we are still very much in isolation.

This mix is an hour and eight minutes of music with a folky, ambient, pastoral tinge with some Balearica and guitars thrown in, some old stuff and some brand new- some birdsong and synth ambience to start and finish, blissed out tracks from Seahawks, Apiento and Ultramarine, Green Gartside solo and as Scritti Politti, acoustic guitars courtesy of Nancy Noise, Michael Head and Barry Woolnough, some understated brilliance from The Clash and Sandinista!, Julian Cope covering Roky Erickson, Thurston Moore covering New Order and Jane Weaver's cosmic/folky weirdness.

Tracklist-
Stubbleman: 4am Conversation

Seahawks: Islands

Nancy Noise: Kaia

Green Gartside: Tangled Man

Barry Woolnough: Great Spirit Father In The Sky

The Clash: Rebel Waltz

Thurston Moore: Leave Me Alone

Julian Cope: I Have Always Been Here Before

Jane Weaver: Slow Motion (Loops Variation)

Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band: Picasso

Scritti Pollitti: The Boom Boom Bap

Apiento: Things You Do For Love

Ultramarine: Stella (Stella Connects)

Stubbleman: 6am Chorus

Day Or Night No One Knows

It's a funny thing- over the years since Daydream Nation came out I've fluctuated in my appreciation of Sonic Youth. Working backwards from Daydream Nation threw up lots to enjoy (Bad Moon Rising, EVOL, Sister) and then forwards as well but with more mixed results. I loved Goo but there are swathes of their albums from the 1990s and 2000s I missed and was fine about missing. I bought and enjoyed NYC Ghosts And Flowers and Murray Street but completely missed and still haven't heard Washing Machine and A Thousand Leaves (both highly rated I think). I sometimes think they seem like style over substance but when they hit the target they hit it good and proper.

Teenage Riot (Live at Paradiso, Amsterdam, 1989)

Thurston Moore doesn't come out of Kim Gordon's 2015 autobiography Girl In A Band too well and he can come across as bit worthy on punk documentaries. I saw him play with his group in Manchester last year. I'd gone along on a whim in a way and was glad I did. It looked interesting, the venue is a former garage across the road from Strangeways prison, MBV's Debbie Googe plays bass in the band and his Spirit Counsel album last year was a good if infrequent listen.  His cover version of New Order's Leave Me Alone had pricked my attention too, a really good take on the song. Sometimes maybe you're just more in tune with things than at other times. Three weeks ago I posted his lockdown release, a nine minute instrumental for three guitars called Strawberry Moon. Last week Thurston announced the release of an album recorded back in March, just before lockdown hit. By The Fire has Debbie on bass and Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley on the drums on some songs plus Jon from Negativland. In advance he put out this single, Hashish. According to Thurston the song is 'an ode to the narcotic of love in our shared responsibility to each other during isolation'. The opening guitar drones and atonal picked notes followed by the thumping drums and wasted vocals are exactly what you'd expect from Thurston Moore and if this had been a few years ago I could easily have shrugged and moved on but right now they are hitting the spot completely.

New Levels

Last Thursday the incredible twenty one hours of mixes put together by Andrew Weatherall's former colleagues and friends, pulled together by Andrew Curley for the Glade Area at the virtual Glastonbury, went live at Mixcloud. There's is so much to enjoy in them- Timothy J Fairplay's mix, a heady, sticky ninety minutes of electronic dance music, Richard Sen's barnstorming ride through dance music littered with samples Andrew used and songs he played and Justin Robertson's masterclass in bumpity bumpity house music have been getting plays round here this week. 

In the early 1990s Andrew worked with David Harrow in various guises- as the Planet 4 Folk Quartet, as Deanne Day and as Blood Sugar. The pair released a superb double pack of 12" singles as Blood Sugar, Levels, scratchy deep house meets dub techno. The Blood Sugar night is represented in the Glade mixes with ninety minutes of outstanding digital dub techno, Basic Channel sounds, from the hands of Rick Hopkins (here). The Blood Sugar mixes were the type of thing that got passed around on cassette, nth generation copies with tape hiss as an indelible part of the experience. David Harrow, now resident in LA, has put together his own mix, half an hour of tracks he and Andrew made together. See it as an encore, digital dub techno, intense, minimal, glide by grooves, including the sweet deep house majesty of Deanne Day's Hardly Breathe. 

David is still very productive and his Bandcamp page regularly sees new and old music posted. You can find music he made with the late Bim Sherman there and this release, Machine Dubs. Headspinning, experimental, ambient techno with dubby basslines.

Put Your Hands Together

This song was on the same CD as the Grant Hart one I posted yesterday, a 2012 album from Chuck Prophet. Chuck was lead guitarist in Green On Red and lives in San Francisco. The album Temple Beautiful, which this song comes from, was a tribute to a long gone punk rock club which was in the basement of a building occupied by Jim Jones' People's Temple, a place where Chuck saw his first punk gigs. The opener on Temple Beautiful was this, Play That Song Again, a straight ahead, guitar rock 'n' roll song with a clanging riff and memorable vocal lines thrown out left, right and centre.

Play That Song Again

And suddenly it's July.

You're Not The Moon

Grant Hart put this song out back in 2009 on an album called Hot Wax. The lyrics are based on a Buddhist meditation.

'You're the reflection of the moon on the water
But you're not the moon.

You are the scent of the sea on the night wind
But you're not the sea

You are the shadows from the light of a fire
But you're not the light

You are the sound of the rain on the dry earth
But you're not the rain'

Sung in Grant's familiar edge- of- his- register voice and surrounded by the fuzz of guitars and the rattle of drums, an organic sounding, circular song and a four and a half minute white knuckle ride. It popped up on an old CD compilation I found recently and I thought it was definitely worth a re-post. The last time I posted it was back in March 2010 which as I keep noting is a fairly long time ago. The album is well worth tracking down, not least for this and closing song My Regrets.

You're The Reflection of The Moon On the Water

Monday's Long Song

The new album from The Long Champs has been occupying chunks of my listening time since it arrived a week ago, eight songs that find the sweet spot between chuggy dance music, late 80s indie and shoegaze. Next Stop Nowhere opens the album in fine style with glistening peels of guitar, a filthy bassline and synth washes over a thumping rhythm, a streamlined, dancefloor facing Sonic Youth.



Across Straight To Audio's next six songs the guitars are equal parts fuzz and shimmer, there are layers and washes of sound that trigger a range of emotions, all underpinned by the slow- mo, chugging drums. The closing song and title track pairs Ocean Rain era Will Sergeant tremelo with a lovely chilled out bassline and sets sail for somewhere on the horizon.



You can buy the CD or download from Tici Taci.

Tangled Man

Green Gartside, the voice of Scritti Politti, has unexpectedly released a 7" single through Rough Trade. If you're quick you might be able to track a copy down. The release has two songs, both covers of songs originally by legendary English folk singer Anne Briggs. There is a lot of back story to the single involving Green's pre- punk love for folk music, Morris dancing, dressing as a 19th century farm labourer but with eye liner, Fairport Convention and Martin Carthy. Green's Scritti bandmate Rhodri Marsden had been asked to do an arrangement of an Anne Briggs song and asked Green if he'd like to sing on it.

Tangled Man is the A-side, a gorgeous take on the original with Green's voice sounding as ace as ever over some lushly recorded acoustic guitar.



The B-side is Wishing Well, less instant than Tangled Man but with some dubby FX alongside the guitar and multi- tracked vocals.

Spark Sparkle

No Isolation Mix today. With Thursday's bumper Weatherall/ Glade post there are more than enough mixes to go around and frankly I'm not going even attempt to compete with that line up. Instead I have a story about an encounter with Hugo Nicolson and the small part we played in getting his solo album released this week.

Hugo Nicolson is the man who engineered many of Andrew Weatherall's early records. He started out as a tape- op working at The Town House, working on some of Julian Cope's late 80s records. In the early 90s Hugo and Andrew met and Hugo became the man who turned Andrew's ideas into reality, becoming the co- producer on Screamadelica, some of the One Dove tracks and a slew of remixes from the period, remixes of bands like That Petrol Emotion, Finitribe, Jah Wobble, My Bloody Valentine and The Drum by The Impossibles. A couple of weeks ago Hugo offered to hold a Zoom meeting to talk about his work and in particular the records he made with Andrew Weatherall in exchange for a donation to the charity of his choice (Black Lives Matter). On Thursday night a group of us listened in intently as Hugo spoke from his kitchen in Los Angeles. He told us about his initial experience as a junior tape op, watching Adrian Sherwood and the way he used the mixing desk in the studio, throwing faders around and bringing instruments in and out of the mix. He talked about Andrew Weatherall's passion and fervour, the depth of knowledge about music he brought to the studio and the skill Andrew had for bringing people together. He described the making of Come Together (a song I have previously described as the my favourite ten minutes of recorded sound) and Don't Fight It, Feel It (a song that took just four hours to do). He talked about the spirit that he and Andrew developed with remixing, that you should take the original song to pieces and create something entirely new.

Hugo described his own lack of confidence in his abilities and how Andrew encouraged him, how he developed the programming and sampling in the studio, the moment they realised Higher Than The Sun needed something else and Weatherall phoning Jah Wobble, who he'd met recently, and getting him down to play the bass on Higher Than The Sun. He discussed how he then joined Primal Scream on tour as part of the band. Hugo's job was to be the man on stage responsible for all the Midi, the man who pushed the buttons to play the spaced out, cosmic, technicolour aspects of Screamadelica- in other words, everything on Screamadelica when played live that wasn't either a guitar or the drums. Midi in a live environment in the 90s was unreliable and if the technology failed, the songs couldn't be played. At that point, everyone turned round a looked at Hugo. That, coupled with being on tour with Primal Scream during one of their most hedonistic periods, brought its problems and pressures. He discussed his love and admiration for the late Throb Young and his growing realisation he couldn't live like Throb.

Hugo engineered the Hallelujah ep for Happy Mondays and told us being in the studio, the chance to work with Martin Hannett, and waiting for the drummer to appear who had 'popped out'. The longer the wait, the more substances the Mondays consumed. Hannett, ostensibly in charge as producer, observed the madness going on, as the wait went from an hour to two days, participated. Hugo's chief interaction with Hannett was when the legendary producer came into the kitchen where Hugo was making a cup of tea and asking him, completely seriously, if he'd seen the aliens land on the lawn the afternoon before. Nevertheless, a successful e.p. was recorded and Hugo talked about his pride at working on Clap Your Hands. He worked on Julian Cope's Peggy Suicide and Jehovakill, two of the Archdrude's best records, and on Bjork's Debut.

His position in Primal Scream's touring band took him with them to Memphis to record the Dixie  Narco record, a trip that was beyond hedonistic and involved everyone getting tattooed in Memphis (except Bobby), various chaos including at least one stabbing incident and a twelve minute masterpiece being recorded, the title song that wasn't on the Screamadelica album (a song Hugo had actually forgotten about and he recalled didn't think at the time was very good- some of us in the meeting begged to differ). As the tour continued to Australia and the band's lifestyles spiralled into daily lunacy Hugo had a drug induced breakdown in Sydney and was seen trying to find the Sydney Opera House's steering wheel so he could drive it into the water and (and here's where the laughter stops) he had a nervous breakdown that hospitalised him and took him out of action for four years.

Since the late 90s Hugo has worked again with Primal Scream (on 2000's XTRMNTR) and with Radiohead, in cinema and on soundtracks, not least with David Holmes. He took questions from us about all sorts of nerdy things and at times was reminded by us of records he had made and remixes he was responsible for but had forgotten about. We had a long chat about this, one of Andrew and Hugo's best remixes from 1991 (a cover of a Slapp Happy song by a girl duo from Edinburgh). Hugo said that the song wasn't recorded to a click so there were timing issues and that to put the vocal into time would be a day's work and a real ballache so they dropped it in as it was, beautifully and brilliantly out of time.

The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Hugo also told us about an album he made as Spark Sparkle in 1999 which he'd never released. He emailed us all the same day with a link to the album and following our encouragement and feedback he's now released it on Bandcamp.



The twelve songs on Crank combine 60s Wrecking Crew sounds with a sort of West Coast exotica, dive bars and the Sunset Strip, and an experimental sheen. The production, as you'd expect from the man who engineered Screamadelica and One Dove's Fallen and Breakdown, is superb and it's incredible that has languished largely unheard for the best part of two decades. It sounds like it comes from from a similar place as David Holmes' Unloved project and if you like that, you'll find a lot here to enjoy. There's some real magic and moments of beauty in the songs, orchestral sounds and huge quantities of echo, gorgeous piano, layered voices and a kind of cosmic- folkiness to it in places. Hugo's siblings Claire and Krissie appear on vocals along with Martin Duffy (of Primal Scream) and Donald Skinner (who played with Cope). I thoroughly recommend it.

Fail We May, Sail We Must

It's now over four months since Andrew Weatherall's passing. This weekend would have been the 50th Glastonbury festival. Former Sabres office man Andrew Curley has been working with the Glade Area Glastonbury to put together a day long tribute featuring an all star list of Lord Sabre's musical compadres from the past three decades, each contributing a mix in his honour, for a virtual festival. They dropped at various times yesterday, a Three O'Clock Drop, a Six O'Clock Drop and a Nine O'Clock Drop. All are available at Mixcloud for repeat listening. Obviously it's too soon for me to review each one- there are thirteen in total and I have other things in my life which restrict me from enjoying DJ mixes in permanent rotation for twenty one hours. And I need to sleep. These mixes will be enjoyed slowly over the days and weeks to come but there must be something for everyone here- Sherman at the Controls with an outstanding hour of dub, The Orb's Alex Paterson, a blistering set from Richard Sen, dance magic from Scott Fraser, Sabresonic's Alex Knight, former Sabre Of Paradise Jagz Kooner and Primal Scream's Andrew Innes rock 'n' roll/ northern soul extravaganza, Rico Vincent's Double Gone Chapel mix, Rick Hopkins bringing the Blood Sugar, fellow- Asphodell Timothy J Fairplay, ALFOS stalwart Sean Johnston, Keith Tenniswood with a Two Lone Swordsmen set that starts at 0 bpm and builds from there and something truly special from David Holmes. The full line up is below. All the sets can be found here. 

Edit: I'm three sets in, spacing them out so as to enjoy them each fully. The Sherman dub set is a joy, an hour of serious dub vibes and several tunes with Andrew's stamp on them, some Clash and Killing Joke, King Tubby's Dub Fi Gwan and plenty more besides. Alex Paterson's house music funfest sounded great in the garden last night. Any set that opens with Ralphi Rosario's You Used To Hold Me is setting out its stall. Rico's Double Gone Chapel mix is sixty minutes of hotwired blues and amped up rockabilly. Tremendous stuff and testament to Andrew Weatherall's tastes, influence and impact. Andrew Curley has done an amazing job putting this together and pulled it off with aplomb. I'm sure that Andrew would shake his head a little and smile, downplay it- 'it's just playing records in a disco, dear boy'- but the spirit of the man and his thirty years in music is shot through these mixes in huge measures. 

Gotta Get Out Now

Fresh from contributing to the soundtrack Killing Eve South London's Fireflies released an e.p. at the start of the month called The Machine Stops. Recorded at Nina Walsh's Facility 4 the e.p. is led by their spooked cover of Kip Tyler's She's My Witch. Tucked away at the end of the four songs is the fuzzed up, smouldering garage rock of Heidi, four minutes of snarl and menace, a song which blows my cobwebs away each time I play it, thumping drums, a vicious guitar solo and lyrics about escape.  The Machine Stops is at Bandcamp and there's a video for Heidi here which isn't available to embed at the moment.

Not Sleeping

The Twilight Sad's No One Can Ever Know came out in 2012 and is about to be re- issued. It came with the line that it had been 'anti- produced' by Andrew Weatherall. I was never absolutely sure what this meant but according to the internet he gave the group some advice about analogue synths and some words of wisdom. He had apparently been lined up to produce the album but for whatever reason this didn't happen. Several years later, in 2018, a remix by Andrew of their song Videograms appeared, a seven minute piston- powered drum machine excursion with a huge synth riff and early 980s New Order/ Depeche Mode vibe. Lovely stuff.



Back to 2012. No One Can Ever Know was paired with a vinyl only remix album release, nine reworkings of the songs from the album by sympathetic remixers such as Liars, Com Truise, The Horrors and Optimo. The remixes are club based, pushing the darker, more industrial sound the band were experimenting with further. Tom Furse of The Horrors took them to a sleek, cosmische place, somewhere in the spiritual vicinity of West Germany in the 1970s.

Not Sleeping (The Horrors Dub Mix)

JD Twitch fired up the kick drum and sent them out onto the floor in the early hours.

Alphabet (JD Twitch/Optimo Remix)

False Visions

Back in March Timothy J. Fairplay relaunched three albums on Bandcamp that were previously only available on cassette. All three are packed full of drama, tension, melodies, retro- futuristic synths, ideas and noises bouncing around.

The title track to the seven track False Visions album, originally out in 2015, is an intense ride into electronic sound, all bouncing synths, keyboards, drum pads and compressed noise. It's quite a trip. Timothy has always been a king of song titles and False Visions maintains his strike rate with Bizarre Fables and Watergate Metaphor Love Scene up there with his best.



The Promise Of Midi, released for Cassette Store Day in 2014, seven more songs for cassette. This mini- album is slower and moodier, with John Carpenter vibes to the fore. Rooftop Meeting could soundtrack a spy exchange in 1980s Berlin or the final moments of the alien invasion. Given the state of the world at the moment, I'm sure some of us would welcome our extra- terrestrial overlords putting us out of our misery.



The final track on The Promise Of Midi was/is Sleighride/ Blizzard and it was remixed by Andrew Weatherall. In Lord Sabre's hands it becomes a magnificent, twice the length bass- led, dub FX grind and prowl.



The third of the three cassette releases is Good For Driving In The Night, first out in 2013, seven more slices of twisted, nocturnal synth- based exploration, finding room for disco, techno, electro, soundtrack melodies and chillwave. This is Deserted Trawler, a twinkly synth part over ominous chords and a general sense of foreboding.

Monday's Long Song

It's a common feeling round here to think a song/film/album is recent and then to check and be reminded it came out ten, fifteen or twenty years ago. The 21st century is a fifth of the way through and I still think of things that were made and released in its first decade as recent. Time is relative I guess.

Back in 2010 A Mountain Of One were remixed by The Time And Space Machine at least twice and one of the results was this seven minutes excursion, a slow burning, simmering piece of psychedelic Balearica, Richard Norris setting the controls for the heart of the sun.

Bones (The Time And Space Machine Remix)

There's something about artists that use A as their prefix, they are almost always top quality musical outfits- A Certain Ratio, A Tribe Called Quest, A Guy Called Gerald, A Mountain of Rimowa, A Place To Bury Strangers, A Winged Victory For The Sullen.

State Of The Union

On Friday night Public Enemy returned with a new single, State Of The Union, Flavor Flav and Chuck D at the forefront with DJ Premier at the decks.



There's no nuance or subtlety about this song, it is direct and furious and confrontational. It is a message aimed directly at Donald Trump and the USA's white supremacists. The chorus leaves no room for doubt 'State of the union/ Shut the fuck up/ Sorry ass motherfucker/ Stay away from me'.

In a brief message to go with the song Public Enemy said this...

'All we know is Trump has gotta go…. We shot this video in secret in the dead of the night. PEace Chuck D and Flavor Flav'

Chuck D at sixty still raging with the energy of a man forty years his junior.

Back in 2007 Public Enemy proved they were still alive and kicking with the Shirley Bassey horn sampling Harder than You Think. The song had a UK resurgence in 2010 when it was used as the music for Channel 4's TV coverage of the London Paralympics. It still sounds magnificent today.

Harder Than You Think

In 1990 Public Enemy released their third album, Fear Of  A Black Planet, a dense, sample heavy, layered album with hard, funky loops underpinning the rhymes. Among the lyrics were calls to organise and become self sufficient, samples dealing with the treatment of black men by white police forces and media coverage of race issues, songs about the stereotypical portrayal of black people in Hollywood films and the inadequacy of the emergency services. Public Enemy made Fear Of A Black Planet thirty years ago. State of The Union is partly asking the question 'what has really changed?' and the answer is nothing, in fact, things under Trump are worse.

Revolutionary Generation

Isolation Mix Twelve

I'm not sure that the title of these mixes holds true any more but onward we go. This week's hour of music is coming from the punk and post- punk world and the long tail that snakes from the plugging of a guitar into an amplifier and someone with something to say stepping up to the microphone. Some Spaghetti Western as an intro, some friendship, some politics, some anger, some exhilaration, some questions, some disillusionment, some psychedelic exploration and some optimism to end with.

In History Lesson Part 2 D. Boon explains his friendship with Mike Watt, the importance of punk in changing their lives, the singers and players in the bands that inspired him and, in the first line, the essence of punk as he experienced it.

'Our band could be your life
Real names'd be proof
Me and Mike Watt played for years
Punk rock changed our lives

We learned punk rock in Hollywood
Drove up from Pedro
We were fucking corn dogs
We'd go drink and pogo

Mr. Narrator
This is Bob Dylan to me
My story could be his songs
I'm his soldier child

Our band is scientist rock
But I was E. Bloom and Richard Hell
Joe Strummer and John Doe
Me and Mike Watt, playing guitar'

Ennio Morricone: For A Few Dollars More

Minutemen: History Lesson Part 2

Joe Strummer/Electric Dog House: Generations

X: In This House That I Call Home

The Replacements: Can’t Hardly Wait (Tim Outtake Version)

Husker Du: Keep Hanging On

The Redskins: Kick Over The Statues

The Woodentops: Why (Live)

The Vacant Lots: Bells

The Third Sound: For A While

Spacemen 3: Revolution

Poltergeist: Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder)

Echo And The Bunnymen: Ocean Rain (Alt Version)

Pete Wylie: Sinful

Carbon/Silicon: Big Surprise

Post Lockdown Dub

Jah Wobble posted his latest lockdown tune, this one titled Post Lockdown Dub, the most upbeat of the eight songs he's written and recorded since mid- March. It's a great little song with a sprightly tempo, horns, uplifting piano and keys and a nice bubbling bassline.

Despite my love of the tune I'm not sure if the optimism is that well placed. The lockdown has seemed over for a lot of people since Dominic Cummins got busted and Johnson defended his senior adviser's right to do what he liked. Now it looks like for many people it's over completely. Shops may be set up for social distancing but on the streets and in public places it looks like many people think it doesn't apply to them. We are still shielding so for us very little has changed. When everyone was in the same boat it seemed much easier. Now through loosening the lockdown and the government's mixed messages and incompetence everyone is in different boats. The UK has the highest death toll in Europe which ever way you slice the figures, whichever set of statistics you use, and the third highest in the world. Countries that looked like they had beaten the virus are now reporting outbreaks again and having to reintroduce measures- New Zealand, Germany, China. The criticism for not prioritising schools is being deflected onto the teaching unions and the Labour Party (schools have had guidelines from government about social distancing- the government's own guidelines are why they've been unable to re- open). The UK's supposedly 'world beating' track and trace system won't work fully until the autumn and the government has gone on to prioritise re- opening the economy over public health. Queues formed early on Monday morning as non- essential shops re- opened. Talk of reducing the 2 metre guideline to 1 metre is giving out the message that getting pubs and restaurants serving again is more important than controlling the virus.

Eat out. Forget the virus. Fuck the NHS.

Maybe everything will be ok.

Escape

The new album from husband and wife duo Peaking Lights, a thirteen song psychedelic dub pop trip with layers of tape loops, FX, compression and the dreamily drifting vocals of Indra making for a very pleasant way to escape. Opener Dharma sets the tone for an album of Californian sunshine with the haze and half light of the rehearsal room/ studio. Third song EVP is propulsive, escapist dance pop with drones and processed backing vocals. The Damned is the early 80s crossed with Mediterranean Euro-pop. Dreams has delayed guitars and a dub bounce. By the end and final song Change Always Comes we're deep into proggy, sail away territory, floating out on piano and waves of gentle noise.

Lost All Reason And Belonging

A month ago JC, The Vinyl Villain, posted some songs from the first flush of Ian McCulloch's post- Bunnymen solo career, a single from late summer of 1989. It's here, a comprehensive post about Faith And Healing, Candleland and it's B-sides. I was about to post something very similar so pushed my post back a bit and then re-wrote it. I have a lot of affection for Candleland, an album that JC notes sold fairly well and got good reviews but came and went very quickly. Tastes were changing quickly in the autumn of 1989, in the world of guitar bands very quickly indeed, and at the ripe old age of thirty Ian was looking like one of yesterday's men.

Candleland stands up as a decent collection of Ian McCulloch songs, some have a late days Bunnymen feel, not least in his voice and the lyrics. The single Faith And Healing is a particular favourite, sounding as it does like Mac fronting late 80s New Order. It's nothing groundbreaking, nothing out of the groove he was in by that point, it's just pushes my buttons (in a good way). The flow of words and themes remind me of The Game re-worked for '89.

Faith And Healing

Ian did a Peel Session in December 1989 with his new band, The Prodigal Sons. The session version is very different from the album one, the New Order synths and bass sound removed and the fuzz guitars turned up, sounding alive and tuned in. The whole session is much rawer, rehearsal room stuff rather than the more smoothed out sound of the Candleland album and thirty one years later these versions sound fairly fresh.

Faith And Healing (Peel Session)

The Flickering Wall (Peel Session)

Damnation (Peel Session)

Candleland (Peel Session)


The 12" release of Faith And Healing came with several remixes. This one, The Carpenter's Son Mix (by Mark Saunders), is a typical late 80s remix- extended with the guitars and bass separated and moved around.

Faith And Healing (The Carpenter's Son Mix)

Just For Me

I was watching an episode of Sounds Of The Sixties late at night over the weekend. It was a 1964- 66 episode called The Beat Room and featured John Lee Hooker suited and booted, The Rolling Stones in their mid 60s mod/ pop- art glory miming to Get Off Of My Cloud, all fringes, cords and trebly guitars, The Pretty Things with recently departed Phil May and his long hair, and The Kinks blasting their way through the screen with You Really Got Me. I fast forwarded past Tom Jones having never seen the appeal. Manfred Mann were on with their 1964 single Come Tomorrow, singer Paul Jones having his trousers tugged at by two girls dancing by the stage. Naughty.



Manfred Mann aren't a group I've ever had that much interest in. Doo Wah Diddy doesn't do much for me. It did then occur to me that I had the soundtrack to the 1968 film Up The Junction, all the songs written and recorded by the London group after original vocalist Paul Jones had left and a new one, Mike d'Abo, joined. The film version of Up The Junction stars Suzy Kendall and Dennis Waterman, Kendall playing upper class heiress Polly Dean who forsakes her privilege and moves to Battersea. The soundtrack, Manfred Mann's fourth album, has some jazzy songs and some very nice, slightly psychedelic songs, acoustic guitars and melodic basslines, light vocals and breezy choruses- a bit Beach Boys, a touch slightly stoned in the park on a summer's day.

Just For Me

When I retraced my steps with the soundtrack and the songs I remembered that this song and the title track were both played by Andrew Weatherall, once on his 6 Mix residency about a decade ago and once on a radio programme with Terry Farley and Gary Crowley he discussed and played songs about London. In an edition of Record Collector he said this about it

'When I moved to London I got sucked into the centre of the cyclone because of the nightclubs I DJed at. I knew what I was involved with was something really important, it was proto acid house. Just For Me goes “Soon the world was a better place/It appeared to have changed its ugly face”. I always associate it with the feeling I’d have as the sun was coming up and I was walking through the city; that this is my town now; I’m shaping it. I think it plays during a scene in the film when Dennis Waterman’s walking through London at dawn, and it’s still bombsites. Though it doesn’t mention any landmarks, this is my archetypal London record'.

Monday's Long Song

Thurston Moore's Strawberry Moon, a nine minute piece played on/for three guitars, in that New York, experimental minimalism, Glenn Branca, Spirit Counsel vein he's been exploring. Thurston is a resident of London right now not New York. You can take the boy our of New York but you can't take New York out of the boy. Strawberry Moon was recorded and released the same day, 3rd June, a celebration of the first full moon of June 2020. A good, go with the flow, piece of music.

Seventeen

Daughter and second child Eliza is seventeen today. Once upon a time, aged five, she would entertain herself by sitting in the car with a Finding Nemo bucket on her head. Now she is a risk taking, danger seeking young adult who sticks up two fingers to the Ministry of Defence and their signs. The year 2003 when she was born seems a very long time ago and much has happened in between then and now it has also shot by very quickly. Happy birthday Eliza, have a great day despite the restrictions of lockdown. Keep doing what you're doing and you'll turn out just fine.

Eliza shares a birthday with George O'Dowd, better known as Boy George (born in 1961 so turning fifty nine today- happy birthday George). I've been meaning to post something by his late 80s acid house outfit Jesus Loves You for ages. The song here, remixed by Paul Oakenfold, is an upbeat seven minutes of Balearic dance pop, powered by a bassline that hits the groove and some rattling snares. Over this George sings a soulful plea for tolerance and understanding, as relevant now as it was in 1990 when optimism and positivity were all the rage and genuinely felt.

Generations Of Love (Oakenfold Mix)

'The Jew and the Gentile, the black and the gay
The lost and the futile, they've all got something to say
The African nation, the sword of Islam
The rebels in China, the Sikhs and the Tams'

Isolation Mix Eleven

This week's mix is made up entirely of songs released during lockdown, since mid- March 2020. Some of them have been written and recorded during this period. I could easily have doubled the length of this so maybe I'll come back to this and do a part two. This one has the trippy psyche of Sonic Boom, dusty funk desert blues from Ess O Ess, some dubby jazz (or jazzy dub) courtesy of Jah Wobble, Number's post- punk dance stance, yet more excellence from Weatherall and Walsh's Woodleigh Research Facility, Justin Robertson and Sofia Hedblom's blend of Nigerian rhythms and electronic dub, Dan Wainwright's pagan chug and some Balearic bliss from Joe Morris, Rich Lane, The Long Champs and a cover by Rheinzand. There's one segue which is a bit of a mess but it'll have to do. Life has surface noise and all that.



Sonic Boom: Just Imagine
Ess O Ess and Saul Richards: Totem (Swamp Crawl)

Jah Wobble: Lockdown 5 (Forbearance)

Number: Red Flag

Woodleigh Research Facility: Karra Mesh

Formerlover: Correction Dub

Dan Wainwright: A Blessing

Joe Morris: The New Dawn Will Come

Rich Lane: Barry Island (The Long Champs Dub)

Rheinzand: All By Myself

Sail To The Sky

Nick Drake's 1969 song 'Cello Song has been one of lockdown's songs for me. It was on my daily radar back in late March and I'm still coming back to it again now. There's a real melancholy about the song, one of those songs to wallow in for the few minutes it lasts. The lyrics are littered with poetic imagery that also give some insight into Nick Drake's state of mind- 'the cold of the night/when the armies of emotion/go out to fight' and 'forget this cruel world/where I belong... and if one day you should see me in the crowd/lend a hand and lift me/to your place in the cloud' both stand out. One of the things with listening to Nick Drake is, like Ian Curtis, it's difficult to separate the person from the ending.

The music and the sound has a similarly sad feel. The album Five Leaves Left was produced by Joe Boyd and he tried various arrangements on the songs. This one is really close and intimate and has a real weight to it, Nick's voice and fast finger picking folk guitar, accompanied by Claire Lowther's cello and the congas and shaker played by Rocky Dzidzornu. Back in March 'Cello Song sounded like life and society shutting down, the dusk falling early and the fear of going out. Now it sounds like night falling later and some warmer nights but coupled with the fears of lockdown loosening and coming out.

'Cello Song

I Said I Couldn't Hit It Sideways

Sister Ray is a seventeen minute, recorded in one take avant- rock dance song that completes their 1968 album White Light/ White Heat. Lou Reed said that it was done 'as a joke- no, not as a joke... but as a scene of total debauchery and decay'. It was intended to be confrontational. The group agreed to keep playing for the duration and leave in whatever mistakes were made. The engineer pressed record and then walked out. Reed and Sterling Morrison batter the fuck out of the riff and John  Cale plays organ hooked up through a distorted guitar amp. The guitar playing is simple and percussive and completely overloaded and the organ is completely in the red, distorted and wailing.

Sister Ray

Lou Reed had written a lyric about 'a transvestite smack dealer' and in the song 'a bunch of drag queens take some sailors home... and start shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear'. In the song Lou's characters include Doc and Sally, Rosie and Miss Rayon, a sailor who's dressed in pink and leather, Cecil with a new gun with which he shoots a sailor and makes a mess of the carpet. Amongst all this Lou drawls about  'I'm too busy searching for my mainline/ I couldn't hit it sideways' and 'she's too busy sucking on my ding- dong'.

While this is the noisy side of The Velvets at their most extreme the song when played live was often the one that would get the audience up out of their seats dancing. There are multiple live versions out there lasting for up to and beyond half an hour, like this one recorded live at The Matrix in San Francisco in 1969. Starts out slow and sparse and builds but with a noticeably different feel compared to the album version.

Sister Ray (Live)

I'm fairly sure though that the first version I would have heard of the song would have been a cover, probably this one by New Order at Glastonbury in 1987. They had played Sister Ray live as Joy Division and there's a version on Still which I might have heard earlier but I know I had a tape of the 1987 Glastonbury set because it was recorded by Radio 1 and transmitted as part of their Live In Concert series and I taped the set straight from the radio. New Order's version is a comparatively short eight minutes and is a bass, guitar, drums finale after a set chock full of mid 80s dance- pop brilliance that opens with Touched By The Hand Of God and takes in Temptation, True Faith, Your Silent Face, Every Little Counts, Bizarre Love Triangle, Perfect Kiss and Age Of Consent. The group kick up a solid racket, sounding quite like Joy Division in parts, Hooky's ascending and descending bass riding in and out of the mix and Bernard making up the words as he goes along and then sampled voices being dropped in at the end. It captures the spirit and intention of Sister Ray as Lou and The Velvets set out to I think.

Sister Ray (Live at Glastonbury 1987)

Rituals

Dan Wainwright has been in flood mode during lockdown, a torrent of releases and tracks on Bandcamp. The latest is his best yet, a four track e.p. on Amsterdam's Night Noise label. The opener is Raindance, a full on chugging piano banger, night noise indeed. Second track Ceremony, which grows in intensity, has didgeridoo, space, bass, Space Invaders FX and eventually a violin, a controlled freak out. The Joe Morris Dubwise remix of Raindance is exactly what it says, Joe slowing it down, spacing everything out, dropping some lovely trippy piano in and piling the echo onto the drums and percussion. It's a funny coincidence that when I last posted something by Dan I paired his Peace Of Mind and Get Higher releases with a new two track release from Joe, the laid back Balearica of The New Dawn Will Come. Now the two of them are united on one release.

The track that really raises the hairs and hits the heights at the moment is the third one, A Blessing, which starts out as an acid monster, dark noises likely to end up with the carpet worn out under your feet, synth sounds beamed in from left and right, the tension building for several minutes. Then unexpectedly the ceremony begins with bells, finger cymbals and chanting and the definite whiff of incense before the groove returns and the dark acid kicks back in. 2020 dance music and ancient ritual combined.

Forbearance

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

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



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

Monday's Long Song

This is an epic twenty one minutes of sound, a wrap around, found sound collage called We Are Stardust, with voices flitting in and out, layers of radio static, echo, bursts of transmissions, the sudden appearance of strings or guitars, Geiger counter noise, alien sounds, the distant remains of Joe Meek's New World reverberating. It was written, recorded and produced by Mat Ducasse who some might remember as DJ, producer and musician Skylab.



Mat also recently released this one, Lord Of The Cosmos, twenty one minutes of ambient, cosmic drift, the soundtrack to a film about space exploration that hasn't been made yet. This one is more musical, synth sounds, drones and chimes.

At a pound each they're excellent value for money. Played back to back they make a very good, forty minute way to kick off your day. Maybe put some appropriate visuals on at the same time and sink into space.