A Certain Ratio's 21st century renaissance continues. Their ACR: EPA 12" came out recently, four songs recorded at the end of the sessions that led to last year's album and the last songs to feature the vocals of Denise Johnson. They've just announced two further EPs, ACR: EPR which promises a further five new songs (grey vinyl and digital, out in August) and ACR: EPC (blue vinyl, out in July). EPC has a version of Music Control, the collaboration with Stretford's Chris Massey and their Sir Horatio alter ego, a tribute to Andrew Weatherall titled The Guv' nor (ACR were one of Weatherall's foremost and guiding influences), the long version of YOYOGRIP and this face off between ACR and The Emperor Machine.
If that doesn't get you up and out of your chair, I don't know what will. Deliberately pushing the Shack Up button with a bassline from their earliest days, ACR and The Emperor Machine (Andrew Meecham) are in full flow with brightly coloured dance funk, laser beams and mirror balls, and that ever present northern noir.
Private Agenda are a two man team split between London and Berlin (Sean Phillips and Martin Aggrowe) who have an extensive back catalogue behind them, their own work, along with numerous remixes and collaborations. Their first full album came out in 2019, an album calledÎle de Rêve, a dream island which inspired the nine tracks- downtempo, Balearic, ambient music. The album and the rest of their back catalogue is here. Recently a remix package called Submersion came my way- water, islands, the sea, coasts all loom large in Private Agenda's musical headspace. The six remixes are a mini- album in themselves- half an hour of washes of synth, drum pads, half heard vocals, brightly coloured passages and parts where the sound drifts by, repeating piano parts and warm drones- with remixes and reworkings by Coral Sea, JQ, Delac, Delmer Darion, Ocean Moon and this one from Seahawks.
Seahawks are masters of this kind of thing, the point where Balearic and ambient gently bump into each other, with their own recordings dating back to 2010 and the authors of several albums which I've played to death- Paradise Freaks, Escape Hatch and Starways are all recommended. Seahawks remix of Malanai Ascending is a chilled but persistent, slightly psychedelic swim in warm seas, the bass pulsing while waves of sound swoosh by, birdsong, a piano- kaleidoscopic like bright sunlight glinting off the surface of the sea. Buy it digitally or on cassette here.
I just noticed that Google/ Blogger have deleted a whole week of posts from early March this year claiming that they have violated their community standards. The posts include-
Underworld 'Concord'
Spooky 'Schmoo' (Underworld Remix)
Daniel Avery remixed by Jas Shaw and Teodor Wolgers
Curses remixed by Inga Mauer and Daniel Avery remixed by Inga Mauer
Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith's Unreal City
Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio's Early Morning
The Charlatans Then
The Utopia Strong 'Strange Altar'
There's no rhyme or reason to it, most of them don't violate any standards that I can see or even break any copywrite law. Some of the emails say that 'Your content has violated our malware and viruses policy' but I can't see how or why. There are then some emails saying that the posts have been reinstated but they haven't been, they're still missing. Weird. I understand that as the host platform Blogger/ Google own everything I write and can delete my posts as they please but it really irks that they've been taken down. Has this happened to anyone else using Blogger recently?
This Daniel Avery track called Hazel And Gold just came out, another new one from his forthcoming Together In Static album. Downtempo and dreamlike.
Edit: on closer inspection they deleted posts have been reinstated but reverted to draft status- so I can republish them. Still, a bit odd. Anyway, as you were. The Daniel Avery track is still worth the post.
When Alan McGee told Primal Scream to turn their run of singles in 1990- 1991 into an album the end result was Screamadelica. The singles that led to it were era- defining and a total change of course for a band who were first 60s indie janglers and then Stooges style rockers. Taken together the singles- Loaded (I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have remixed/ demolished by Andrew Weatherall), Come Together (an epochal Weatherall mix and a summer sun kissing, Elvis referencing Terry Farley version), Higher Than The Sun (various Weatherall mixes and an eight minute Orb mix) and Don't Fight It, Feel It (Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson again at the helm, no guitars, no Bobby, Denise Johnson singing)- are a compilation released together. Add Movin' On Up, a Jimmy Miller Rolling Stones/ gospel fantasy made real, and you still have a series of singles. Slip Inside This House almost sounds like another single, a tripped out acid house cover of The 13th Floor Elevators with Throb singing. It's the rest of songs that turn Screamadelica from an all- the- hits 1991 compilation to an album, sequenced to work from start to finish, a trip/ journey unfolding over four sides of vinyl. I'm Coming Down and Damaged are a pair of ballads, one a Pharaoh Saunders influenced hit of comedown and the other a country blues, a pair of album tracks that give the album a different pace and vibe. The glue that holds it all together are the other two Weatherall / Nicolson songs, Inner Flight and Shine Like Stars. I'll come back to Shine Like Stars, the perfect closer for Screamadelica another time- instead here is Inner Flight.
Hugo Nicolson provided the studio nous and production skills for Weatherall to translate the spirit of the times and his encyclopaedic record collection into recordings. Inner Flight is a trippy, Pet Sounds on ecstasy instrumental, floating in and floating on, a circling melody line and some stellar, wordless ooh ooh ahhh backing vocals drifting in (sampled partly from C.B. Cook along with some drums from Dr. John's Gris Gris). If you listen to the last forty seconds of this 1974 song from Brian Eno you'll spot where Andrew pilfered the sound effect from for Inner Flight's intro as well.
Hinds, a four piece, all female guitar band from Madrid released a cover of Spanish Bombs last year- a frenetic, breakneck, shouty, exhilarating race through one of The Clash's finest moments. This is a lo- fi, energetic and wonderfully chaotic recording of the song that definitely captures the spirit of the band. I'm sure Joe would have loved it.
I'm fifty one years old today. Last year's birthday, the big five- oh, took place in lockdown and despite everything it was a good day- lockdown brought some freedoms with it in a way, do what you can under the circumstances. This year's birthday means we can actually go to a pub although our booking for tonight is for sitting outside, it still feels a bit soon to be going indoors.
Songs about being fifty- one are understandably thin on the ground. There aren't too many songs celebrating moving another year into your fifties. On Heartland in 1986 The The sang about the UK being the 51st state of the USA but that's not especially cheery for a birthday song. Instead here's Jimi Hendrix and his Experience in 1967 with a song about 51st anniversaries, the B-side to Purple Haze. Hendrix's guitar sings and swings, fuzzy and warm, switching between rhythm and lead or playing both at the same time, Noel and Mitch thudding away behind him. Jimi sings about the flipsides of marriage, a tale about not wanting to settle down, not wanting to be tied down- very much a young man's point of view. Jimi never lived to see his 51st birthday- he died four months after I was born, 18th September 1970.
A return to Notts duo Coyote today and a song that recently featured at Dr. Rob's Ban Ban Ton Ton blog- since hearing it there I've become mildly obsessed with it so felt I had to post it here too. Coyote deal in a shuffly, beach bar Balearica, music for holidays, sunsets and dancing but music also for listening to, encouraging the mind to wander, for moments of introspection. The album, The Mystery Light, is out in the summer and this song will be the closing track. Clicking play now will improve your Tuesday no end.
A slightly fuzzy, fat bassline and a bed of FX, an acoustic guitar picking out a gorgeous melody. Over this the sampled voice of Alan Watts talks about those people who don't want to join in, the individuals, non- conformists and outsiders who don't want to play the game that society has set for them- 'you don't have to join, you don't have to play the game'. Given that The Outsider was one of Andrew Weatherall's first pseudonyms when writing the Boy's Own fanzine back in the 1986- 1989 and that he was someone who did exactly what Alan Watts is talking about, it's fair to assume this song is a tribute to him and the inspiration he provided for others.
How about an unofficial dub version of Loaded to start the week? Peter Fonda starting us off with his speech sampled from The Wild Angels, 'We want to be free... we wanna get loaded, we wanna have a good time', but then he gets slowed dooooown to a halt. A melodica floats in and the skank takes over. There are some 'na na nas' towards the end. No idea who is responsible for this but I'm glad they did it.
David Holmes was back in his regular monthly slot in God's Waiting Room at NTS Radio at the start of May, another two hours of perfectly chosen music from across the board- ambient, psychedelia, Velvets indebted rock from Belfast, cinematic weirdness, dub techno from Ability II in 1990, folk, experimental exotica, The Mekons in 1978, the whole gamut of leftfield music but always with a tune and a way in. You can find it at Mixcloud, two hours well spent.
This would fit right in with the rest of David's selections, a new song from The Liminanas with Laurent Garnier on board- thumping drums and electronic rhythms, a twangy riff, beatnik gang vibes and Lionel speaking in French (naturellement) over the top.
Back in 2018 Circle Sky, the sleek electronic/ sci fi techno vehicle for Richard Norris and Martin Dubka to explore their futuristic dreams, released a single called Ghost In The Machine. It was and is a favourite of mine, tinkling piano at the top end, synth stabs, subtle, pulsing drums, a spectral voice and lots of beautiful repetition- repetition of melodies, of rhythms and vocals.
Circle Sky also released If I Let Go in the same year and in 2019 Love Hertz, both with some sumptuous remixes from the likes of Ulrich Schnauss, Crooked Man and Michael Mayer.
Now, as part of Richard Norris' seemingly endless productivity drive in 2020- 2021 and his Inner Mind subscription service we have a new Circle Sky release, Holding On. Similar building blocks, all those elements present- repetition, sweetly sung vocal loops, pitter- pattering drums, bright synth melodies and retro- futurist, happy/ sad, euphoric/ melancholic sheen. The album, titled Dream Colour (a title which sums Circle Sky up perfectly), is out in the summer.
Some uplifting feelgood musical biscuits for Friday courtesy of some veteran DJs and producers. First, an edit of a 70s folk rock song, refitted for 2021 by Justin Deighton and Leo Zero, out on 7" and digitally at their own 7s Clash label (with a tie in bar at Two Tribes Campfire in King's Cross, London). I Feel is a funky/ Balearic number, acoustic guitars, a chugger of a bassline and lots of chanting- I'm getting hippy parties in the Med in the mid 1970s, unspoilt beaches, kaftans, hash, sunsets, sandals, love beads. Find it here. The B-side is a Pete Herbert dub of the edit, a more laid back version but still with that chuggy rhythm.
Balearic overlord Phil Mison records under the name Cantoma. This Pete Herbert remix of Cantoma's Verbana from 2018 fits perfectly with the I Feel Edit above, more music for dancing, acoustic guitars, bubbly bassline, handclaps and a soaring synth part.
This one, another Cantoma/ Pete Herbert pairing, shows the Balearic revival (if it ever really went away) was well underway back in 2014. Very laid back magic.
Releasing single songs or tracks semi- regularly onto the internet has become the new way of putting music out for many artists, especially those who occupy the long tail of the music industry- not a single as we'd recognise it from the glory days of the 7" of the 70s and 80s or the CD single even of the 90s but a drip- drip- drip of new music in easily digestible chunks. Bandcamp seems to offer artists a much better deal than the big streaming services and they have a one Friday a month offer that gives even better cut for the artist. Two of my recent favourites both unleashed new tracks into the ether last Friday, a pair of superb pieces of 21st century electronic music, built on the dance music of the past but with a half closed eye squinting at the future.
Duncan Gray has released umpteen tracks through his label Tici Taci, often the kind of chuggy, wonky monsters that made Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston's A Love From Outer Space travelling disco such a good night out. His latest offering is a bouncier, housier affair- May Your Toes Kiss The Sand Again is a sentiment we can all empathise with and the track is a joy, a Larry Heard inspired piece of uptempo Chicago house via Slough (or uptempo Slough house via Chicago, either way).
This is an older one, Deep Blue, a fuzz bass- led slice of dark acid disco from 2013.
Pye Corner Audio has been dropping, as I believe the young people say, a series of one off tracks since lockdown last year, mesmerising wobbly acid and sci fi house with button pushing names like Quarry Rave, Rotational Squelch, Memory Of Rave, Somewhere There's A Sunrise and Jupiter Orbit. The latest is Interplanetary Acid, five minutes of retro- futurism, synths and sequencers, that I can't get enough of. Get it here at a name your own price deal.
More Pye Corner Audio acid from earlier this year came in the shape of Thermionic Acid- darker, deeper and altogether squelchier, part of a four track release called Midnight Acid. There's a theme developing here isn't there?
New Order's recent releases (and by recent I mean those since 2015's Music Complete) haven't always convinced me. It sounds like New Order but with all the edges sanded off and smoothed out, the tension and pioneering spirit of their greatest art lost after so long in the saddle. I suppose it's to be expected- no one can keep their edge for that long, unreliable technology and stubborn independence gets traded in for gear that works and financial security. At some point in the process (I'm dating this to the recording of Republic in 1993 and Rob Gretton's absence onwards) there was a power struggle that was won by Bernard. He took control of the creative process and song writing, the recording and production. Peter Hook's departure is well documented and there's no need to dig over that again but his bass was one of, if not the, key sounds of New Order- the bass guitar as lead instrument, the riffs and runs played through that chorus pedal and those amps. At some point Bernard decided he wanted a bass player who followed the guitarist and who just played the root notes.
Thankfully Hooky pops up here and there from time to time, bassist for hire, his Viking bass sound immediately identifiable on two superb singles by The Liminanas (Garden Of Love and The Gift). Last year he slung the bass around on a single with Damon Albarn's Gorillaz, part of their monthly 2020 digital release campaign. Aries, Hooky's growl at the start and then the bass runs throughout, beamed in seemingly straight from New Order's Cheetham Hill rehearsal studio in 1986, seem to contain the spirit of New Order as much, if not more, than anything on Music Complete.
Ten years previously Damon, Jamie Hewlett and the four unreal members of Gorillaz released Plastic Beach, a guest star heavy concept album featuring turns from Lou Reed, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, Gruff Rhys and another hero of the Manchester's punk scene, the late Mark E Smith.
At the end of last week JC at The Vinyl Villain posted three songs by Cocteau Twins, the epically beautiful Pearly Dewdrops Drop and the two songs from the 12" single, The Spangle Maker and Pepper- Tree. By coincidence I'd recently pulled the band's 1990 album Heaven Or Las Vegas off the shelf, intending to give it a listen. The opening song, Cherry- coloured Funk, is a spellbinding and breath taking three minutes, a liquid, melting guitar riff played over the simplest of drum machine beats, a swirl of FX lying just behind. Liz Fraser's voice glides in on top, an otherworldly blur of words and then without warning a sudden soaring moment to a falsetto part that is . The guitar riff comes back again, round and round in its gently trippy, off kilter groove and Liz sings on- I've no idea what she's singing about and it really doesn't matter, the words are just part of the sound (I'm sure they meant something to Liz when she wrote them). The band was going through some churn at the time and there's a slight unease about the album, hints at the darkness of their personal lives (you can hear it in Cherry- coloured Funk) but there's also an energy about the songs and the rush bands get when they're on a creative roll and on fire.
I did another mix for Scotland's Tak Tent Radio and it went out yesterday from their nerve centre. I put it together back in March when the days were shorter and I seemed to spend a lot of time walking round in the dark after work- seems a bit gloomy now that it's May and the evenings are lighter much later. At first I intended it to be a fully ambient/ drone mix, partly because I was listening to a lot of ambient music in my headphones while walking and partly because I'd just begun reading Harry Sword's book, Monolithic Undertow, a history and appreciation of the drone from Neolithic times to the present day (highly recommended if you haven't read it) but I got twenty five minutes into the mix and thought we needed some drums (and a voice or two too). Tak Tent Radio is here, loads of great stuff to listen to. Bagging Area Tak Tent Three is at Mixcloud. Tracklist below.
Tak Tent Three
Luke Schneider: Anteludium
Daniel Avery: Tremor
A Winged Victory For The Sullen: The Dead Outnumber The
Living
Coyote are Timm Sure and Richard Hampson, a duo who met at the legendary Nottingham nightclub Venus in the late 80s and went on to DJ there, and then make their own music together. Their latest release is a five track EP led by a slow paced, easy going Balearic dream called Return To Life.
Californian Woolfy adds vocals to two of the songs (Save Me and very laid back grooves of Wonderful). Closing track Cafe Con Leche drops spoken word samples- 'when all this is over/ I plan to go north', a female voice says, over acoustic guitars, washes of synth and some bongos. The whole thing is available to buy here.
Their album Buzzard Country, a 2020 release I missed and only began playing a few weeks ago, has a similar palette, seven songs built around dubby basslines, shuffly rhythms, Spanish guitars, pianos and shimmering synths. Last song, Feedback Valley, is especially good, a languid glide around the coast on the edge of a desert, the heat of the day pouring upwards out of the tarmac. Get it here.
It's a month since I last posted anything by Andrew Weatherall and that's too long a gap. Time for a remix, seven minutes of bliss and wide eyed abandon, the aural equivalent of sunrise after a night out that you don't want to end. Brisbane's Confidence Man, a male- female duo who make day glo, straight up, electro/ indie dance for nightclubs and festivals, released Out Of The Window in 2018, a poppy tribute to a night out that never ends and lyrics celebrating the joys of hedonism- 'It's about time the sun comes up/ We don't wanna believe it/ Seven hours later I'm still up/ I can't really see us sleeping'.
Weatherall presses play on the steam powered drum machine, isolates and repeats extracts of the vocal, pulls in a gorgeous Hawaiian guitar lick, adds a pulsing synth topline and sends everything into 'euphoric chugger' mode, circling round a couple of key vocal phrases, one being the 'Slow down, carry me home/ Lights out, arms open wide/ Exhale, step inside' part. When the beautiful, rising ecstatic/ melancholic chord sequence hits at five minutes thirty it's almost too much to take but then the multi- tracked vocals take over to carry us home, 'try to free my mind/ I only want a good time...'
This song has been posted at various blogs recently, many of them friends of this blog, but it seems tailor made for Bagging Area in many ways and it's a feelgood, upbeat dance song for Friday- and we could all do with a bit of feelgood and upbeat for Friday.
Hifi Sean (Sean Dickson) got hold of the master tapes of Fire Island's 1998 cover version of Shout To The Top. Finding the original vocal part, sung by legend Loleatta Holloway, Sean re-wrote the track from the bottom up, in the end providing three different mixes- house, soul/ disco and orchestral horses for courses. Bassline, four on the floor, lovely late 80s pianos, strings, gospel backing vox and then Loleatta. Hands in the air. Hugging strangers. Lights come up. End of the night. Crowd spills out into the night. Here.
Hifi Sean was in a former musical life the frontman of The Soup Dragons, the original indie dance crossover band. His journey from there to here shouldn't be too surprising given how enthusiastic he was about dance music back in 1989. The 1998 version of Shout To The Top isn't too shabby either, the work of Fire Island aka Terry Farley and Pete Heller (both men the subject of various posts here in the last eleven years, Boy's Own being one of the cornerstones of my record collection). Fire Island's cover has a more NYC, Salsoul flavour.
Back in 1984 Shout To The Top was the seventh single released by The Style Council. By this point Paul Weller had put significant distance between his then current band and his previous one. Shout To The Top is a classic Style Council single, the equal of most things The Jam released- those staccato strings, the thumping pace, Weller's vocal, the surge into the chorus. Shout To The Top, then and now, is hugely uplifting dance pop, a message of solidarity and determination and a refusal to beaten down in times of economic and political uncertainty- with a smile on its face.
I go four years without an Inspiral Carpet turning up here and then suddenly the bassist turns up twice in a matter of months. Martyn Walsh, bass player for the Oldham five piece, has formed a project with Simon Lyon and released a song/ single with a bunch of remixes. The original version of Afterglow is a throbbing, pulsing piece of 80s post- punk, a dash of Hooky found in the bass grooves and a touch of Sisters Of Mercy in the vocals. It is, and I mean this as a compliment, perfect for the Thursday night indie/ alternative night at a club you wouldn't go near any other night of the week, a slice of mid 80s indie- disco for 2021.
The remixes come thick and fast and can be found at Bandcamp. The pick of the bunch is from Hardway Bros, the nom- de- plume for Sean Johnston, an eight minute electronic dub- drum pads, plenty of bounce, some breathy backing vox and a female lead vocal that keeps coming back to the line 'sunset's so low', and then that bassline coming back in, straight from Lowlife. Released on MFS, the Berlin based label of Mark Reeder (Factory's man in Berlin in the 80s and member of Shark Vegas).
This is very good indeed, a ten minute advance on a full album coming out in June, from the combined talents of The Grid and Robert Fripp. Back in 1992 Dave Ball and Richard Norris worked with Fripp with some of these recordings saw the light of day on the albums 456 and Evolver. Recently Richard rediscovered the tapes from the sessions which included unreleased material, unfinished and unmixed tracks. Some new synths and drums, FX and some technical jiggery- pokery were then added to Fripp's '92 soundscapes and voila!, a new album called Leviathan. Fire Tower is a ten minute treat, programmed beats, long tones and drones, bags of texture and atmosphere- something to sink into on a rainy day.
This is shaping up to be one of the singles of spring 2021, a joint venture from Craig Bratley and Amy Douglas. No In Between kicks off with Italo/ Balearic analogue synths and a beat taken at a hot summer's day pace with typically strong vocals from Amy before some bleeps from Sheffield circa 1990 are beamed in sideways. There's a dub remix too, a slowed down, bass led head- nodder. You can find both at Bandcamp.
Two long songs today, a bank holiday special, both taken from a 12" single released in 1991 on beautiful sugary pink vinyl from Julian Cope who was at that point at the crest of a wave. Beautiful Love was the first single ahead of the Peggy Suicide album, a trumpet led tribute to Avalon. For the Beautiful Love L.U.V. remix an uncredited Hugo Nicolson loops up various drum parts, handclaps and wobbles, a bass excerpt and some vocal fragments and samples dropped in, a seven minute ride, progressive pop/ house (or something like that). Although it's clearly rooted in 1991's sounds and styles it still works today.
If you turned the 12" over- and why wouldn't you?- there was a nine minute guitar led psyche rock, repetition freakout called Dragonfly. Fading in and then driving onward in motorik krautrock fashion, Dragonfly is all heavy Stooges guitars, wah wah organ, a relentless fuzzed up groove cooked up by Cope and Donald Ross Skinner, and some ad libbed vocals and the occasional exclamation of the title.
The Woodentops were a great band, a little out of step with the times perhaps which maybe explains why their music still sounds so good today. Their mixture of rockabilly, fast propulsive rhythms (at least partly due to a stand up drummer with hub caps as part of his kit), acoustic guitars being scrubbed at speed, the sweetly sung vocals of Rolo and a generally bright, sunny outlook set them apart from their peers in the indie world. There's some hints of darker influences in their music, Suicide definitely in there somewhere and Rolo served some time in Liverpool post- punk legends The Wild Swans but their songs were usually upbeat, beat music. Why Why Why was adopted by the Balearic DJs, Alfredo and Leo Mas, out in the Mediterranean and then in the club scene back home, an Adrian Sherwood version of the song and then a live version recorded in Los Angeles in 1986 and released a year later on the Live Hypno Beat Live album. This version was from a session recorded for Janice Long at the BBC in 1986.
Dublin's poetry/ guitar guttersnipes Fontaines D.C. have been remixed by Belgium's remix/ mash up party kings Soulwax,. A Hero's Death is ideal May Day bank holiday weekend music- a drum machine, NY disco- not- disco vibes, an FX strewn, mechanical chugger. Singer Grian Chatten dispenses wisdom- 'life ain't always empty/ life ain't always empty.... don't get stuck in the past/ say your favourite things at mass/ tell your mother you love her/ and go out of your way for others....'
It turns out that Luke Schneider and the 'weird Nashville' scene of Nashville Ambient Ensemble I posted on Monday is not confined to Tennessee but is part of something wider. A friend on social media pointed me in the direction of SUSS, a New York fourpiece who use a similar set of instruments- pedal steel guitar, ebow, baritone guitar, synths and a harmonium- to make ambient Americana or ambient country, inspired by the wide open spaces of the north American continent and 70s psychedelia. SUSS call it 'pastoral psychedelicism'. Their album Promise was made in lockdown and doesn't put a foot wrong, a perfect state of blissed out, cosmic drift with some loss hinted at in the grooves. Buy it at Bandcamp. Promise, their third album, came out in December last year. Mission is as good an introduction to their music as any of the eight tracks on the album and with titles like Midnight, Drift, Winter Light and Echo Lake you can see exactly where they're coming from.
One of my regular evening walks takes me past the park not far from us and the view across it to the line of trees on the far side with a row of houses behind it. The sun setting and the fade of the blue in the sky differs from one night to the next. I probably wouldn't have noticed this pre- Covid, I certainly wouldn't have walked past it frequently enough to see it and photograph it.
Here is some political punk/ soul from The Redskins. Punchy agit- prop from the skinhead three piece who wanted to marry Motown and The Clash... and largely succeeded. Unionize was the B-side to their 1983 single Lean On Me, a plea to the workers to organise themselves set to an irresistible, fast as fuck rhythms and scratchy guitars.
The Power Is Yours was the first song on their 1986 album Neither Washington Nor Moscow and while the tempo is slower, the message is just as powerful.
And that leads me to The Style Council and their 1985 single Walls Come Tumbling Down. 'You don't have to take this crap/ you don't have to sit back and relax/ you can actually try changing things... governments crack and systems fall/ 'cos unity is powerful/ lights go out/ walls come tumbling down'
How does it feel? is one of music's great questions- yesterday's postee Bob Dylan famously asked it in 1966, 'to be on your own/ like a complete unknown/ like a rolling stone?' Mod art- rockers The Creation asked how it feels to feel. In 1983 New Order wanted to know how it feels to treat me like you do. In 1989 Spacemen 3 asked it too, in typical style asking it over and over, part of a dark and trippy hymn to feeling- 'we could make love and live as one/ and burn our fingers on the sun/ so tell me, how does it feel?' Pete Kember in 1989 asking a question which sounds like it's about love but is just as likely about drugs.
This re- edit from the good people at Paisley Dark appeared a few days ago, an eight minute re- edit by Jesse Fahnestock, available at Bandcamp for free/ pay what you like. How Does It Feel? (1040's Terrace Moonshine Dub) stretches the original out and strips it down, a slow down and wait reworking.
I don't know if it was yesterday's Nashville Ambient Ensemble post that implanted the word Nashville in my mind or complete coincidence but out of nowhere I found myself humming a song from Bob Dylan's 1969 album Nashville Skyline. This one...
Recorded in Nashville with Dylan deep into country music, a clear higher register voice (due to a temporary giving up of ciggies) and with some of Nashville's top musicians on board- pedal steel guitarist Pete Drake and drummer Kenny Buttrey are all over the album (as well as Johnny Cash). It's a new Dylan, not the thin wild mercury man of 1966, not the voice of a generation any more, but calmer, more reflective family man. At the time many felt he'd abdicated his responsibilities, given up his crown at a time when he was needed most- 1969 was a tumultuous year in the USA- but he couldn't keep going at the rate he was and had to slow down and stop.
The previous year Dylan had released John Wesley Harding, a stripped back, low key, almost lo- fi album, short songs recorded in Nashville (almost on a whim) full of historical and biblical imagery (the outlaw of the title, St Augustine, Tom Paine, Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, landlords, drifters and hobos). John Wesley Harding was the opposite of what everyone else was recording in 1967 and this makes it all the more a standout album of both the decade and Dylan, Bob doing something else entirely as everyone else was chasing the psychedelic dollar. This song, recorded in Nashville has Pete Drake's pedal steel all over it, Bob's laid back, folky acoustic guitar and country backing from Kenny Buttrey and bassist Charlie McCoy. Meanwhile Dylan croons.
Nashville Ambient Ensemble are exactly as their name suggests and have not long since released an album called Cerulean (already sold out almost everywhere, you might be lucky if you hunt around- there's hints of a repress). Led by composer Michael Hix and including the pedal steel of Luke Schneider (whose Altar Of Harmony from last year is a revelation and a joy), the album takes in six tracks of improvisation, meditative bliss and not a little transportation, just what the musical doctor ordered. The centrepiece of Cerulean is the ten minute drift of Conversion, a soundscape built in the capital of Tennessee by a like minded group of musicians, a weird Nashville, with layers of synth, a meandering piano part, that achingly beautiful pedal steel guitar and a vocal coming in and out gently like waves lapping on a beach. It really is something else. The digital release is here.
Red Snapper have a new single out, a lithe piece of space- jazz- danceable rhythms and dubby echoes, a retro- futuristic surf across the spacewaves. Having been living with this on and off for the last month it's come into its own as the world has unlocked a little, as the sun's come out and we're seeing the outdoors as somewhere to live. Put B Planet on a playlist or burn it onto a CD compilation and let it groove away between some appropriate surrounding tracks, some cosmic disco and 90s Detroit techno say.
Kito Jempere's remix takes things into more abstract territory, rattling snare and stripped down surrounds, lots of space, some horns and double bass and a voice drifting in. One for the bar in the nightclub at the edge of the solar system where the robotic bartenders clear your table and pop another alcohol tablet under your tongue. You loosen the velcro strap at the top of your silver and grey boilersuit as the android band on the stage plays on. Buy both here.
A double post of ambient weirdness from post- industrial lockdown England. Craven Faults are a Yorkshire based outfit who make industrial ambient pitching up somewhere between 1970s West Germany and 2020s West Yorkshire. Walks across the countryside to see decaying mills and workshops turned into music using an array of modular synths, keyboards, organs, pianos and drum machines. A three track EP called Enclosures is out in physical formats now, available at Bandcamp and led by the ten minute trip of Doubler Stones.
Further south to the East Midlands and a city which was under lockdown and tiered restrictions longer than anywhere else in the UK. Leicester duo Smoke Test send out dark, ambient transmissions built using a similar sonic arsenal- synths, found sounds, noises. This isn't ambient as a calming, music for healing experience but uneasy ambient, a wordless shout into the void. They've just released their second album, cunningly titled Volume II. Opener Tender bubbles around for four and a half minutes, loops building and folding in on themselves with a touch of acid in there. The Owl Sanctuary is a disquieting walk at dusk, birds chirruping. Wasted Time, echoes bouncing around the inside of a container, is anything but. Buy it here.
A new compilation from On U Sound rounds up some oddities, rarities and unreleased versions from the New Age Steppers tape vaults. On U Sound's re- issues of African Head Charge's albums and the similar unreleased extras compilation from last year, Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, were essential purchases and this covers similar ground although Ari's presence and the post- punk anxiety and dissonance give many of the tracks on Avant Gardening an edge that makes this sometimes uneasy listening.
World Wide Version is a dubbed out version of My Whole World from 1981's Action Battlefield, bass and FX providing the foundation for some Eastern tinged clavinet courtesy of Kishi Yamamoto. Previously only available on the 2004 Japanese re- issue of the album
Mike Mitchell, the last surviving member of The Kingsmen, has died aged 77. He was a mainstay in the band from 1959. The Kingsmen, from Portland, Oregon, released their version of Richard Berry's Louie Louie in 1963 and in the process laid down one of the cornerstones of garage rock- three chord riff, primitive beat, the whole group crowded round one single microphone, muffled vocals about a sailor trying to get home to his girl and Mitchell's guitar solo. I'm sure Mike Mitchell achieved many, many things in his life other than just being the man who played the guitar solo on Louie Louie but if it were the only one, it's not too bad a thing to have as an epitaph.
If you've been in a band you've probably done a cover of Louie Louie or a song very similar to it. The Beach Boys, The Troggs, Jan and Dean, Motorhead, Toots and The Maytals, The Flamin' Groovies and The Sonics all covered it.
Paul Revere And The Raiders did too, also in 1963, intro riff played on sax.
In 1981 US hardcore band Black Flag, with new vocalist Dez Cadena making his debut at the mic improvising the lyrics while the rest of the group, guitars like a wall of sludge, pummel the song into submission in one minute twenty seconds.
The second Bicep album, Isles, came out at the start of the year. The singles that led up to it were real favourites of mine- Atlas especially but Apricots too- but the album felt a bit flat to me, a bit samey. Maybe listening to it in the dark days of January with everything that was going in lockdown wasn't right, and the highs and lows of Isles, the euphoric synths, neon waves and clubby rhythms might be better heard now the days are getting brighter. I need to go back to it and give it another go. Bicep have since added another three tracks to the album to expand it into a deluxe edition. Siena, with vocals from Clara La San, is a bit of a turnup, a breakbeat and slow moving moody synths drone and then Clara's breathy vocal building for the first minute before the bassline takes over. It could easily spill over but the Bicep pair show some restraint here, holding back the temptation to go big instead keeping it a bit darker and more interesting.
Light is all synth stabs, chopped up vocals and hi hats. There's something about this one that reminds me of 808 State, a similar approach to beats and sounds, hard edged with tough melodies.
Meli is all textures and atmosphere, gradually growing in intensity, the bleeps and waves of sound folding in on each other, and could easily be twice as long without losing anything.
Dinosaur Jr have come back to do what they always do- J Mascis' sleepy drawled vocal, a guitar sound patented in 1987 and largely unchanged since, lacerated with gnarly solo thrown in partway through to rip a hole in the song, this time a song called I Ran Away. The album Sweep It Into Space comes out on Friday and promises more of the same as they've always done and in a world where things change under your feet on a daily basis maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Lou Barlow gets a song as a single too, the gorgeous indie- ache of Garden. Lou going back to basics and back to the land.
More krautrock for Montag this time with Faust. West German bands in the early 70s were fired up on the zeitgeist- revolutionary politics, communal living, music as an anti- establishment activity- and those aspects of it peculiar to life in West Germany- the shadow of the Nazis and their parents' generation, a country divided by the Cold War and a city literally divided in two, the FRG's position as the frontline in any war that might break out in Europe between east and west. Faust were experimental, improvisational and challenging, making music out of cut ups and collage as well as more conventional band based, progressive rock music. This song, from their 1973 album Faust IV, is a pretty chilled out affair, a drifting lullaby built on top of some distorted bass and a slow drum pattern, over which Rudolf Sosna sings gently 'Jennifer you red hair's burning/ yellow jokes come out of your mind'.
My internet friend/ Balearic overlord Dr Rob tipped me off to this, a new album from Chris Coco. Jamu is six tracks long and inspired by the island of Bali. The music was made in lockdown, the tracks passed around a group of friends, each playing their parts based on the original grooves and soundscapes, building on what the person before had added. At the end Chris edited it all together. It's been the soundtrack to my evening walks this week, the light lasting a little later, the crescent moon very bright and low in the sky and a welcome distraction from all the nonsense life and work sends your way. The album is here. Album opener Rainy Season is an immersive experience (especially through headphones), voices scattered in the mix with traditional instruments and ambient sounds.
A new Daniel Avery was announced this week, following 2020's pair- Illusion Of Time made with Alessandro Cortini and the lockdown produced Love + Light (not to mention the Lone Swordsman single and they all came on the back of 2018's Song For Alpha). The album, Together In Static, is tied in to a performance (socially distanced of course) at Hackney Church in May, a matinee and evening sitting. Once he started preparing for the shows and making new music ahead of them the album grew a life of its own- eleven tracks led by this one, Endless Hours. Austere, intense, emotive ambient techno, subtly shifting synths and rattling drums. The album in various formats and bundles can be bought here.
Back in 2007, longer ago than it seems, Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie released two albums on the same day- After The Night Falls and Before The Day Breaks. The former opened with this piece of music, four minutes of ambient electronica, sound to lose yourself in as it drifts over you- piano notes drenched in reverb, some plucked, treated guitar strings, washes of synth, a gentle drone.
Hawkwind's vocalist Robert Calvert suffered from some terrible episodes of poor mental health and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar. As a child he dreamed of being a fighter pilot and when this didn't happen began to dip into bohemian London of the 1960s. His combined interests in psychedelia, poetry and science fiction led him to Hawkwind. He left in 1973 after being hospitalised under the Mental Health Act, rejoined in 1975 and then left again in 1979. Along the way he recorded several solo albums including in 1981 an album called Hype. Hype was tied in to a novel of the same name, telling the fictional story of the rise and fall of a rock 'n' roll star.
Lord Of The Hornets is the last song on Hype and was also released as a 7" single. It is a buzzing, pounding, overloaded song full of striking lines and memorable imagery, about the man who is the Lord of the Hornets. Norbury is in south London, sandwiched between Streatham and Croydon. It would not surprise me at all if the living God of stinging insects lived in a suburb of south London.
'Asleep in a hive in the base of a hollow tree Behind a shed in a garden in Norbury And when he whispers commands in his megaphone They swarm to his call and he knows that he's not alone
He's lord of the hornets
As a tiger wing drones in a hive of industry Each has a place and will be what it must be Queen's a machine on a larva production line Laying antenna-ed troops on the stings in a paper mine'
Michael Moorcock, science fiction and fantasy author and a key figure in the New Wave of British sci fi plays guitar on Hype. Moorcock also played with Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult and had his own band, The Deep Fix. Additionally he is one of the stars of Half Man Half Biscuit's legendary 1989 single Dickie Davies Eyes. A bit of a one off in the HMHB back catalogue musically, it fades in slowly led by organ rather than the Wirral group's usual three chord indie guitar rumble. Nigel Blackwell pulls together more great lines and British cultural references than any other contemporary songwriter could manage- funnier than Mark E Smith, more relevant than Nick Cave, not racist like Morrissey, Nigel Blackwell is the true voice of British post- punk lyricists (I am aware obviously that Nick Cave is not British).
As the organ comes in, ascending and descending chords and a rattling drum picks up the beat Nigel kicks us off with Tolkein and Moorcock
'Mention The Lord Of The Rings just once more And I’ll more than likely kill you Moorcock, Moorcock, Michael Moorcock you fervently moan'
He then brings us Brian Moore (1) and the London Planetarium, Roger Dean (2), Cadbury's Flake adverts (3), oral sex (3), romanticised dreams about the living and the dead and 'a Romany bint in a field with her paints/ suggesting we faint at her beauty... But she's got Dickie Davies Eyes'. (4)
(1) Brian Moore- a football commentator and TV presenter. Covered nine world cups.
(2) Roger Dean- artist and designer. Famous of his album covers for 1970s prog bands
(3) Cadbury's Flake- the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate... tastes like chocolate never tasted before'
(4) Dickie Davies- TV presenter most famous for being the anchorman of World Of Sport from 1968 to 1985. Darts, rugby, snooker, horse racing, wrestling- he covered it all with a streak of white in his quiff and a twinkle in his eye.
If you want a short, sharp blast of early 70s space rock to lift the spirits and provide a shot of energy and adrenaline you can't go far wrong with Hawkwind's Silver Machine. It opens with a wobble of synth, some oscillations to draw you into the space age, and then the three note bassline and rackety drums drive in, before guitars and vocals provide lift off.
'It flies/ sideways through time/ It's an electric line/ To your zodiac sign'
When the group recorded the song in 1972 Robert Calvert's original vocal wasn't cutting it, it sounded said new bass recruit Lemmy, 'like Captain Kirk reading Blowing In The Wind', so he sang it instead, the only one present who could hit all the notes. Calvert was hospitalised not long after. As the song increases in intensity, everyone bashing away at their chosen instrument, the fur flying and the backing vocals screaming, it sounds like the most exhilarating, most exciting ride through space and time imaginable. Guitarist Dave Brock wrote the song about his new silver racing bike, inspired by a short story about cosmic time travel machine. Brock's joke was that the song was about a bicycle and not a sci fi epic. Sax player Nik Turner has said the song could be about a bike but it could be about 'a spaceship or a hypodermic needle, anything that gives you freedom'. I think I like it being about a bike best.
'It flies/ out of a dream/ it' antiseptically clean/ you're gonna know where I've been'
Silver Machine reached number three in the UK (back when these things mattered), a hit single played by a group of mad, long haired, drug using, counter- culture, anti- authoritarian outsiders who played every free festival they could and who had no interest at all in being pop stars or superstars.
This fine piece of political discourse is painted on the railway bridge behind my place of work (a school in a former mill town in the north west of England that has seen its fair share of post- industrial decline and the problems associated with it and yet inexplicably is represented by a Tory MP). I like to think a student or former student is responsible.
Back in February 1985 Verve records released a ten song compilation of rescued Velvet Underground recordings. Back in 1969 the band had recorded an album's worth of songs for what was intended to be their fourth album. A new broom came in at Verve/ MGM, an executive called Mike Curb and he took the decision to drop all the unprofitable groups from their roster. The Velvets were among those and were released from their contract. On the shelf they left behind the tapes containing five songs from the John Cale- era Velvets and fourteen for the unreleased album. These recordings were re- discovered in the 80s and the 'best' were released as VU. Most of the songs were in the master tape, multi- track format so some of Verve's top engineers were able to 'clean up' and remix the songs. VU is a treasure trove, a record that was partly responsible for the indie boom in the UK in the mid- 80s. As an album it hangs together and sounds coherent despite two of the songs being Cale period songs and the rest Doug Yule period songs. Some of the songs were re- recorded for Loaded and some were already known to Lou Reeds' audience due to him recycling them on various 1970s solo albums but these were the source material, the songs as recorded by Lou, John or Doug, Sterling and Mo (with some typically 80s gated reverb on the drums added by Verve to make the recordings more contemporary). In many ways VU is as vital a Velvet Underground release as any of their four official studio albums and when exploring the group as we all were in the mid- to- late 80s, VU was an essential purchase. In 1986 the rest of the songs were released as Another VU, a marginally less essential nine song album that rounded the set off.
In 2014 when the Velvet's record company were celebrating the forty- fifth anniversary of their self- titled third album with a super deluxe box set they went back to the songs that made up VU/ the unreleased 1969 album and remixed them again, this time much more sympathetically. The 2014 version of I Can't Stand It especially was a revelation- the drums especially- and the restored Lou Reed vocal countdown, backwards from eight to one starting at two minutes twelve seconds, just after the vicious guitar solo and before the choppy rhythm guitar parts come back in, is ridiculously good. This is as good a song as any they recorded.
There are many things I cannot stand at the moment, things that easily top living with thirteen dead cats and the purple dog that wears spats in Lou's lyrics, but listing them will only irritate me more. As it is I'll just echo what the Manic Street Preachers said in their 1992 song Repeat, 'Useless generations/ dumb flag scum/ repeat after me/ fuck Queen and country'. Scum is admittedly a strong word but the rest I can't find any fault with.
