That's Where It's At

After yesterday's Supremes post I thought we should have some Temptations today although the two songs I've gone for are later than 1967, the year covered in depth in Stuart Cosgrove's Detroit 67 book. The Temptations spent much of 1967 struggling with the behaviour of David Ruffin, who was replaced by Dennis Edwards in 1968. Ruffin's voice was a key feature of the group's sound, raspy and raw, but by '67 his behaviour had become an issue. Just as The Supremes were being rebranded as Diana Ross and The Supremes, Ruffin had begun to feel a similar situation was called for with The Temptations. Ruffin's issues with cocaine and habit of missing shows or turning up late and crashing the stage caused further friction and when he began to dig into Berry Gordy's accounting and Motown's finances relations broke down further. In 1968 Ruffin sued Motown and Motown counter-sued Ruffin. Holland- Dozier- Holland had withdrawn their labour in '67 too, unhappy at their share of the money and their perception of their status. The Temptations had begun working with Norman Whitfield whose string-laden, multi-tracked, orchestral sound pushed the group in a new direction, coupled with a side order of psychedelia and some socially conscious lyrics.

By 1970 the Motown sound had gone, Whitfield's productions taking in sound effects, synths, the left to right sweep of stereo production, guitar solos, multi-tracked drums and vocals and The Funk Brothers jamming like a rock band. Hence, they partied at the psychedelic shack...

Psychedelic Shack

Also released in 1970, Ball Of Confusion was released to promote their second Greatest Hits compilation, a state of the world address- the breakdown of the civil rights movement, several summers of rioting in the US cities, the assassinations of King, Malcolm X and the Kennedys, Black Power, Vietnam, My Lai, Kent State University, Nixon- on and on the list goes. And the band played on. I don't know where this Alt Mix is from- I must have downloaded it from somebody/somewhere.

Ball Of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today) Alt Mix

I recently found a copy of their 1971 album Sky's The Limit in a second hand shop, which has the twelve minute opus Smiling Faces Sometimes on it, a song that Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote and produced for The Temptations but then re-recorded as a single with The Undisputed Truth. The album is in perfect condition, surprising given it is nearly fifty years old, but the disc is so thin it is almost a flexidisc. The album saw a return to ballads, a step away from the psychedelic soul of the previous three years. It also the break up of that line up of the group with Eddie Kendricks leaving due to continuing tensions and Paul Williams retiring due to ill health.

Come See About Me

I've been reading Stuart Cosgrove's Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul,the best music related book I've read for some time (and have Jon Savage's recent Joy Division book lined up next which promises to equally good). In Detroit 67 Stuart Cosgrove takes the reader through 1967, month by month, starting with the city almost completely shut down due to snow. From there on we see the year largely through the prism of Motown and the disintegrating relationships within The Supremes which led to Flo Ballard being removed from the group (and she then takes some dreadful advice and makes some poor decisions which would contribute to her tragically early death at the age of just 32 in 1976). Throughout the year Berry Gordy faces further simmering discontent from his writing team Holland- Dozier- Holland, multiple lawsuits, the death of Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye's desire to move into recording socially conscious, politically aware songs (something Gordy tried to resist) and ructions within The Temptations (who would shift stylistically themselves as Norman Whtifiled began writng and recording their songs, making widescreen psychedelic soul). The year ends with the suicide of writer Rodger Penzabene, the lyricist of I Wish It Would Rain. John Sinclair and the MC5 are present, the hippy counter-culture battling police harassment, drug laws and right wing attitudes and violence. Central to the year and the book are the riots of July, five days of rebellion against a racist police force which culminate with the terrible events at the Algiers Motel and the subsequent court case and smouldering injustice. The Vietnam war, white flight from the centre of the city, a rising murder rate- it's a wonder the city survived at all. Detroit 67 is a meticulously researched, well written and fascinating study of a record label, individuals, a city, society and the USA as a whole.

There are times when the more you know about a musician/singer/writer/pop star, the less you like them. You can insert your own recent examples here I'm sure. Does it taint the music? Sometimes I think it does but then I put The Supremes on, and the thundering backing of The Funk Brothers comes into earshot and the combined talents of Holland- Dozier -Holland and Wells, Ross and Ballard for three minutes make the doubts fade away.

Come See About Me

What Goes Around

In 2005 Sister Vanilla released their only album to date, Little Pop Rock. Sister Vanilla was/is Linda Reid, the sister of Jim and William. Back in 2005 Jim and William were only just talking again and the Mary Chain hadn't yet re-united. Instead Little Pop Rock became a sort of Jesus And Mary Chain album by proxy, Linda on vocals throughout and Jim and William recording songs with her in her flat and at their studio The Drugstore (along with Ben Lurie who followed Jim after the JAMC split up live onstage in Los Angeles who plays on it ). The album was recorded piecemeal over a couple of years with Stephen Pastel helping out, while Jim and William presumably found their way round working alongside each other again.

Some of the songs on Little Pop Rock appeared elsewhere in the brothers catalogue- K To Be Lost on William's Lazycame album and Can't Stop The Rock and The Two Of Us on the reformed Mary Chain's Damage And Joy from 2017 (Linda singing on the former). The songs reference the Mary Chain in places- the song called Jamcolas for one, a scuzzy romp with Jim singing the first half of the song and Linda the second. On K To Be Lost Linda sings 'Honey's Dead and Psychocandy, I listened to them all of the time'. Linda had sung on The Mary Chain's swansong, 1998's Munki, the song Mo Tucker being one of that albums few high points. So it's a Mary Chain album in many ways with shared vocals, lo-fi and homemade (and all the better for it), Linda's voice providing a good counterpoint to her brothers.

This one opens with a drum machine and single piano notes and a sense of impending doom. The guitar playing is spindly and distorted and then Linda, vocals smothered in reverb, sings of Tienanmen Square, digital pies and Jim Morrison.

TOTP

What Goes Around is full on self-loathing set to a three chord rumble with lyrics about hookers and LSD, money, drugs, fame, piss, mothers and wives, good times becoming bad times. Eventually William joins in singing 'what goes around comes around'.

What Goes Around

Make Way

A few weeks ago Drew posted this song on Twitter in our semi-regular Sunday night slot, a brave attempt to stave off the Sunday night blues. There haven't been any Sunday night blues this week- it's been a bank holiday weekend and this week is half term so those blues will wait until Sunday 2nd June (by which time after a week off they'll be much worse admittedly).

Back to the song- Vul'indlela by Brenda Fassie, a song I think I'd heard before but which really struck a chord with me this time.

Vul'indlela

Brenda was a South African singer, born in Cape Town and making records in Soweto from the mid 80s. She became hugely popular, someone whose clothing and style was widely copied by her fans, a voice for the poor of South Africa. She became known as the Madonna of the Townships, unafraid of being outspoken or of living her life how she wanted to. She died aged just 39 in tragic circumstances. Vul'indlela is a perfect piece of mid 90s South African dance pop, infectious and uplifting, a song which travelled across Africa and beyond.

Vul'indlela translates as 'make way'- the song's opening lines translate roughly as 'open the gates you gossiping  neighbours and make way, my son is getting married today'.

The Very Reverend D. Wayne Love Is Gone

Jake Black, the Very Reverend D. Wayne Love, founder member, singer and co-writer for the Alabama 3 has died, taken ill after a performance at the Highpoint Festival in Lancashire. Coming out of Brixton in the mid 90s they succeeded in fusing country and blues with acid house and found fame when their song Woke Up This Morning became the theme tune to The Sopranos. They always struck me as being infused with the spirit of south London with a touch of Happy Mondays style shambolics, tailor made for festivals and street parties. According to the band Jake has now made the ascension to the next level and they have been trying to complete booked dates without him which must be difficult.

This song is a favourite of mine, a hypnotic riff and dance beat with a Jim Jones sample about change coming from the barrel of a gun.

Mao Tse Tung Said (Radio K Mix)

This John Prine cover was a 1997 single and on their debut, Exile On Coldharbour Lane.

Speed of The Sound Of Loneliness

Falling Light

I discovered an album by Zarelli via a Twitter friend a couple of months ago after he posted a Youtube clip of one of the songs. After a few days of streaming the songs I bought a copy and have been playing it on and off for a few weeks now. It is a perfect Sunday morning record. In 1975 Leonard Nimoy, world famous as Mr Spock in Star Trek, read some Ray Bradbury science fiction stories which were released as an album with Nimoy's reading of There Will Come Soft Rains from The Martian Chronicles on one side and some chapters from The Illustrated Man on the other. Nimoy has a fantastic speaking voice, distinctive and instantly recognisable.

Not long after Leonard Nimoy's death in 2015 musician and producer Carwyn Ellis set Nimoy's words to music, electronic space age futurism and cosmic easy listening and released the album as Soft Rains. For the Soft Rains album Carwyn Ellis called himself Zarelli and on the sleeve he listed the instruments used on the record- Farfisa organ, Roland and Juno synthesizers, Rhodes electric piano, Suzuki Omnichord, iPad.

Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains is set in an immediately post-apocalyptic world, in the aftermath of nuclear war. A completely automated house continues to perform its duties for its inhabitants. The house's family have been vapourised by the nuclear explosion, their silhouettes are burnt onto an outside wall of the house. The family dog turns up at one point, the only living being the house can now provide for. It dies soon afterwards and the house disposes of the body before a firestorm breaks out, destroying the remains of the house leaving only the wall with the silhouettes on standing and what's left of the automated house still reading out the time and date- 5th August 2026. Once you've listened to the track below a couple of times, Zarelli's beautiful music and Nimoy's voice reading Bradbury's words, you'll probably head over to Youtube and listen to some of the rest of the album, and if you're anything like me then go and hunt down a copy of the album.

Falling Light

Bank Holiday Weatherall Special

Back to back Weatherall posts for the Bank Holiday weekend and a bumper two-for-one deal today only! Bank holiday madness! Must end Monday! Terms and conditions apply.

First up a return to NTS for the monthly Music's Not For Everyone show, the usual smorgasbord of obscure, experimental and plain brilliant all delivered from a shack in Hackney. May's edition includes a new Hardway Bros remix of Dan Wainwright guaranteed to make you shimmy and a track from my friends Rude Audio. The full tracklist is here.



As an end of May extra there's this, Weatherall playing live at Ritual in Brighton at the start of the month, an hour and three quarters of dancefloor action with tracks from Passarella Death Squad, Signal Deluxe, Jasper James, Tecwaa, Pitto and Autarkic.

Facility 4

This appeared out of the blue this week, fifteen minutes of lo-fi, wobbly, out there, ambient- acid, a sonic treat from Weatherall and Walsh aka the Woodleigh Research Facility. The visuals, including Silbury Hill, add a prehistoric vibe to the already fairly shamanic sounds.

Green Milkshake

I thought it was interesting that the message the two major political parties took from the local elections three weeks ago was that 'the British public want Brexit got on with- get us out of the EU'. That I suppose was one interpretation, despite both of the them losing seats nationwide (Tory losses admittedly outstripping Labour losses by some distance). Another take on the results was that the parties that gained the most at the local elections were those explicitly taking a stance against Brexit, who have opposing Brexit as policy. Today we have European elections, three years after voting to leave which is a small victory in itself, and it seems that this is an ideal opportunity for those of us still against leaving the EU, those of us who have seen and heard nothing to convince us that leaving is in the national interest, to send a loud and clear message. The only way to do this is to vote for parties who have remaining in the EU as their policy.

The Tories want to leave, it's their baby, they started digging the hole and have kept on shovelling. Labour, despite Keir Starmer's efforts, are a leave party- it is party policy and they have spent the last three years fudging it. The ongoing attempt to appeal to both leavers and remainers, for fear of 'losing the north', is misguided and unprincipled (which is odd in itself for a party led by people for whom principles are supposedly the key to their politics). Labour's stance on Brexit is political, has nothing to do with principles, and is failing. Nigel Farage's Brexit Party will undoubtedly mop up lots of votes, from disillusioned Tories and ex-UKIPers, from people who voted Leave in the referendum but rarely otherwise vote and from Labour too. I've been told repeatedly in the media recently that having voted Labour at the 2017 general election (as I have throughout my adult life) that I am one of the 81% of British people who voted for a party who want Brexit. I've seen Farage staring down the camera telling me this even though I voted Labour despite their Brexit policy not because of it. That won't be happening again. These are European elections that matter (for once), where our votes may count more than usual and where the whole election is about the future of Europe and our relationship with it.

The advice I've read is that if you want to vote for remain/oppose Brexit you should do the following depending on where you live- vote SNP if you live in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and either Lib Dem or Green if you live in England. I can understand why some people on the left will have a problem with voting Lib Dem, memories of the coalition lingering, but going off the local elections there are increasing numbers of people able to vote for them. There are plenty of good arguments for voting Green and their stance on Brexit is one of them- I voted Green at the local elections three weeks. Putting my X in a different box really wasn't that difficult under the circumstances.

This is Brian Eno's lovely piano remixed beautifully by Mojo Filter.

Another Green World (The Blue Realm)

While we're in the political arena the rise of the milkshake as the weapon of choice against fascists and rabble rousers has been a real highlight of 2019. I know some people have said it adds little to public discourse, that reasoned debate and discussion should always be the way to win arguments, and that the throwing of milkshakes is the thin end of the wedge but these people - Farage and Tommy 'Robinson'- have been spreading the seeds of hatred, xenophobia and racism in the public realm for years now and it's no surprise that when faced with that some people will use more direct action. For two men who like to pose as outsider tough guys, they also go scuttling off quickly crying 'foul' when small quantities of dairy products are used against them. Violent language will always breed similar responses and you reap what you sow. Plus, it is very funny and maybe humiliating these people is the best way to deal with them. This article by Aditya Chakrabortty is a much better articulated piece about the milkshake spring. All of this can only be soundtracked by Kelis.

Milkshake

For Just One Moment In Time

This is a song I keep going back to at the moment, listening and then skipping back to the start, the opener to Simple Minds' 1981 album Sons And Fascination. Never was there I band for whom the phrase 'I prefer their early stuff' is so appropriate. Their early stuff is among the best music of the era (and their later stuff really isn't). Empires And Dance and New Gold Dream are both superb too but this one is the one for me.

In Trance As Mission starts with a Derek Forbes bassline, one of many on the album that personify post-punk bass playing, along with a rigid drumbeat. The synths are central not merely providing colour or filling the sound out. Guitarist Charlie Burchill plays one note throughout, ringing with feedback. A long way to start an album, nearly seven minutes, Jim Kerr singing about moments, the holy back beat, trance as mission, trans American, white rocks, dreams, a new type of light, all the post-punk poetics. Religion maybe. The combined effect is thrilling, dramatic, forward thinking. Top stuff from a band who later on went for the money over the art but certainly paid their dues as far as art is concerned

In Trance As Mission

Sons And Fascination is a great album and a curious one too, packaged with a second disc of songs called Sister Feelings Call (which includes Theme For Great Cities, a song which most bands would kill to have written and which Kerr showed admirable restraint in deciding it didn't need vocals). Not a traditional double album, an album with an extra disc of songs. Ideas galore, loads of ambition and songs to spare.

We Never Compromise

Mancunian artist LoneLady has released a cover of New Order's 1981 B-side Cries And Whispers. Her sound and aesthetic are partially rooted in those early 80s New Order records and Manchester's spirit of those times- her last album was inspired by walking round the concrete and streetlight spaces underneath the Mancunian Way (a section of elevated motorway that skims the southern edge of the city centre). I don't always like covers of New Order songs but this is a keeper.

  

The original was one of two B-sides on 1981's Everything's Gone Green single, a song that skipped the group forward several paces, the moment when they combined rock and dance for the first time on disc and the last time they worked with Martin Hannett. The two songs on the flipside- Cries And Whispers and Mesh- were mislabelled on the disc and then again on Substance, causing confusion for years. One listen to this song, the synth sounds at the intro, the skittering rhythm, Barney's bleak vocal, Stephen's metronomic drumming and the swell of keyboards towards the end, should convince anyone that New Order were a class apart from around this point onwards and for most of the 80s.

Cries And Whispers

Monday's Long Song

At only six minutes forty-three seconds this isn't an especially long song but it came up on shuffle over the weekend and sounded immense. Released back in 1983 this is Colourbox's magnificent take on Baby I Love You So, an Augustus Pablo song from 1974 recorded by Jacob Miller, but updated by Martyn and Stephen Young making the most of early 80s technology- it doesn't sound dated all these years later either, that bassline alone is worth the price of admission. The guitar part is ace, not your standard reggae guitar part, the cymbals splash away and Lorita Grahame's vocal glides over the top.

Baby I Love You So (12" Version)

49

It's my birthday today- the number above.

Madness were a lot of fun on Friday night. I won precisely nothing betting on the horses. Suggs and saxophonist Lee Thompson are a great pair of frontmen (Chas Smash left a few years ago). The set was as you'd expect heavy on the hits, a run of songs pretty much unparalleled in British popular music plus a couple from their more recent albums, a mass singalong for It Must be Love and an encore of Madness (the song) and Night Boat To Cairo which saw outbreaks of pandemonium in the crowd. I was going to post this on Friday but didn't so here it is as a bonus, a deliciously skanking, dubby Andrew Weatherall remix of Madness from 2012. I'm sure that there was a second version of this, a dubbier one, that's never been released that Weatherall played on one of his radio shows.

Death Of A Rude Boy (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Looking for songs with 49 in the title I fond this one from The Jazz Butcher, released on Creation in 1988, a spiky, ramshackle, catchy indie guitar song from Pat Fish that rattles along breathlessly, surfacing for the 'you make me want to carry on' line. This sort of thing seemed ten a penny in 1988 but like genuine moments of mini- greatness now. I first heard it on the Creation compilation Doing It For The Kids, a brilliant example of the art of the compilation album (The Jasmine Minks, The House Of Love, My Bloody Valentine, Felt, Primal Scream, Pacific, The Times, Nikki Sudden and The Weather Prophets plus several others showing Creation had an embarrassment of riches at the time). The Jazz Butcher's Lot 49 references a novel by Thomas Pynchon which I feel like I should have read but haven't.

Lot 49

Sonic Boom In The Pink Room

Sonic Boom played The Pink Room at YES, Manchester's newest gig venue, on Wednesday night in a small upstairs space called the Pink Room (it's painted pink and has a bit of a Warhol/Factory vibe going on). The room holds about 250 people and the gig wasn't sold out. The post- Spacemen 3 trajectories of Pete Kember and Jason Pierce are a bit mystifying, Spiritualized playing grand venues to thousands while Sonic Boom/Spectrum plays to the low hundreds. It gives a better gig experience though if you prefer intimate and up close but you can't help but feel Pete has been shortchanged somewhere along the line.

Sonic takes the stage with one other musician, a guitarist with long, centre parted hair who is wearing a Spacemen 3 t-shirt. Without much in the way of introductions he begins playing the riff to Transparent Radiation, Spacemen 3's cover of The Red Krayola's 60s psyche- rock classic. After this slow, repetitious opener Pete doesn't play guitar again until the end, instead sitting at a table with keyboards, synths, a sampler and an array of pedals, cables, leads and plug ins. From hereon in Sonic digs deep into his bag and plays a selection of songs from his back catalogue- long, slow, hypnotic tracks, loops and drones from the various boxes on the table, all sorts of delay and echo going on. One song often melts into another, the pedals continuing to give out their sounds, loads of tremelo and wobble, as one ends and the next begins. We get All Night Long and Lord I Don't Even Know My Name from two different Spectrum albums, Spacemen 3's Call The Doctor and Let Me Down Gently, all perfectly illustrating Sonic's talents, lyrics that are either melancholic or devotional over the top of undulating synths and waves of sound, drones and loops and repetition. There's no drummer so the songs never get that injection of oomph and power a drummer brings, instead they glide by complemented by the trippy visuals projected onto the back wall. In the middle of the set Sonic starts manipulating a vocal sample. The set list website says this was during I Know They Say (from Spectrum's Highs Lows And Heavenly Blows) but I don't recall that song being the basis of what becomes very improvisational, Sonic constantly triggering the vocal sample, stuttering it, repeating phrases, building in intensity on and on, for what must have been ten or fifteen minutes. He goes back to the guitar for the penultimate song, a fairly blistering take on Suicide's Che. Pete then tells us something along the lines of 'this is where we fuck off back stage for a few minutes, you clap and then we come back out but that's bollocks so we're just going to keep playing'. He fiddles with a few boxes, sets them going for a finale of Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here), the highlight of Spacemen 3's Recurring album and the band's last single, Sonic's psychedelic, acid house influenced peak- the pedals and synth pumping the song out, the guitarist using an e-bow to play the top line  and Sonic leaning in to deliver and repeat the lines, 'everybody I know can be found here/ let the good times roll/ waves of joy/ yeah I love you too', for fifteen blissed out, mesmerising minutes. Waves of joy indeed. I wish he'd tour more often.

This is the ten minute version of Big City from back in 1991, still sounding magnificent nearly thirty years later.

Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here)

And this is a 1992 single by Spectrum, also off their album Soul Kiss (Glide Divine) out the same year.

How You Satisfy Me

Take Time For Your Pleasure

I'm off to Aintree Racecourse tonight, not a sentence I use very often- or ever before. This is a work team night out, an evening of horse racing, gambling (remember kids- stop when the fun stops) and Madness. As in, Madness, the Nutty Boys, the Los Palmas 7, Suggs and co. Back in 1983 as a callow thirteen year old the first gig I ever attended was Madness and The JoBoxers at Manchester Apollo and I haven't seen them since so there will be a nice completing of the circle. I've never been to the races before either and have a history of occasionally getting dress codes wrong at events where the words 'smart' and 'casual' are used in the same sentence.

The Wings Of A Dove was a standalone single in 1983, a time when even the now lesser known Madness songs were huge hits. One of my younger brothers was a Madness obsessive as a kid and still knows all their UK chart positions by heart. I use Google. This one reached number two.

The Wings Of A Dove

Rainford

May must be a prime time for throwing your art out into the world, this is the fourth new music post in less than a week here. Today's new music alert is from Lee Scratch Perry who has an album out at the end of the month, recorded with Adrian Sherwood at the controls. Rainford is a personal, autobiographical record recorded in bursts over two years in London, Jamaica and Brazil. Sherwood describes it as the strongest set of Scratch songs for years and set out with the intention of doing for the Upsetter what Rick Rubin did for Johnny Cash. The lead single Let It Rain goes some way to fulfilling those aims, catchy as you like and sounding like a song for the summer. The album can be pre-ordered at Bandcamp.



Scratch is on Twitter. On Sunday he Tweeted 'ALTHOUGH WE’RE IN THE END TIMES, WE ARE NOT AT THE END OF THE TIME. BE CAREFUL WHO YOU LISTEN TO.
SATAN IS RAGING NOW BECAUSE HE KNOWS THE TIME IS SHORT DON’T LISTEN TO GLOOM AND DOOM. IT IS TRICKERY DESIGNED TO DRAG YOU DOWN. WE SHOULD BE REJOICING AT WHAT GOD IS BRINGING FOTH!

And there's plenty more where that came from.

You Were Putting Me On

I found this clip recently and it made me smile, Teenage Fanclub back in 1995 or '96 playing live on The White Room, covering The Byrds 1965 B-side (B-side!) I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better, if push comes to shove my favourite Byrds song.



There's nothing wrong with this clip at all- Teenage Fanclub in 1995, a band in love with music and the sheer joy of playing, Norman and Gerry sharing the vocals, a group who could out jangle anyone, totally Byrdsy. There's some frantic tambourine rattling too from roadie Guitar George.

I'l Feel A Whole Lot Better opens with that wonderful chiming Rickenbacker riff by Jim McGuinn and then lifts off, with all the harmonies, the uncertainty of the lyric- 'Ill probably feel a whole lot better when you're gone'-  and that rocket fuel rhythm section, a perfect slice mid 60s folk rock, all over and done with in two minutes and thirty two seconds. I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better was written and sung by Gene Clark and released as the flipside to Mr Tambourine Man, their first self- written song that sold in its millions.

I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better

In 1989 Dinosaur Jr covered the song, released on a Byrds tribute album called Time Between, an album that also had covers by the likes of the Mock Turtles, Thin White Rope, Miracle Legion, Robyn Hitchcock and The Chills. J Mascis, Lou and Murph go at it fast, ragged and in one take. Gene Clark said this is his favourite cover of the song and I can't disagree with that. I don't have a copy of this anymore- I owned the album once but have no idea where it is now. If anyone has an mp3 of this version I'd be more than happy to take a copy off your hands.

Face Down

Former Red Snapper duo Ali Friend and Rich Thair have a new band called Number, inspired by the punk-funk acts of the late 70s and early 80s of New York and Manchester, the scratchy guitars and dub influenced basslines and chanted vocals of A Certain Ratio, Talking Heads, Magazine and sounds and the styles of No wave and dirty disco. The first fruits of this new group is the song Face Down In Ecstasy and Richard, Ali and friends have delivered- hipwiggling bass, hi hats and a lovely choppy guitar.

Monday Long Song

I found this on Friday night, an ALFOS road tested release fresh out on Phantasy. Terr is a Brazilian born, Berlin based DJ and producer. Her original track Tale Of Devotion is a wide eyed homage to the disco-synths of Georgio Moroder, a seven minute pulsing joyride with swooping strings. The Prins Thomas Diskomiks is nine minutes and four seconds of undulating cosmic disco with Terr's vocal layered over some wild synth action, guaranteed to pick you up and spin you round. Single of the week (as they used to do in the NME/Melody Maker).

As Good As Gold

A new Steve Cobby album dropped into the ether out of the blue on Friday, titled Sweet Jesus (and with cover art to match).  Steve's been on a roll for the last few years, from 2014's Suadade to the following year's double disc masterpiece Everliving and 2017's Hemidemisemiquaver. The opening notes of song As Good As Gold have me hooked from the start, a descending finger picked acoustic guitar riff and some slide guitar, the sound of the sun going down while you sit in the beer garden, eking out a few more moments before going home.

I'm still getting to know the rest of it, twelve tracks showing the wide range of styles Steve plays- Lanspresado is drum machine and keyboard based, downtempo electonica with a dubby melodica part; Feline Plastique has Spanish guitar and castanets; the moody guitar and live drum kit of The Groom Stripped Bare By His Suitor with an ace snaking topline; the finger picking acoustic guitar back for the final pairing of songs, folky, downtempo Balearica from Humberside.