An Hour Of Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown And Downtown

Hardway Bros (Sean Johnston) and Monkton (Duncan Gray) DJ and remix together. In both cases there's something about the partnership that pushes both to do something that's different from what each does on their own. Their remixes as Hardway Bros Meets Monkton reference the seminal Augustus Pablo album King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and as a result you'd be right to expect lots of dub percolating through the sounds cooked up in the remix studio. Dub, bass, echo, melodica- all are present. So is plenty of glorious chug and the wide spaces of cosmic disco. Cosmic, psychedelic, dub disco. The remixes also tend to be long, usually going up towards ten minutes, so this mix was always going to be a long one. 

An Hour of Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown And Downtown

• Jack Butters: Shake It Off (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Electric Blue Vision: Other Skies (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Perry Granville: Sailing Ships (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Version)
• Fjordfunk: It's All Black (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown)
• GLOK: That Time Of Night (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Dub)
• Psychederek: Screamadereka (Hardway Meets Monkton Uptown Downtown Remix)
• Phil Kieran and Green Velvet: Enjoy The Day (Hardway Meets Monkton Downtown Remix)

Jack Butters is from Stoke- on- Trent, a city fmaous for consisting of five towns, its historic past as the centre of pottery and ceramics, and for it's football team Stoke City (the old ground, the Victoria Ground, was a fairly fearsome awayday in the past). What Stoke should be famous for now is Jack's music, not least this dubbed out Hardway and Monkton remix. I heard this played by Sean at ALFOS at The Golden Lion last summer and it sounded immense.

Electric Blue Vision is Jesse Fahnestock of 10:40 and Jezebell with singer Emilia Harmony. Other Skies came out last November, a 2023 highlight with three great remixes- this one plus remixes by Tambores En Benirras and Balearic Ultras. Sean and Duncan's remix is more majestic melodica led dub, a complete reconstruction of Jesse and Emilia's song.

Perry Granville's Sailing Ships becomes a metallic- dub- by- way- of- post punk- and- acid house trip in the Hardway Bros and Monkton hands, noises rattling round and ricocheting as the bass pushes on and thunder rumbles. There are stuttering vocal sample and pulverising synths, drop outs and re- entries and always underpinning everything, huge, live sounding bass. 

Fjordfunk released It's All Back in 2020 on the Tici Taci label, an eleven minute cosmic disco tune remixed into an eleven minute cosmische dub disco tune by Hardway and Monkton with a squealing guitar line dropping in and out and an ultra- distorted voice saying things that are impossible to make out. 

GLOK is Ride's Andy Bell. Since 2019 Andy's released several albums and singles as GLOK, experimental cosmische/ synth songs and tracks. That Time Of Night was on 2021's Pattern Recognition and features the voice of Shiarra Bell, Andy's wife, talking about the pleasures of being lost on a dancefloor, 'just one person, one part of the whole mass of people.. the heat and the light and the flashing...'. Hardway and Monkton take the track and turn it into a sleek, propulsive, krauty trip, a keening guitar line running through it with a booming, metronomic kick drum.

Psychederek is from Stretford, just up the road from me, and has recently released one of this year's best EPs, Alt!. In August 2021 he released the Space Arcade 12" on Chris Massey's Sprechen label, with the very ace Screamadereka coming in double Hardway Monkton remix form- the Downtown remix and Disco Dub version. The Downtown Remix is a glorious sunlit thing in two halves, the first half dubby psyche and the second a chuggy, pacier, cosmische glide. 

Phil Kieran and Green Velvet's Enjoy The Day came out in late 2022. Phil is a Belfast based DJ and producer. Green Velvet is from Chicago. Enjoy The Day is full on, four four drums and techno bass, chopped up and FXed vocals, 'you got it', and a piano line that is the definition of happy/ sad. 

V.A. Saturday

This week's Monday Long Song was by Joy Zipper. Their song Check Out My New Jesus, a woozy ode to drugs/ sex, sparked some conversation among readers. For quite a few people the first time they heard the song and the band was on a free CD given away with the 17th June 2000 edition of the NME. The CD, London Xpress, is a contender for best ever freebie magazine CD. The internet tells me that the NME cover star that week was Richard Ashcroft, a feature where he faced readers questions including 'has all that acid fucked you up?', 'any dieting tips?' and 'what's the latest you've stayed up?'. Also featured in that week's NME were Graham Coxon, Bloodhound Gang, Bon Jovi and Deftones. None of these people should concern us right now, some of them ever, we are here solely for the free cover mount CD. 

London Xpress was done with the record label Nuphonic and featured three guest DJs providing three mixes of various artists. The DJs were Andrew Weatherall, Harvey and David Holmes- that's quite a line up. On the CD the different tracks were available as individual tracks although all three DJs had mixed their selections. The three files below are the three sets as one mixed file. 

London Xpress Andrew Weatherall

Andrew opens the CD with a typically eclectic and downtempo/ electro set. Stuttering, minimal, lo fi, dirty sounds that build into something quite frenetic and funky, a fair reflection of where Andrew's head was at that point given the Two Lone Swordsmen releases from the period. He finishes with German badn Lali Puna who Andrew and fellow Swordsman Keith Tenniswood were obsessed with, various remix exchanges taking place between TLS, Radioactive Man and Lali Puna. Andrew's selections here are first rate, the work of an inveterate record buyer and sound seeker. 

• Plaid: Tophapy
• Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players: Hard Drive Dub
• John Tejlda: Daydreaming Disaster
• Steve Stoll: Supernatural (You're So)
• 7 Hurtz: Stockers Motor
• Lali Puna: Everywhere All Over

London Xpress Harvey

Harvey starts out all Balearic and laid back, Plaid making their second appearance on the CD, surf guitar and fluttering electronics. He brings the breaks in and the poolside/ sunshine sounds, a contrast to Andrew's much more urban set. Very nicely done. 

• Plaid: Ralome
• Addvibe: Love And Happiness
• Forme: Morfe
• ADNY: Tell Me
• Amalgamation Of Soundz: Salsin

London Xpress David Holmes

Possibly though, the best is saved for last- David Holmes' set is a journey in twenty five minutes, staring out with sweet sounding psyche with children talking about who God is, where he is and what he can do as organ and ba ba baa backing vox  flow behind them.  Then Joy Zipper's laid flat, woozy song, two slices fro David's about to be released album Bow Dow To The Exit Sign and then more scuzzy lounge funk and Ella Fitzgerald concluding with her cover of Sunshine Of Your Love. Stunning. 

• Family Of God: Family Of God
• Joy Zipper: Check Out My New Jesus
• David Holmes: Commercial Break
• David Holmes: Hey Lisa
• Keith Mansfield: Morning Broadway
• Gian Piero Riverberi: Cat Casanova
• Hot Butter: Getting Off
• Ella Fitzgerald: Sunshine Of Your Love

Tonight we are celebrating Eliza's 21st birthday-her actual birthday isn't until next weekend but she's away at a festival in Anglesey next weekend, so the party is tonight at a venue in Altrincham. It should be quite the do. 

Another Imaginary Album

Last week I floated the idea of imaginary albums, albums that could have/ should have happened but didn't- the pair I mused about were an imaginary Andrew Weatherall/ Sabres Of Paradise produced Sinead O'Connor and Jah Wobble album, building on the Visions Of You single, and also what might have happened had Andrew Weatherall actually gone on to produce The Fall in 1993, a meeting that went as far as the studio before there was a backing out. Today's imaginary album is going back to 1986 and the aftermath of The Clash.

This is what really happened.

Mick Jones was fired from The Clash in 1983 by Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon (and Bernie Rhodes, back as manager at Joe's insistence). Mick had become increasingly difficult to work with and there had bee major disagreements about the song selection and mixing of the album that became Combat Rock. Famously, Mick and Paul had a stand off for several hours about the level of the bass in Know Your Rights and their relationship broke down to the point where they weren't even speaking. Joe and Paul issued a statement saying Mick had drifted away from the original intention of the group and they would now pursue this without him. Joe and Paul recruited two new guitarists, Vince White and Nick Sheppard and drummer Pete Howard who'd replaced Terry Chimes, who'd replaced Topper Headon. The five man Clash went on to tour and record a much derided album called Cut The Crap (made mainly by Strummer and Rhodes- it's not all bad, the song This Is England is a genuine Strummer state- of- the nation classic, but much of the rest was done by Rhodes and doesn't add much to the band's back catalogue although some fan remixed versions have some merit). The Clash Mark 2's highlight was a busking tour. On getting home Strummer called it a day and the band broke up. 

Mick Jones was kicked out of The Clash, the band he started in 1976, and set about proving Joe and Paul wrong. He formed TRAC (Top Risk Action Company) who then became Big Audio Dynamite. Some of Mick's songs for the first B.A.D. album were already written while he was in The Clash and the rest came quickly. Recorded by the new band- Mick with Don Letts, Greg Dread, Dan Donovan and Leo Williams- BAD's first album, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, is a modern, fun, genre- clash and sample- fest, packed with great tunes- The Bottom Line, e=mc2, Medicine Show, A Party and the rest, fusing rock, reggae, rap, and dance music. After that Mick moved quickly, writing songs for B.A.D.'s second album. 

Joe was full of regret and self- loathing about the way The Clash had imploded, blaming himself for sacking Mick and for being (again) seduced by Bernie's talk. He hoped to make up with Mick and flew out to the Caribbean where Mick was staying. The legend has it that Joe cycled round the island looking for Mick, found him, presented him with some weed by way of apology and asked him to reform The Clash. Mick had no interest in reforming The Clash, B.A.D. was his future and he must have taken some pleasure at Joe's volte face. At some point Joe told Mick that the new B.A.D. songs were 'the worst thing I've ever heard'. Joe's retrenchment into three chord rock had characterised The Clash Mark 2. Mick was fusing the questing, experimental Clash of 1980- 81 with pop music and samples and he wanted to keep pushing forward. The two made up though and both Joe and Paul appeared in the Medicine Show video, the three former bandmates friends again.

Joe signed up for co- producing the next B.A.D. album and ended up co- writing several songs- Beyond The Pale, Limbo The Law, V. Thirteen, Ticket, and Sightsee M.C. Two more saw the light of day as bonus tracks on the U.S. CD release- Ice Cool Killer and The Big V (Ice Cool Killer is drum machine beats and Scarface samples. The Big V is a cooled down version of V. Thirteen). 

Ice Cool Killer

The Big V

The Strummer- Jones writing team was firing on all cylinders on No. 10 Upping Street. V. Thirteen is one of B.A.D.'s best songs, sleek and widescreen with a great Mick Jones lyric and vocal. Beyond The Pale is a crunchy, guitars and keys celebration of immigration with Joe on backing vocals. There are two songs further Strummer- Jones co- writes from this period. Love Kills (from Alex Cox's Sid And Nancy film) features an uncredited Mick Jones on guitar and backing vox and U.S. North, a song that sounds like a close cousin of love Kills, written in late '86 but not released until a posthumous Joe Strummer album a few years ago. 

Mick kept going and in 1988 B.A.D. recorded and released their third album, Tighten Up Vol '88, and then the rave influenced Megatop Phoenix in 1989. Joe worked on the soundtracks for Walker and Straight To Hell, and went to L.A. and recorded his debut solo album, Earthquake Weather. Paul formed Havana 3 a.m. and released an album in 1991. The original B.A.D. line up broke up after Megatop Phoenix and Mick formed B.A.D. II. 

But... this is what could have happened...

After No. 10 Upping Street and the success of the Strummer- Jones writing and production team, Mick and Joe could have closed ranks again and reformed their partnership. This could have been The Clash re- united. Joe probably would have done this, Mick would have been less keen, wanting to keep moving forward. Band re- unions weren't really a thing in the late 80s, not the way they are now. But if Mick had changed his mind some time in 1987, a new Strummer- Jones band could have formed and made a killer late 80s album. They could have brought Paul back on board. Poor Topper was deep into heroin addiction and driving a taxi- he appeared with Flowered Up in 1990 but then dropped off the map again. 

The Strummer- Jones '88 album could have cherry picked the key songs from Tighten Up Vol. 88 and Earthquake Weather. A fully fired up partnership in the studio would have brought further new songs. 

From Tighten Up Vol. 88 Mick's Other 99, a soaring, guitar- led song about doing the best you can, not being sucked into the rat race and sometimes accepting good enough is just that. The Battle Of All Saint's Road, a Jones- Letts co- write with banjo, reggae and a coming together of the Ladbroke Grove tribes, the rockers and the dreads. Just Play Music, 2000 Shoes and Applecart all pass muster and could all feature Mick and Joe swapping lines and singing together. The last thing the original B.A.D. line up recorded was Free, a song for the film Flashback (a Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland film adventure comedy about a aging on the run hippy and an FBI agent). A Mick and Joe version of Free would make the cut. 

Other 99 (Extended Mix)

Free (LP Version)

Joe's Earthquake Weather is an album cursed by muffled production, a weird mix and the sometimes unsympathetic and over the top playing of the band, L.A. rock musicians (a group Joe christened Latino Rockabilly War, which is a great name and could be the name of my imagined Joe and Mick band or album). But versions of those songs with Mick Jones playing and producing would lift them much higher. Gangsterville, Island Hopping and Sleepwalk are the obvious candidates, Leopardskin Limousines and Passport To Detroit maybe. The B- sides of the Island Hopping single include a lovely stripped down, swinging acoustic- ish version of the song re- titled Mango Street so we'll have that one too. 

Mango Street

Joe had already contributed the mighty song Trash City to the soundtrack to a Keanu Reeves film called Permanent Record, a that song would open and adorn any late 80s Strummer- Jones album. 

Trash City

U.S. North could have been dragged from the vaults, its ten minute length trimmed a little. Paul could have come back and contributed something from Havana 3 a.m.'s album- this spaghetti western song perhaps...

Hey Amigo

If we're not careful we're heading back into double album territory, one of the straws that broke the Clash camel's back, but an imaginary single album, Mick and Paul co- writing and co- producing, playing and singing together, Mick back with Joe and Joe fully focussed, is a great What If? and could have been a very good (imaginary) album. They'd still have argued and fallen out again when Levi's came calling in 1991 of course. But that's The Clash. 

Rotters

Chris Rotter and Pati Yang have two new songs out, both available at Bandcamp and both sending any monies raised to Medical Aid For Palestine. The first is The Killer Inside- synths fade in, a tambourine rattles, the bass throbs and and Pati sings. It's got that woozy, shimmery, shoegaze feel, a pop song wrapped up in a hazy guaze. Pay what you want, raise money for those in need, find it here. 

The second is Gravity (Take Me Home), a long lost, unreleased Rotter/ Yang song, now out in the wild and looking for a home. Acoustic guitar layered over a bed of synths, Pati singing of memory and loss. Again, pay what you want, find it here. 

Chris' brother Roger is the guitarist in The Early Years, a cosmische band from Hackney whose single Complicity in 2011 caused a stir, was played on the radio by Mr. Weatherall and led to 6 Mix and then remixing Paul Weller during his Sonik Kicks period. In 2017 they released an EP of remixes of songs from their album II which included two Andrew Weatherall remixes and an Andy Bell remix. Both Weatherall remixes are stunners obviously but Remix I is especially stunning, an exercise in krauty hypnosis, repetition, bleepy melodies interrupted occasionally by the sound of speeding cars. One of those remixes which is a little overlooked in the back catalogue. 

Hall Of Mirrors (Andrew Weatherall Remix I)

Hop On Down

I posted Clean On Your Bean by Dinosaur L on Saturday, a track from the New York Noise compilation on Soul Jazz. While going through the stack of free CDs from magazines I found a New York themed one from Mojo called Change The Beat: 14 Tracks From Madonna's New York Scene, a free CD from March 2015 with lots of New York Noise adjacent artists, including 23 Skidoo, ESG, James Black, Bush Tetras, and Delta 5 plus Curtis Mayfield, Funkadelic, and Section 25 among the others. It's a good CD, lots of great music, a time capsule and primer and shows that sometimes the people putting these magazine CDs together really get it right. I no longer have the magazine but a quick internet search shows Madonna was on the cover, promoting her album Rebel Heart (in my head 2015 is pretty recent but it's nearly a decade ago). 

One of the artists on Change The Beat was Arthur Russell (who recorded as Dinosaur L) and his track Hop On Down. Arthur Russell has grown and grown in stature and reputation in recent years, his back catalogue re- issued and his sonic palette an inspiration for lots of people. When he died in 1992 aged just forty he was largely unknown. Hop On Down is from a collection of twelve previously unreleased Arthur Russell tracks, an album titled Calling Out Of Context. His music is a sonic stew of cello, minimalist disco, whispered, crooned and/ or half sung vocals, disruptive noises, deep bass, keyboards, tablas and drum machines, all seemingly effortlessly stitched together and surrounded in acres of space and hiss. Deeply lovely music, art and pop music combined. 

Hop On Down

Songs For Skulls

Songs For Skulls is a five track EP by The Field Guide Radio, a duo from Margate of Chris F Clark and Lesley Malone who with their synths, drones, words and art have produced a musical response to a book called The Skull by Jon Klassen. The EP is at Bandcamp, a full on half hour journey into the woods, a crossover between experimental electronics, spoken word and folklore. It's out on The Fearless Few, a label and collective based in London. At the end of last week a remix EP came out, four of the tracks on Songs For Skulls reworked and remixed by Oliver Si, MSOM, Valtow, Greyfield Woods, and Melinda Bronstein, Songs For Skulls- The Fearless reworkings. 

Helpfully, in order to simplify matters and provide some background the Fearless Few asked the remixers to describe themselves and their remix, and each one of them did a really good job. Oliver Si's remix of The Bones & The Fire opens the EP, dark and persistent, a walk in the woods that has gone way off the path. Oliver's own description is 'a dark and majestic take on an already deep and strange theme'. MSOM's remix of The Headless Skeleton is an eight and a half minute slow building trip by a self- confessed synth obsessive, long synth chords, a rippling topline and then the thump of the kick drum. MSOM describes his remix as 'a dramatic intro evolving into a synth banging tour de noughties', as accurate a description as any. 

It's followed by Valtow's remix of The Forest, a 'dubby soundscape with syncopated grooves' according to Valtaw. It's definitely dubby- that kind of dark, industrial, electronic dub- and the drums are nicely off beat and disturbed. Greyfield Woods remixed The Dark, a short piece, less than three minutes, of soundtrack/ folk horror sounds, with a hushed voice and wash of grey synths. Greyfield Woods says it is 'whispers from a witch dabbling in borderline- pervy remote viewing', and also as 'occult, lusty and atmospheric'. The remix EP concludes with Melinda Bronstein's version of The Bones & The Fire, a drone, a folky, female voice, the peculiarities of the countryside turned into five minutes of sound. Melinda calls it a 'radiophonic torch song' and 'a crepuscular vision of desire and hope emanating from a flickering fire'. Again, spot on and better than anything I can do. The EP is at Bandcamp

Monday's Long Song

I uncovered a box of CDs recently which contained dozens of CDs that came free with magazines, some going back to 1998. Mountains of plastic jewel cases, endless tracklists of samplers from 'this month's latest releases' plus old songs from albums being re- issued, songs from themed CDs (things like '14 Tracks From Madonna's New York', 'Pet Sounds Revisited', and 'Panic: 15 Tracks of Riotous '80s Indie Insurrection'), several volumes of Jockey Slut's Disco Pogo For Punks In Pumps, and loads more besides. A treasure trove and some rubbish too. I've been working my through them, looking for songs I'd previously missed or overlooked. There's a potentially rich vein of blogging inspiration along with some chaff.  

Among them all I found a CD from the magazine Uncut titled White Riot Volume Two: A Tribute To The Clash, sixteen covers of Clash songs and a Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros song, Long Shadow. The covers include this one by Joy Zipper of Mick Jones' Hitsville UK from Sandinista!, a six minutes plus slow burning, shimmering, walls of fuzz guitar take on a Clash song that Mick wrote as a tribute to the UK's independent scene. 

Hitsville UK

Joy Zipper were from Long Island, a married couple, Tabitha Tindale and Vincent Cafiso. By 2003 (the date of the magazine and the CD) Joy Zipper had already been active for a few years. Their debut release was in 1999 and their second album, American Whip from 2002, had production and mixing courtesy of Kevin Shields and David Holmes. Their cover of Hitsville UK was the B-side to their 2003 single Christmas Song. It reminded me that I had the first two albums and of this song, a woozy piece of late 20th century psychedelia/ shoegaze that comes across like a hymn to slow sunny days, sex and Jesus. 

Check Out My New Jesus

xiM sgnoS sdrawkcaB fO setuniM eviF-ytrihT

Thirty- five minutes of backwards songs.

This mix occurred to me a few weeks ago when I posted David Holmes' remix of Andy Bell's The Sky Without You, a remix of the opening song from Andy's 2022 solo album Flicker. Reversing the tapes and playing them backwards is an age old technique- The Beatles used it in 1966 on Rain and then perfected it on Tomorrow Never Knows (although both of those merely contain backwards elements/ instruments- most of what's included below is entirely backwards). They went the full hog on The White Album with Revolution 9. Those backwards noises- the sound of cymbals splashing in reverse, the trippy whirl of guitars backwards, the weird throb of bass- are all very evocative and possibly suggest too long spent in the studio, indulgence maybe, but when done well are superb. I've loved it as a sonic whoosh, an aural WTF?, since my first exposure to The Stone Roses and their B-sides in 1989 and Don't Stop. This mix will I suspect be an opinion splitter- you'll either roll your eyes and quietly close the page and go elsewhere for your Sunday morning music fix or you'll love this. I've played it through several times and each time can convince myself it's the best Sunday mix I've ever done. 

xiM sgnoS sdrawkcaB fO setuniM eviF- ytrihT

• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You
• The Stone Roses: Simone
• The Clash: Mensforth Hill
• The Stone Roses: Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3
• The Stone Roses: Full Fathom Five
• Andy Bell: The Looking Glass
• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
• The Stone Roses: Guernica
• The Stone Roses: Don't Stop

The Sky Without You opens Flicker, Andy Bell's solo album. It was a deliberate nod to The Stone Roses, Andy looking backwards to Don't Stop and the B-sides of Elephant Stone, Made Of Stone, and She Bangs The Drums. Most of the rest of Flicker is fully crafted, 'proper' songs, from the lovely Something Like Love to the wistful Way Of The World. Halfway through, the start of the second disc on the vinyl version, is another backwards track, The Looking Glass, Andy's voice, guitar and what sounds like some organ fed backwards through the looking glass. I'm guessing it's one of the songs from Flicker flipped. 

Simone is Where Angels Play played backwards and for many years was only available as the B-side of a U.S. import version of I Wanna Be Adored, which found its way into U.K. shops in 1989. It was buying this 12" single for this one song, a 12" priced at £5.99 (a huge amount for a 12" single then) that made me realise I was in deep. Where Angels Play was the 'lost' song from the golden period of 1989- 1990, the song that didn't make the album but was often bootlegged live. It was eventually released on a 12" of I Wanna Be Adored, put out by Silvertone as a money spinner when the band and label were in dispute- a dispute that led to a court case that led to the band signing to Geffen and to the end of the group ultimately.  

By the time The Clash had committed themselves to an album which would comprise six sides of vinyl  and to having six songs for each side, they were in very deep indeed. Studio experimentation, Joe's lyric writing bunker, and hours through the night of recording dubs and versions with Mikey Dread were the order of the day. I've said it before and I'll say it again- London Calling may be their 'best' album, punk purists will go for the debut, some of the class of '78 will always argue for Give 'Em Enough Rope, but Sandinista! is where the true, questing spirit of The Clash is to be found. It's a treasure trove and as Joe says in Westway To The World, it's 'a magnificent achievement, warts and all'. Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards with studio chatter at both ends. 'Shall we do another one then?' asks Joe at the end. Yes please!

Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3 is She Bangs The Drums played in reverse- it came out as an extra on the 20th anniversary release of The Stone Roses (the one with the lemon shaped USB stick- no, I didn't buy it). 

Full Fathom Five (a nice coincidental link to Duncan Gray's album Five Fathoms Full that came out last week) is Elephant Stone backwards (the Peter Hook produced version of Elephant Stone, so if you can reverse the reversed version, you've got Hooky's mix of the song too). I think this is a little more than just flipping the tape round- Ian's vocals are unclear but recorded and dropped in forwards. Full Fathom Five is the name of a 1947 Jackson Pollock painting, one of his earliest drip paintings, a masterpiece, and a clear influence on John Squire's Roses sleeve art from this period. 

The Sky Without You has already appeared once here. For his Radical Mycology Remix David Holmes took all of Andy's backwards Roses swirl and took it further, adding forwards drums, a blurry sunny day feel and sirens. One of my favourite records of recent years. David's name for the remix came from some mushroom based experimentation he undertook during lockdown, dealing with some growing up in Belfast related PTSD

Guernica is Made Of Stone backwards with Ian singing a new vocal forwards- 'If you wanna hurt me stop the row' (or similar), can be made out fairly clearly. This one feels like a step towards Don't Stop. You can imagine them in the studio with John Leckie working their way through the songs backwards, hitting on certain ones, trying new vocals, flipping parts around and eventually getting it all together when they reversed Waterfall. There was an interview with Ian and John in '88 or '89 where they said they used to drive out the road under the flightpath at Manchester airport (I know exactly which road they mean too), sit on the bonnet of the car and wait for the jumbo jets to take off over head, and then try to replicate the roar of the engines with their reversed tapes. Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Spanish town that was obliterated by the Nazi's Condor Legion, Stuka dive bombers deployed to aid the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. 2024; see Gaza.

A Spanish Civil War Sunday mix anyone?

Don't Stop is more and more, as each year passes, the highlight of The Stone Roses debut album- don't laugh- the one where the experimentation, delight in backwards tapes, a modern psychedelic guitar band was fully realised. Reni's drums and Ian's vocals are both forwards, recorded over Waterfall played in reverse. There's more to it than just reversing the tape- the guitars are slowed down, sounding like an actual waterfall, and the fade in has been added from elsewhere. Things are out of sync. The flow of the backwards guitars and bass, bubbling, lightly drilling, is a rush and Reni's cowbell tapping away gives so much. John wrote the lyrics by listening to Ian's vocal for Waterfall played backwards and then transcribed what Ian's blurred voice seemed to be suggesting.Ian then sang them- the lyrics are among the best too- 'hey blues singer/ just the guitar/ from the top/ what can I steal/ what can I feel/ I wake/ ease into my heart/ one of us/ don't stop/ isn't it funny how you shine?'. Andy Bell used this technique on Flicker. Which is where we came in....

V.A. Saturday

I'm trying to avoid making this Saturday series just a succession of compilations on Soul Jazz Records but since the 1990s they have become the standard setting label in many ways with what must be close to definitive various artist compilations in reggae, dub, ska, rocksteady, disco, kraut, acid, soul and funk. There are two post- punk compilations on Soul Jazz which came out at a time when sharp, angular, mutant funk/ noise was a big influence on new bands - one was the 2002 compilation In The Beginning There Was Rhythm, an eleven song gold standard compilation that I'll save for another Saturday. It was followed in 2003 by a sixteen song double vinyl/ single CD of late 70s/ early 80s music from New York, a compilation called New York Noise. As a document and round up of that scene it seems pretty comprehensive (although Lydia Lynch is missing) but it shows the influence of those artists on early 21st century hip hop, dance music, electroclash and disco- post- punk/ disco, groups like LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all those bands that came through in the wake of The Strokes. 

New York Noise isn't always pretty or easy listening. It's intense and experimental and at times smells like damp basements, poppers and dry ice- but it always moves, its always invigorating and its always wants to tell you something is happening. As dance music it sometimes feels like its for the head as much as the feet. It definitely feels arty, the sort of music where you find people who are dressed interestingly- that's a good thing by the way- and that kind of thing can always topple into posing, but there's a time and place for posing and New York between 1979 and 1982 may be exactly that time and place. 

Across the seventy one minutes and sixteen tracks you get familiar punk- funk names- James Chance and The Contortions, The Bush Tetras, ESG, Mars, Theoretical Girls, Konk, DNA, and Defunkt. You also get this by Glenn Branca, a hugely influential wall of electric guitars and the power of repetition (a fundamental part of Sonic Youth's inspiration).

Lesson No. 1(For Electric Guitar)

There's also this by Dinosaur L from 1982, supremely funky and, yes, angular, sounds from Arthur Russell and Peter Gordon, a juddering post- punk bassline, sax and tape FX voices looped, rushing by in and out of time 

Clean On Your Bean

New York Noise opens with Liquid Liquid's Optimo, the title track from an EP that gave hip hop and early rap it's bassline in White Lines. By way of closing the circle Glasgow's Optimo, named after the track, did their own edit of Optimo, doubling the length and turning it up- cowbell, atonal sax, rumbling, thumping drums and percussion, Brazilian funk in early 80s New York retooled in Glasgow. 

Optimo (An Optimo Espacio Mix)

Five Fathoms Full

Out today, Five Fathoms Full, a full length, twelve track album from Duncan Gray. It has soundtracked much of my weekly commute to work recently, a sleek, cosmische, dub disco album that chews up the miles and eases the low level pains of travelling on our roads. Everything is extended, all the tracks allowed to play out over six or seven minutes minimum, analogue synths, drum machines, basslines of both the dubby, Hooky and propulsive variety, guitars sent via FX pedals, the constant chugging ALFOS- esque disco groove that sends shards of flickering lights flashing round the space you're in, everything mastered by Rich Lane at Cotton Bud. There's loads to enjoy in Five Fathoms Full, as individual tracks and as a full album that unfolding over something close to one hundred minutes. The track titles alone promise a trip- Full Trip, Astronomy, Greenville, Medicinal, Shark Bumps, Hot Jupe, Two Cold Volts....

Duncan has put together a 57 minute DJ mix of the songs from the album as a taster and a musical experience in its own right. You can find that at Soundcloud. Full Fathom Five is available digitally at Bandcamp. 

If you missed it Duncan's back catalogue is full of moments of chuggy joy. In March 2022 he put out a collection titled Emergency Transmissions, eight slices of dub disco as played on Sean Johnston's lockdown Friday night EBS system. You can get that here. 

In 2015 Duncan was one of a handful of artists who saw their music released on Andrew Weatherall's vinyl only Bird Scarer label. Duncan's EP, No Safe Word, had four tracks including the acid joy of Kick Intrusion. 

Imaginary Albums

Over at The Vinyl Villain you can find a long running series of Imaginary Compilation Albums where JC and various readers have put together compilations for a range of artists and musicians from The Smiths (ICA 001) to Steve Albini (the most recent, ICA 366). This is not a post or series to tread on those toes- this is imaginary albums that should have happened but didn't or that only exist in the mind, music that should have/ could have been made but which remains unwritten, unrecorded and inexistent. 

I've spoken to Mark from Rude Audio/ The Flightpath Estate previously about the imaginary album we wanted to happen. In 1991 Jah Wobble and The Invaders Of The Heart recorded Rising Over Bedlam, an album taking Wobble's huge love for dub and fusing it with what was then called World Music. Sinead O'Connor and Natacha Atlas both appeared on vocals and on Bomba and Visions Of You Wobble produced some of his best solo songs. In 1992 a 12" of Visions Of You appeared. The A Side was the version from the album. The flipside, The AW Side, had three remixes by Andrew Weatherall, remixes that ran into each other, adding up to nearly thirty minutes of music- Andrew took the song and looped it, twisted it, dubbed it, reshaped it, the bass and FX bubbling on forever, Sinead's voice dropping in and out. The AW remixes,  Pick 'n' Mix 1, Pick 'n Mix 2 and The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny Mix, are a brilliant piece of work in their own right, the remix as an artform. 

Weatherall's remixes of Visions Of You were also the first time that what would become The Sabres Of Paradise would work together. Andrew had met Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns in a club and said they should work together. Jagz and Gary nodded and smiled and said, 'of course, of course', not expecting it to happen. Andrew phoned them shortly after and the three of them went to work on Visions Of You. 

Visions of You (The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny Mix)

In the imaginary album of my mind the remixes led to talks about an album, and in the aftermath of the albums Andrew produced for Primal Scream and One Dove, he, Jagz and Gary went into a studio somewhere in London (Orinoco was popular at the time) with Jah Wobble and Sinead O'Connor and they went onto write, record and produce a full length album- Andrew Weatherall's production, Jah Wobble's bass and Sinead O'Connor's voice all fleshed out over four sides of vinyl, a widescreen, post- acid house, 1992/ 1993 dub and electronics masterpiece to go with Morning Dove White. 

I have a second imaginary Andrew Weatherall album that coulda/ shoulda happened. In December 1993, in the bumper end of year Christmas edition of the NME, Mark E Smith was one person given a series of questions, including being asked to nominate their Jerk Of The Year. MES gave the response 'Andy Weatherall' (he also replied to Woman of the Year with 'lead singer from James' and said what he wanted from 1994 was 'death to all French people' so curmudgeonly Mark was definitely having one of those days). But to nominate Andrew Weatherall, out of everyone who could have annoyed MES, as Jerk Of The Year seemed odd. 

It turns out Andrew had been lined up to produce a Fall album. Like all right minded folk, Andrew was a huge fan of Prestwich's finest post- punk group and in 1993 had accepted the challenge. Mark and the then line up had been playing with dance music rhythms and the album that ended up being '93's The Infotainment Scam included The Fall covering Lost In Music among the customary swaggering Fall brilliance and mayhem. If Andrew had stayed on the job, he would have been the producer of The Infotainment Scam. The thought of a 1993 Andrew Weatherall produced Fall album is mind boggling- by '93 Sabres were off the ground and the techno sound of Andrew's Sabres Of Paradise club and label had shifted him away from the Balearic remixes of the previous years and the genre bending sounds of Screamadelica.  

In reality Andrew arrived at the studio, took a look at the amount of boozing that was going on (as Brix Smith has said in an interview) and walked away. Other Weatherall insiders have said similar. We can only imagine what a Weatherall produced Fall album would have sounded like but the thought of some of the Sabresonic- era sounds and rhythms with Mark E. Smith's voice plus those ramshackle, distorted Craig Scanlon guitars cut up and looped is mouthwatering. 

A Past Gone Mad

The experience may have led Mark to call Andrew Jerk Of The Year. It clearly didn't put Andrew off The Fall- they appeared in mixes and sets thereafter, not least on Sci- Fi- Lo- Fi, a 2007 compilation Andrew put together for Soma which had Big New Prinz on it (From 1988's I Am Kurious Oranj). In 1988 The Fall played the song on Tony Wilson's The Other Side Of Midnight- a proper glam racket. 

There may be more imaginary albums to follow, some may even be non- Andrew Weatherall related. Although there is the story of the Sabres Of Paradise album with guest vocalists that never happened that I'll probably come back to. 

Weekend Machines

Jezebell have been pushing their way into the Balearic/ acid house world over the last two years, especially so in the last 12 months. Their album Jezebelearic Beats Vol 1. caused a fuss when it came out digitally last summer and again with the vinyl release this spring. The vinyl release has slightly fewer tracks than the digital and runs in a different order, the sequencing of four sides of vinyl an artform in itself. Since my copy of the album arrived it's been semi- resident on my turntable, an opportunity to enjoy the album all over again. From the languid, Ibizan beats of Jezebellaeric (with a voice over from the legendary DJ Alfredo) to the ten minute blissed out feel of Jezeblue, the album is filled with a laid back, coastal feel. It also has plenty of moments where the tempos rise, the beats get thumpier and the feel is more intense, more dance floor oriented- Swamp Shuffle finds Jezebell leading Byrne, Frantz, Harrison and Weymouth for a dizzying spin under the mirror ball. 

Man 2.0's Red Shift, remixed by Darren and Jesse as the Jezebell Inner Child Mix, is an electronic maelstrom. Jezebell's Trading Places (3 PM) is a mid- paced, mid- afternoon warm up, the sound of a few liveners sunk and the head spinning a little. If you're quick there are a handful of copies of the album left at Bandcamp. 

Jezebell have been at it in real life too- Jesse and Darren played a Jezebell DJ set at The Evil Acid Baron's Weekender in Devon last weekend and in June Darren and guests host a Jezebell takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden. 

Jezebell have a new track out today, a seven minute banger with the self explanatory title Weekend Machines. Described in their own words as a 'late- night, strobe- lit, smoke- machine, low- ceiling, eyes- closed, spring- loaded, acid house avalanche' Weekend Machines is a hairpin turn away from the beach and poolside sounds in favour of something darker, thumpier, and more direct, an injection of electricity and intensity- four four drums, definitely machine made, wobbling synth sounds, chugging bass that pushes, acid house mayhem, and a distorted voice that wriggles into the ears and the brain, a voice that ends up repeating one word- 'machines'. It's the next step. You can listen to or buy this room- shaker here. 

Bagging Area Book Club Chapter Two

Since last summer I've read four novels by Benjamin Myers, the four pictured above. Myers is a writer, author and journalist who has published fiction, non- fiction and poetry as well as writing for various magazines- NME, Melody Maker, Mojo, The Guardian, The Quietus, Time Out and more (he's also contributed to the excellent Weird Walk zine which I'll come back to another time in this series). He's from Durham and currently lives in the Calder Valley. Music forms a backdrop to or an intersection with a lot of his work and it was via music that I first encountered his writing. 

The first of his books I read was The Perfect Golden Circle, a book I consumed from the sun lounger by the pool in Greece last July. It's a magical book, one of those completely self contained novels that you don't want to finish but can't stop reading. It's set in the hot summer of 1989, a summer where a series of crop circles appeared in fields across the south of England. Those crop circles are the work of two men, the classic odd couple, Redbone and Calvert (one a free party, peace convoy hippie- punk who lives in a van, the other an SAS veteran left reeling and scarred by the Falklands War). The two men plan and carry out the creation of crop circles through the summer, their work becoming more ambitious with every circle completed, building towards their moment of perfection- although according to Redbone the truly perfect circle does not exist, 'it can only exist as an idea'. The book feels like the summer of '89, but it goes wider and deeper, the novel a poetic reckoning with the English countryside, the history contained within it, English folk traditions, and the natural world. The Latin phrase Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope) appears near the start of the story, tattooed on the arm of one of the two crop circle creators- both men in the novel are looking for something to keep them going, both living on the fringes of society, and finding something in an unexpected friendship and the crop circles that they've devoted themselves to. 

In my mind crop circles are connected to The KLF- I'm pretty sure that Drummond and Cauty created one with their ghetto blaster and pyramid design at the centre. 

What Time Is Love (Techno Scam Mix)

After The Perfect Golden Circle I read The Offing and enjoyed it just as much, another completely absorbing book with fully realised characters. The Offing is set in a summer not long after the end of the Second World War. Robert Appleyard, 16 years old, sets off on foot to find work, walking away from a Durham colliery village and coal mining, trying to find something, anything, that doesn't involve going underground. His journey takes him by chance to Dulcie Piper, a middle aged woman living alone in a ramshackle cottage, who takes him in, offering food and a bed in exchange for gardening toil. She also provides him with conversation, swear words and poetry, and encourages him to go to university. Dulcie's ex- lover, a German poet Romy Landau, becomes a presence and the story hinges around the circumstances of Romy's death and a manuscript of Romy's Robert discovers. The offing is the point where sea and sky merge on the horizon- the book is the story of a transition, of a place where two things meet (the two people of the tale and Robert's transition from childhood to the adult world), a summer where things change. 

Last autumn I tackled The Gallows Pole. The characters from the novel (and history) were televised by Shane Meadows (who bought many of the cast of his This Is England series with him for The Gallows Pole). The Gallows Pole is historical fiction, based around the real life 'King' David Hartley of Cragg Vale (buried in Heptonstall churchyard, not far from Sylvia Plath's grave). In the late 18th century the Cragg Vale Coiners began counterfeiting coins, clipping the edges from the currency, melting the clippings and then producing their own counterfeit coins. They were so successful that they almost crashed the British economy. The coiners operated in an isolated world, West Yorkshire, where unemployment and threat of starvation were ever present. In Shane Meadows' dramatisation for TV there are meetings on the moor with men with stag's heads and a swirling psyche rock soundtrack from the likes of 70s rockers The Groundhogs and Swedish psyche band Goat. Hartley is portrayed as a hero, a man who has returned to save his community and be re- united with the woman he left behind. In Myers' novel Hartley is a much more dangerous character, violent and oppressive. The book switches between styles- narrative sections, chapters in the first person from Hartley's point of view (in prison awaiting trial) and from the view of Deighton, an official charged with bringing the group to justice, and from the viewpoint of James Broadbent, a coiner turned informant. It's a dense and epic tale, Myers bringing the late 1700s to life, a world where petty theft carried the death penalty, where the weather and the Yorkshire hills are a glowering presence, and where crime and community come together. 

The Shining Levels, an alt- folk group from the north east of England, were so inspired by The Gallows Pole, that they wrote and recorded a soundtrack for the novel. The album marries folk and electronics,  loops and synths and drones. This track, ghostly and slightly unnerving, opens the album...

Stag Dance

Goat's album that soundtracked Shane Meadows' BBC series came out on vinyl for Record Shop Day earlier this year. The digital version can be found here. 

The fourth of Ben Myers' novels that I've read is Cuddy, a visionary telling of the story of St. Cuthbert, patron saint of the north of England, told over a thousand years. The story is as much about the north of England and the area around Durham, where Cuddy's remains are interred in a grave behind the altar in the cathedral. Cuddy's life in 7th century England took him from shepherd boy to monk, and life as a hermit on Lindisfarne. Attacks by Vikings led the monks at the monastery to move his remains, ending up in what would become Durham cathedral. Myers' book is split into four stories- it starts with the monks on the road with Cuddy's coffin, told by a devotee called Ediva, the text often breaking into chants and prayers. The second story moves to 1346 (the year before the Black Death arrived in England, something that struck Myers as relevant when writing in the summer of 2020 during Covid). Fletcher Bullard is home from war, an archer and domestic abuser. In Medieval Durham Bullard's wife meets Francis Rolfe, a stone mason working on the cathedral and things unravel. The third story jumps to the 19th century and an Oxford professor who has been invited to Durham to witness and record the opening of Cuthbert's tomb, a ghost story that brings the spectres of chanting monks into the 19th century. The fourth part of Cuddy is set in 2019, a young man caring for a dying mother and working in the 21st century, cash in hand, zero hours economy. He lands a job at Durham cathedral where he finds people and a place that he was excluded from previously, his eyes opened by the resting place of St. Cuthbert. As in The Perfect Golden Circle and The Offing, Cuddy is about land and nature, the elements, the north's history and the past impinging on the present as well as the characters Myers' creates. Cuddy is epic in scope and range, impressionistic in parts, poetic but also earthy and gritty, about real people and their lives.  

Bank Holiday Monday Long Song

Nine minutes of wide eyed joy and wonder from the combined talents of The Flaming Lips and Scott Hardkiss should be more than enough of a way to celebrate not just a bank holiday but a week off work for me too. The Flaming Lips cemented their status as one of the early 21st century's best bands with the release of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots in summer 2002, an album which if described to someone who'd never heard it (or of the band) would sound ridiculous...

It's an eleven song album, psychedelic, space pop which starts out with a world where a young girl Yoshimi is engaged in a life or death battle with some evil machines, giant pink robots. The story of Yoshimi and her fight is dealt with on the first four songs and then the album turns into a metaphysical/ philosophical record with the band taking electronics, hip hop drums and acoustic guitars to create some achingly beautiful, lush, experimental and incredibly memorable songs that deal with life and death, ruminations on beauty and mortality, physics, science fiction, emotion and suffering, ending with a soaring neo- classical piece called Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Pavonis Mons is a volcano on Mars). It is an album that can make you laugh and make you cry. 

See? That doesn't do it justice at all does it? Or capture what Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots actually sounds like or what it feels like. 

The Flaming Lips followed the album with several singles and EPs. In 2003 they released Fight Test, a seven track EP led by the title track and covers of Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head, Beck's The Golden Age and Radiohead's Knives Out, a song for Jack White, another Lips song and this remix of Do You Realize?? by Scott Hardkiss.

Do You Realize?? (Scott Hardkiss Floating In Space Mix)

Scott Hardkiss stretches Do You Realize?? out for over nine minutes, the song's cosmic wonder underpinned by throbbing bass and rackety machine drums, piano, bells, heavenly choirs and Wayne Coyne's vocal front and centre. 

The lyrics are something else aren't they? Again, written down they could look trite or like the kind of positivity affirmations one sees on social media but Wayne's voice gives so much emotional heft and conviction that they feel like the truth being given courtesy of a kooky 21st century Moses.

'Do you realize? That you have the most beautiful face? 

Do you realize? We're floating in space

Do you realize? That happiness makes you cry

Do you realize? That everyone you know some day will die'

All these things are true. Happiness can make you cry, it happens all the time. Everyone you know some day will die, time is short, we're here for an instant. Whenever I look at photos of people from a century ago, those people and their lives, the stories you can see in their eyes, the battles they faced and the things they felt- I feel this and think of Wayne's line, all those people, they're all gone. 

Wayne doesn't just hit us with these four lines though, revealing the vastness of space and time, the bigger than us nature of the universe. He follows them with something to do about feeling infinitesimally tiny.

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes

Let them know you realize that time goes fast

It's hard to make the good things last

You realize the sun don't go down

It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

These would be just more Instagram positivity quotes in the wrong hands but Wayne Coyne is the right pair of hands. Scott Hardkiss is too, allowing the remix to serve the song and ending with Wayne, as the song should, his isolated voice gasping and singing 'Do you realize?'.

I read an article last week that made me think of this song, an article with this headline- 'Euclid telescope spies rogue planets floating free in the Milky Way'. Apparently astronomers have discovered dozens of planets that have broken free from the gravitational hold of their suns and are floating freely, inside the Orion nebula, a giant cloud of dust and gas, 1500 light years away. The article says they are 'destined to drift through the galaxy unless they encounter a star that pulls them into orbit'. 

Do you realize? We're floating in space. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Beloved

The Beloved were a massive part of the sound of 1989- 1990, their album Happiness released in February 1990, a summation of the sound of the times. They started out as an indie guitar four piece but lost two members in 1987, with Jon Marsh and Steve Waddington now spending their nights soaking up the new music of acid house and rave and then writing songs in the day influenced by those sounds. Steve left in '91 and Jon came back in 1993 with his wife Helena as co- writer and the song Sweet Harmony and an album Conscience. The sound had been smoothed out and something of the spirit of 1990 had been lost- lots of things had changed by 1993. This mix focusses solely on those records Jon and Steve made in the period between 1988 and 1990, songs alive with the possibility and excitement of those years.

Forty Five Minutes Of The Beloved

• Found
• Hello 
• Pablo
• Your Love Takes Me Higher (Piano/ 303 Demo)
• Acid Love (Acid Dream)
• The Sun Rising (Evening Session Remix)
• The Sun Rising
• Scarlet Beautiful
• It's Alright Now

Found is the song that ended Happiness, as close to a New Order Technique outtake as anything Bernard, Hooky, Gillian and Stephen could have recorded, the end of an album that is all ups with a love song, bringing a blissed out, chilled out ending. So I thought I'd start with it. 

Hello was a single, released in early 1990 and taking The Beloved to Top of The Pops, Jon Marsh fully embracing the new decade, growing his hair out, in a poncho and doing the dance. The song is a list of saints and sinners, from Jeffrey Archer to John Paul Sartre. 

Pablo was the B-side to the 1990 single Time After Time single, a fantastic slice of wonky acid house, some dubby melodica, a house rhythm and piano with Jon's vocal spun inside out and round about. 

Your Love Takes Me Higher was a song originally released in '89 and re- released as a single in '90. The 303/ Piano Demo speaks for itself, a (presumably) earlier version of the track led by a very Detroit synth bassline, rattling hi hats and then that whooosh the song has as the piano riff hits. 'Baby, let tell you something about love...' Jon  sings, simmering, one of those songs that could be about a woman, could be about a drug. This version is thumpy and chopped up, not as obviously radio friendly as the final one that made Happiness. 

Acid Love was the new look Beloved's debut, a 1988 B-side to the song Loving Feeling. The A-side didn't do much but the B-side got them into some DJ's record boxes. Dark and insistent, heavily house influenced. 

The Sun Rising was The Beloved's breakthrough, an ambient house classic, a crossover hit (in November 1989). It sampled Emily Van Evera's vocal from an album called Gothic Voices, one of several hooks in the song. Jon wrote the song after a night at a club night put on by Danny Rampling, Joy. Jon and Steve then put it together on Steve's four track before recording it more fully. The Evening Session Version was recorded for Mark Goodier's, faster, less ambient and more made for the hours before the sun rises. The appearance of the chant from Walking On Sunshine by  Rocker's Revenge is a genuine flash of brilliance, 'everybody to the sun/ that's right/ you're there'.

Scarlet Beautiful is from Happiness, one of the songs that wasn't released as a single, a fantastic slice of dance music crossed with pop. Lyrically, it's about positivity. Or love. Or E. Or about feeling massive positivity while in love on E.

It's Alright Now was a follow up to Happiness, October 1990, a single to promote the remix album Blissed Out- four minutes of moody dance pop that should have been massive. The album Blissed Out had different tracklists across the three formats, vinyl, cassette and CD, a total of sixteen different mixes and versions. The Beloved appeared on BBC 2's early evening dance music programme Dance Energy, a Normski presented attempt to catch the zeitgeist. As ever for the period, the crowd are the stars as much as the band. 'It's alright now/ Don't you worry 'bout a thing/ 'Cos when the morning comes around/ I'm gonna make your heart sing'. 

V.A. Saturday

In 1991 U.S. label 4th And Broadway, a subsidiary of Island Records with a focus on American dance music, pulled together a various artists compilation that tried to capitalise on the then recent upsurge in rap artists inspired by and sampling jazz. There was something in the air in the USA and the UK in the late 80s/ early 90s, jazz being mined for sounds, for styles and for substance- Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing may have been part of this, the DAISY Age hip hop groups (De la Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers), the London based Acid Jazz label with acts like Galliano and Young Disciples. 

The album was released as The Rebirth Of Cool, the title a play on Miles Davis' 1957 album Birth Of The Cool, and featured fourteen jazz inspired, jazz sampling or jazz adjacent songs. I loved it, bought it in the summer of '91 and played it endlessly, sometimes going into the north west's boutique shops and wondering if I could get away with something a little jazz flavoured- a button up Gabicci style cardigan maybe. The graphics of jazz were beginning to find their way into flyers and the acid jazz sound would feed into what would become trip hop. The album was a mix of U.S. and U.K. acts, opening with Gang Starr's Jazz Thing, the foundation stone of the album really. Gang Starr were a great hip hop duo, GURU and DJ Premier's stripped down sound, two turntables and a microphone, GURU's easy lyrical flow and the short songs, a sound I loved for several of their albums. Jazz Thing (first released in 1990) works as a primer, sampled jazz drums and basslines, and rhymes that celebrate the jazz music of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s- Bessie Smith, Theolonius Monk, Max Roach, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Betty Carter- before concluding, 'the 90s will be the decade of a jazz thing'. 

Jazz Thing

Side 1 then unfolds with tracks from X- Clan, MC Mell'O', Soho, Dream Warriors, Izit and Galliano. Side 2 starts with Young Disciples, doyens of the London Acid Jazz label and scene- their song Apparently Nothin' was a hit in '91 and launched Carleen Anderson as a solo artist. On The Rebirth Of Cool they were represented by Step Right On, dusty early 90s funk with a jazzy feel and some Jimmy Smith style organ, James Brown and Roy Ayres samples and rap courtesy of London group Outlaw Posse. 

Step Right On

Side 2 has further jazz/ hip hop grooves from A Tribe Called Quest, Skatemaster Tate, Laquan, Caveman and Young MC and one from Stetsasonic, Talkin' All That Jazz, a track dating back to 1988. All That Jazz was a response to critics of hip hop who claimed that sampling was lazy, an act that showed those who did it lacked true musical talent. Stetsasonic bite back, led by producer Prince Paul, and over a sax and looped jazz drums and bass, fire off rhymes in all directions, placing hip hop and rap in the tradition of jazz, funk and soul.

Talkin' All That Jazz

The Rebirth Of Cool came back with further volumes The Rebirth Of Cool Too and then on, up to at least Volume 7. I bailed after the first, the law of diminishing returns setting in fairly quickly- and there were so many other things were going on in 1991 and into 1992. 

Hidden Thoughts

Florecer are a Californian duo, Allie Schulz and Alex Pasternak, who both surf and have a small homemade studio overlooking the Pacific where they make music to go with their lifestyle of surfing, trips down the coast to Mexico, yoga and meditation. It sounds idyllic- I've never done yoga but I know people who swear by it. They've just released a 12" single on Is It Balearic?, the Notts label run by the Coyote pair of Timm and Ampo. The single is led by the track Hidden Thoughts which wafts in gently, lightly coloured washes of synth, a pitter patter drum machine and then an ethereal vocal courtesy of Allie. A surf guitar line appears, a woodblock taps away at the back of the mix, a one note topline comes and goes, there is acres of space and echo and the shimmering feeling of warm drift...

There are three remixes, one each from Hitchhiker, Das Komplex and Ken Fan. The Hitchhiker remix is a little more uptempo, more pushy and with more bounce but still pretty laid back. Ken Fan strips it down, changes the feel and adds a totally new drum track, giving it a live/ jazz club feel. The Das Komplex remix is the one that has me at the moment, nine minutes and nine seconds of deconstructed electronic sound, a cinematic sound with an acidic undertow and a sun- soaked, cosmische vibe, Allie's vocal reduced to the line, 'lay your hands on me', the last syllable reverbed and looped into infinity. Hidden Thoughts is available digitally and on vinyl. Find it here. 

Submerge

In April last year M- Paths released an album on Mighty Force, one of a string of first rate releases on the Exeter label in recent years, label boss Mark Darby clearly knowing his musical onions. Mighty Force's Bandcamp is a treasure trove of electronic albums and EPs and this year celebrates it's 33rd anniversary with a series of MF33 compilation albums, one already out and another to follow shortly. 

M- Paths 2023 album Hope was born in the early 90s influences of chill out rooms and the ambient/ indie of the 4AD bands but went beyond both of those, an ambient/ electronic masterclass, music bathed in the warm glow of analogue synths and made with the intention of connecting the listener to nature, each other and optimism. The new album, out a few weeks ago, is titled Submerge and is definitely an album to get lost in, to listen to with headphones on and sink into. There are thirteen tracks with Submerge and Emerge bookending the album, the feel of drifting below the surface and falling deeper into the ocean as the strange undersea world engulfs you, is present from the opening moments of the title track, sub bass, synths and then a clattering drum beat... 

Many of the tracks have single word titles- Panoramic, Reflect, Celestial, Beach, Contemplate- that reflect the album's theme and signpost the wonderous ambient techno that Marcus Farley and Nick Murray have crafted. Celestial is as good an example as any, six minutes of soaring electronic music, washes of synth bleeps, rippling toplines with the steadying, pushing thump of the drums.

Other tracks give strong suggestions about the nature of the music in their titles too, In No Hurry, On The Up and In The Warmth, all speaking for themselves. After over an hour of this ambient techno submersion things come to the surface with Emerge, a track that comes in gently with some piano notes picked out, Erik Satie all at sea, gradually joined by an industrial clanking for a rhythm track, as if great iron chains are lifting the submarine out of the water. Warm bass and a heavenly choir drift in and the clanking becomes electronic drums, panning between the speakers- it's a wholly beautiful and blissed out way to finish the album and the experience of listening to it, the sense of a journey completed and the hit of the sun on your face as you finally break through the waves and breathe the air again. Buy or listen at Bandcamp. 

ACR: NCH

A Certain Ratio finished their tour with a hometown gig at Manchester's New Century Hall last Friday night, a set of two halves- first the new album, It All Comes Down To This, played in full and then a second set of career spanning ACR classic. In truth, it's all one set, there's no gap between the two halves, the stripped back ACR never sounding better. I first saw them play live in 1991, have seen them periodically ever since and in recent years have seen them regulalrly at various Manchester venues (the Main Debating Hall at the university, Gorilla, The Ritz, New Century Hall a year ago, Band On The Wall and most recently Soup- a few years ago a group of us had a jaunt to see them in Blackburn too. Sometimes it feels a bit like this blog is just a constantly updating ACR live review service and I make no apology for that, they are in many ways Manchester's finest band with a rich back catalogue, a quintessential Factory act in the 80s, a dalliance with a major label, some turn of the 80s/ 90s acid house adventures, a re- appraisal in the early 2000s, and since signing to Mute have had a run of records that are as good as any of their previous ones). 

ACR have stripped back to the core trio of Martin Moscrop (guitar, trumpet, weird Brazilian percussion instrument, sometimes drums), Jez Kerr (vocals, samples and keys) and Donald Johnson (drums and bass) with new bass player Viv covering for Jez. This pared back version suits them, they sound as good as ever if not better. They play It All Comes Down To This in order, from the opening title track, all clanging guitar and urgent vocals to the chiming closer Dorothy Says, Jez quoting Dorothy Parker in the lyrics. It's already one of 2024's best albums, made by a group over four decades in, who are renewed and energised. As well as the two mentioned the penultimate Where You Coming From is a highlight, driving bass, scratchy guitar and a vocal that rolls the years away. 

The second half is jaw dropping, the band powering through their back pages, cherry picking a dozen highlights and playing them with a freshness and energy that cut through the room. Long time instrumental set opener Winter Hill buzzes with electricity and dark drones, then they dive into the stepped staccato punk- funk of Du The Do and The Fox from 1981's To Each... album, arty New York inspired scratchy funk originally recorded in NY with Martin Hannett. They stay in New York for their sublime cover of Talking Heads' Houses In Motion, the song with Grace Jones that never was, resurrected live for their 40th celebrations, a bendy, shape shifting cover version. 

ACR's recent albums have been so strong that songs from them are part of tonight's set and they stand alongside the ones that would make up any Best Of ACR album. Berlin (from 2020's Loco) is sleek, Mancunian guitar melancholia. Samo (from 2023's 1982) is early 80s inspired funk/ rap. 

The Big E is dedicated to Denise Johnson who Jez tells us they still miss terribly, and is the cue for a mass audience singalong, the build up to the chorus and the line, 'I won't stop loving you', as much one of this city's mainstays as any by bigger and better known bands. Good Together, a 1989 acid house banger with squiggly acid bassline, throbbing synths, purloined Beach Boys lyrics and massive dance music energy, is a highlight and is followed by Shack Up, their calling card in many ways, a song they borrowed from funk band Banberra and never gave back. Martin gives an impassioned between song speech about supporting smaller venues, something of an issue in Manchester at the moment with the farrago at the much vaunted brand new Co- op arena and the farcical delayed opening, its boss (who resigned a few weeks ago) having previously made comments about how the problem with smaller venues is that they're sometimes very badly run- lol, as the kids say. 

For the final two songs they invite support act and singer Ellen Beth Abdi back on stage to join them, powering through the 1982 song Knife Slits Water, a song with a weird tension and stuttering drum pattern, echo and minor chords, demob haircuts and army jumpers, greyed out funk for the early 80s. Tonight it's a powerhouse, Don slapping the bass and Martin playing trumpet and guitar simultaneously. They finish with Get A Grip (from Loco), Ellen skipping and singing her way through a song that as much as any demonstrates ACR still have so much to give. 

Tonight's gig is being filmed. Hopefully in the near future it'll be released so that those who weren't there can see what all the fuss is about- and those who were can relive it. I have friends who went to the Bristol and Aberdeen gigs who were equally blown away by ACR and their live show. Genuinely life affirming stuff from a group who just don't seem to want to stop. 

Bagging Area Book Club

The first rule of Bagging Area Book Club is, uh, you can talk about it. It's an irregular series of music and literature crossovers starting today and heading into the next few weeks, maybe beyond. Last Monday night I attended Richard Norris in conversation with Dave Haslam at Blackwell's bookshop at Manchester University. Richard recently published his memoir, Strange Things Are Happening, an account of his life and musical journey written as he explained to us in the first person present, a technique that gives the entire book a real immediacy and presents every scene as happening in front of you (Richard says he learned this from Viv Albertine's autobiography Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys. He also notes that that book opened the door for many others to write their memoirs and autobiographies, the generation who grew up with punk and its aftermath, including himself). 

Dave opens proceedings by noting that him and Richard have a number of parallels in their pasts- both ran club nights called The Hangout, Richard in Liverpool and Dave in Manchester, both lost parents at a young age, there were one or two others as well but they escape me now. Both also came to music with at least half an eye on writing about it as well as participating as musicians/ DJs, Dave writing his fanzine Debris and Richard writing one titled Strange Things Are Happening- there's a literate side to both of them that informs everything they've done. Dave dives into the Q&A starting in the middle with The Grid on Top of The Pops firstly in 1993 with Crystal Clear and Mancunian door face Elton on vocals. 

Richard talks eloquently about their experiences on the show, later appearing four times to promote Swamp Thing, a song they wrote as a joke which ended up becoming a smash hit, one which took them all over the world playing to huge crowds, something they eventually became tired of especially when the record company stated to put the pressure on for a follow up. Dave and Richard then go backwards, to St Albans in the late 70s and the nascent punk scene Richard becomes a mover in and the older folk crowd in the town who not only tolerate a group of fifteen year olds but encourage them. Dave says Richard's evocation of the St Albans scene is endearing and inspiring, something that struck me when reading the book- people crating scenes in small towns, across generations, finding places to play and making music. Not long after Richard's band, The Innocent Vicars, make a 7" single and Richard's dad drives him to London where they sell the entire run of singles to Rough Trade and then turn up at Radio 1, ask to speak to John Peel, meet him on the doorstep of the BBC and give him a copy of the record which he plays the following night. From that point Richard is off on a lifelong journey in the music world. 

I won't give to much away- you should read the book if you haven't already. Richard Norris music runs through my record collection like the writing in a stick of rock- from the psych compilations on Bam Caruso to his adventures with Genesis P. Orridge and the acid house album they made in 1987despite not having heard any acid house records at that point- Jack The Tab- to his writing in the NME which switched me onto stuff and his records with Dave Ball as The Grid. In the mid- 90s he wrote and recorded several songs with Joe Strummer, songs which were instrumental in Joe getting a band back together again. Richard is asked from the audience how it ended with Joe- 'badly' is Richard's short explanation, the circles around former members of The Clash not always easy places to navigate. Yalla Yalla is one of the results of that partnership, for my money one of Joe's greatest solo songs. After that episode Richard spirals on making music with Erol Alkan as Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, makes psychedelic acid house as The Time And Space Machine, forms The Long Now and The Order Of The 12 releasing albums both both and then from c2019 and into lockdown and beyond, his long running series of Music For Healing/ deep listening and ambient pieces, a project still arriving on a monthly basis at Bandcamp- Richard says that he sees Bandcamp as a new Rough Trade, the conduit between artist and listener.

Richard reads from his book for us, the chapter on meeting Strummer, the arrival of Joe and his entourage at Peter Gabriel's Real World studio and the ensuing fun and madness which followed. As he reads he causally flings each completed page aside, a piece of stage craft he points out in a tongue in cheek way he learned from someone else doing a reading. 

Richard's book is full of other stories- the time he spent with Sky Saxon, his adventures in New York at the NME's expense in 1986 and his encounters with ecstasy, making a record in Amsterdam with Timothy Leary, a road trip to Mexico in Joe Strummer's Cadillac with Shaun Ryder and Bez, and more, a life well lived with music at the centre of it. At the Q&A Richard does pause at one point to question what it's all about, what the meaning of it all is. He recounts a trip fairly recently to Spain, hiking with Penny Rimbaud of Crass. Penny, Richard says, is a wise man, someone who surely knows what the meaning of life is. He asked him and was told sagely, 'to serve'. 

Dave Haslam is a great host, asking the right questions, clearly interested and alert and who has also lived a life with music at the middle of it. Dave has just finished writing and publishing a series of mini- books through Manchester publishers Confingo. These are short, essay length books on very niche topics, each book small enough to fit in your pocket and short enough to read in one sitting. He had a list of topics to cover and felt a series of small books was the best way to do it, not for making a pot of money but for the joy of the writing them and then publishing them. The series tackles a variety of topics starting with Dave's decision to sell his entire record collection (something Richard has done in recent years too), then exploring specific periods of people's lives: Keith Haring and 80s New York; the semi- mythical months Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in 1982; Sylvia Plath's sojourn in Paris; the Angry Brigade cell that existed in Moss Side in  the late 60s; the life and times of Cresser, Manc face, and Stone Roses dancer; Picasso's time in early 20th century Paris; and the night Grace Jones almost recorded Houses In Motion with A Certain Ratio and Martin Hannett at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in 1980. All of these are tales worth telling and tales well told (ACR will almost certainly appear at this blog again later this week). You can get all eight here or buy them individually here.  

Back to Norro, as Joe Strummer christened him- in 2016 Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve released this song,a gloriously melancholic piece of electronic pop, drums that patter away like Spacemen 3's Big City, synths like mid- 80s New Order and Hannah Peel's wistful vocals. For the full effect, go to the 12" version.