Put Your Money In My Box

Acid Klaus played The Golden Lion, Todmorden, on Friday night, a launch party for a five track EP P.T.S.D. By Proxy that came out on Golden Lion Sounds last month, with a DJ set afterwards by Maxine Peake. Acid Klaus came on stage under the Lion's mirror ball and red lights to a busy and excitable crowd, the pub filled with people young and middle aged determined to have a party from the moment the first note was played. The recent EP was played in full, Adrian with hat pulled right down and collar of coat pulled right up and dark glasses too, on keys/ synth and vocoder, a poncho'd and behatted stand up drummer and twin vocalists who gave it all, Cat Rin stage left, singing in Welsh and English and Amelia Lace, centre stage, wearing a helmet. They powered their way through the songs from P.T.S.D. By Proxy, from the revved up synth pop call for revolution The Solution, to the Detroit techno sounds of Aerodromes, Philly singing of cruising the council estates and having to get it right. Pour Some Wood On The Fire mixes Hi NRG and blurry acid house with Adrian on robotic vocals, and then abandoning the synth completely, leaving the stage and entering the heaving throng on the floor with microphone firmly clenched for Losing Our Way, his north Manchester vowels and the 303 ricocheting round the stone floor and walls. Adrian says the EP is 'dance music you can cry to', electronic sounds to frug around to while the world goes up in smoke. The last song is a riot, the twin vocalists chanting 'put your money in my box' while Adrian counters with the robotic 'heaven's for sale' and the crowd dance like no one's watching. Or cares about anyone who is. 

The EP is still available at Golden Lion Sounds, 10" on yellow vinyl. If you buy the vinyl you get a digital only remix of Aerodromes by David Holmes with a video filmed in the Golden Lion

Maxine Peake played records afterwards, the self described 'leftie luvvie' spinning Northern Soul 7" singles and floor fillers, psyche, indie, guitar bands, Motorhead and more. I had to run for the 11.36 train back to Manchester and found myself sitting on the train with a group of twenty- somethings who, on finding out I teach history for a living, asked me to tell them some history. There followed a long, rambling and probably incoherent monologue about the Spanish Civil War with multiple digressions. If you're reading this kids, thanks for humouring me/ looking after me. 

Monday's Long Song

Another aurora borealis photo, a bit out of focus but I like the chimney pots in the corner. Today's long song is from 1991 and The Orb and the fifteen minute epic that closes the first half of the Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld album. 

Spanish Castles In Space (Lunar Orbit Five)

Much of the work that went into Ultraworld came from Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty's DJ sets at Paul Oaknefold's Land Of Oz nights at Heaven in London, the long layered multitrack sets with three decks and tape and CD players all linked up, BBC Radiophonic Workshop albums, dub records, sound effects records, NASA samples, very few drums and whatever else they could get their hands on. 

Spanish Castles In Space samples the love theme from Spartacus by Bill Evans, the narration from a Soviet Union field recordings album called Звуковые И Биоэлектрические Сигналы Рыб (Audio And Bioelectrical Signals Of Fishes apparently), and Crystal City by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Glynis Jones. It is a long, chilled and very worthwhile trip. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jah Wobble

Like much of the rest of the country I was outside on Thursday night taking in the spectacle of the northern lights. To the naked eye not much more than a faint flicker but when seen through a camera on night setting giving us a dazzling display of the aurora borealis. This photo was taken from our loft window by my daughter Eliza and is better than any of the ones I took. 

Today's mix has a similar cosmic vibe, seven songs from the bass playing legend Jah Wobble. His back catalogue is so wide and deep that it would take several mixes to pay justice to Wobble's music so this is just a selection of post- PiL Jah Wobble tunes with an emphasis, as always in Wobble land, on the dubbier end of things. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jah Wobble

• Angels
• King Of The Faeries (Avengers Outer Space Chug Dub)
• Visions Of You (Pick 'n' Mix 1)
• Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts)
• Post Lockdown Dub
• Inspector Out Of Space
• Everyman's An Island

Angles is from Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart 1994 album Take Me To God, an album with twelve different vocalists, the voice on Angels belonging to the Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, the song underpinned by one of those lovely fat dub basslines that only Wobble can conjure. 

King Of The Faeries is by Dub Trees, a Martin Glover/ Youth project with Wobble and Daniel Romar in 2016 with some loop and beats consultancy by Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh. The Dub Trees album is an excellent collision of dub and folk with a pagan angle. 

Andrew Weatherall is also present on the 1992 remix of Visions Of You, a single from 1991's Invaders Of The Heart Rising Above Bedlam album. Visions Of You was the first time Andrew worked with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, a partnership which would lead to Sabres Of Paradise. On the 12" there are three AW remixes of Visions Of You, Pick 'n' Mix 1 and 2 and then The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny, twenty five minutes of dubbed out excellence with the beautiful voice of Sinead O'Connor. Everyman's An Island is also from Rising Above Bedlam. 

More Weatherall! This time from Primal Scream's Screamadelica. In an interview for the Classic Albums series Andrew describes sitting in the producer's chair and realising what this version of Higher Than The Sun needed, reaching for the phone with the words, 'Get me Jah Wobble'.

During lockdown Jah released a series of tracks onto Bandcamp, recorded at his home in Stockport (I know! How did Jah Wobble end up in Stockport right?!). Post Lockdown Dub is self explanatory. 

In May 2020 Youth and Jah Wobble released an album called Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse, a selection of dub songs with various singers- Hollie Cook, Rhiannon, Aurora Dawn, Durga McBroom- plus appearances from Richard Dudanski, Roger Eno, Nik Turner and some of the beats and programming courtesy of Mr Weatherall and Nina Walsh. 

V.A. Saturday

In 2017 Copenhagen's Music For Dreams label asked Mancunian/ Balearic DJ Richard Moonboots to compile an album for them, to pick out some little known gems and chilled tunes that could soundtrack moments of calm and contemplation-  moments that could come sitting at a beach bar in the Canaries or at somewhere more urban/ suburban, Ancoats or Chorlton say. We're definitely into autumn now. This week the leaves have begun to change their colour from the greens of summer to the reds, rusts, oranges and yellows of October and November. Moonboots' compilation, Moments In Time, sounds like summer and foreign shores in places but also carries the chill breeze of autumn. Bombay Hotel's Between Leaves for instance, or this one by Matt Deighton...

Tannis Root

There's a circling, fingerpicked acoustic guitar part, some wonderfully deep cello, and a woodwind instrument (a clarinet probably) picking out a meandering lead, all beautifully mellow and woody, and yep, all pretty autumnal, and done in under three minutes. There are very much shades of Nick Drake and John Martyn present. 

Matt Deighton fronted Mother Earth in the 90s, who were on Acid Jazz. He played in Paul Weller's band in the late 90s and briefly deputised for Noel Gallagher when he walked out of Oasis for a while in 2000. His solo back catalogue is much wider than that brief summary though and his albums and songs are steeped in a 60s and 70s folk sound but go beyond that too. I'm sure I should own more by Matt than I do. 

Coincidentally, or not, I reviewed a  various artists compilation at Ban Ban Ton Ton this week, a twenty track new release compiled by Luke Una which has a similar feel, songs for astral traveling, songs for long nights of quiet contemplation cherry picked from Luke Una's record collection. It opens with John Martyn's sublime ambient/ folk/ jazz/ field recording song Small Hours, a piece of music from 1978 that really has to be heard to be believed. And felt. You can read my review here. 

Small Hours

Nocturnal Homecoming

Stourbridge producer Dirt Bogarde has made some of my favourite electronic/ acid house tracks of the last couple of years- his tracks Heavy Blotter and Backroom Sunrise have both lit up my life and listening sounds along with several others. Earlier this year Dirt released an album called Love, Sweat And Beers, an eight track debut packed with tunes and moments and an album that is in part a love letter to his hometown and a pub, The Mitre, that played a key role in the Stourbridge music scene n the mid- to- late 80s. Get the album here, priced at £0 or pay what you want. 

Today sees the release of Come Home, another slice of tip top dark disco/ acid house, nine minutes of enthralling and pulsating synths and drum machines (and not a cover of the James song by the way). The long intro raises the tension, drums eventually kicking in at one minute forty, a mid- paced, throbbing dancefloor monster, synapse twisting toplines and after four minutes a mashed, filtered, backwards vocal that has the bass and FX wrapping themselves around it coming to a close with a lovely drawn out ending. All in all, a hypnotising and transportative way to spend ten minutes. Dirt Bogarde's Bandcamp page is here and Come Home will be there from today. 

Also out today is a new EP from Spatial Awareness, which complements Come Home nicely. I posted the previous Spatial Awareness release in the summer, Dream Food which came with a lovely dubbed out remix. The new one, Nocturne, is yet more dark electronic fun, seven minutes of the stuff, with hissing hi hats and a bouncing bassline. At a minute in, the tom toms roll in. There's a breakdown, a wait, the tension rising, and then everything thumping back in. You should be able to find it here.

As with Dream Food, there's a dub version, the Nocturne Spatial Awareness Dub which adds some space and a slightly slower tempo but keeps the intensity and dark delight in place, shifting up a gear half way in a way that might wear out patches of the carpet at house parties. 

The Dark Is Rising

I can start to feel November's presence bearing down on me. Isaac's birthday was/ is the 23rd and the anniversary of his death comes a week later on the 30th. The first November after he died, November 2022, was awful, the anniversaries coming thick and fast and then going straight into December and everything that that month brings. Last year's November was no better and in some ways maybe worse. The passing of time, one year since he died, then two, and now, in November 2024, it will be three years. In some ways it doesn't seem feasible that it can already be three years since he was last with us but time keeps marching on and he slips a little further into the past every day, getting further away in little ways all the time. Three years on I can think of him and smile now which hasn't always been the case in the time since he died- sometimes it was impossible to think of him and it not be painful so I guess that's some kind of progress- but I'm not looking forward to November and can feel it already casting a shadow. 

In September 1998 Mercury Rev released an album which completely changed their world- Deserter's Songs. Coincidentally this was just two months before Isaac was born. Deserter's Songs was the group's fourth album but it brought them success and renown they'd never had before, an album of perfectly played and sung songs that mixed end of the century fragilities and anxieties, the Catskills mountains, whispered psychedelic poetry, the old weird America that Bob Dylan and Greil Marcus talked about, and baroque chamber pop, made by a group recovering from breakdowns, addiction and break ups. It was a rebirth and is one of those albums that never seems to age or fade or lose its power and appeal. 

In 2001 Mercury Rev followed Deserter's Songs with All Is Dream, a less fragile and more confident record but one still shot through with a certain amount of dread. It opens with The Dark Is Rising, a song that sets out like a 1950s Hollywood blockbuster with huge sweeping strings and then lonely piano. Jonathan Donahue starts singing in that reedy, upper register voice about dreams and loss and bridges burned. The Dark Is Rising is about a lover who has gone but Jonathan has a kind of certainty in the song, he welcomes the darkness because he can hear them, 'somewhere in this song'. The strings and timpani crash back in and a ghostly voice wails away in the background. It's strong stuff- I recall listening to it in 2001 and being quite freaked out by it. 

The Dark Is Rising

The last verse goes like this-

'I dreamed that I was walking and the two of us were talking/ Of all life's mystery/ The words that flow between friends/ Winding streams without end/ I wanted you to see

But it can seem surprising/ When you find yourself alone
And now the dark is rising/ And a brand new moon is born

I always dreamed I'd love you/ I never dreamed I'd lose you/ In my dreams I'm always strong'

My dreams have been all over the place for a long time now, made more vivid and disturbed by the statins I've been taking for over a year now. Isaac has been appearing more and more regularly in them. After he died, when he appeared in my dreams he was always 23, the age he was when he died. Now when I dream about him he's often much younger. I don't what that means or if it means anything. I'm not sure what The Dark Is Rising means for me either but its been playing in my mind a lot as September has turned into October and November has begun to show its face. And as Jonathan sings in The Dark Is Rising, 'dreams don't last for long'. 

Noise Inject

This is the flipside to yesterday's post, the solo album In Waves from Jamie Xx and its sonic effervescence, exuberance and sheer joie de vivre. Pye Corner Audio's Martyn Jenkins operates from a much murkier place, regularly releasing single tracks onto Bandcamp that sound like postcards from a subterranean world, one where daylight rarely reaches and dark, ominous analogue synths, drones, radio static and hissing drum machines evoke some dystopic otherworld- a dark rave where everyone's dancing on their own. The latest missive from Pye Corner Audio came out last Friday- Noise Inject- and can be found at Bandcamp, a pay what you like deal. Click play/ download and let its five minutes of spectral, gloomy rave come down. I love it by the way- none of this is a criticism. 

Martyn's tracks often have highly evocative titles, names that conjure up exactly what the track is going to sound like- Mayday Acid, Rotational Squelch, Quarry Rave, Murk, Fictional Drilling, Eaten From The Inside, Five Years In The Dark, Social Dissonance and Skip Function all give you some idea of what to expect. The exception to these dystopian sounding soundtracks was the album that came out in July 2022, Let's Emerge and its single Warmth Of The Sun. Let's Emerge is a ten track vinyl/ digital album, a response to Covid, lockdowns and isolation, with Martyn writing music to capture a 'collective sigh of relief... new beginnings and a sense of hope'. Andy Bell played guitar on five of the tracks and a shared love of Spacemen 3, tremolo guitars and The Beach Boys were part of the inspiration. A few months later former- Spaceman 3 man Sonic Boom remixed three of the tracks including this one...

Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)