J Saul Kane

My social media timelines were full on Monday night and Tuesday with tributes to J Saul Kane who has died aged just fifty five. He'd become quite reclusive in recent years and had more or less given up making music, concentrating on photography instead, but in the 1990s he was one of the founding fathers of what became known as trip hop. His music was dusty, atmospheric and beat heavy, sampled spaghetti Westerns, martial arts films and Brazilian football commentators and he was a DJ who knew how to fill and move a dancefloor, as J Saul Kane, Depth Charge and The Octagon Man. He was a pioneer and trailblazer. Trip hop seems reductive somehow- this is cinematic electronic funk a weird hybrid of hip hop and dance music (that's pretty much trip hop I guess but J Saul Kane's music never became dinner party music which was the fate of a lot of 90s trip hop). 

In 1994 I bought Shaolin Buddha Finger by Depth Charge, having heard the title track somewhere in Manchester after dark. A dark, swirling piece of electronic breakbeat with advice about how to attack a man using the titular digit, layers of samples and a massive buzzing bassline. The album Nine Deadly Venoms followed, an essential mid- 90s album and then the Legend Of The Golden Snake EP. 

Shaolin Buddha Finger

He was still producing great records into the 2000s. This one came out in 2004, a filthy, juddering blitz of beats, samples and undulating bass. 

Hi Voltage Man

Back in 1995 J Saul was one of a select group of artists who got to remix The Sabres Of Paradise. There were a pair of Depth Charge remixes of Tow Truck (from Haunted Dancehall). The Sabres original was an alternative James Bond theme if 007 had come from East London and sold second hand motors rather than lived life as an international spy. J Saul broke it down even further, a grinding bass heavy swim through the murk. 

Tow Truck (Depth Charge Mix II)

His music chimed with the trip hop artists and with the world of The Beastie Boys and Grand Royale and his influence on labels like Mo Wax and Ninja Tune was enormous. His passing is very sad news, especially having died so young. RIP J Saul Kane. 

Broken Beauty

Jason Boardman's Manchester based Before I Die label has become one of the ones to watch in 2023 and 2024, a small is beautiful aesthetic coupled with some very strong music, with Nuremberg's Konformer making one of last year's best albums and this year releases from Klangkollektor and Khartomb both raising the bar again. The latest release is from J- Walk (otherwise known a Martin Fisher/ Martin Brew), an album called Broken Beauty, made in a room in Stockport using cheap and long forgotten keyboards, guitars and amps, unplugging from the world, switching the Casios and Yamahas on and seeing what happens. The result is a ten track album that blends dub, post- punk experimentation, tropical rhythms, digi- dub and DIY culture. 

There is something special about Broken Beauty, something spontaneous but also something that can only come from a lifetime of soaking music up, steeping oneself in the culture and coming at making music anew. It also sounds like Martin had a lot of fun making it. This is Black Lion Passage, Stopfordian dub of the highest quality. 

You can find the album at Bandcamp, and if you're lucky there may be some vinyl copies left at some of the shops- Bandcamp have sold all of theirs. Pick any of the ten tracks and you'll find gold. This is Walking In The Sunshine, more superb sounding J- Walk tropical/ dub from the sunny streets of Stockport, a cover of the 1982 Balearic pop  song by Laid Back, the Danish duo of John Guldberg and Tim Stahl. 

Monday's Long Song

A remix from the end of October that I should have posted then but something else always nudged it a few days back and then suddenly it's Monday and, hey presto, it finds a home in the Monday long song slot. Max Essa and David Harks are The Clean Trip. Max has been making electronic music since the 90s, releasing on Warp and Manchester's Paper Recordings, plus the D.I.Y. Sound System. In July this year the duo released an EP as The Clean Trip, four chuggy, summer sounding tracks, dreamy/ blissed out Balearic sunset pop. You can find it here.  Two of the tracks got the remix treatment and this one has been getting repeat plays round the Bagging Area way, memories of summer and the warmth of the sun- Lobster Boys remixed by Hifi Sean, seven minutes and fifteen seconds of dubbed out, spaced out, end of the night, Italo cosmic disco splendour, with a gently sighing vocal.

Wasn't that a lovely way to spend some of your Monday in the dull, misty, murk of November? It's what Dr Rob at Ban Ban Ton Ton would call a chocolate milk and brandy kind of track. You can buy it plus a Takovoi remix of Magic Eyes at Bandcamp. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Cure

The Cure's late 2024/ late career album Songs Of a Lost World is very much a gift that keeps giving and the recent televised gigs plus an hour of The Cure at the BBC had me going back to the band's music. That meant a Sunday mix was going to happen sooner or later and here it is, a selection centred around some of the best pop/ indie/ goth singles of the 1980s along with a few remixes and album tracks. Looking at the tracklist you might think that I've gone for some of the obvious choices- and you'd be right, I have- but there's a nice ebb and flow to it. A Cure Mix of deeper cuts might need to follow at some point in the future. I said recently that their music has meant more to me as time has gone on, and the way that Robert Smith has kept the band's integrity intact, and the quality of songs and albums so high, should be an inspiration to others about how to do it, how to grow old with your credibility and dignity in one piece. He stands up against immoral ticketing practices too, something some heritage rock acts should take note of. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Cure

• Alone
• Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix)
• Shiver And Shake
• In Between Days
• The Caterpillar
• Lullaby
• Fascination Street (Extended Mix)
• A Forest
• Just Like Heaven

Alone came out at the end of September this year ahead of the album Songs Of A Lost World, a majestic crawl through Smithworld, the first new Cure song for sixteen years and one which delivers on all promises. Seven minutes long, the first half all glacial synths, Simon Gallup's bass and crashing drums and then at last, Robert Smith comes in with the line, 'this is the end of every song we sing', a heck of a way to announce your comeback. The album deals with endings, mortality, human frailties, loss- now all experienced for real as life has taken its toll. 

Pictures Of You came out in March 1990, a gloriously melancholic song that I find incredibly moving, especially since Isaac died. It was also on Mixed Up, a 1990 remix album, four sides of vinyl, that shifted The Cure's songs into the brave new world of the 1990s. The eight minute extended version of Fascination Street was also on Mixed Up and previously came out on the 12" of that single the year before, a nine minute recreation of a raucous band night out in New Orleans in 1985.

Shiver And Shake was on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, the band's 1987 double album that saw them spread out musically and thematically- Velvets inspired rock, post punk pop, some goth gloom and some of the sunny South of France (where it was recorded) breaking through too. Shiver And Shake is spiteful, gnarly, fast paced proto- grunge/ rock- 'You're a waste of time/ You're just a babbling face'- that grinds away as Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me's penultimate song. The song that closes this mix is Just Like Heaven, sublime indie- pop, that nestles inside the centre of Kiss Me, a moment of sheer joy. 

In Between Days was a 1985 single. What is there to say about it? Superlative breezy mid- 80s pop, with hyperactive acoustic guitars, New Order- esque bass, and hooks aplenty. 

The Caterpillar is a wiggy, psychedelic single from 1984, a funny little song from the band when they were still a three piece.

Lullaby was a 1989 single, a creeped out goth rock single from a time when the indie rock world was transforming from the mid- 80s indie scene into something else, something more confident, more colourful. Robert Smith's spindly nightmare/ catchy but slightly disconcerting pop song might have seemed a bit out of place or out of time. Plucked violins, a whispered vocal about spiders- a top ten hit, obviously. 

A Forest was The Cure's first hit single from way back in 1980, a definitive early 80s post- punk song and one of The Cure's best moments. Shimmering, primordial gloom with the bass driving it forwards a Bob sings of existential dread/ a walk in the woods.  

V.A. Saturday

Last Saturday's various artists compilation album featured four ferocious 1950s rockabilly songs. Today's post comes from a connected place. Rock On was apparently the country's, maybe the world's, first collectors record shop, a vinyl goldmine dedicated to retro music- rock 'n' roll, rockabilly, blues, doo wop, 60s beat, soul, ska and reggae, jazz, 50s and 60s pop, more or less every type of music that was pressed onto black wax. It opened as a market stall at the back of the flea market on Portobello Road in August 1971. Rock On opened a shop on Golborne Road, near Portobello, a couple of years later and then a second stall in Soho market in 1974 and from there one in Camden too. In the mid- to- late 70s it played a key role in punk, a stop off for 7" singles for the movers and shakers (despite the punk's talk of '76 being Year Zero).  

In 2008 Ace Records put out a twenty eight track CD various artists compilation in tribute to Rock On, a line up of songs that were the soundtrack of the shop. The booklet has very detailed sleeve notes by Ted Carroll, an ever present in the shop from the early 70s. From the opening song to the last, the CD is very much a pre- punk party, a slew of songs from the likes of Vince Taylor, Link Wray, The Flamin' Groovies, Dr Feelgood, Waylon Jennings, Roky Erickson, Peter Holsapple, The Shangri La's, Charlie Feathers, Slim Harpo, Fats Domino, Don Covey and Joe Tex. This is just a handful of those for your Saturday morning pre- punk rave up.

Slim Harpo released Shake Your Hips on 7" in 1965, electrified Louisiana, mouth organ, clackety rhythms and clipped guitar, horns and Slim's raspy vocal. Mick Jagger was listening and taking notes. 

Shake Your Hips

Roky Erickson's Two Headed Dog came out in 1977, the version on Rock On a French release rather than the Doug Sahm produced Sponge EP version. Blistering acid guitar lead line, crunching chords, and Roky giving it the full Texan vocal. 'I've been working for the Kremlin with a two headed dog'.

Two Headed Dog

Waylon Jennings' Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? came out in 1975, a gimlet eyed country song about the price paid for a career in the music business, Waylon reaching Nashville peddling that same old tune, rhinestone suits and shiny cars, and asking the question, 'are you sure Hank done it this way?'. A rhetorical question I think. Hank Williams did it his own way. 

Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?

Lastly, some more rockabilly from 1957 by Peanuts Wilson and an Andrew Weatherall favourite from his rockabilly sets in the 00s too. 

Cast Iron Arm

Speaking of Mr Weatherall, this afternoon we are off to one of his spiritual homes, Todmorden's Golden Lion. Tonight is A Love From Outer Space, the night Andrew started in 2010 with Sean Johnston, a travelling cosmic disco that Sean has flown solo ever since. Me and my Flightpath Estate friends (Martin, Dan, Baz and Mark) are DJing at the pub from 2pm through until whenever Sean takes over. Upstairs this evening is a double header by the Stretford pairing of Psychederek and The Thief Of Time. It promises to be a lot of fun. 

Bounds

In 2020 I bought a double album by Craven Faults, Erratics And Nonconformities, six tracks of foreboding analogue ambient, modular synths, dark kosmische, made to accompany walks across post- industrial northern Britain, the soundtrack to abandoned foundries, stone walls, damp valleys, murky canal towpaths and moorland. It was hugely atmospheric and difficult to ignore, not the sort of ambient that becomes background music but foreground instrumental ambient, a very present sound. Sometimes it would leave me feeling totally enveloped by the sound, layers of recorded sound that bore a hole through me and left me feeling like something cathartic had happened. One evening listening to it it made me feel anxious and like the world was caving in. Full disclosure- this was after Isaac died and maybe is as much about how I was feeling as about the music, but I haven't been back to Craven Faults since. 

A new EP came out last month, four tracks that are intended to soundtrack a thirty seven minute trek across some part of northern England. Craven Faults is non- specific about the precise location but it's 'less than twenty miles north west of the city' (Leeds? Sheffield? Bradford?) and takes in the gathering dusk, a gritstone pillar destroyed by lightning, a tarn, and hillsides. The tracks- Long Stoop, Groups Hollows, Lampes Mosse and Waste & Demesne- vary from five minutes through to eighteen and are best encountered in one sitting, a kosmische but also earthbound trip where repetition is central and layers of analogue sound and drones build, with occasional sudden bursts of synth swooping in, like a flock of birds wheeling overhead. Buy Bounds at Bandcamp.

Won't Somebody Sign My Release?

Julian Cope's non- stop creative motion continues not just with a stream of albums but with his series of booklets called Cope's Notes. Each one focusses on a specific album or period, is packed with Julian's memories of the time and explanations of what he was doing and why he was doing it, along with photos, pages from notebooks and memorabilia, plus a CD of new/ extra/ unreleased materials. They are a treasure trove for the Cope fan. Cope's Notes #5 was a 48 page booklet and CD titled How I Wrote The Modern Antiquarian... And Why and was followed in the summer by Cope's Notes #6 Jehovakill. 

In 1991 Cope was at the crest of a wave. Peggy Suicide was a hit and a long world tour with a full band had seen some incredible performances. Julian was in creative overdrive and on finishing the tour was desperate to keep moving and head straight to record more songs. His band and roadies had become hyper fixated on krautrock the longer they'd been on the road and Julian was grabbing moments in hotel rooms with Dictaphones and portable recorders to get songs out of his head and onto tape. Cope's energies had been supercharged by the opposition to Thatcher's poll tax, his giant green alien outfit Sqwubbsy, not to mention his new and deeply felt attachment to Britain's neolithic past and in 1991 the birth of his daughter Albany. Jehovakill is a sequel to Peggy Suicide, the second part of a trilogy, and very much an album from a purple patch in Julian's recording history- even if Island disagreed and rejected the first version an eleven song album called Julian H. Cope, 'the most sonically unappealing album I've ever heard' according to managing director of the record label Marc Marot. Undeterred Julian, Donald Ross Skinner, Rooster Cosby and guitar tech Rizla Deutsch kept going, channeling krautrock, dark folk and pre- Christian themes into the sixteen track opus that is Jehovakill, a mysterious and occult record. Hugo Nicolson (Hugoth), 'fresh' from being Andrew Weatherall's engineer and co- producer of choice and Primal Scream's synth and samples operator on stage, plays synth. 

Rizla Deutsch by the way, fired a toy rocket into a hotel air con unit in Japan that got Cope banned from ever performing in the country again. 

The CD that comes with Cope's Notes #6 is full of nuggets and versions, some reocrded onto Walkmen, some at Holt Studios and Shaun Harvey's, one for a radio session in London, some while on tour in Chicago and Los Angeles. It's a mini- Jehovakill in its own right and finishes with a version of Upwards At 45 Degrees, a key Jehoakill song. This version was recorded live on stage at Elephant & Castle while preparing for the Jehovakill tour with a field recording of a downpour made on a beach in Lanzarote by Rooster. 

Upwards At 45 Degrees (Version)

There are still some copies of Cope's Notes #6 left at Head Heritage.