Forty Minutes Of Richard Norris And Friends

Richard Norris has a prodigious work rate, a seemingly endless source of musical creativity and productivity. This year alone he has continued his monthly deep listening Music For Healing series (a pair of twenty minute ambient pieces released on the 1st of the month, themed for 2026 around patterns), release a double album of remixes, a solo album inspired by Super 8 home movie footage, an album with Lol Hammond as Moon Dust, an ambient album with Mark Barrott (Nocturnes Vol. 1) and a track released on Martin Luther King Day in January called The Corn Is Coming. There are still two and a half months of 2026 to go- there could be much more to come. 

This is a forty minute mix, a selection of tracks from some of those releases, that starts out ambient and picks up the pace into dub and Balearic areas. If you aren't already a member, his monthly subscription means that most of this music drops into your digital world throughout the year and often comes through your letterbox as well in physical formats. You can find all of this and more at Richard's Bandcamp. 

Forty Minutes Of Richard Norris in 2026

• Richard Norris: River's Song
• Richard Norris: Nocturne No. 6
• Moon Dust: Scarlet Traces
• Moon Dust: Wide Open Space
• Katy J Pearson: Willow's Song (Richard Norris Ritual Mix)
• Gulp: Wildflower (Richard Norris Remix)
• Hollow Hand: Before Tomorrow (Richard Norris Avalon Remix)
• Warpaint: Disco// Very (Richard Norris Remix)

River's Song  came out as a single back in May ahead of the 8mm album, a wobbly and affecting piece of hauntology, inspired by 8mm cine camera films and home movie footage from the pre- digital era. River's Song sounds exactly like watching a flickering film of kids playing in the summer sun, the film clicking as it whirrs round and the past flashing by. Nocturne No. 6 is also from 8mm, a piano piece that uses a different piece of film to spark the music. 8mm is here. 

Moon Dust is Richard and Lol Hammond (Spiral Tribe, The Drum Club). Their album Memories, Dreams, Reflections comes from a similar place as 8mm, thirteen largely piano- led tracks that fall somewhere between ambient, neo- classical and soundtracks. Scarlet Traces is a slow mo, melodic synths and keys track. Wide Open Space is gentle drones, sci fi/ cosmische ambient. You can find Moon Dust's album here. 

Richard's remix work is legendary and cherry picking to compile the highlights onto one album must have been a headache. The remixes on Re- Make: Re- Model go back over a decade with twelve on the vinyl edition and nineteen on CD and download. Narrowing it down to just four remixes for this mix was a problem in itself. The ones I didn't include but easily could have take in Mark Peters and Dot Allison, Pale Blue Eyes, Jagwar Ma, Joe Goddard, Saint Etienne, A Mountain Of One and Andy Bell and there are plenty more as well as those. Re- Make: Remodel is here. 

Richard's dubbed out remix of Katy J Pearson's version of Willow's Song is originally from 2023, a remix of a cover of Paul Giovanni's song from The Wicker Man film, a celebration of the summer solstice, disappearing policemen and pagan goings on. There's a bit of a collision as that track segues into the next one, all my fault I'm afraid.

Gulp are Super Furry Animals Guto Pryce and Lindsey Leven whose album Beneath Strawberry Moons came out last year with Richard's remix on a 12" of Wildflower. Psychedelic folk transported into Balearic- psyche. 

Hollow Hand are from Brighton, a three piece that also play as Caitlin Rose's house band. 60s pop/ indie folk and country rock. Richard re- models them in shimmering  dubby/ folky/ electronic style.

Warpaint's Disco// Very came out in 2014, a track from their self titled 2014 album. Richard's remix is a seven minute floor shaker- I played it at The Golden Lion earlier this year and it hit the late Saturday afternoon/ early evening spot very nicely.

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was The tape is now the music. 

I went through my collection of tapes and spooled up Billy Bragg, The Wedding Present, One Dove and Sabres Of Paradise, Klangkollektor and Rentamax 2000. Out in the Oblique Saturdays community the suggestions came thick and fast, everyone rewinding their cassettes with pencils to save battery life- Bow Wow Wow from C, This Heat from Walter, Martin Newell and Ephrem Tamiru via Ernie (who also had a photo of his small but perfectly formed collection of tapes with The Cleaners From Venus, Mikey Dread, Richard Hell and Joe Ely all featuring), Mrs G with The Smiths (How Soon Is Now. She also revoked her National Trust membership), Coldcut from Craytezboi, Tapes 'n' Tapes and The Lucksmiths from Al G, mixtapes of the BBC Essential Mix from Jase especially Felix da Housecat and also Brian Wilson's mid 60s tape experiments, The Pooh Sticks (Rol and Gullybully), Julian Cope from Khayem and Died Pretty courtesy of The Swede. And again I'm left thinking, what a mixtape that collection of tracks could turn out to be.

The Pooh Sticks in 1988 with a celebration of tape culture- this song was very much a precursor to LCD Soundsystem's Losing My Edge. 

'I've got all The Velvet Underground albums... on tape/ I've got The Monkees head soundtrack... on tape'. 

On Tape

This week's card is this- In total darkness, or a very large room, very quietly.

My mind focused on the very large room part. I wondered what the largest room I'd ever been in was and what the largest room I've ever seen a band in was. The first large room gig I attended was Lou Reed at Wembley Arena, 4th July 1989. I traveled down to London to stay at my friend Al's (we met that year when we both pitched up Liverpool university the previous autumn. We're still friends today). We went from his parents' house in Ealing to Wembley Arena to see Lou play his then current New York album in full and then a second set of hits. The venue seemed huge to me (at the time used to seeing bands in much smaller rooms), the seats on the venue floor were stackable chairs and the audience was largely a generation older than us. There were a few people our age, all in our 1989 clothes and haircuts, indie kids, goths and acid housers. Lou proclaimed at one point that 'everything you hear is being made by real musicians with real instruments, no samples or tapes', which made him sound like an out of date, punk rock Grandad. According to Setlist.FM the last five songs of the encore were Sweet Jane and Walk On The Wild Side (both of which I remember), Vicious, Satellite Of Love and Waiting For the Man (none of which I do). 

Romeo Had Juliette

The next two gigs in large rooms were both GMex. The December 1989 New Order, Happy Mondays and A Certain Ratio party and Pixies supported by The Real People and Cud gig of June 1991. 

Since then I've seen a few gigs at Manchester Arena (formerly Nynex and the MEN now the AO) most recently Nick Cave on his Wild God tour and before that Pet Shop Boys, Prince, Beastie Boys (twice), The Who with Joe Strummer, Bob Dylan and The Charlatans. Sometimes arena gigs can be a dispiriting, expensive and passive experience and they're not my favourite rooms to see bands in.  

Nick Cave shrunk the arena, making the room feel smaller and bringing the audience into his wild celebration of forty years of Bad Seeds music and the post- grief world of Wild God. The Mercy Seat is played at the end of most Nick Cave gigs and has lost none of its power since its first appearance back in 1988, the tale of a convicted killer going to his death in the electric chair, the condemned man confusing his own story with that of Jesus' and opening us to the possibility that he may have lied. 

I could divert here to two current news stories concerning the USA and its use of the death sentence, the botched attempts to kill Christa Pike and Peter Hegseth's recent announcement that Nidel Malikk Hasan, a disabled man, will be executed by firing squad and that it will be live streamed. In both cases, one is tempted to ask, for a nation and government that claims to be guided by Christian principles, what do you think Jesus would have done in this situation? Hegseth would probably say that Christ would have pulled the trigger. 

The Mercy Seat (Live 1992)

Pet Shop Boys know exactly how to play a very large room- with over the top staging, costumes, dancers, graphics, screens, lights, smoke and mirrors and a non- stop parade of wall to wall bangers. 

Prince in 2014 didn't have much of a stage show, just himself and his band 3rd Eye Girl and a set including Let's Go Crazy, Raspberry Beret, U Got The Look, When Doves Cry, Sign O' The Times, I Would Die 4 U, Purple Rain, 1999, Little Red Corvette, Paisley Park and about two dozen other songs. Pretty incredible really. Also, it was the most culturally diverse crowd I've ever been to a gig with, young and old and every point in between- dressed up Asian couples, middle aged Mums and Dads, musos, hardcore Prince fans, teenagers with chaperoning uncles/ aunties, hippy pensioners... everyone was there. 

Raspberry Beret

I saw the Beastie Boys play the arena twice (1999 was the Hello Nasty tour, an absolute peak, and the other was 2004 it seems- I thought it was earlier). Both times they were superb, a three way energy hit of rap, hip hop, lounge, funk, punk and stoner rock, ably assisted by Money Mark and Mix Master Mike. On the 1999 tour they played in the round on a specially constructed circular stage. Great fun. I'm off to see Mike D in a couple of weeks at the much smaller Albert Halls in Manchester.

The Who was in November 2000 while John Entwistle was still alive. I can't imagine I'd have much interest in going to see them now, Brexit Roger and internet Pete have both sullied their track record a bit. Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros supported playing to a half empty arena, Joe clearly enjoying himself, with Tymon Dogg wheeling around on violin and finishing with a dub version of White Riot. 

The Charlatans was twenty five years ago, in 2001, at the peak of their hits period, the Tellin' Stories and Us And Us Only albums. They were blistering and although the arena wasn't full, it felt full, they gave it their all and got it back from the crowd. 

Tellin' Stories

The Charlatans have made multiple Oblique Saturdays appearances.

Bob Dylan played Nynex in May 2002. We were at the far end of the room, a quarter of a mile away from the stage. There were no big screens, no show at all really, just Dylan and three musicians playing an arena as if it was a club gig. Setlist.FM tells me he started with Maggie's Farm and ended with All Along The Watchtower. The setlist looks like a great gig but I don't remember it being that great. 

All Along The Watchtower (Live 1974, Before The Flood)

Those are the largest rooms I've seen music performed in as far as I can remember. None played in total darkness or very quietly (although Tricky played in near total darkness at the Aviva Factory earlier this year). 

For some reason all of this mention of large rooms and total darkness also suggests this song from Jamie Xx's In Colour album, a beautiful song with bandmate Romy on vocals about a couple drifting apart due to their love of different social scenes.

Loud Places

There's also this John Talabot remix which is as good as anything you'll hear today... 

Loud Places (John Talabot's Higher Dub)

I only realised recently that two lines in the chorus are sampled from Idris Muhammad's Could Heaven Ever Be Like This, covered on the new Birds Of Pandaemonium album that I wrote about here and here.  

Anyway, these Saturday posts are getting longer and longer, more and more wordy. Maybe I should try to reel it in and be more succinct next week. It all depends on Eno's card I suppose. 

Feel free to drop your own responses to In total darkness, or a very large room, very quietly into the comment box. 

Leave It All Behind

Looking back at 2026's album releases the Le Carousel album The Humans Will Destroy Us is standing out, a ten track concept album (the concept being human capacity for our own destruction... via, ooh take your pick... climate change, AI, nuclear weapons, psychotic leaders, war, ...) that blends dancefloor electronics, synth soundtracks, kosmische and Weatherall inspired sounds into a single, coherent whole. 

Le Carousel's Phil Kieran released an EP this week, two versions of a track called Leave It All Behind that he felt didn't quite fit on the album. The first version rides in on electronic percussion and soft female vocals singing the track title, looped and overlapping. Synths add to the blurry psychedelic feel. Halfway through the rhythm hits the foreground and an organ joins, the track becoming more driving, more upfront, before the drums drop out completely. 

The second version, the Le Carousel Mix, has a guitar and bass thrown in, the rhythm tougher and more live, an electronic/ live band stomp with a vocal by Phil, the vague promise of escape with a lack of regret. The Le Carousel mix kicks on, a drone/ psyche/ post- punk version of the song equally at home at a messy indie night as out clubbing. You can buy both at Bandcamp. 

Time & Space

Time & Space is the new album from Nottingham's Shrinkwrap, out now on Notts label Delia Recordings. It's a thirteen track double album and almost all the tracks are over five minutes long. It's an album that demands your full attention, not an album for cherry picking or flicking through or for those with short attention spans (and doesn't that affect us all at times these days- a short attention span seems to be a symptom of modern life). Time & Space is an album to get lost in, to surrender to, to give oneself up to. There's no sense in rushing it. You need to let the music work its magic in its own time.

The first four tracks take in a beautiful marimba led opener (Vibra Marimba), layered and sonically rich Balearica (Call Me When You Get There), the languid and soulful Beautiful Thing, and then a short neo- classical piece called People Passing Through You. The hum of electricity and the dreamy haze of FX are everywhere, tying the tracks together. Shrinkwrap mention Cocteau Twins, Talk Talk, Massive Attack, The KLF and Ryuichi Sakamoto as influences and all of those feel on the money. 

Time & Space drifts into dubby areas and into more uptempo ones. On 54 Blues Pt 1, drums and energy kick in. The follow up, 54 Blues Pt. 2, flips it, downtempo, Bristolian blues. Throughout, there are both live instruments by a variety of guest musicians and the Shrinkwrap duo's samples, synths and machines, a blurring that makes for an organic and alive sound. 

As it moves towards the final four songs Time & Space wanders into ambient territory. Calm Your Mind takes a vocal sample, 'Let your mind wander... calm your mind', and wraps it in rain forest sounds, double bass, pedal steel guitar and fluttering synths. The title track jolts us with a synth wobble and electronic drums. Blind Side is journey into ambient techno and they finish with Acoustic, a track built around an acoustic guitar and FX, a trip into sound and feeling. 

There's so much going on on Time & Space hat you need several sittings, ideally some with headphones, to let it reveal itself fully. Mark Raynor and Matt Horobin have poured several decades of listening to music and making music into it, a head music album that is rich and rewarding in lots of ways.

You can find Time & Space in various formats at Bandcamp. 

Coming Up For Air

Robin Guthrie, ex- Cocteau Twin, has a Bandcamp page where he uploads what he calls his 'orphan tracks', some of them orphaned from the album he was working on back in 2015 (Universal Road, recorded with Mark Gardener of Ride). Robin must have been on a creative spurt because as well as the ten songs on that album there have been several that have seen the light of day on Bandcamp. The latest, out last week, is Coming Up For Air, three minutes of rippling guitar lines over a sheen of warm FX and some beautiful lead lines. It glides by in a shimmer, instrumental shoegaze/ dream pop recorded on the French Riviera. 

According to Robin, 'Elvis was in the building'. You can find it, listen and buy here. Well worth it. 

It doesn't sound at all like Elvis to me.

Back in May Robin released Cherokee, a song from 2012 that began life in Mexico City in 2008. Those familiar guitar sounds, rising chords and FX pedals, with an injection of guitars at just after one minute and then drums a few seconds later- it could be a lost Cocteau Twins track, his guitar playing is so signature and recognisable. The falling notes at three minutes forty sound like lush, warm droplets falling, all very lovely. Again, find it at Bandcamp. 

What If No One's Calling?

Over at The Vinyl Villain JC spent September counting down 800 songs that span the parameters of the blog and his musical world. Near to the business end of things was a song by Echo And The Bunnymen, a band who were a formative Vinyl Villain influence. The song was Heads Will Roll, from 1983's Porcupine. It was a choice that made me smile- out of all the songs from the classic four man line up, from Crocodiles to Ocean Rain, all those songs and moments, all those singles, JC went for a Porcupine album track. 

I spent some time going back to Porcupine and Heads Will Roll. The album was described by those involved in making it as 'horrible'. They'd been on tour and hadn't had time to write new songs. The songs they were writing didn't flow as easily as the Heaven Up Here songs. Mac doesn't like singing the Porcupine songs, as he feels the words are too personal, that he gave too much away. Will didn't like the record company telling him first version of the songs and the production weren't good enough and resented them having to be re- worked and re- recorded. Les didn't like the record industry full stop. Pete had been producing The Wild Swans, spent some time doing other things, and was a little isolated from the other three Bunnymen (as he often was). Not ideal conditions. That they made Porcupine at all is a miracle. 

The Cutter and The Back Of Love are songs one and two- two massive Bunnymen singles, adorned with Shankar's strings- and after that the album does become a bit heavy and self obsessed. My White Devil and Clay are both serious songs. The title track too. 

Side two opens with the drama and psychedelic post- punk of Heads Will Roll though and suddenly we're back down at the front, the band blazing and the violas and cellos linking 1967 with 1983, headspinning swirly psyche and Mac singing of 'partly politic' and 'no one calling', meetings in private places where he will 'stare you into the ground'. It's gripping and exhilarating stuff, psychedelic Bunnymen with verses and choruses. 

They recorded a longer version, the Summer Version, which eventually came out as a B- side on the post- Porcupine standalone single Never Stop, a song that broke the gloom. Lay down thy raincoat and groove. The Summer Version is longer, Will's spindly guitar at the fore and Les' bass powering everything along, before the viola comes in. It ends with Shankar's strings and Pete's drums going off on one for forty seconds,a section which could easily have been stretched out for longer. 

Heads Will Roll (Summer Version)

This clip of the Bunnymen on Dutch TV miming to Heads Will Roll demonstrates what was so great about them, the 1983 Bunnymen in all their pomp. 

The 2003 CD release of Porcupine (and the other canonical 80s albums) featured various B- sides and extras. Porcupine's extras included four previously unreleased versions from the original studio recordings, produced by Kingbird (Ian Broudie, who produced both the original and re- recorded songs for Porcupine) and before Shakar's strings were added. When you listen to them it's easy to see why Will was pissed off at them being rejected- there's nothing wrong with them, they're sparser and possibly less dynamic but still good takes. WEA/ Korova rejected them as 'too uncommercial'. I'm not sure Will was too bothered about being commercial. When they'd recorded The Back Of Love in 1982 tensions were so bad Drummond got them off to Scotland, a tour of the highlands and islands, to rebuild band relations, a tactic which didn't entirely succeed. The Porcupine sessions were tense and that can be heard in the original versions I think. Shankar's strings which added so much to The Back Of Love and The Cutter were brought back. This is the original version of the album's title track...

Porcupine (Original Version)

Ian's lyrics to the Porcupine song Higher Hell were inspired by seeing a Hieronymus Bosch painting while on tour in Madrid, Ian lost in the detail and crazy world of the 16th century Dutch painter. The lower heaven and higher hell of the song were Ian's version of Bosch's psychedelic/ religious freakout world of God, animals and monsters, birds swallowing people whole and bodies piled up after final judgement.

Higher Hell

Hieronymus Bosch appears on the new Bunnymen album Apples For Isaac, a link between the worlds of 1983 and 2026. 'What would Hieronymus say?', Ian sings in the single Brussels Is Haunted, a genuinely great late period Bunnymen song, Ian back at the top of his game, sounding good and writing lyrics that are memorable. 

It's difficult to listen to the album and hear it as a full Bunnymen album in some ways- Will only appears on a few songs and Ian has said that Will's 'weird stuff' didn't get used. It feels more like an Ian McCulloch solo album but the name Echo and The Bunnymen will get greater attention and sales. But even so, it's good, I like it. It feels weirdly personal due to the title but that's not the only reason. At least half the songs are much better than you might expect at this stage in proceedings and the fact that there's been so long between this one and the previous one (ten years) suggests Ian has worked at it, chosen his best songs, got them recorded as he wants them and not just rushed out some mediocre product. It feels like he cares. 

Clem Burke's drums give it some wallop, the guitars and synths sparkle, it sounds Bunnymen but not deliberately so, not chasing or reviving the classic sound- it's just that this is what they sound like. First song Take Me By The Hand charges in at a pace and Can't Be Sold follows, bold and confident in itself. Brussels Is Haunted is a beauty. On some of the songs Ian sounds his age, the voice a bit worn and weary- not in a bad way but in a way that works for the songs. 

An Unstoppable Force opens side two, Velvets acoustic guitars and Ian at the fore, wiser maybe, a man who knows time and tide wait for no- one. 

There are a couple more that stand up- Asimov has clipped guitar chords and some drama and The Light That Surrounds You pulls at the heartstrings. Lab Rats Ran has sax that recalls Roxy Music. Apples For Isaac ends with We Prayed In The Dark and by the time it finishes I've spent forty minutes listening to eleven new Echo And The Bunnymen songs and not wished I had Ocean Rain, Porcupine, Crocodiles or Heaven Up Here on instead. It's not any of those albums either but it's definitely, on its own terms, a minor triumph. 

Monday's Long Songs

The last two Spiritualized albums were released in 2018 and 2022, songs recorded at the same time and split over two records with titles that joined up to form a phrase courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt. 

There's an argument, not least in the pair of album titles, that the sixteen songs demonstrate that Jason has finally found some inner peace and buried the demons that were on his trail for the previous three or four decades and that dominated his songwriting. The songs were worked up on Jason's laptop with Jason playing a huge range of instruments- sixteen I read somewhere- and it is incredible what can be done on a laptop. The songs are huge, fresh and vibrant, a definite addition to the Spiritualized back catalogue after a couple of previous albums that didn't do as much for me (2008's Songs In A&E and 2012's Sweet Heart Sweet Light). If ...And Nothing Hurt and Everything Was Beautiful... end up being the full stop on Spiritualized, they're a good place to finish. 

Jason's no stranger to long songs. The longest song on 2018's ...And Nothing Hurt was The Morning After which blasts off with organ drone and Johnny B. Good guitar, totally Velvet Underground too, and then Jason's slightly broken voice, 'Jane said she had a problem with the modern world/ All the boys she ever loved are in love with another girl...' 

The Morning After

There's a view on various Spritualized forums that Jane is Jason, reflecting on his own problems with the modern world. The song is a blast, nearly eight minutes of rock 'n roll as catharsis, the ending overdubbed with free jazz sax and a pile up of instruments putting Jason's laptop through its paces. 

The longest song 2022's Everything Was Beautiful... was The A Song (Laid In Your Arms), seven minutes and seven seconds of exhilarating psych/ space rock. 'These are the words, they're as old as the hills/ Cooked on a diet of mushrooms and pills/ One man's crime is another man's thrill/ And we're gone'. Some kind of acceptance there. Guitars, horns, organ, drums, all weigh in, layered and distorted and all contributing to a mass musical delirium. 'We're laid in your arms'. 

The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)