Crypto

The return of Beastie Boy Mike D is along with the return of the Durutti Column a massive musical highlight of 2026, both completely unexpected until a couple of months ago and both very welcome indeed. Mike's album Thank You is out at the end of August. So far he's put out four of the songs onto the internet- What We Got, Switch Up, True Colours and now Crypto. 

Crypto is a blast, distorto vocals, a ton of echo, fuzz guitar, primitive drum machine beats, space invader samples, rumbling bass- he's not playing it safe or pulling any punches, this is Mike and his sons' band The 5D doing exactly what they want to do. There was more good news recently with the announcement of a gig in Manchester in October. 

There's never a bad time to revisit the Beastie Boys so here's your bonus track from 2004's To The 5 Boroughs, an album the three Beastie Boys made that was very much a response to 9/11 and a love letter their home city and call for unity and community. 

An Open Letter To NYC

Monday's Long Song

Spanish Monday long song or Canción larga del lunes en español (I hope that's correct, Google Translate can't always be relied upon).

This is from The Orb's Aubrey Mixes album, released and deleted the same day on 2nd December 1991. Bought by me on the day of release in Probe in Liverpool. The original version of Spanish Castles In Space (on Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld) was fifteen minutes long. This mix is a comparatively concise nine minutes, remixed by Youth and with bass by legendary session bassist Guy Pratt. Ambient house in excelsis with a more uptempo feel than some of the original mixes.

Spanish Castles In Space (Castles In Goa Mix)

August And Augustus

Some songs for August on the 2nd day of the month. August is high summer in the UK, the month of summer holidays, those endless days as children when school had vanished, the sun shone and the possibilities were endless. September and everything it brings- change, the back to school rhythms, autumn- is weeks away. As a teacher I've kept these school days rhythms all my adult life and August always feels like this.

August is named after the Roman Emperor Augustus, the month it is said of his greatest triumphs (the conquest of Egypt among them). Augustus Pablo shares a name with the Emperor and while he may not have achieved the same imperial feats the Emperor Augustus did not record any seminal dub albums, the 1976 King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown among them. Is Jamaica's influence on music the equal of the Romans on the history of the world? All empires fall but dub will last forever. 

555 Dub Street

In 2023 PJ Harvey released I Inside The Old Year, Dying, an enigmatic, poetic and forbidding record and one that only she could have made- a triumph in many ways. The album's first single was this-

A Child's Question, August

Echo laden folk, piano, a guitar and drum and her voice, softer and more tender than sometimes. It feels as old as the hills. 

This one is from 2022 by Turkish composer Ozan Tekin. I know little about it or about Ozan- a minimalist pianist/ musician, born in Istanbul and resident in Cologne. This track starts out as a piano piece, slightly Satie- esque, and dissolves into distortion and feedback at the end. From an album called Anarya.

Knots (Ballad Of August) 

Shrag were a Brighton based five piece group, post punk/ c86 indie, who made three albums between 2003 and 2013. Sharp and raucous live wires with pointed and funny lyrics. 

Tights In August

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 Change instrument roles.

I went with the change in using the Roland TB- 303 by Phuture and Marshall Jefferson that led to acid house and also with Luke Schneider's ambient pedal steel guitar. In the comment box it all kicked off with Ernie bringing the funky jazz bagpipe sound of Rufus Harley, SRC with Carlos Alomar and David Bowie in 1980, Le Petit Mort and possibly the ultimate Oblique Saturday sound of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, C with New Model Army, Rol with the brilliantly named Twat Union, and on social media Chris Zen Arcade with A Guy Called Gerald's Voodoo Ray, an otherworldly and seminal record that was probably influenced by Phuture's 303 experiments a couple of years earlier. 

Voodoo Ray

This week's card say this- Don't be frightened to display your talents.

In 1988 Talk Talk released Spirit Of Eden, a record which is very much a display of talent and vision. Mark Hollis, Lee Harris, Paul Webb and producer Tim Friese- Greene made the album at Wessex Studio in London in 1987 and 1988. It sounds nothing like anything else made in those years, existing in its own world and context and on its own terms. The songs that make up side one- The Rainbow, Eden and Desire- run into each other, instrumental passages from the end of one song becoming the next and as such it's best taken as one piece...

Spirit Of Eden Side One (The Rainbow/ Eden/ Desire)

The short hand genre descriptions are usually post- rock, ambient, experimental, art rock combined with the influence of free jazz and folk but these labels don't really describe the three songs on side one of Spirit Of Eden. As Andrew Weatherall said, 'Don't get hung up on genres'. Spirit Of Eden is Spirit Of Eden

The three musicians (Hollis on guitar, organ, piano and melodica, Webb on bass and Harris on drums) plus Friese- Greene (harmonium, piano, guitar and production) were joined by umpteen other musicians who would be brought into the blacked out studio, in almost total darkness (oil projections and strobe lights were deployed to increase the disorientation). They were played the track as it was at that point through their headphones and asked to contribute. Under these circumstances there were presumably lots of takes and parts which were unused and unusable but what they coaxed out of the players and created between them is an astonishing piece of work. 

The Rainbow opens with a burst of a horn and then strings, a saw and woodwind. Some piano notes waft in. It's all tone and texture, the start of something, improvised and loose but clearly the work of someone with a vision. We drift along, the darkness of the studio reflected in the sound. An electric guitar picks up and then a harmonica that cuts right through. Three minutes in, there are suddenly drums and a groove and Mark Hollis sings- 'Oh yeah, the world's turned upside down...'.

The Rainbow is nine minutes long. It stops and starts, unhurried despite the harmonica's attempts to drive it. The long end section fades into Eden, followed by bursts of noise, a wah wah guitar maybe, some feedback, and then a shift as Eden starts. Acoustic guitar, softer and gentler for a while but with the propulsion of drums, bass and a guitar riff. Hollis sings again, somewhere out in the wilds, somewhere in the darkness looking in. 'Everybody needs someone', he settles on. 

The segue into Desire comes after seventeen minutes- organ, woodwind, a horn maybe- and then the guitar is back, clipped and woody. More piano. Not jazz but there's an echo of jazz of a kind in it and some of John Martyn's folk too. Hollis sings again over this freeform improvisational piece. I'm not sure I've ever fully made out all the words and I'm not sure how much it matters. The voice and sound of the words as part of the song are just as important as what he's actually saying- again, tone and texture. There's an explosion of noise, guitars, bass and harmonica, and the drums kicking up a storm. An electric guitar sandstorm. Shakers. 

There's something so unknowable about Spirit Of Eden, so mysterious, so difficult to pin down. The music is physical, its real but it also hangs in the air, slightly out of reach. It can't really be described as chill out or ambient- the bursts of guitar and noise are unsettling (the post- rock label comes from these parts- Spiritualized, Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Tortoise, Radiohead, Low and others were all listening to Spirit Of Eden at some point). You can listen to side one (or the whole album) many, many times and continue to find something new in it each time, a different sound or feel, a new angle, a part you hadn't focused on before or hadn't noticed. It seems like a different record sometimes to the one you'd listened to before. Mark Hollis was at full tilt on Spirit Of Eden, unleashed and exploring what they could do collectively, what they could achieve. Entirely unafraid to display his talents. 

Feel free to drop your own response to Don't be frightened to display your talents in the comment box. 

On Islands

Out today- a new EP by Birds Of Pandaemonium called On Islands with an album on Sprechen to follow. On Islands is a dream- a swooning psychedelic and Balearic crossover dream, a drifting along the beach and loosing oneself in the night kind of dream. Chuggy drums, soft pads, stellar synths, a laid back vocal, hypnotic bass, handclaps, a child's spoken word part, a reference to Andrew Weatherall, orchestral strings... it's got it all. 

There are three remixes by Hardway Bros- the Stereo Odyssey, the Steppas Dub and the Hardway Bros Dub. All three are very good. The Stereo Odyssey is the place to start, a spaced out and interstellar version that goes straight to the Balearic/ indie- dance/ psychedelia sweet spot. The Steppas Dub is a fuzz and bass version with bells on and the Dub strips it back to bass, bleeps and rhythm, hints of strings and voice. Blissed out to the max.

On Islands is at Bandcamp. 

On Islands is a cover of a 1980 song by New Musik, a song that sounds weirdly contemporary for something that came out forty six years ago. New Musik were from South London, formed in 1977 and called it a day in 1982. The band look like they could all have been in Hot Chip.

Espana

Y viva Espana! We're off to Spain today for a few days, going to Granada, Nerja and Malaga. There are lots of songs with Spain or Spanish in their names in my collection. Let's go with cuatro songs for today's post. 

Hinds are a Spanish, all girl group with four albums to their name- the most recent, Viva Hinds, was one of my favourites of 2024. They covered The Clash's Spanish Bombs in 2020 in fine style. Joe Strummer's lyric dealt with the Spanish Civil War, 70s separatist Basque terrorism and mass tourism. 'The hillsides ring with 'free the people'/ Can I hear the echo of the days of '39?', Joe asks, harking back to the civil war and the days of one of his heroes, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca (murdered by Franco's forces in 1936). In the chorus Joe declares his love for Spain, 'Yo te quiero, oh mi corazón' ('I love you/ Oh my heart'). 

Spanish Bombs

In 1967 Jimi Hendrix's second album with The Experience had a song called Spanish Castle Magic on it, a glorious slice of '67 blues/ psychedelia, Jimi's guitar raw and raucous, the bass locked into the crunching guitar chords and doubling the riff, Mitch battering the drums. I don't think Jimi ever sang better than on this song.

Spanish Castle Magic

The Spanish Castle wasn't actually in Spain, it was a roadhouse on the outskirts of Seattle where a young Hendrix was sometimes found jamming with local groups. 

In 1999 Gorky's Zygotic Munki released their sixth album, Spanish Dance Troupe. The title track is gorgeous, absurdist, lilting Welsh psychedelic folk. This is Gorky's first appearance at Bagging Area which seems a bit of an oversight. 

Spanish Dance Troupe

Last for today, Galaxie 500 and the B-side to their debut single Tugboat from 1988. In King Of Spain a man inures himself from pain and hurt by becoming the King of Spain, safely isolated as a powerful man but he ends up alone and lonely. Galaxie 500 may have refined their songs and sound over the three years they were active after they released Tugboat/ King Of Spain but almost everything that made them so special is present on this single. 

King Of Spain

I've set posts up for the time I'm away so there'll be no break in service. Bagging Area's commitment to blogging knows few bounds.  

Dicky Two Times

Dicky Continental is one of Rich Thair's alter egos, a one man project away from his main band Red Snapper and Red Snapper's offshoot Number and his role as drummer and percussionist in the rejuvenated Sabres Of Paradise. Dicky Continental appeared on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 with his Andrew Weatherall sampling Large Bongos, Andrew's voice appearing over some low fi dusty funk on side one, very much holding its own next to the previously unreleased version of  Sabres' track Lik Wid Nit Wit.

Dicky Continental have two new releases. The first is a single coming out in early August called Hostile Environment, ahead of an album called Queer The Pitch. Hostile Environment is a dubbed out gem with some typically cool percussion (conga and djembe), a sample from pirate radio, and Cardiff rapper/ poet Tia Zakura on vocals, a laid back and easy vocal style asking the right questions- 'Tell me what's the difference between existing and living?'

Recorded and produced at Buntys studio in Swansea and mixed in Hastings, listen and buy at Bandcamp. On the EP there will be a dub and an instrumental version to go with the vocal mix already available.

Meanwhile, The Secret Garden (Alex Vickers) have a track out called Weekend Away, remixed by Dicky Continental and featuring the vocals of Ioan Omar. Dicky's remix is a jazzy, summer sounding tune, keyboards to the fore and live drums and bass pushing it on. 'Call the collective', Ioan says, again like Tia above in a laid back vocal style- the tune and vocal flow press buttons that call Soul II Soul, Ballistic Brothers and Acid Jazz to mind. Find Dicky Continental's remix of Weekend Away at Bandcamp.