Flightpath Manoeuvres

Some news about upcoming Flightpath Estate adventures and manoeuvres. Tomorrow we return to The Golden Lion to play DJ support at A Love From Outer Space, the travelling cosmic disco started by Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston sixteen years ago, now a ship steered solo by Mr. Johnston. Myself, Martin and Dan will be playing in the pub from 3pm through to about 9, a selection of afternoon and evening tunes to go with the Lion's unique ambiance. Free entry in the afternoon too- come and say hello if you're in the Todmorden area. Tomorrow is doubly exciting because as the poster below shows Prins Thomas is playing too, upstairs in the gig room. I've been a fan of Prins and the whole Scandi- disco scene for many years so getting to hear him play will be a treat. 

Two years ago Mildlife released Return To Centaurus, an appropriately cosmic and psychedelic sound. Prins Thomas remixed the track- nine minutes of blissed out, space age cosmic jazz. 

Return To Centaurus (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)

Next Saturday, 21st November, sees the end of a week of gigs by The Early Years whose album Modern Moonlight has been one of the sounds of 2026, a mix of Eno, early Roxy and Bowie, The Only Ones, krauty motoriks and London art rock. The band are co- headlining with Sennen, a shoegaze band on Sonic Cathedral. As a general rule of thumb, if it's on Sonic Cathedral, it's worth listening to.

The tour ends at Yard in Cheetham Hill, just north of Manchester Victoria. Yard is a fantastic venue. We supported Pye Corner Audio there last year. The Early Years and Sennen are both playing live, with Parastic opening (a post- rock/ kraut three piece from the north east). We are playing between the three bands (probably mainly me) and then afterwards too if anyone's sticking around for an end of tour disco. 

The Early Years are promising some recently unearthed copies of the 12" they put out in 2017, Hall Of Mirrors remixed twice by Andrew Weatherall plus remixes by Andy Bell and XAM.It looks like being a really good night, and there are a few tickets still available I believe, just £12. Bargain. 

The Early Years released this recently, a pre- tour promo- The River (HEX Edit), a new version of a song from Modern Moonlight with the guitars stripped back, synths and keys to the fore, drums pitter pattering, an FRG in the 70s chillwave sound. 

Sennen are from Norwich, now based in London and named after an early Ride classic. Their album New Quiet, came out at the end of October, harmonies, keys, acoustic guitars, electric guitars and shoegaze with melodies pushed to the fore. This is I Can See The Future, the opening song from New Quiet, one of those songs that the first time you hear it, you swear you've heard it before. Then it's in your head all day and you're humming the vocal melody endlessly. 

And this is Parastatic from 2026, a song called Tear It Down from an album that reflects the band's obsession with Brutalist architecture and 1960s post- war modernism. A band after my own heart. 

And I'm Pulling Out All of Your Mind

Money Mark (Mark Ramos- Nashita) played keys for the Beastie Boys from 1992 until 2012. His introduction to them came via some carpentry work he was doing for them when producer Mario Caldato got him in to fix the gate of the property the Beasties were recording Paul's Boutique in. He then helped them build their own studio (G- Son in Los Angeles) and began playing keys and organ for them. He put out two solo albums on Mo'Wax in the 1990s, Mark's Keyboard Repair in 1995 (a slew of demos and sketches, lo fi and quirky stuff) and then Push The Button in 1998, a much more fully realised album, eighteen songs on piano, keys and guitar. I'd forgotten until recently how good Push The Button is and - this is Mo'Wax remember- how beautifully packaged he album was. 

All The People is cocktail hour, singer songwriter, jazzy pop that opens with the memorable line, 'Everybody's got their own kinda hope/ Some people got dope...'. Laid back, hippyish, supper club vibes.

All The People

Maybe I'm Dead is a fuzz bass groove, somewhere between mid- 90s Beck with John Lennon-esque lyrical surrealism. 

Maybe I'm Dead

Hand In Your Head is even better, late 90s leftfield pop, the sort of song that Squeeze might have written had they come from LA rahter than Deptford. 

Hand In Your Head

Random Fall Song Wednesday Three

Random Fall Song Wednesday continues, a series that wasn't meant to be a series but has become one due to the participation and contributions of guests. Last week SRC from No Badger Required regaled us with The Fall in 1982 and Jawbone And The Air- Rifle. 

This week JC from the standard setting blog The Vinyl Villain takes the reins...

My I-phone has 526 tracks by The Fall.  Some of these are ‘doublers’ thanks to their appearance on compilation albums such as 50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong or 458489 A-Sides.  As such, there was a chance that this could go badly wrong when I pressed the shuffle button.

Thankfully, it didn’t.  But it certainly didn’t deliver what could be classed as a typical Fall song. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the immediately identifiable vocal style, you might have been hard pushed to guess the name of the band correctly. 

The Mixer

From the 1991 album, Shift-Work, the band’s 13th studio recording.

Here’s a bit of a surprise statement, the album was recorded at a tumultuous time in the band’s history.

A 12-date tour of Australia, New Zealand and Japan in June/July 1990 was disrupted when MES sacked Martin Bramah and Marcia Schofield for the heinous crime of becoming romantically involved. The sacking took place after a show in Sydney, and while the couple went one way back to the UK, a band now consisting of just four musicians made their way to Japan for the final three shows of the tour, with their roadie Kevin Riddles (described by Steve Hanley as ‘eighteen stone of hairy-arsed Motorhead roadie’) who had previously played in some obscure heavy metal bands, stepping into the role of keyboard player.  He would replicate that role for the band’s appearance at the 1990 Reading Festival, where they were second top of the bill on the main stage on Sunday 26 August, behind the Pixies. 

MES was keen to use the stripped-down version of the band for the next album, but this solid back four of Smith, Scanlon, Hanley and Wolstencroft ended up being augmented with a couple of virtuosos in the shape of Kenny Brady on fiddle and Dave Bush on electronics, and it is their contributions which end up being what makes The Mixer so different from the usual.

The NME review of the album states that ‘vast rippling keyboard riffs power The Mixer’ which kind of manages to overstate and undersell the song in one go.

There’s no doubt that the dance-style synths and electronic drums/handclaps are what mostly propel the song forward, but the persistent violin melody is every bit as important….and just as maybe you think the song is about to overstay its welcome, there’s a strange spoken outro:-

'It possessed the sort of bright sound microphone with audio pickup pattern.  It can produce broad responses, hi-fidelity quality, no feedback and no howling etc. We can express good sound of your voice, an excellent melody orchestra, a self-contained filter control, explosive breath sounds, controlled explosive breath sounds...... wind noises, in different locations.…'

Nobody is credited when said spoken contribution, but it’s been suggested on various online forums that it is Robert Gordon, one of the three producers who worked on the album – the others were Grant Showbiz and Craig Leon.

Worth mentioning that Robert Gordon was one of the founders of Warp Records, the label probably best known as the home of the Aphex Twin.  Oh, and also worth mentioning that much of Shift-Work was recorded at FON Studios in Sheffield.  FON, which also lent its name to an indie label that was the initial home of Age of Chance, stands for Fuck Off Nazis.

And that, frankly, is what we are here for. Many thanks JC, a fantastic piece of writing about a genuinely random Fall song. If anyone else wants to join in with a random Fall song (you choose your selection method or ask me to randomly assign you one) and some words, please feel free to send it in.

Next week our guest contribution takes us from Glasgow to Portugal.

One Trip Continuation

The return of Factory Floor is something to celebrate, Gabe Gurnsey and Nic Colk Void back on modular synths and drums along with new member Joe Ward and an album inspired by a one off live performance in Montreal. The album, One Trip, comes out at the end of the month. At Bandcamp and elsewhere there are four new tracks ahead of the album- the title track came out last week, a rhythmic thump with percussion and dive bombing synth sounds. 

Buzz Saw is a little lighter in tone, analogue synths and a fragment of Nic Colk Void vocal that goes off in an acid house warehouse way a minute in. Between You came out last year, juddering and hypnotic with one of those repetitive vocals. The band say the album was partly a re-connection with their days playing gigs in pre- gentrified East London, the physicality of electronic noise and rhythm played loud.

At the start of the album is a track called Continuation, a wonderful lead in with wobbly synths, a kick drum and detached vocal, oscillating and building, the sound spiralling and hypnotising. Lovely stuff. 

Vinyl, cassette, CD, digital- all available to buy at Bandcamp and elsewhere. 

Factory Floor's previous album, the magnificent 25 25, came out a decade ago. A soundtrack to the silent film metropolis came out in 2018. Gabe Gurnsey (drums, percussion and synths) had two solo albums in the interim, Physical in 2018 and Diablo in 2022. Eyes Over, from Physical, was a huge record- speaker rattling, bass with an actual physical presence, all kinetic energy, sirens and synths. 

Eyes Over (Extended Dub)

Set A Course

Recently a friend offered me a free ticket for Teenage Fanclub at New Century Hall on Saturday night. Who'd say no to that?

New Century seemed close to sold out and the band were welcomed on stage like returning heroes. In 2018 Gerard Love, bass player and writer of some of their best songs, left the group and Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley have continued since, writing, recording and playing, but haven't played any of his songs. This means that some of TFC's best songs- Sparky's Dream, Star Sign, Don't Look Back, Ain't That Enough and December among them- are off limits. The five man TFC come on stage not long after nine with support act and Gorkys main man Euros Childs on keys and backing vocals. Norman and Ray launch straight into a late period song, Home from 2021, and immediately we're into that Teenage Fanclub sweet spot zone, Glasgow via late 60s West Coast American rock, twin guitars and co- vocals, Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse and Big Star all very much in the area.

There's no light show to speak of, no projections, not much in the way of between song patter, just a band playing their songs- and the songs very much do the talking. Early on Metal Baby from Bandwagonesque gets a big crowd response. Mellow Doubt is played as part of a three song acoustic guitar mini- set. There are songs from their full back catalogue, from 1991 and from their latest, Do Not Dare To Dream, and all points in between. They are warm and punchy, the guitars are slightly distorted and the harmonies a little ragged, the drums thumpy and unflashy. It's exactly what TFC should sound like. What You Do To Me is crowd pleasingly loud and the run in to the end of the set hits all the spots- My Uptight Life from 2000's Howdy is sweet and moving. It's A Bad World (from 1998's Songs From Northern Britain) is the penultimate song and a peak and a song that means a lot to me. 

It's A Bad World

Back in 1999 when Isaac was diagnosed with his genetic illness and we were waiting for a bone marrow donor, I drove to and from work for what seemed like many, many weeks contemplating his future and ours. A successful bone marrow transplant was his only hope but also at that point carried a 50% mortality rate risk. I listened to two albums in that period on my car's cassette player (I must have listened to more but these two stand out in my memory)- Songs From Northern Britain and Primal Scream's XLRTR. Weirdly the two songs, one from each album, that really struck me back then as being in some way 'about' Isaac, have both been songs I've heard played live at New Century Hall in the last few weeks- Teenage Fanclub's It's A Bad World and Primal Scream's Keep Your Dreams. 

There was something about It's Bad World, the uplifting melodies and Raymond's vocal, the contrast between the verse, 'I've made up my mind/ Life's not unkind', and the chorus. 'It's a bad world', that hit me. Life was indeed unkind and it was also a bad world and yet the song, it's gorgeous guitar lines, the tone and the harmonies, suggested otherwise. Anyway, on Saturday night, it was a bit of a moment. Moist eyes. 

They finished the set with The Concept, 1991's TFC calling card, Neil Young and Big Star fed through a noisy blender with those tongue in cheek lyrics about Norman's denim clad girl who is gonna buy some records by the Status Quo, likes the group when they pull in the slack and who don't do drugs but does the pill. Is it a song about the girl or about the group? Both maybe. Who does he love more? The group, I think. The coda, all searing, crunchy twin guitars, three part vocals and thumping drums, is as much a part of 1991 as Screamadelica, Nevermind, Andrew Weatherall and acid house. 

The Concept 

A three song encore follows, It's All In My Mind and Can't Find My Soul, more songs about young men's insecurities and the feeling that things just aren't quite right, and then finally Everything Flows from 1990, the group's starting point- major and minor chords, fuzz pedals, early 20s ragged glory and a love of Sonic Youth and Love. The band and much of the audience are middle aged, heavier and losing their hair, and Norman sings, 'Well you get older every year/ But you don't change/ Or I don't notice you changing...', and nearly four decades have flown by and we've all got older every year. 

'I'll never know which to flow/ Set a course that I don't know'.

Everything Flows

No Gerard, no flashy show, no big deal, in the end it's just Teenage Fanclub playing a bunch of songs that have soundtracked parts of our lives. As Gerard once sang, ain't that enough?

Thirty Five More Minutes Of Planet Mondo 80s

As promised this Side 2 of the tape that Planet Mondo put together for The Vinyl Villain circa 2009, a period when JC was absent from the blog for a while and various guests filled in. This post along with loads of others were lost when Google deleted the original Vinyl Villain blog without warning back when the music industry saw music blogs as the enemy. JC recovered some of his lost pages and posts and started again but a lot of them were thought long gone. My chance finding of a home burned CD of the Planet Mondo contribution (with the photograph of the sleeve that I'd downloaded from TVV and printed off) has filled in one of those gaps in JC's back pages. 

Prompted into action by last Saturday's post JC has since re- discovered a slew of lost posts, up to forty of those guest posts written in 2009 while he was away. He's going to post them over the upcoming weeks as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of The Vinyl Villain. His starting point with the reproduced original Planet Mondo C60 post is here. 

Side 1 Sound Of The Crowd was all about the then modern 80s dancefloor sounds, synths, drum machines and electronic pioneers. Side 2 Creatures Of The Night is a different beast, same nightclub perhaps but a different night, the Thursday night when the freaks and the weirdos come out, the goths, the Cramps fans, indie kids, post- punkers and assorted misfits who want their turn under the lights on the floor. 

Side 2 Creatures Of The Night

• Gina X Performance: No GDM
• The Bollock Brothers: The Bunker
• The Cramps: Human Fly
• Bauhaus: Largartija Nick
• Tuxedomoon: No Tears
• Siouxsie and The Banshees: Spellbound

Gina X Performance was a dance rock/ art project from Cologne, singer Gina Kikoine and producer Zeus B. Held. Their electropop/ synthwave sounds, 'robotic soul' they called it, pulled together pop and performance with experimental. No GDM is a blast of 1979 action. Nice Mover, the follow up, was the opening song on Andrew Weatherall's hugely influential 9 O'Clock Drop compilation. 

The Bollock Brothers were formed by London DJ and promoter Jock McDonald and with various musicians including at different times Killing Joke's Youth and Jimmy Lydon, brother of John. They released several albums, mainly cover versions with Led Zep, Sex Pistols, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Bowie and Vangelis among others given The Bollock Brothers treatment. The Bunker is from 1980 and is an uncredited cover of No GDM by Gina X Performance but with new lyrics. Nice selection and sequencing by Planet Mondo.

Human Fly by The Cramps is from 1978 and is, well let's see, one of the best singles of that decade or any other. An unholy mash up of 50s rockabilly and late 70s punk, Lux and Ivy's love of horror and sci fi with a nod of the head to ? And The Mysterions 96 Tears. Brothel creepers, white shirts, drainpipe jeans and quiffs and sunglasses after dark, 96 tears and 96 eyes. 

Bauhaus's Lagartikja Nick is from 1983, dark and pounding gothic punk, a standalone 7" on Beggar's Banquet. Lagatija Nick is a Spanish term for the devil. Bauhaus are along with Alan Moore Northampton's greatest cultural export. 

Tuxedomoon formed in San Francisco in 1977, avant garde/ experimentalism with synths, violins, sax, drum machines- gothy post- punk open to jazz, classical, funk, anything. They relocated to Europe in 1981. No Tears is frantic synthpunk from 1978 and sounds utterly brilliant all these decades later. 'No tears for the creatures of the night/ No tears/ My eyes are dry...'

Spellbound was a 1981 single from a point when Siouxsie and The Banshees were well into their imperial phase. John McGeoch's guitars sound, yep, spellbinding and Siouxsie's voice is confident and enthralling. Intense goth/ post punk for the creatures of the night. 

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 You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas.

My lack of shame took me to Wayne Walker, The Black Balloons (Weatherall and Tenniswood), Sugar, It's Immaterial, Timothy J. Fairplay and Parquet Courts. 

The Oblique Saturdays collective came up with another set of eclectic, weird and wonderful suggestions: Leftfield and Toni Halliday (C); William Burroughs (Al G); The Streets (Mrs G); Courtney Barnett (Rol); Merle Haggard (Ernie); Culture (both The Swede and Chris Yardley); and XTC (John Medd and big apologies to Mr Medd whose Beatles suggestion I missed off the previous week's round up). 

This week's Oblique Strategies card says this- Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency.

Sometimes I turn the card over and wish Mr Eno and Mr Schmidt would be a bit less fucking oblique. 

There are loads of songs about change, change as a force for personal or social improvement and about the possibilities of change. There are fewer about not changing. 

Stasis is the act of staying the same, of not changing. In 2016 Pye Corner Audio released an album called Stasis and at the heart of Stasis was a track called...

At The Heart Of Stasis

Gloomy ambience, modular synth drones, a hammering kick drum and then chords that evoke 70s sci fi crossed with Kraftwerk and Moroder's futurism. Which is what Ghost Box, the label he released it on, were all about. 

The word immaculate means only one thing in music- Madonna. In 1990 Madonna released The Immaculate Collection, her first greatest hits compilation, just at the peak of her Catholic Church baiting period, hence the title. She dedicated the album to The Pope, 'my divine inspiration'. This was apparently not a reference to John Paul II but to her brother Christoper, whose nickname was The Pope. I'm sure the confusion was intentional. The Catholic concept of the Immaculate Conception is that the Virgin Mary conceived without having sex, without the stain of the original sin of Adam and Eve.

Here's Keith Hudson with some righteous roots reggae...

Virgin Rock

The word Original takes us back to C's suggestion last week, Leftfield and Toni Halliday in 1995 and this superb piece of techno/ trip hop, a slow burning dubby odyssey...

Original

Back to Madonna. The Immaculate Collection was a greatest hits package starting with Holiday and working its way through her 80s hits and ending with two then new songs- Justify My Love and Rescue Me. Justify My Love is a great song, based on that Funky Drummer/ Public Enemy drum sample with Madonna in imperious mode. I've posted it twice in the last year, once in its own right and once as part of a Funky Drummer celebration mix. All of the songs on The Immaculate Collection were reworked by Shep Pettibone using QSound (a processor that gave sound a 3 dimensional effect). Some had new intros or were shortened. Into The Groove, Like A Prayer and Express Yourself were totally different versions. Borderline was the album version, pure pop and utterly irrepressible. 

Borderline

Borderline was written because Madge's first album was a bit short. Songwriter Reggie Davis wrote it for her while she was flat sitting for Jean Michel Basquiat. As one does. 

Feel free to drop your own responses to today's Oblique Strategy into the comment box- Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency.