Train Dreams And Undiscovered Shores

Secret Soul Society released a new EP two weeks ago on a Madrid based label Rare Wiri. Train Dreams has five tracks. The first, Take Me In, is a lovely slice of Balearic pop with warm padding drums, sunshine synths and a vocal declaring, 'something's happening in my heart'. The title track Train Dreams follows, pulsing Italo disco crossed with Kraftwerk style rhythms and bursts of synth noise and lasers. There's a remix of Train Dreams too by Popsneon which takes the train into cosmic disco territory. 

In the middle of the EP is Everybody Needs A Good Friend, a rather beautiful piece of electronic Balearica. The vocal, just two lines of lyric, might be familiar to some of you. Everybody Needs A Good Friend and the other four tracks on Train Dreams can be found at Rare Wiri's Bandcamp here.

Brighton's Higher Love Recordings have been quiet of late but return to action with an EP by Mass Density Human called The Undiscovered Shore- a trio of tracks based around the idea of coastlines, imaginary shores and the borderlands between sleep and being awake. Do You bumps in with some crashing drums but the synths and piano chords gradually take it to more chilled territories- heavy waves crashing on shores followed by smaller, gentler ones maybe. 

The Body is full of fluid, liquid bass and gently rippling synthlines, a voice occasionally muttering something, like hearing someone when you're half asleep. The Undiscovered Shore is all ambient beauty, layers of drones and notes falling like water droplets, seagulls squawking and then more piano. Another voice, this one talking about rescue, and six very lovely minutes of drift. You can get The Undiscovered Shore here. 

Monday's Long Song

Over the weekend I was suddenly struck the need to hear Tangled Up In Blue, one of Bob Dylan's finest songs- the words, the playing, the production and the singing, the way he paints so many vivid images of five minutes, the internal rhymes and the lovers crossing paths as the song shifts back and forth in time and across places, Delacroix and Montague Street, New Orleans and the great north woods. The ending, where Dylan returns to find the her, and he sings that all those people he used to know are an illusion to him now, 'some are mathematicians/ some are carpenters' wives', a line that always jumps out- mathematicians and carpenters' wives is so specific and so odd.

Having scratched my Tangled Up In Blue itch I sat down and listened to Blood On The Tracks all the way through. There's an argument thatit's Dylan's best album. It's definitely his best album of the 70s and after shedding fans and critical adoration with a run of albums in the first half of the decade (Self Portrait, New Morning, Dylan and Planet Waves all have their moments but none touch his 60s work or Blood On The Tracks) it can be viewed as a comeback with nine absolute top drawer Dylan songs (and Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts which is fun but for me inessential). 

It's widely seen as an album that describes the breakdown of his marriage to Sarah Lowndes following an affair he had. Jakob Dylan says the album is 'about my parents'. Dylan denies that the album is autobiographical or confessional, saying in Chronicles Vol. 1 that all the songs were inspired by short stories by Chekhov (Anton Chekhov not Star Trek's Mr. Chekhov). I'm not sure Dylan is a completely reliable witness but then again, he's Bob Dylan, who are we to doubt him?

Four songs in to Side One of Blood On The comes the epic seven minutes and forty eight seconds of Idiot Wind. It starts off with a complaint about someone who has it in for him, 'planting stories in the press', and goes on from there, by turns reflective, indignant, vindictive and despairing. Some of it is aimed at a 'sweet lady', some at himself perhaps, the idiot wind that blows 'every time you move your mouth... it's a wonder that you still know how to breathe'. There's biblical imagery, fortune tellers, boxcars and lone soldiers, a chestnut mare and a priest wearing black on the seventh day. The idiot wind blows everyone away and eventually the nation, 'from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol' (and this is the mid- 70s of defeat in Vietnam, Nixon's disgrace and resignation so the idiot wind has blown all the way to the very top).

In the end though it blows on him and on her- 'Idiot wind/ Blowing through the buttons of our coats/ Blowing through the letters that we wrote/ Blowing through the dust upon our shelves/ We're idiots babe/ It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves'.

Idiot Wind

Forty Five Minutes Of Japanese Psyche

For the last two months Ernie of 27 Leggies and myself have been engaging in a long running duel- think Ridley Scott's masterful 1977 film The Duellists where Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine engage in a long running feud during the Napoleonic Wars. 

Mine and Ernie's duel is not due to an imagined slight and a stain on an officer's honour- at least I don't think it is- but is a duel of Japanese psyche bands, a to and fro  between two music blogs, each raising the stakes slightly with a post featuring obscure Japanese rock bands playing psyche, acid, prog, punk, ambient, psychedelic, noise and jazz inflected rock. Ernie went last with a post in May celebrating Kuunatic. Today's Sunday mix is something of a post holder while I consider where to go next, forty five minutes of music made by a variety of Japanese psyche bands featured either here or at 27 Leggies. Three quarters of an hour of Japanese psyche may not be your Sunday morning cup of green tea but in the spirit of adventure and experimentation I offer it up anyway. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Japanese Psyche

• Boredoms: Free (End Of Session Version)
• Kikagaku Moyo: Zo No Senaka
• Bo Ningen: Triangle
• Kuunatic: Desert Empress Pt. 1
• Yura Yura Teikoku: Dekinai (Extended Remix)
• Kikagaku Moyo: Majupose
• Yura Yura Teikoku: Sweet Surrender (Remix)

Boredoms are from Osaka, a noise rock band who formed in 1986 and have a huge, rambling back catalogue. They formed a friendship with Sonic Youth and as a result got exposure in the USA and played 1994's traveling circus Lollapalooza. Free is a cover of a song by Phish,  a rather lovely and chilled ambient track that leads us gently into the mix...

... whereupon Kikagaku Moyo take over- heavy, overloaded psychedelic rock, drums and guitars, wah wah pedals and valve amps pushed to their limits, chanted vocals, sitar, theremin. Kikagaku Moyo formed in 2012 and went on hiatus in 2022, a decade of psyche. Zo No Senaka is a live recording, the band playing a wedding at Hasenheide near Innsbruck and the album recorded and given to the guests and helpers with a further 300 copies made available to fans via the band's website. 

Bo Ningen's Triangle is the fifteen minute closing track from a 2021 re- recording of the band's 2011 debut album, a rebuild. I shaved four minutes off the start here, so that Bo Ningen kick in where Kikagaku Moyo left off. Bo Ningen are a fearsome live band and have found many supporters in the UK and Europe. They've played with Damo Suzuki, Savages and Faust and Bobby Gillespie has sung with them. 

Kuunatic are an all female trio from Tokyo who make 'tribal, dramy, tale music' (their description not mine) with keys, bass and drums and three way vocals. Experimental prog and psyche merged with sci fi and Japanese folk while wearing robes and headdresses. What's not to like?

Yura Yura Teikoku (translation- the wobbling empire) formed in Tokyo in 1989, underground psychedelia but with a commercial edge that led them to New York's DFA who put out a 2007 EP with Dekinai on one side and Sweet Surrender on the other. Terrific James Murphy endorsed electro/ punk funk. 

Mata ne. 

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 What is the reality of the situation?

My Oblique responses were a new song from Mike D and The Aloof from 1994. The Bagging Area Oblique squad came up with some excellent suggestions. ilradz4evuh suggested a slew of Happy Mondays songs, all benefiting from the input of a producer (John Cale, Martin Hannett, Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, and Sunny Levine and Howie B). Al G suggested Liverpool's The Real People (a band I saw twice back in the day, once in their home town and once at G- Mex supporting Pixies). This is the song Al G proposed, from The Real People's 1991 self- titled album...

The Truth

Rol went with Soul II Soul and The Beautiful South. Ernie plumbed for Gil Scott Heron's B Movie. JC came up with The Jam and Crass (a second Oblique Saturday showing for Crass) and Edinburgh's Sons Of The Descent. Over on social media Chris threw African Head Charge and Professor Stretch in. 

The variety of responses and the sheer range of songs thrown up by a short Brian Eno penned cryptic remark is ace. 

This week's Oblique Strategy card says this- Emphasise differences.

In 1973 Iggy Pop had a third roll of the dice with The Stooges, now Iggy and The Stooges. The monstrous groove of the original band had become something more akin to hard rock with the addition of new guitarist James Williamson. The failure of the first two albums, the debut and Funhouse, had seen the band spiral into chaos and addiction. They broke up, Iggy was on smack, Dave Alexander was an alcoholic. Singing as a solo artist with Colombia he moved to London with Williamson to make an album. Once there they failed to find a rhythm section that worked and so they flew former- Stooges the Asheton brothers over, with Ron reluctantly accepting he'd play the bass. With Bowie producing they recorded an album- Raw Power. 

Raw Power is a high octane blast of, well, raw power. From the opening frenzy of Search And Destroy it rattles and shakes, roars and thunders, proto- punk, one of those albums that inspired a thousand others. It ends with Death Trip...

Death Trip (1997 Iggy Pop remix)

'Sick boy sick boy going wrong/ Memory losing grip/ Girl I wanna take you out with me/ Come along on my death trip'

Iggy was on a one way trip at this point, heading towards the exit door. A death trip.

Incidentally, the version above is from Iggy's remixed/ remastered 1997 version, an opinion splitting version. Bowie's original 1973 version was often criticised for being muddy and unclear. Iggy redid it, in an attempt to compete with late 90s rock radio, everything pushed into the red but clarified for radio. Lots of people hated the new version- both Asheton brothers for two, Robert Quine and Don Fleming for two more and David Bowie himself. 

The Iggy mix does emphasise the differences, the distortion is audible but the instruments are separated and punchy. For two generations brought up on Bowie's 1973 mix though the wound up tension and ferocity of the original would always be the one. 

From Death Trip in 1973 to Lust For Life in 1977. 

Lust For Life

In between Iggy had finished off the second version of The Stooges on tour, the band and a bunch of bikers coming to blows while the band played (captured on Metallic K.O.). Iggy's drug issues deepened and he checked himself into a mental institution. Bowie rescued him, took him on the Station To Station tour and the pair then relocated to West Berlin in an attempt to wean themselves off their respective drug addictions (Bowie cocaine, Pop heroin). I guess it made some sense at the time but West Berlin was one of the strangest places in the world in 1977. Going there to get off drugs was a brave decision. It paid off. The made two of the best records of Iggy's and David's careers. Of anyone's careers in fact. The Idiot and Lust For Life (both should really be seen as part of Bowie's Berlin trilogy).

The road from Death Trip to Lust For Life is in itself an exercise in emphasising differences. Bowie and Pop were too, Bowie cerebral and arty, a megastar, a life as a work of art while Pop was a washed up rocker, an exercise in living as hard as you can all the time, primal.

'I'm worth a million in prizes/ I'm through with sleeping on the sidewalk/ No more beat my brains/ With liquor and drugs/ I got a lust For Life'.

Another way of emphasising differences is to look at where a band starts and where they finish. In the seven years between 1976 and 1983 The Clash went from this...

White Riot

...to this...

Death Is A Star

I'm not sure many bands ever traveled as far musically and stylistically as The Clash. Strummer, Jones, Simonon and Headon emphasising the difference, between White Riot and Death Is A Star, between ferocious two chord punk and impressionistic cinematic modern jazz. 

Feel free to drop your own emphasising differences suggestions in the comment box.

Lost Tapes In Dub

B:Dum B:Dum Sound* are a lesser known early 90s Mancunian act, a foursome who made dub infused with shots of post- punk and house. Their lost recordings are slowly but surely making their way onto the internet in various places. Last year a four track EP was released by Ramrock- The Lost Tapes EP is led by There Is No Question, a long slice of dubbed out digitalism with the gnomic vocals and lyrics of singer Gears. Do/ Don't, Only A Ghost and Mercy keep the flame burning with deep bass, hiss, space and echo and serious rhythms- dub you'll want to shuffle around to. The Lost Tapes EP is at Ramrock's Bandcamp. 

More recently in March this year B:Dum B:Dum's epic twelve track album SBG In Dub came out on the group's own Bdum Bdum Sound label. Experimental, spacey, rhythmic dub techno in a hundred shades of dark. Five tracks in a variety of versions from a time when Manchester was a bit burnt out from the long tail of Madchester and the Hacienda. In No State (4 To The Floorsteppa) is serious dub, an instrumental with rocking bass and drums. The Understated Mix is taken further, the vocals suggesting fellow Mancunians A Certain Ratio and a guitar line summoning Bernard Sumner's 80s playing. 

Turn The Silence Down (DubDisco) is dub and post- punk spliced together, basement music with alienated vocals from Gears and the samples/ programming giving the track an On U Sound/ industrial edge. Ancoats before it was gentrified. 

There are three versions of Mind Is A Temple, the Sainted mix pushing the bass to the fore and the hi hat riding the rhythm as whooshes and static echo the sonic palette of Berlin's Rhythm And Sound. Gears vocals appear again, like a voice singing from the radio drifting into the song. There are twelve tracks on SBG In Dub, all of which are worth your time and attention if lost Mancunian dub/ post- punk is the sort of thing you're into. Which of course it should be. Get SBG In Dub at Bandcamp. 

* I'm not sure how we're styling the band's name-  there are various versions including B:Dum B:Dum, bdum, bdum sound and B-Dum B-Dum. It all adds to the mystery and confusion. 

Giant Sized

Giant, the debut album by The Woodentops, came out forty years ago this week. It's a fantastic album, a slice of 1986 that is in some ways a unique sounding record, one that was a little out of step in 1986. It's indie but sounds little like the main indie attraction of 1986 (The Queen Is Dead) and had little in common with the other big indie hitters of that year- The Fall, Billy Bragg, R.E.M., The Housemartins, Husker Du and The Shop Assistants all made the NME's albums of 1986 with Giant pitching in at number 36*.

Rolo McGinty formed The Woodentops in South London in 1983 having spent some time in Liverpool playing bass with The Wild Swans and then joining The Jazz Butcher. The Liverpool connection s present with Frank de Freitas (brother of Bunnymen drummer Pete) playing bass in The Woodentops and them being joined by Simon Mawby, Alice Thompson and Benny Staples on drums. Staples added something different to the band- he played standing up and had a rack of hub caps that added a real bite tot he percussion and rhythms. Rolo strummed his acoustic guitar like he was trying to scrub several layers of it away and the use of acoustic instruments like marimba and accordion made them sound different. The songs were crafted, beautifully sung, hypnotic, upbeat and infectious. On disc they popped out of the speakers. Live they were twice the speed, hyper energetic and Rolo sang like his life depended on it. 

Good Thing

There isn't a bad song on Giant- Get It On, Good Thing and Give It Time are an uptempo and punchy opening trio, the swooning, rattling Love Train follows. Love Affair With Everyday Living sounds like nobody but The Woodentops. Travelling Man, Last Time, Everything Breaks make a strong final three songs. Their energy and speed hen playing live is caught brilliantly on Hypno- Beat, a live album released in 1987 with the band recorded playing at The Palace in Hollywood. It's been noted I think that was the night The Woodentops discovered ecstasy. The performance is most definitely ecstatic. 

The Woodentops found their way into the record box of the legendary Alfredo, a DJ playing records at Amnesia in Ibiza. Alfredo played whatever he liked- rock, soul, disco, early house, reggae, instrumentals, Belgian New Beat, ambient, New Age, anything that suited the mood of the outdoor dance floor and that people could enjoy under the stars. Why Why Why became part of the Balearic Beat, The Woodentops energy and dance rhythms fitting in with Alfredo's vision and spirit.  

Rolo posted on social media on Tuesday marking the fortieth anniversary of Giant's release and saying what a happy time it was for the band, hard work but great fun visiting countries they never imagined they'd play. He recounted being in a club in Kyoto, the Rubba Dub, and having an emotional moment standing looking at the band and road crew having the time of their lives on the dance floor and becoming teary eyed at the sight. 'The Giant tour... peak happiness all round', he wrote.  

Happy 40th birthday Giant. 

The Woodentops story didn't stop with Giant and it goes on still. Last year a revitalised Woodentops released Fruits Of The Deep and this week have put out a remix of one of the songs from the album, the Too Good To Stay (Night Club Mix)- funky, infectious, uplifting, danceable, indie rock.  Get it at Bandcamp.

* The NME's end of 1986 Albums of the Year is here and it's an interesting top ten showing that the NME's writers were of a fairly broad mind in the mid 80s. The indie ghetto they were famed for is not evident in the top 10 or the top 50. Prince topped the '86 chart and the top 10 found places for Mantronix, Run DMC, Paul Simon's Graceland, Cameo, Janet Jackson and Anita Baker as well as Sonic Youth (Evol at 4), The Fall (Bend Sinister at 7) and The Queen Is Dead (number 9). Melody Maker had The Beastie Boys at number 1 along with The Smiths, Prince, Elvis Costello, Throwing Muses, The The, R.E.M. and Big Audio Dynamite, with Giant coming in at number 16. 

River's Song

Richard Norris never stops, a endless flow of music coming from his monthly subscription at Bandcamp via his studio in Lewes. The latest piece of music is River's Song, the first fruits from a forthcoming album. Richard acquired some clips of 8mm film and then asked on social media for people to send him any further pieces of film they might have. The album, titled 8mm, is a musical response to those flickering images, past lives clicking and flickering by, captured by 1960s cine cameras on Kodak film. 

River's Song is a tremendously affecting and evocative piece of music, three minutes of treated piano/ keys very much in the Hauntology arena, the ghosts of people and lost places preserved on an obsolete film format several decades ago. River's Song is a version of lost futures idea of hauntology, as expounded by Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher, captured in three minutes of piano.