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. 

The Green Lady

Once prints like Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl (or The Green Lady) were cheap, mass market art. Now, the popularity of vintage, Mid- Century Modern and kitsch mean that original copies from the 1950s and 60s in good condition are priced into three figures. Vladimir Tretchikoff painted it in 1952 and then a new version a year later. The original sold for just under £1 million at auction in 2013. The copy I photographed above was in Pear Mill in Stockport and if I'd had a spare £100 I might have bought it. 

In 1989 Mick Jones paid tribute to the painting, a copy of which hung on his Nan's wall in her flat- the flat with the balcony from which thirteen years earlier Joe Strummer wrote London's Burning. The Green Lady is on Megatop Phoenix, the last album by the original line up of Big Audio Dynamite.  

The Green Lady

'Dry your eyes Salome/ Mona Lisa too/ Lady in the picture frame/ My heart belongs to you'. 

Mick also sings the line, 'Window to the Orient... Nobody knows your name', but it seems we do now know who the Green Lady was- the model was Monika Sing- Lee, also known as Pon-Su-San, introduced to Tretchikoff by a Russian dancer Masha Arsenyeva. Pon-Su-San died in 2017 and presumably made nothing financially from being the face on a hundred thousand living room walls. 

This photo of The Clash in Mick's Nan's flat was taken by Pennie Smith and printed in the Before And After book. It's one of my favourite photos of the band- the contrast between their 1979 rock 'n' roll finery and glowering looks and Mick's Nan's wallpaper and belongings is perfect. 

Your Shadow At Morning

They say good things come in threes and Tuesday into Wednesday this week added some fuel to that fire. On Tuesday night, after suggesting in yesterday's blogpost about The Fall, that a Manchester United win was unlikely verging on impossible, the dysfunctional crisis club from Old Trafford went and turned a nil- 2 half time scoreline into a 3-2 win against Roma. United hadn't won since early September. This caused me some pleasure which may all come crashing down when we play Aston Villa on Sunday but at the moment we've got to get our kicks were we find them. 

I realise that United winning isn't necessarily seen as a good thing by everyone but there were internet comments below the line in several places from fans of other clubs including Liverpool and Arsenal fans saying they were glad for Michael Carrick to finally get a win and agreeing with us that United's ownership model and executive management (racist Jim Ratcliffe et al) are bad news all round. 

Secondly, waking up to the news on Wednesday morning that Trump and MAGA have taken a massive hit in the U.S. midterm elections put a further spring in my step all day. Americans turned out in droves to reject Trump and his policies- the war against Iran, ICE, inflation, tariffs, the cost of living and a certain tone deafness about his projects have all been cited as motivating factors for disillusion and disgust. 'Pretend it's me on the ballot', he kept telling the MAGA faithful crowds at rallies. Looks like they did just that Donald. It's easy to say that incumbent presidents often get a kicking midterm. They do. But this was a kicking on a generational scale, a once every 20 or 30 years reversal. It turns out having a fantastic reflecting pool and plans for a gold plated ballroom and processional arch don't actually count for much with ordinary voters who are struggling to pay their weekly bills. The beginning of the end of Trump hopefully. 

Thirdly, in the middle of the day while on my lunch break I saw a link to a new remix of Durutti Column by Four Tet. A dream pairing for me. One of my favourite modern/ recent artists remixing one of my lifetime favourite artists (in a year when a new Durutti Column album was a most unexpected thing). Kieran Hebden takes Your Shadow At Morning from Renascent and adds some typically Four Tet sounds and moments to it, stretching it out over nine minutes, adding a springy Four Tet kick drum and highlighting Vini's guitar and voice. Your Shadow At Morning (Four Tet Rework) is out now to stream, and hopefully to buy, even more hopefully to buy physically, at some point in the future. What a treat. 

Random Fall Song Wednesday Two

Last Wednesday I posted a random song by The Fall. SWC from the wonderful No Badger Required blog said he wanted to join in and his random Fall song is here today. 

Did my random Fall selection this morning.  127 tracks....and the shuffle button selected.....

 

Jawbone and the Air-Rifle (Peel Session)

A song from Hex Enduction Hour, 1982. 

A gloriously lopsided, driving Fall track with one of those line-ups firing on all cylinders. Not a single, not one of the obvious gateway songs, just a fantastic slab of early-80s Fall weirdness with Mark E. Smith barking his way through the chaos.

 

And, in true Fall fashion, I hated it after thirty seconds, but loved it six months later....

Thanks SWC. Just to up the randomness I've posted the Peel Session version. 

If anyone else wants to see their own random Fall song in a future Wednesday slot, please let me know. I'll leave the selection method up to you. All you have to do is select a song by The Fall at random and send it to me and I'll post it here ith any words you'd like to accompany it. JC at The Vinyl Villain has also signed up to play Random Fall Song Wednesday. 

What are the chances of any of us randomly selecting the same Fall songs? 

Slim but not nil. About the same as United winning a game of football I reckon. Mark E Smith would be delighted with Manchester United's current travails. Despite growing up in red leaning Salford, he supported City, 'just to be contrary' and just because his dad was a United fan. 

Mark would probably be reveling in the cheating too.