Edit Selection

Some recent edit and remix offerings today from a variety of Bagging Area repeat postees and appearances from Lou Reed, Timothy Leary, The Rev. Gary Davis and Jimmy Dean among the voices dredged up from old recordings. 

First up (and not one for the purists I'll wager) is Leo Zero with an edit of Lou Reed's Walk On The Wildside. A free download at Bandcamp, and as Leo says 'made with LOVE/ FOR FUN and for DJ sets'. Probably best to enjoy it for what it is, a dark disco/ late night Balearic version of Lou Reed's 1973 calling card. Lou would either love it or hate it. 

Cardiff's Secret Soul Society continue to ply edits and remixes from deep within the rich tapestry of popular music. Following recent Paul McCartney and Lulu inspired outings the new reggae edit Bukkle Up is a groover, very much one to keep. There's also a new this week, a Balearic disco spliced with dub edit called What About Dub? that sounds like the sort of thing the DJ at the bar in a cosmic/ kitsch sci fi film might be spinning as the hero/ heroine enters the night club. 

Find both at Bandcamp where there's loads more Secret Soul Society edits and remixes to explore. 

Dublin's 100 Poems likes to work in threes- his Balearic trilogy of 2024 has been followed by a trio of albums themed around Americana and the Old West, cowboy songs and country and blues. Last year there was the first of the three, Let The Horse Run Free, and then in late 2025 Rodeo Disco. Mike Wilson now completes the triplet with End Of The Trail, eight edits/ remixes/ versions of songs that take Johnny Cash, Timothy Leary, the Rev. Gary Davis, Bessie Jones, Alan Lomax, Planxty and Jimmy Dean and send them into altered states- cosmic country, Balearic Americana, blues and an undercurrent of dub. 

Three picks from the third of the series. This Record Is Not For You takes a Timothy Leary sample from 1966, Leary's album Turn On, Tune, Drop Out. Leary's advocacy of LSD as a way of life and a marker of a generation gap brought him a certain amount of notoriety. Leary's voice, calming saying that for anyone over the age of forty this record is not for you, is laid over some squelchy acid house and is unexpectedly supplemented by a banjo solo at four minutes, Mike freewheeling with an anything goes, whatever works for the song approach.

Rev. Gary Davis was a blues and gospel singer and player who pioneered a highly influential finger picking guitar style. Mike borrows Gary's song If I had My Way for an epic piece of sundown cosmic blues, Gary's voice echoing down the years from 1967 to 2026. Slow motion dub and FX drenched tune Big John features the voice of Jimmy Dean, American folklore from the days of mining and outpost towns. End Of The Trail can be found at Bandcamp, seven tracks plus an eighth that mixes them into one continuous piece with Elvis, The Clancy Brothers, Lightnin' Hopkins and Ennio Morricone thrown into the casserole pot for good measure. 

Monday's Long Song

Last week Dr Rob at Ban Ban Ton Ton posted a review of a re- issue of a 2003 album by Pharoah Sanders and Bill Laswell, a four track album called With A Heartbeat. It was new to me and I clicked play after reading Rob's words.. The first track, Across Time, began to play and I sat there, entranced for the time it took to play out- seventeen minutes and six seconds. 

The album's core as the tile suggests is the human heartbeat. The resting heart rate pulse beat kicks in, the Pharoah Sanders sax drifts in over the top, a sound that goes all the way back to John Coltrane and the 1950s and Bill Laswell's expansive dub informed sound constructs a world around the two elements, the heart beat and the saxophone. A dub bassline comes in that pushes the track along and there are tabla to add percussive colour. The instruments drop in and out, sometimes leaving just the heartbeat. Sanders sax blows across the top for most of the track's running time, a signature sound riding its own wave, the free form melodic counterpoint to the bass, until at fourteen minutes a sitar picks up the lead. Across Time fades out with the sitar drone and then just the heartbeat. 

A trip through time, part spiritual jazz, part ambient dub, part future music, part meditation. There are three further excursions on the album- Morning Tala, Alankara (Beats Of The Heart) and Gamaka, but at the moment I'm stuck on Across Time. With A Heartbeat is at Bandcamp, out on vinyl for the first time. 

Half An Hour Of Lost Baggy

In 2015 Jon Savage put together a compilation called Perfect Motion- A Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia 1988- 1993. Jon pulled together the threads of guitar bands, rave outfits and pop groups who were creating a new wave of psychedelia, not a definitive survey but a snapshot. It very much chimed with my record collection with several Andrew Weatherall tracks, a backwards Stone Roses B-side, songs by The High and Shack, Dee Lite, Electronic, 808 State and Saint Etienne plus Joi, DHS, Northside and a bonkers Pet Shop Boys B-side.

In 2023 the label that released Perfect Motion, Caroline True Records, released a cassette only follow up, limited to just 100 copies, called Never Change- Baggy The Lost Tracks 1988- 1993. I never liked baggy as a descriptor but it's one that's was widely used at the time and has stuck. 

The cassette had an hour of music over two sides of a C60, sixteen songs sequenced together by John K with some extras spliced and mixed in (Loaded's famous sample from The Wild Angles opens up Side A). Some of them are fairly well known- World Of Twist, Stereo MCs and A Guy Called Gerald are all on Side A while Primal Scream and The Stone Roses are on Side B but there are also some very less well known artists and songs on the tape so Lost Tracks is a pretty accurate description. This is an uptempo stew of indie guitars, funky backbeats, a Rolling Stones cover, sampling, Hare Krishna chanting, acid house, Mancunian rap and Bruce Hornsby. 

Never Change Side A

• Sinister Groove: Perfect Person
• World Of Twist: She's A Rainbow
• The Apples: Eye Wonder
• Stereo MCs: What Is Soul?
• MC Buzz B: Never Change
• Joi Bangla Sound: Taj Ma House
• Baby Ford: I Love It
• A Guy Called Gerald: Hot Lemonade
• Sunsonic: Driveaway

Sinister Groove released a four track EP in 1991 on 12" vinyl. One of those very much lesser known EPs from the time. The band were previously known as Bounce The Mouse but sensibly changed the name (not that it made them any better known). Perfect Person is the second song on the EP, a perfectly pitched piece of 1991 guitar pop, funky drummer drums, chiming guitars and a northern sounding vocal. As far as I know they released nothing else. 

World Of Twist were an amazing band who released one album, Quality Street, that wrapped up indie, guitars, Northern Soul, northern psychedelia and a love of kitsch in one package. Their cover of The Stones She's A Rainbow was released, re- released, remixed and promoted in search of a hit. They split a few years later having promised much. 

The Apples were an indie dance band from Edinburgh who released Eye Wonder in 1991. Other than that, I know nothing. 

Stereo MCs would make it big supporting/ blowing the Happy Mondays off stage every night in 1992 and then crossing over with Connected. Before that they had two albums, Supernatural in 1990 and 33- 45- 78 in 1989 from which What Is Soul? is from. In 1989 they constructed their tracks from scratch, sampling records onto tape, pressing pause, winding the record back and letting it go again. Painstaking. Sample spotting fun- Eno and Byrne, Ben E. King, Van McCoy...

MC Buzz B (Shorn Braithwaite) was a rapper from Hulme, from a time when UK hip hop was very undeveloped. Never Change makes liberal use of Bruce Hornsby's That's The Way It Is and showcases Buzz B's positivity and inventiveness. Never Change is from the album Words Escape Me. 

Joi Bangla Sound were a DJ/ production duo, Farook and Haroon Shamsher, from Bradford. They took the sounds from their Bangladeshi upbringing and mashed them together with late 80s street sounds- house, sampling, rap- and released Taj Ma House as a white label in 1988. Desert Storm was NME single of the week in 1992 when that accolade meant something and they performed at WOMAD and signed to Peter Gabriel's label. They became festival regulars and played thousands of gigs in the 90s. Haroon died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1999 and Farook has since continued alone. 

Baby Ford is a UK acid house original, releasing singles including Oochy Koochy, Children Of The Revolution and Beach Bump. I Love It is from 1989 on the label of the day Rhythm King and the album Ford Trax. 

A Guy Called Gerald. You know who Gerald is. Co- writer of 808 State's Pacific State. Voodoo Ray. Emotions Electric. Some of the best and most important UK house singles of all time. Hot Lemonade was recorded in Manchester in 1989 and missed out on the kudos it deserved in that year's run of records that captured people's attention. 

Sunsonic were previously indie band The Flowerpot Men who left guitars for electronics in 1989 and made three singles and an album in 1990/ 1991. Driveaway was the third/ last. Their first single Kind Of Loving (1990) has a B- side called Innocent Man which is a lost ambient classic (but that's a different tape/ mix/ album entirely). 

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 Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics. 

I converted this suggestion into The Ramones in 1976 and roped in Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie too. Out in the internerland/ real world the Bagging Area community came up with Smokebelch by Sabres Of Paradise (Rickyotter), Buzzcocks (Boredom courtesy of C), Jah Shaka (Ernie), The Cocteau Twins (Spencer), 808 State's Pacific (Al G), Tool (Mrs G), Camper van Beethoven, (Rol), Buzzocks (again, Oh Shit, The Swede) and Mont Kimbie (Chris ZenArcade). And there's nothing wrong about any of those choices, they make a fine Saturday morning mixtape in their own right. 

Boredom

The Swede works in a supermarket in Beccles, Suffolk, the home of Brian Eno (and formerly the town my maternal grandparents retired to). I'm encouraging The Swede to have a brief word with Mr Eno the next time he sees him down the bread aisle or by the deli counter and see if he'd like to drop in and contribute to the fun. If you're reading Brian, welcome. 

This week's Oblique Saturday card is this- Always First Steps.

Snapped Ankles took 3 steps to a development in 2019. Post punk/ psychedelic electronic band vibe, (unhinged in a good way), weird hyperactive 80s crossed with scuzzy Fall influences. 

3 Steps To A Development

The Flaming Stars took 39 steps on their Named And Shamed album in 2004. A Bad Seeds and Gallon Drunk kind of band. You'll like them. 

The 39 Steps

In 1990 Bocca Juniors, the Boy's Own inhouse band of Andrew WEatherall, Terry Farley, Pete Heller and Cymon Eccles, took 63 Steps to heaven. Anna Haigh on vocals singing Weatherall's Aleister Crowley inspired lyrics. A screech of tyres, a massive piano riff calling Thrashing Doves to mind, crunchy drums- a  roof raising record. 'Boy am I gonna wake you up!'

Raise (63 Steps To Heaven)

One shouldn't live in the past but within seconds of Raise playing my initial thought is almost always, 'oh man, take me back...'

In 19943 The Boo Radleys took Giant Steps on their album of that name, a record inspired by John Coltrane's Giant Steps (an album I own on vinyl but don't have digitally). The Do Badleys finally broke their reputation as the band Creation Records couldn't sell with a genre busting, spirit of Screamadelica record. On Lazarus a shoegaze band from Wallasey go dub reggae/ experimental that then becomes trumpet led MBV inspired pop. This is the first time Boo Radleys have appeared at Bagging Area. 

Lazarus

Feel free to drop your own responses to Always first steps into the comment box.

14 Rodney Street

14 Rodney Street, Liverpool. Unlike the childhood homes of The Beatles there is no blue plaque on the outside of the first floor flat and it hasn't been preserved and restored by the National Trust either. In 1978 Paul Simpson moved into the first floor flat, paying a grand total of £7.50 per month in rent. It was in this flat that the early and unnamed band Julian Cope had formed with Simpson, Dave Pickett and Mick Finkler were discussing names. Paul picked up a copy of Daredevil that was lying around, recently found in the basement flat recently vacated by an actor, Ozzie Yue. Paul found a frame with Daredevil and Spiderman facing Submariner in a showdown and the caption, 'the Teardrop Explodes!'

The rest of the band were unconvinced but Cope jumped on it, claiming it to be 'psychedelic brilliance!'. 

Paul's flat was according to Cope 'a hangout and port of call for both the cool people and the crazies'. Paul would be a member of The Teardrop Explodes in their early days and left to front his own group, The Wild Swans. The Wild Swans single Revolutionary Spirit came out on Bill Drummond's legendary Zoo Label, and was Drummond's favourite single on the label. The recording of the song was paid for and produced by Bunnymen drummer Pete de Freitas who accidentally recorded it in mono. Revolutionary Spirit is one of the wonders of its time, a shimmering and drama laden song with lines about the Delta of Venus, Saint Sebastian and the quiet places where angels fear. 

Revolutionary Spirit

The flat at 14 Rodney Street was shared by Paul with his school friend Will Sergeant who like Paul was member of the Eric's scene, Liverpool's punk circle and guitarist in nascent Echo And The Bunnymen. Paul and Will had an on/ off band called Industrial/ Domestic. 

Read It In Books (Peel Session)

In his memoir Echoes Will recalls that despite their love of psychedelia the band rarely dabbled with anything stronger than brown ale.  Paul's autobiography, also called Revolutionary Spirit, describes an occasion where Paul and Will accidentally imbibe 'heroic quantities' of magic mushrooms in the first floor flat at 14 Rodney Street, a trip that had Will pinned in his chair, the wallpaper moving around in front him. The Liverpool police force somehow became convinced that Paul's flat was the epicentre of Liverpool's drug trade and raided it, finding nothing illegal but destroying Paul's carefully put together montage of photos cut out from magazines.

Courtney Love turned up at one point having been told by Julian Cope that she could stay with Paul and Will. Paul shared a flat with her elsewhere in the city later, Courtney's own brand of chaos witnessed up close and first hand. Will moved out to a top floor flat at 19 Aigburth Drive near Sefton Park, with Les Pattison and Pete, a flat that became Bunny HQ. It does not have a blue plaque either to the best of my knowledge. 

I'll Search The World Over

In 1999 Heavenly released the third in a series of DJ mix CDs Heavenly Presents Live At The Social, a double CD package with an Andrew Weatherall mix on disc 1 and Richard Fearless on disc 2. The previous two had been block rocking excursions, big beat and breakbeats courtesy of The Chemical Brothers on Volume 1 and a genre busting blur of reggae, hip hop and electronics by Jon Carter on Volume 2. 

Weatherall and Fearless offered up something a bit different. Now, be prepared for a shock but I'm about to commit a heresy. I've always preferred the Richard Fearless mix over the Andrew Weatherall one. Andrew's is very good, technically brilliant and seamlessly mixed, an eighty minute deep house set with some undeniably great tunes- Marshall Jefferson and Noosa Heads' Mushrooms (Salt City Orchestra Out There remix) for one and Ashley Beedle's remix of Ryuichi Sakamoto's Salvation for another- but for me it doesn't ever really catch fire in the way his 90s techno sets did or the scuzzy electro of the early 00s that come either side of it and the deep house he plays isn't as deep and dubby as the stuff he was playing at his Blood Sugar nights. There, I said it. 

Richard Fearless delivers though- a superb late 90s record box dive into electro and techno that totally captures the excitement of being in a small room with a great DJ playing records. He plays an Andrew remix (the Two Lone Swordsmen remix of Primal Scream's Stuka) and some classic 90s techno tracks- Ron Trent, E- Dancer, Slam, Model 500. Fearless opens his set with this....

Eurotrash Girl

Chicks On Speed were a trio, three women from New York, Munich and Australia converging in 90s Berlin, a feminist art/ punk/ electro/ techno group who as much as anyone became known under the banner electroclash. Synth pop plus techno with a dash of post- modern punk. Their cover of Cracker's Eurotrash Girl was their second single, a fantastic slice of tongue in cheek, end of the century art/ pop. They have said that techno producers would always turn the vocals down so on Eurotrash Girl they placed the vocals front and centre- they also saw themselves to some extent as the Eurotrash Girls of the title. 'Well I've been up to Paris/ And I've slept in a park' the Chicks intone, 'I'll search the world over/ For my angel in black', over throbbing, minimal electronics.

And in the middle of his set, track eleven, Fearless mixes this track by Miami's Jackal & Hyde out of Model 500 and then a few minutes later into Slam, energising robotic techno funk...

Get Down To My Technique

XTRMNTR LVE

The last time I saw Primal Scream play live I didn't have a very good time and I wasn't really in a rush to go back for more. The band have been touring XTRMNTR recently, an album released in January 2000 and one that is the flipside of Screamadelica, an inversion of the 1991 album's blissed out celebration and fusion of acid house and rock 'n' roll. XTRMNTR was made at a time when the band were at the peak of their powers as a live act, having been joined by Mani on bass, Kevin Shields on guitar and pedals, with contributions from The Chemical Brothers and Bernard Sumner and various producers at the control desk- Brendan Lynch, David Holmes, Jagz Kooner, Hugo Nicolson and Dan The Automator. 

Although XTRMNTR came out prior to the geopolitical messes of the 00s it seems to prefigure them, a squally, noisy, ragged, fucked up but highly focused album. It's one that I played a lot back in 2000 and showed the band as forward thinking and open minded again after their detour into Stonesy rock 'n' roll in the mid- 90s, embracing the futurism of noisy guitar rock cut and shut with hip hop and electronic/ industrial. They'd got back on track with 1997's Vanishing Point and then came XTRMNTR. They pitched up in Manchester last weekend for two nights at New Century Hall, a venue at which I've not seen a bad gig to date. 

I wasn't aware that they were being supported by Escape- Ism and was disappointed to arrive at NCH to see Escape- Ism t- shirts on the merch stand and Ian Svenonius talking to fans by the merch desk. Their album last year, Charge Of The Love Brigade, was one of my favourites so it was galling to miss an opportunity to see them play songs from it. Always check who the support are is my takeaway from this error. I also missed the opportunity to say hello to Svenonius as he disappeared again just before the lights went down. 

Primal Scream arrived on stage and played XTRMNTR in full, in order. The only two surviving members from the late 80s are Bobby and Andrew Innes but they have benefited from the recruitment to the ranks of Sabres Of Paradise guitarist Phil Mossman on bass. All in black and wearing a hat he brings not just some style to the frontline but some punch and power to the bass playing. Kicking in with the mutant electro noise funk of Kill All Hippies, the Linda Manz Out Of The Blue sample loud and clear, they show they mean business, all rough edges and distortion and sneery fury. Accelerator is The Stooges compressed and overloaded through an FX pedal and Exterminator sounds huge, gnarly and messy. 

Swastika Eyes is played twice (as on the album), once in the Jagz Kooner guitar version, Phil's bass and the twin guitarists creating a racket and again later in The Chemical Brothers version- the second one is possibly the highlight of the night, lights flashing, films and images projected behind them, the turbo Chemicals synths crossed with guitars punching though and Darren Mooney's drumming. It's not subtle. It's not supposed to be. 'End genocide/ End apartheid/ Free Palestine' is left n the screen behind them as the song dies away. 

Swastika Eyes (Remix)

Bobby leaves the stage for the XTRMNTR instrumentals, the seedy, downbeat, cop show jazz of Blood Money and the MBV Arkestra version of If They Move, Kill 'Em. Both are brilliant, the band clearly buzzing off the songs and each other. A broken, ragged Keep Your Dreams also hits deep, Bobby crooning the end line 'I'm going down to the underground/ As deep as I can go'. The XTRMNTR set finishes with Shoot Speed Kill Light, an epic noisy finale, the guitarist in front of us and Phil coaxing the distorted krautrock out of their instruments. 

The second half is a mix of hits and deeper cuts. Vanishing Point is dedicated to Mani, the first song he played on with the Scream, and they do their cover of I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time, 60s garage rock originally by The Third Bardot that came out as a Scream B-side back in 2000. 

I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time

They do I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have, a genuine surprise- I don't think I've seen them play it live for a very long time. The first time I saw Primal Scream was in July 1989 at Planet X in Liverpool, a tiny basement club and they played it that night, Bobby kneeling on the floor, long hair covering his face, howling into the mic. I wouldn't have guessed seeing them at Planet X that night that I'd be seeing them play live 37 years later, playing one of the same songs. I'm Losing more..., as Bobby points out, is important to them. It became Loaded, which they play next. 

They encore with the big hits, crowd pleasing singalongs of Movin' On Up, Rocks and Country Girl, Bobby doing the full on audience participation frontman thing, taking it down and building it up. All good rock 'n' roll fun but for me the real deal was the first half of the night, the scabrous early 21st century, wired and switched on electronic- punk/ noise rock they conjured up in the Bunker on XTRMNTR. 

Blood Money