I Lose My Sense Of Gravity

Patti Smith's historical importance probably can't be overstated. From the release of Horses in 1975 she provided the spark for several generations of New York and US punk/ post- punk and indie musicians and her entire being is an act of willpower- inspired by transformative powers of rock 'n' roll she decided to become an androgynous poet/ punk and that's exactly what she did. The Patti Smith Group played every venue New York had to offer in the mid- to- late 1970s, from CBGBs upwards while recording four albums- Horses, Radio Ethiopia, Easter and Wave. The last one of those four, 1979's Wave, had this as a single...

Dancing Barefoot

Less a song, more an incantation (as someone at YouTube rather succinctly puts it). Dancing Barefoot has become one of her best loved and most covered songs. It doesn't sound specifically 1979 either, it could just as easily have been recorded in 1995 or 2001- a two chord acoustic guitar riff, an electric on top, folk rock/ indie punk and Patti giving her all lyrically, a song (according to the sleeve notes) dedicated to women such as Amedeo Modigliani's mistress Jeanne Hebuterne. Love as addiction (heroin and heroine used deliberately in the lyric), love as sublimation, love as intoxication. 

After the release of Dancing Barefoot as a single Patti withdrew and semi- retired, the band fell apart and she spent most of the next decade at home with husband Fred 'Sonic' Smith, raising their two children Jesse and Jackson. 

Asha Bhosle

Legendary Indian singer Asha Bhosle died a few days ago aged 92. Her singing career,alongside acting and television presenting work, spanned eight decades and apparently she is the most recorded artist in history. She may be best known to British indie audiences from the title and lyrics of their 1997 single Brimful Of Asha.

Brimful Of Asha

What a great song- The Velvet Underground via Indian TV and film, the beauty of the 7" single as an art form, Asha's sister Lata Mangeshkar (also a singer of renown), Ferguson Mono, Jacques Dutronc, the Bolan boogie, Trojan Records... a lyrical stream of consciousness that makes perfect sense even if you don't get all the references. The single stalled on release but a Norman Cook remix smashed its way to the top of the charts and it sold millions. Asha herself said that the song was significant, the moment that two worlds, British indie rock and Bollywood, collided.

Asha Bhosle sang on this song, O Je Suis Seul,too by West India Company. West India Company were Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe (from Blancmange), Asha and tabla player Pandit Dinesh (when West India Company started in 1984 Vince Clarke was involved too but Erasure became a much bigger day job). 

In 1989 West India Company rubbed shoulders with Dr Alex Paterson of The Orb and his Battersea neighbour Andrew Weatherall (then at the start of his remix career) and the pair did two remixes of O Je Suis Seul, another Asha Bhosle cultural collision, this time, acid house/ ambient house and Bollywood spliced. Weatherall drops in the 'Yep, I know that feeling' sample, Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas, one he'd use again on Screamadelica a year later. Thrash, then of The Orb, engineered both remixes, the Bhagwan Boogie is Andrew and the Orient Express Mix is Andrew and Alex. 

O Je Suis Seul (Bhagwan Boogie)

O Je Suis Seul (Orient Express Mix)

Both are totally of their time, have a wonderful 1989 innocence about them and are completely fantastic, the Bhagwan Boogie especially. 

Asha also sang on Bow Down Mister, Boy George's late 80s/ early 90s acid house/ Hare Krishna outfit Jesus Loves You. George wrote the song on a trip to India- Asha said several times it was the song she was most pleased to have contributed to. Her vocal in the second half elevates the song. 

Bow Down Mister (A Small Portion 2 B Polite Mix)

Asha Bhosle also appears on this 2021 track by Bicep, a duo from Belfast. Asha's vocal is a strong presence in the track, set back from the tumbling and thumping drums and the skipping synths, the track on the verge of falling apart. The album Isles was released in early 2021, a point where any communal activities- dancing, clubbing, going to gigs, even meeting indoors- were out of the question. Asha's vocal seems to fully capture that in a way, partway between euphoria and melancholia. 

Sundial

Lastly, and I was completely unaware of this song until this week, is this- in 2002 Asha sang a duet with Michael Stipe, a song that appeared on an album by 1 Giant Leap (Faithless' Jamie Cato). The Way You Dream is pretty stunning- eight minutes long, building gradually with tabla and samples, Asha's divine voice, strings, Michael joining in just after two minutes, singing along with and around the vocal the 1 Giaat Leap pair had already recorded with Asha. 

Asha's funeral took place two days ago, huge crowds coming out to pay tribute to her as she made her way to be cremated where she was sent off with a gun salute. 

RIP Asha Bhosle. 

Transcendental Radiation

Manchester label Sprechen released an EP by Todmorden cosmische band Lines Of Silence last month with an album and another EP lined up to follow shortly. 

The Radiate EP begins its orbit with Transcendental Radiation- warm bass, squelchy synth sounds and a ticking rhythm, a spaced out joy that should be the soundtrack to what the four astronauts saw from the windows of Artemis II last week, the earthrise coming into view as the spacecraft clears its journey round the back of the moon, dissolving into dub FX before heading for splashdown. 

There is a further version, the Kayla Painter Remix, an ambient remix by Bristolian artist Kayla, that softens the sound even further and bathes it in a golden, liquid glow. Third track Walrus (Amaury Cambuzat's It's A Rainy Mix) is a stompy, flipped out techno track remixed by Ulan Bator/ Faust member Amaury, a darker, more subterranean take on the Lines Of Silence sound. 

The EP is at Bandcamp and Transcendental Radiation will be part of the forthcoming Lines In Opposition! album. There's another EP, Harmonise, due too which comes with a Psychederek remix. We'll return to both at some point in the near future and in May they're supporting The Utopia Strong in Manchester. 

月曜日の長い歌

Getsuyōbi no nagai uta. Monday Long Song. 

Apologies to any Japanese readers who find any errors in the translation of the title of today's Monday Long Song post- I relied on a popular internet translation service. 

A couple of weeks ago Ernie posted some Japanese psyche at 27 Leggies, by the band Nagasa Ni Te. I responded a few days later with some Japanese psyche by Yura Yura Teikoku. Last week Ernie raised me with a London based Japanese psyche band who go by the name of Barbican Estate- you can read about them here. I suspect this is a game of musical tag that we won't be able to keep going for very long but I'm going in again...

Bo Ningen are a London based  Japanese psyche rock four piece who make a fearsome racket. I saw them play at Manchester's Albert Hall in 2016 supporting Savages, quite an intense pairing. Bo Ningen were hugely impressive, four androgynous figures swinging their guitars around, the bassist/ singer Taigen Kawabe finishing the gig by turning his bass around and playing it with the headstock in his armpit and the body pointing out away from him and towards the audience. 

In 2021 they re- released their debut album on double vinyl but decided to rebuild it, taking the master tapes and completely remixing it. It ends with Triangle, a sixteen minute psyche epic that starts out gentle and then builds, becoming a ferocious noise. 

Triangle

The rest of Rebuilt is at Bandcamp along with several more Bo Ningen albums. 2024's live score for The Holy Mountain is an experience that should be enjoyed at least once. 

The Flightpath Estate At The Social

• 

This was last Saturday night at The Social where Acid House Chancers hosted a tribute to Andrew Weatherall on what would have been his 63rd birthday with a line up spread across the venue's two floors. 

The Flightpath Estate had been asked to play a few months ago and the prospect of playing The Social was pretty exciting. The Social is on Little Portland Street, just north of Oxford Street and a stone's throw from Soho. Dan and Martin couldn't make it and Mark was also playing as Rude Audio, so me and Baz travelled south to represent on the decks. We were on downstairs, a club space with a dancefloor, DJ booth and bar area. When I arrived there were already a good number of people downstairs, Stuart D. Alexander at the decks and Jenny Leamon taking over from 5.15 pm. Jenny had a crowd up and dancing before 6 pm, something that caused me some pre- gig nerves with visions of clearing the floor, playing the wrong tunes and various technical mistakes all running through my mind. 

I shouldn't have worried. I got the obligatory minor technical fuck up out of the way early on and then we were off and in a groove. As the room filled up the energy levels kept rising, more people arrived to dance with some familiar faces from gigs at The Golden Lion, and it was a total blast- one of those times when you're completely caught in the moment and wish you could revisit, soak up and enjoy. It just flew by. 

                                             

This was the scene looking out from the booth- red lights, dry ice, a blur of dancers... the most mayhem we've ever caused on a dancefloor. Alex Knight, formerly of Sabresonic and Fat Cat records and the Sabres Of Paradise tour DJ, took over from us, playing a seamless set with some Weatherall and Sabres inspired mid- 90s techno. 

Our set wasn't recorded but I've recreated it since and it's available to download below or you can find it at The Flightpath Estate's Mixcloud is you prefer to stream. What a night we had. 

The Flightpath Estate At The Social

• The Light Brigade: Shuffle The Deck
• SOP: Ysaebud (From The Vaults)
• Bim Sherman: World Dub
• The Clash: Ghetto Defendant
• Coyote ft Daniel Gidlund: Butterflies
• Paul Weller: Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)
• New Order: Your Silent Face
• Doves: Kingdom Of Rust (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
• Mark Lanegan: Ode To Sad Disco
• Le Carousel: We're All Gonna Hurt
• Unloved: Turn Of The Screw
• Fontaines DC: A Hero's Death (Soulwax Remix)
• Bedford Falls Players: Fool's Gold- en
• The Pogues: A Rainy Night In Soho

The Light Brigade is David Holmes and guests/ collaborators. On Shuffle The Deck it's former Swordsman Keith Tenniswood and a floor shaking, civil rights leader sampling tune, opening with a rousing speech- 'It's time for a new course, a new coalition, a new leadership... somebody gotta rise above race, rise about sex... Don't cry 'bout what you don't have, use what ya got... Our time has come!', and after several minutes of bass- led oompty boompty finishing with Andrew's musings on acid house as gnostic ceremony, music, coloured lights and smoke.

SOP was Sabres Of Paradise, a one off, one sided 7" single from 1996 with a righteous vocal sample from Count Ossie and Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari- 'Ever since I was a youth/ I've always been searching for the truth'. 

Bim Sherman and Adrian Sherwood's Ghetto Dub album came out in 1988 and due to all kinds of legal complications over the late Bim Sherman's back catalogue has remained out of print. A German label have unlocked some of the problems and re- pressing of Ghetto Dub is out shortly on Week- End Records. 

Ghetto Defendant is from Combat Rock, The Clash and Allen Ginsburg rocking out in dub reggae style, Strummer lamenting the drug addiction and heroin pity that prevents civil resistance'. Paul Simonon's bassline and Topper's drum keep the song grounded in reggae/ dub groove. A late Clash classic. 

Coyote's Butterflies is a moment of Balearic calm, from a forthcoming 12" with vocals by Daniel Gidlund. Last Saturday night it slowed things down a little and gave the dancers a breather.  

Playing at The Social was a big deal. In the 90s I'd read about the first Heavenly Social nights at The Albany pub, accounts in the music press of exhilarating music and wanton debauchery, Weatherall, The Chemical Brothers, Tim Burgess, the Heavenly and Creation crews, a cast of thousands. One of those accounts was of people flipping out to Andrew playing Brendan Lynch's version of Paul Weller's Kosmos, a dub/ trip hop/ jazz noise fest that scrambled minds as it squawked and ricocheted on a Sunday evening. I'd been to The Social on Little Portland Street before but only as a punter so to actually take to the decks was a big moment. Playing Kosmos was a nod to all of that. 

New Order's Your Silent Face is one of the great New Order songs and therefore one of the great songs. It provoked a few moments of emotion on Saturday night, Hooky's bass, those one finger keyboard notes and everyone waiting for Bernard's kiss off last line 'So why don't you piss off'. It was released in 1983 on Power, Corruption And Lies and is one of those New Order songs that really should have been a single, had New Order in the 80s operated along the lines other less obtuse bands at more conventional record companies did. 

Doves' Kingdom Of Rust remixed by Scandi- disco legend Prins Thomas is one of those tunes that always gets people asking what it is (or Shazaming it on their phones). A hypnotic, locked in groove, bass and drums circling, guitars picking out little melody lines and then sweeping strings joining in with Jimi's vocals- glorious Mancunian melancholy. 

Mark Lanegan's Ode To Sad Disco is a New Order- esque song from man usually more associated with grunge and gnarly blues rock. The synths and guitars are heavenly and Mark's imagery is memorable- subterranean eyes, the factory line, a mountain of nails, a white horse that drowned on parade, an Arcadian twist and a hollow headed morning all stand out. The 'mountain of nails' mentioned in the second verse links rather nicely to the 'kingdom of rust' and 'ocean of trust' in the Doves song too I've just noticed. 

Le Carousel's The Humans Will Destroy Us is already one of 2026's best and most prescient albums and We're All Gonna Hurt is its emotional centre and heartbeat, a Giorgio Morodor via Belfast acid house banger, dance music that is up and happy but sad and broken. 'Sooner or later/ We're all gonna hurt'.

Unloved's Turn Of The Screw came out on 2022's The Pink Album, David Holmes' beat group joined by Raven Violet for a 1960s in the 2020s song with a philosophy and attitude to admire. 

A Hero's Death was from Fontaines DC's second album and was remixed by Soulwax in 2021, the clanging guitars replaced by stripped back Balearic dance- cowbell and bass- with Grian Chatten's Dublin street poetry riding on top. 

Fools Gold- en is by Berkshire's Bedford Falls Players, a crowd pleasing mashing together of The Stone Roses and Rockers Revenge that hits all the spots and really gathers pace in its last few minutes, the bass and drums tumbling and thumping, a looped Reni and Mani doubling and powering on. 

Finishing our set with A Rainy Night In Soho, just a few hundred yards north of Soho, felt right. A Rainy Night In Soho is from the 1986 Poguetry In Motion EP, one of Shane MacGowan's most loved songs that ends with one of his best verses- 'Now the song is nearly over/ We may never find out what it means/ Still there's a light I hold before me/ You're the measure of my dreams/ The measure of my dreams'. 

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 Do nothing for as long as possible.

My responses were the Specials, The Stone Roses (who I've just realised also did nothing for as long as possible by releasing nothing between One Love in June 1990 and Love Spreads in November 1994), Underworld and Sandals with Leftfield. Brian and Peter's Oblique Strategy proved to rich pickings from the Bagging Area readership with a bumper comments box of responses- Brian (not Eno) suggested Black Flag, Swc came up with Notts post- punkers Do Nothing, Ernie suggested Elton John's Song For Guy, Khayem had multiple songs (John Cage, Orbital, Richard Norris' long running Music For Healing, and Love Is All), Anonymous proposed Andrew Ridgeley and Wham!, Rol went with Simon Armitage's Scaremongers, Beerfueledlad gave us Spacemen 3, C turned off her mind, relaxed and floated downstream with The Beatles, Dan went for Fugazi, Jase suggested The Beach Boys and Chris went for Stasis by Force Of Angels. 

This week's card is this- Use 'unqualified' people.

I didn't have much of an immediate response to this Oblique Strategy, I had to let it percolate for a while. If by unqualified it refers to musical training and qualifications, I'd guess that the majority of people who make the music I listen to are unqualified, at least in terms of formal musical training. Many musicians are self- taught, many of the vocalists who stand up in front of a microphone are several years down the line before they get any vocal training or singing lessons. I'd guess that there's a decent number of people I listen to who have some educational qualifications despite the ongoing pop culture suspicion of education. Punk made a virtue out of being unqualified- being able to play and having stayed in school and gained O Levels were seen as/ portrayed as un- punk. 

In 1977 The Nosebleeds released a 7" single, Ain't Been To No Music School. After a burst of classical music at the start we get a couple of minutes of very 1977 punk, fast and thrashy, shouty vocals, lo fi production. 1977 Mancunian punk. 

Ain't Been To No Music School

It probably wouldn't be of much wider interest if not for who was in The Nosebleeds (formerly Ed Banger and The Nosebleeds) and what they went on to do. Ain't Been To No Music School is the first recorded output of Vini Reilly, the pale young guitarist from Wythenshawe who went on to form The Durutti Column, a key Factory act and a huge Bagging Area influence and favourite. Vini co- wrote the song and the B-side (Fascist Pigs) with Ed Banger. Both Vini and Ed left The Nosebleeds after the single's release. Vini and the first version of The Durutti Column would also come to an end fairly abruptly and if it wasn't for Tony Wilson's intervention, pushing Vini into a recording studio with Martin Hannett, we might not have heard much more from Vini either. 

The drummer on this single incidentally was Philip 'Toby' Tomanov, also from Wythenshawe, who played with Linder Sterling's band Ludus and on The Return Of The Durutti Column after The Nosebleeds demise. He would also play in Martin Hannett's Invisible Girls and drummed for Nico (who lived in Manchester during the 1980s), John Cooper Clarke and Pauline Murray. In 1988 he joined Primal Scream and played on I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have, the song that Andrew Weatherall remixed into Loaded. Toby drummed on both Screamdelica and Give Out But Don't Give Up. 

The Nosebleeds continued for a while without Ed and Vini, a certain Stephen Patrick Morrissey arrived as singer and one Billy Duffy joined on guitar. There were two gigs and then The Nosebleeds split up in May 1978 but both The Smiths and The Cult have their origin stories in The Nosebleeds. Morrissey had his own views on education and the qualifications system and on The Smiths' second studio album he took his revenge on the Manchester schools and the 'belligerent ghouls' who ran them in the late 60s and early 70s . Given what he's become, it's probably best to remember him this way.

The Headmaster Ritual (Live on Spanish TV, 1985)

Punk and post- punk saw qualified/ educated musicians form bands as well as unqualified- for every Steve Jones (in his memoir Lonely Boy he tells of rarely attending school and leaving with nothing and says he was functionally illiterate until into his 40s) there's a Green Gartside (Fine Art, Leeds Polytechnic). Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon all went to art college- Simonon and Jones met there, Simmo regularly pinching oil paints and brushes off the students from wealthier backgrounds. The Gang Of Four formed when the members met at Leeds University. Jon King, the group's singer, has been interviewed at two friend's music blogs this week, Plain Or Pan here and The Vinyl Villain here, to promote the publication of his autobiography in paperback, out shortly. 

To Hell With Poverty! is a key Gang Of Four song, scathing and frantic,Andy Gill's overloaded guitar feeding back and sounding like a siren, with rumbling but danceable post- punk bass and King's vocals, an anti- capitalist celebration of getting drunk on cheap wine while waiting for the giro to arrive. 

To Hell With Poverty!

It's telling that Eno and Schmidt's card puts 'unqualified' in inverted commas- unqualified for what? Maybe it suggests that in the studio the band should go and find someone from outside to contribute, someone who is not from the band, an unqualified outsider. I started to think of the guest appearances on songs and albums by people who might be seen as unqualified for the part just by being external. Johnny Depp appeared on guitar with both Oasis and Shane MacGowan (the latter on Top Of The Pops in 1994 with The Popes doing That Woman's Got Me Drinking). 

In his memoir Sonic Life Thurston Moore talks about arriving in the mid/ late 70s New York scene and how creativity was far more important than technique or training, that being unqualified is no object if you have ideas and the desire to do something. This is what keeps inspiring people to have a go, the idea that anyone can step up, plug in and have ago. It's the basis of most outsider pop music since the 50s really- the 60s art school bands, the punks, 80s indie, acid house, many of the groups and bands in the 90s, all very much making the art of the unqualified. 

Feel free to drop your own responses to Use 'unqualified' people in the comment box. 

More

Steve Hillage has had a long and interesting musical life- part of the Canterbury scene in the early 70s, solo and with Kevin Ayres and Soft Machine, then Gong with Daevid Allen (and where he met his partner Miquette Giraudy, his and Miquette's 1979 solo ambient opus Rainbow Dome Musick, production work with Simple Minds in the early 80s and The Charlatans a decade later and from 1989 his and Miquette's ambient/ dance outfit System 7 with The Orb and Youth and he played a key role in establishing the dance tent at Glastonbury.

Steve and Miquette are not standing still. System 7 are back with a new album, Flower Of Life, out later this month. A single came out ahead of it at the end of March, I Want More...

Coldcut's Matt Black is present on I Want More, which starts out with Can inspired bass and then mutates into pulsing synthlines, Matt's demo the launchpad for a soaring, insistent, four- four track that began as a discussion about Miquette's early 70s film soundtrack work, specifically a French underground film from 1969 about heroin addiction in Ibiza called More (to which Pink Floyd contributed the soundtrack). This short clip provides a flavour of the film...

This is Pink Floyd's Main Theme from the soundtrack, a very late 1960s Floyd track- cymbal splashes, wheezy organ, skittery drumming and throbbing bass. The sound of what they called a Happening. 

Main Theme

System 7's album follows in couple of weeks, ten tracks with early 90s ambient/ progressive house grooves and synth sounds. The title track pulses with positivity. On Beulah Alex Paterson from The Orb shows up, crunchy drums, synth squiggles, a Mae West vocal sample and visions of fields filled with dancers. There are faster and thumpier tracks, full on banging psy- trance on Atmosphere and an Eat Static collaboration Transceptor. Penultimate track Bonjour takes us down, three minutes of comedown with a slightly paranoid edge that eventually evens out. Flower Of Life finishes with a System 7 remix of Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society, Dubby Chain Signal is an extended downtempo/ ambient, chill out room delight that could be twice its seven minute length and not outstay its welcome.