Surface Noise

I've been revisiting Stay Down, the 1998 Two Lone Swordsmen album from 1998 that stands out even in their wide and varied thirteen year back catalogue, one that takes in almost every electronic style of music you can think of plus trip hop, stoned hip hop, post- punk, rockabilly and garage punk. 

Stay Down is minimalist ambient techno, twelve tracks with a common and coherant sound. In 1998 I was a bit confused by it. It seemed to lack the hooks or the musicality that a lot of Andrew Weatherall's previous work at that point had. But time and tide have revealed Stay Down's magic- a submerged, ambient murk, dark and clunky drums and bass overlaid by melodies that flit in and out, everything FXed by the Swordsmen studio machines, especially according to Keith Tenniswood the Mutator which applied a blur of resonance, tremelo, reverb and delay. 

The cover image- two deep sea divers, an illustration from a 1950s children's book, washed out in a sea green/ turquoise blue- is the perfect image for what the record contains. The first track is Hope We Never Surface, which in title and sonics, give the listener an idea about what they're in for...

Hope We Never Surface

Static. Distorted voices. Ambient FX. Flickers of sonar and radar. Metallic rattles, the sounds are bouncing off the interior of a submarine. And a pretty synth chord melody, rising and falling, the light that illuminates the deep sea murk of the rhythm. Two and a half minutes of ambient music that fades out quickly with a dial being turned, and more static. 

In 1998 the rest of the Warp roster were getting the plaudits- Autechre, Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada- but this album is as innovative and interesting as any of the ones by those people. Sometimes things just take a while to open up to you. 

In 1999 Two Lone Swordsmen released a 12" called receive Tactical Support, three remixes from the period- A Silicon Scally remix of Black Commandments (originally from A Bag Of Blue Sparks), a C- Pij remix of The Big Clapper (from Stay Down, with C- Pij being a Nina Walsh pseudonym) and a Kenny Hawkes remix of Hope We Never Surface.

Hope We Never Surface (Kenny Hawkes Remix)

Kenny triples the running time, adds a thumpy but minimal kick drum and snare, some bass wobble and heads from the bottom of the sea into a spacey house/ techno galaxy- sci fi electronics for basement clubs. The late 90s were a fertile time, various reactions to the superclub era coupled with some pre- millennial tension creating all sorts of weird and wonderful scenes and subplots. By 1998 Andrew had turned away from the bright lights at least twice, deliberately heading underground or in Stay Down's case, underwater. 

Stella

Back in 1990 Ultramarine found themselves, newly a duo, in Brussels with some new equipment- a sampler mainly- and made a track called Stella which came out on an offshoot of Belgian label Le Discques Du Crepescule (the Benelux home of many Factory acts). The Ultramarine pair, Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper, had some assistance in the studio from Dutch DJ Eddy de Clerc and Colin James (from Meat Beat Manifesto) and it paid off in a sparkling, bright eyed song, one that is completely part of the spirit of the times. Funky Soul II Soul drums, lovely synth melodies, an acoustic guitar chord and a pumping bassline, all topped off with a sampled vocal by dancer/ therapist Gabrielle Roth, talking about dancing as sacred, as a way to 'connect to the deepest part of the self'. 

Stella

Stella came out on 12" in various versions on Brainiak. A year later Ultramarine released an album- Every Man And Woman Is A Star- again with mixing and studio assistance from Colin James, the recording split between London and Brussels. They took inspiration from folk music (although those influences were more obviously to fore on United Kingdoms a couple of years later) but also from bleep techno and hip hop and the anything goes spirit of 1990/1991. The pastoral/ ambient house/ Balearica of the album fits right in with the rest and the best of that year. The 1991 version of Stella, Stella Connects, is longer, running at nine minutes. 

Stella Connects

At record label LTM's Bandcamp page there's an expanded and companion version of Every Man And Woman Is A Star, different versions and remixes (by Sweet Exorcist, Spooky, Coco Steel and Lovebomb), a live track from Glastonbury in 1993, a US version of Bunnmyen sampling Weird Gear and an edit of Stella Connects plus various other companion pieces. You can listen and buy here. Many thanks to reader Blureu for the tip off. Highly recommended. 

Five For September

A month ago I was in southern Spain with views like this one above. Now it's September and the school year and meteorological autumn are upon us. Is it too late to post Nightswimming with its late summer lament, 'September's coming soon/ I'm pining for the moon'?

No, it isn't. 

Nightswimming

This is The Field Mice back in 1991 with a song that also feels like it should have been posted a couple of days ago but it's never too late and this is a classic of its kind. 

September's Not So Far Away

This came up in my search for September songs, dusty cowboy blues from an album last year by Slow Motion Cowboys.

New Beginning (Oh September)

Big Star have got the September song scene covered, Alex Chilton's 1973 masterpiece may really be all you need, Chilton looking back at his past relationships and marrying those plaintive words to some achingly gorgeous chords. The guitars and Alex's ragged voice actually sound like summer turning into autumn.

September Gurls

In 1986 The Bangles covered September Gurls, a mid 80s Los Angeleno, Paisley Underground pop update that more than does justice to the song. 

September Gurls

Monday's Long Songs

The Duchess Of York was a small grass roots venue in Leeds that opened in 1985, held 250 people and hosted pre- fame gigs by Nirvana (October 1989) and Oasis (September 1993) as well as early gigs by Manic Street Preachers, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Verve, Green Day, Pulp and Blur. One of those venues where there could be two people watching on a wet Wednesday night or a packed and sold out sweatbox. A stepping stone to bigger things. Back in the 80s and 90s these venues were in almost every town and bands would frequently play twenty or thirty gig tours, trouping round the country playing in the big cities but also in Northampton (Roadmenders), Buckley (Tivoli), Greenock (Town Hall), Widnes (Queen's Hall), Bath (Moles) and Burnley (Mechanics), not to mention the numerous polytechnic and university rooms and halls. 

The Duchess is long gone but the Leeds Civic Trust put a blue plaque up in 2024 to mark the site (now a branch of Hugo Boss) and the work of the man who opened and ran it, John Keenan. Carl Airsine has recently released an EP on Leeds label Paisley Dark named The Duchess, a tribute to the venue and its underground spirit. Carl's track, The Duchess, is a celebration, noisy, chuggy, disco- punk with distorted guitars and bass, thumpy drums and voices appearing out of the mix. It pulses and throbs with that energy that live guitar bands in small spaces do. 

There are three remixes. Ian Vale strips the track back, toughens the drums and darkens the mood. Belfast's Viper Patrol go acid- full on bassline squiggle and 303s with disembodied vocals and a post- midnight feel. The pick for me is by South London dub specialists Rude Audio, who take an alternative route to/ from The Duchess, finding a cosmic/ dub/ Balearic vibe with twinkling synths, dub space and drums and a letting in of the light. The Duchess is at Paisley Dark and can be found here. 

Nirvana's gig at The Duchess on 25th October 1989 was bootlegged and widely distributed on the bootleg cassette market. My friend Ian Lawton (Meanie) photographed the band for Kerrang and interviewed them in a nearby McDonalds. The tour was to promote Bleach, pre- Dave Grohl with Chad Channing on drums. This is the gig with one of Meanie's photos to illustrate it. Highlights include Love Buzz, Polly, About A Girl and Blew but they do not particularly sound like a band who within two years would become the biggest band in the world. 

Forty Minutes Of Music Inspired By Jodrell Bank

We had a day out at Jodrell Bank yesterday, home of the Lovell telescope which has been sending radiowaves into space since 1957 playing a huge part in our understanding of space. The dish is enormous, once the largest in the world, still the third largest. It moves too so it can be pointed in any direction. We saw it move while we were there, rotating round the track it sits on, which was actually really exciting. 

A new visitor centre has been built since we were last there and is full of brain frying information about the universe, galaxies, pulsars, black holes, quasars and dark matter. It's a humbling place to visit and spend a few hours at, the vastness of space and what's out there compared to the smallness of us and what's down here. There are several artistic responses too which neatly connect science and art, space and poetry. Frighteningly the UK Research and Innovation agency have decided to cut Jodrell Bank's funding from April 2028 and without this the facility- pioneering scientifically, grade 1 listed and a UNESCO world heritage site- may close down. 

I had two major takeaways from the masses of information we read. The first was that when we see light coming from space, the stars for example, we're actually looking back in time- the light is coming from hundreds/ thousands/ millions of years ago and is only reaching us now so what we are seeing has already happened. Jodrell Bank identified the Crab Pulsar, a supernova explosion seen and recorded in China in the year 1054, recorded at the time as a 'guest star' that was bright enough to be seen for several days during daylight. The second was that when we tune between TV or radio channels about 1% of the noise we hear that the antennae pick up is actually 'the fading glow of the Big Bang'. 

The phrase 'the fading glow of the Big Bang' stuck with me for some time. On the way back some of what I'd been reading about and seeing at Jodrell Bank made connections with music and songs and this hastily thrown together mix is a response to that. Musically it's all over the place in the first half but then settles into a dance music groove.

Forty Minutes Of Music Inspired By Jodrell Bank

• Beth Orton: Galaxy Of Emptiness
• Ride: Pulsar
• Timothy J. Fairplay: Dreams Of Andromeda
• Mr Fingers: Qwazars
• Kolsch and Gregor Schwellenbach: Cassiopeia
• Sub Sub: Space Face

Jodrell Bank and the Lovell telescope have conducted research into galaxies and clusters, including gravitational lensing studies of galaxies (the bending of light from a distant source as it travels past a massive object such as a galaxy or galaxy cluster, apparently). 

Beth Orton's Galaxy Of Emptiness is from her album Trailer Park in 1996, a track mixed and produced by Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood in their studio under the flight path at Hounslow. Sonically it's incredible, all space, detail, Weatherallian FX and Ali Friend's double bass ricocheting down the line. Lyrically, it's vast and tiny, cosmic existentialism. Loss. 

A pulsar is a pulsating star, a highly magnetised rotating star that is emitting beams of radiation out of its magnetic poles. Galactic lighthouses. 

Ride's Pulsar was the lead song on their Tomorrow's Shore EP, released in 2018. I'm not sure the post re- union Ride have recorded a more exciting song than Pulsar. It is in their own words, 'a space anthem' about light, existence and trying to get home. 

The Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest major spiral galaxy to our own, the Milky Way, located about 2.5 million light years away and sometimes visible to the naked eye. 

Timothy J. Fairplay's Free Andromeda album came out on Hoga Nord in 2022, a very fine nine track selection of synth electronics and drum machines. Worth revisiting if you haven't spun it for a while. 

A quasar is an extremely bright and distant, active galactic nucleus, powered by a super massive black hole. I'm typing this but I'm not sure I fully understand it. But I like the idea that there are things that are much bigger than us that we can only stare at in wonder. 

Mr Fingers came back with Cerebral Hemispheres in 2018, cosmic acid/ dance music. Qwazars was a stand out, a rotating synth pattern and chord change that is utterly hypnotic.

Cassiopeia is a constellation in the northern sky. It's five brightest stars form a W in the sky, visible to the naked eye. A section of the Milky way runs through it containing a number of young luminous galactic disc stars and nebulae. 

Kolsch's Cassiopeia came out in 2014 with piano and strings by Gregor Schwellenbach. Minimal, emotive 2010s house music. 

The Lovell Telescope appeared on the sleeve of Sub Sub's Space Face, a 1991 record that blew up in clubs at the time not least The Hacienda, thundering breakbeats and Balearic pianos with an aptly chosen sample, 'My god, it's full of stars' (taken from a 1984 film called 2010- The year We Make Contact). Sub Sub were local boys, from Wilmslow, just down the road from Jodrell Bank. As I'm sure you know, a few years later after a fire that destroyed their studio/ rehearsal space on Blossom Street in Ancoats they became Doves. In 2011 they played an acoustic gig at Jodrell Bank in front of the Lovell telescope. Here they are playing a Bagging Area favourite, Kingdom Of Rust. 

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 The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.

I went down a memory based rabbit hole with Pye Corner Audio, Boards Of Canada, Vangelis and Blade Runner, Jan van den Broeke and Aphex Twin (and those tracks all fit together really well, a nice twenty five minute ambient/ synth set). Out in the Oblique Saturday community we found Ernie with a trio of forgetful tracks from Morgan Morse, Farmergeddon and Kenmore Classic, Beerfueled with Pixies covering Leonard Cohen, Al G with the Sultans Of Ping F.C. and their lost jumper, Mrs G with Doves, Khayem and The Mekons, Jake Sniper and The Caretaker and Rol with The Panic Brothers. 

This one's for Jake and his Mum.

This week's Oblique Strategy card reads thus- Spectrum Analysis.

After leaving Spacemen 3 Sonic Boom released his first solo album Spectrum and then several albums and singles as Spectrum (including the sublime Highs, Lows And Heavenly Blows). 

In 1992 Spectrum/ Sonic released an EP with a cover of Daniel Johnson's True Love Will Find You In The End. It's a blissed out cover, Sonic singing dreamily with a choir of angels backing him, over twinkles, drones and pedal steel. 'Don't give up now/ True love will find you in the end', Sonic croons, sounding like he might just mean it and might just make it through the night. 

True Love Will Find You In The End

Anyone who's read Spacemen 3 bassist Will Carruthers' memoir Playing The Bass With Three Left Hands will recall the chapter describing a memorable evening the band played at a health club in Chester, the occasion when they were introduced to ecstasy (to add to the cocktail of somewhat stronger and more addictive drugs Sonic and Jason were well into by that point). The 1997 compilation CD What Came Before After finishes with this track, a nine minute exploration/ distillation of the Spectrum sound- synth drones, repeating and oscillating into eternity. 

Ecstasy In Slow Motion

This is from Spectrum's Indian Giver album with Captain Memphis from 2008. It's the same song that Sonic recorded for Recurring, 1991's final Spacemen 3 album, written by Mudhoney. Sludgy, stoned space rock. 

When Tomorrow Hits

Aphex Twin returns making consecutive Oblique Saturday appearances. In 2016 he put out a 12" single called Cheetah, which paid tribute to an obsolete British electronics company of the same name who made unfathomably difficult to work out synths. The first track on the EP was this one...

Cheetah2 [Ld spectrum]

Aphex Twin in coasting mode is still some considerable distance ahead of his peers. Slow motion, slippery and phased to jiggery. 

Finally, one of my favourite albums of last year was by Sewell And The Gong, pastoral sounding Balearica, instrumental folk gone cosmische. As Rob at Ban Ban Ton Ton put it, 'jubilant, trance- inducing, celebratory.... like a drug free, jolly Spacemen 3'. Which ties things together nicely. 

Spectrum Two

You can drop your own responses to Spectrum analysis into the comment box, if you want to. No pressure. 

Secret Soul

Cal Gibson's Secret Soul Society has been drip feeding us with new tracks all summer, a series of dubby weird disco tunes blurring the boundaries of new music, edits and versions. The tracks below are all highly recommended, hazy and dubbed out soul/ dance music, old and new fused. I'll leave it for you to work out where the source material comes from. 

First, in mid- July- Situation Station, a low slung, machine funk song with a soulful vocal.

A couple of weeks after that, bubbling, summer sounding funk soul/ cosmic disco About2Believe, the singer telling us, 'You're about to believe/ In love again'. 

Then, in late July there was Emotional Dub, dub and disco spliced together, a slinky floor filler with choppy guitar, bubbling bass and killer vocal. 

A couple of days later in early August there was Lemonade All Day, trippy cosmic/ Balearic with chanting and FX 

A week on from that came Mountain Of Tears, a bass driven soul number, urgent and impassioned night time music, drums pushing and synth FX splashing around. 

In mid- August, Dub Sultanas, headband wearing guitar wranglers filtered into something darker and groovier. 

Last week, Dubbing In The City, slowed down groove, taut bass and fractured vocals with an oddness that gives it an edge- very tasty. 

All of these (and more) can be found at The Secret Soul Society Bandcamp page here. They work very well individually but probably best sequenced one after the other, a forty minute late summer dub/ disco/ soul compilation or mixtape.