Where's North From Here?

We had a really good weekend in London. The Flightpath Estate were part of the line up at the Acid House Chancers event at The Social on Saturday night, on this occasion me and Baz third on the bill in the downstairs room with Mark representing upstairs in his Rude Audio guise. It was a fantastic night, the reaction of the crowd to the music was off the scale and I will at some point recreate the set and share it here. We got loads of good feedback and my pre- set nerves at taking over from Jenny Leamon, who already had a room of people dancing, were settled fairly quickly but the fear of clearing the floor and playing to an empty room is real. 

While we were in London on Saturday we popped into Tate Modern. I wanted to see Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals (again). On turning into one of the galleries we were met straight away by Andy Warhol's Marilyn diptych, a piece of art so famous it's almost meaningless, just pop culture wallpaper. Seeing it close up and in full wall sized glory was an experience, fifty slightly different Marilyns fading from day glo colour to black and white. 

Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals take up an entire room, a series of very large, wall sized rectangles in deep reds, maroons and black. They become the room, swallowing you inside them. I can see why some people find them quite oppressive and they certainly suggest something  about Rothko's state of mind when he painted them (for a restaurant originally). When I first saw them in Liverpool in 1988, an eighteen year old just arriving at university, they had an impact on me and going back to see them in London periodically over the years since, they still do. I like big art, art you can get lost in.

On Sunday morning we went out for breakfast in Soho, looking for a morning after cure and still on a high after DJing at The Social. Just round the corner from our hotel was It's Bagels, a New York style bagel shop offering breakfast bagels, the walls decorated with pictures of Bob Dylan and De La Soul. The people sitting in the window looked like they were enjoying their bagels so we went inside. The in- shop stereo was loud, playing a weirdly hallucinatory late 70s/ early 80s soundtrack, trippy yacht rock and stoned singer songwriters. Without warning Mark E. Smith suddenly boomed out, 'where's north from here?', beamed in from his guest appearance with Gorillaz in 2010. I actually laughed out loud in the queue. The expected Gorillaz electronic glam stomp never came- the syrupy yacht rock came back in, Mark E Smith's line isolated from its source and re- appropriated in a new soundtrack. 

Glitter Freeze

The bagels were very good. Not cheap but very good. 

Monday's Long Song

Sunn O))) are back with a new album, titled Sunn O))) and clad in a sleeve with two Mark Rothko paintings. Sunn O))) don't really deal in songs or melodies. They detune their guitars and play slow and sludgy drones, feedback as standard and amplifiers overloaded to the point of exhaustion. The sound and timbre are the thing, an utterly focused and single minded approach to music. For the new one there are some synths and field recordings but essentially they remain unchanged- the sound of continents colliding or ice ages passing. This is Glory Black... 

Two Hours Of Music's Not For Everyone At Terraforma

In June 2017 Andrew Weatherall played an afternoon DJ set at Terraforma, a festival near Milan, Italy. It was billed as a Music's Not For Everyone set, Weatherall's banner for an eclectic mix of music- rockabilly, dub, krautrock and cosmische, post- punk, weird indie, leftfield electronic/ Balearic, music from the fringes and the margins. The set he played at Terraforma is one piece of evidence to show what a master of the art of DJing he was, a two hour selection of songs that are perfectly selected and sequenced and that get a young and beautiful Italian crowd dancing despite the heat. 

The full two hour long genre and decades spanning set can be found at Soundcloud and there's an almost complete tracklist too. Anyone that lines up Fujiya & Miyagi's Extended Dance Mix, The Dream Syndicates' John Coltrane Stereo Blues, Moon Duo's Sevens and AMOR's Paradise in the same section of a DJ set is touched with genius.

• Karl Hector & The Malcouns: Kingdom Of D'mt
• M'Bamina: Kilowi-Kilowi
• Aşık Emrah: Bu Ellerden Göçüp 
• The Orielles: Sugar Tastes Like Salt (Andrew Weatherall Tastes Like Dub Mix Pt.1 (Live Bass)) 
• Gerry & The Holograms: Increased Resistance
• Fujiya & Miragi: Extended Dance Mix
• The Dream Syndicate: John Coltrane Stereo Blues
• Poncho Brothers: Danza Oscuro
• ?: ?
• Moon Duo: Sevens
• AMOR: Paradise
• Scientist: Step It Up (Black Star Liner RMX)
• Iries In Roots: Dub Signs 
• Winston Edwards & Blackbeard : Airport Smuggling
• Mugwump: At The Dub Front (Mugwump Extended Dub Version) 
• La Logia Sarabando: Todos O Ninguno 
• ?:?
• Klaus Dinger & Japandorf: Udon 
• Andrew Weatherall: Evidence The Enemy

Even better, if you go here you can watch the man at work for a section that starts with his remix of The Orielles, CDs in a plastic bag on the desk, sunglasses, workshirt and braces and jeans with big turnups, shimmying in the afternoon sunshine and air guitaring when he spins The Dream Syndicate.

John Coltrane Stereo Blues

Short of gorging oneself on chocolate I can't think of a better way to spend Easter Sunday. Happy Easter!

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 card said Abandon normal instruments.

I conjured up Einsturzende Neubauten, Sabres Of Paradise, The Beatnigs and Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy and Tom Waits, a variety of power tools, car bonnets, chains, grinders and bits of metal being used in place of or alongside normal instruments. The Bagging Area community offered a slew of suggestions- Split Lip Rayfield, Nana Benz du Togo, Kraftwerk, Shane Parrish, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Split Enz, Gruff Rhys and Tony da Gattora, Gasper Nali, Tools You Can Trust and Matthew Herbert. This is Gasper Nali playing on the shores of Lake Malawi. Thanks to Chris, anonymous, Swanditch, Al G, C, Rol, Weareliz, Ernie and Charity Chic for their  contributions. 

This week's Oblique Strategy is this- Do nothing for as long as possible

And part of me did wonder about just leaving the post there and doing nothing further. 

But while that seemed conceptually correct it didn't bring any music into play. I can imagine in the studio musicians turning that card over and it becoming a Mexican standoff. Who breaks first? The drummer? The guitarist? I think bass players could stay out of things for a while, their patience levels are quite high. How long could you keep a track/ song going without doing anything?

The Specials released Do Nothing as a single in 1980, a slightly downtempo song for the band, a Lynval Golding and Jerry Dammers co- write about stasis, nothing ever changing, a life without meaning, police harassment- 'I walk and walk and do nothing' 

Do Nothing

It also gave us the only acceptable appearance of Christmas jumpers. The Specials were not a Do nothing for as long as possible type of band- everyone was very active all the time, all playing at the same time. 

There are quite a lot of songs where the band pause, the silence and a tease, a doing nothing, a moment of tension, before they crash back in. I'm not sure what the longest one is- mostly they aren't able to do nothing for as long as possible for very long. The pause in the extended freak out at the end of I Am The Resurrection is a good example...

I Am The Resurrection

The song started as a joke, Mani playing the bass riff to taxman backwards. Eventually Reni suggested working it up into a song. Ian and John found lyrical inspiration on a church noticeboard in Chorlton and when they got the song figured out Ian suggested the other three should keep playing, a funky/ Hendrix outro that could keep going and going. The do nothing for as long as possible part comes at 5.21 and lasts four seconds. Maybe that was as long as John, Mani and Reni could manage.

It's a good song for tomorrow too- Easter Sunday and resurrections are famously linked. 

Underworld's Second Hand is a ten minute ride, the synths set up and playing and repeating for nine minutes- once those loops are in motion there isn't much to do, the odd tweak here and there for Rick Smith and Darren Emerson, occasionally bring an element in or out, higher or lower in the mix. Karl Hyde is very much not doing very much at all, just the odd delay FXed guitar part. One of my favourite Underworld tracks, an absolute joy.

There a loads of songs about nothing or with nothing in the title. In 1992 Sandals, a London beat poetry/ dub/ progressive house/ acid jazz four piece put out Nothing (with Leftfield assisting on programming, keys and production), a funky, laid back, stoned groove with state of the world lyrics- worth remembering when one turns on the news at the moment, we were despairing about war and US foreign policy in the early 90s as well as in 2026 (and in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 00s...)

Nothing (Extended Version)

'Old man what have you done?' a voice asks over and over. The reply, 'Nothing'. 

Feel free to drop your do nothing for as long as possible suggestions in the comment box. I'm sure you can come up with more apt ones than I have. 

Acid House Chancers

Tomorrow at The Social, Little Portland Street, London, an Acid House Chancers night and a Salute to Andrew Weatherall on the weekend of what would have been his 63rd birthday (6th April). It's a venue that Andrew actually played the opening night of, his association with Heavenly going back to the late 80s. 

There's a stellar line up of DJs including at the top of the bill Alex Knight (Sabresonic and Fat Cat Records) and Johnny Aux of Paranoid London plus Rude Audio (often found at this parish) and lower down proceedings, in the downstairs bar/ space from 6.30pm your friendly neighbourhood Flightpath Estate DJs. Me, Baz and Mark on this occasion, a London debut for me. It's a tickets only affair, all proceeds to charity, a handful of tickets can found here priced just £15.

Back in 2010 LCDMF (Le Corps De Mince Francoise), a Finnish duo released a single on Heavenly, Gandhi. It came with two Andrew Weatherall remixes. This is the first...

Gandhi (Andrew Weatherall Remix I)

At this point Andrew had been feeling his way back into music, releasing a 12" under his own name for the first time and beginning to develop and refine a new remix sound. In 2008 he'd remixed Doves (also on Heavenly, the long standing Andrew Weatherall- Jeff Barratt friendship a part of much of what he was doing), throwing dub space, a cosmische feel and extended running time into the pot. Remixes of Grinderman, The Horrors, Toddla T, Wooden Shjips, Cut Copy and Primal Scream all fell into place, all benefiting from his new partnership with Timothy J. Fairplay. Andrew's slow and spacey sound aligned with the early days of his travelling discotheque A Love From Outer Space. The pair of LCMDF remixes are part of this, squiggles and arpeggios, synths and bass over chuggy beats. 

Cycle Whim

A pair of unrelated but spring- like new recent releases for early April. First is a single from Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor's new solo album with Green Gartside on backing vocals (and when Green joins in on the chorus he soars). On A Whim is from Paris In The Spring and is sumptuous, buttery electro- pop packed with hooks and melodies and going straight to the heart. Guaranteed to make you smile. 

Out last week on the spring equinox and from an album that will be released on the summer equinox comes Cycle, the first offering from the latest Pye Corner Audio album and with Ride/ GLOK's Andy Bell on guitars and PCA's Martyn Jenkins singing for the first time. The pair collaborated previously on 2022's Let's Emerge, a post- lockdown response to the early 2020s world. Cycle is from More Songs About The Sun, a glorious synthpop/ cosmische song welcoming the coming of springtime and full of the promise of summer.  

Fools

Some fools for April Fool's Day. All Fool's Day is a tradition in many countries but there doesn't seem to be any real agreement about where it originates from- an association between 1st April and foolishness is mentioned by Chaucer in The Nun's Priest's Tale where a vain cock is tricked by a fox into believing it is 32nd March. Some scholars inevitably disagree and put this down to a mistranslation. 

A 16th century French poet mentions poisson d'Avril (April fool or literally April's fish) and a Flemish poet, Eduard de Dene, referenced a nobleman who sent his servants on foolish errands on 1st April. The first agreed British reference is from 1686, John Aubrey mentioning 'fooles holy day'. 

Pop culture is littered with fools. In 1973 Lee Hazlewood, the cosmic cowboy, asked a foolish question...

Poet, Fool Or Bum

In 2019, a reactivated Sebadoh saw Lou Barlow return with some typically ramshackle, melodic indie rock reaching the point where he 'won't be a fool in your eyes'. 

Fool

Gallon Drunk weren't a band to do things by halves. A noisy, chaotic early 90s blur of suits, guitars, sideburns, noisy blues and jazz. Some Fool's Mess was Single Of The Week in the NME in 1991, back when these things really mattered. The live recording here is from 1993 when they toured the US supporting PJ Harvey

Some Fool's Mess (Live In Chicago)

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius' latest vehicle for deconstructing music and overthrowing existing power structures. Last year's Charge Of The Light Brigade was one of my albums of the year. In 2021 they released Rated Z, their fourth album, a casual combination of arrogance and minimalism. Electronic rock 'n' roll reduced to its barest elements. 

Suffer No Fool

Lastly I need to direct you here to Bedford Falls Players where Mr BFP has done an entirely unofficial edit of Walking On Sunshine and Fool's Gold, Rockers Revenge and The Stone Roses mashed together in an unholy and total trip, seven minutes of Fool's Gold- En.  Free/ pay what you want. 

On 23rd November 1989 The Stone Roses made their one and only Top Of The Pops appearance, gatecrashing the shiny world of the BBC studios and the top ten with the groundbreaking indie funk of Fool's Gold. The fall of the Berlin Wall, The Stone Roses on Top Of The Pops- the 1990s started here. 

The photo at the top is the corridor of a hotel we have actually stayed in. I felt lucky to wake up in the morning and 

Edit: that last sentence for some reason was never completed. I got distracted and forgot to finish it. It should have read something like this...

The photo at the top is the corridor of a hotel we have actually stayed in. I felt lucky to wake up in the morning and not have been sold into some form of modern slavery. The hotel was a one night stopover and was cheap. The fire escapes had groups of men hanging around them smoking and the fire escape was in our bedroom- in the event of a fire the escape route was through our room. Off our room were two further rooms, one with a broken window that would not close and the other a cell. As I was about to put the light out to go to sleep and huge spider ran across my pillow. It was grim but also very funny.