Pictures Of A Floating World

There's an exhibition on at the Whitworth in Manchester at the moment of the art of two Japanese artists, Hokusai and Hiroshige (it opened two weeks ago and is on until November). In the Edo period (17th and 18th century Japan) the pair were responsible for a multitude of ukiyo- e prints, made on woodblocks and printed in beautiful colour onto paper. The most famous of them is Beneath The Great Wave, a picture that changed Japanese art and then when the country began to open up to the west, one that changed Western art too. It's become one of the most famous prints in the world and there are two originals from the Edo period in the exhibition.

Hokusai and Hiroshige captured Japanese landscapes and weather and everyday scenes, rural and urban life. There are pictures of samurai, actors, geisha and farm labourers as well as endless versions of Mount Fuji- Hokusia's series Thirty Six Views Of Mount Fuji eventually ran to forty six and Hiroshige responded with Fifty Three Stations Of The Tokaido Road. The prints- the detail and draftmanship, the layout (so influential on modern visual arts, comics, books and magazines) and the vividness of that world- are astonishing. I loved it and will definitely go again. It's a joy just to spend time looking at them.

They were known at the time as 'pictures of a floating world' which is a phrase which has stuck with me since Saturday afternoon. 

What's more, it's free- and the gallery was busy, people of all ages wanting to get close to the prints. 

Coincidentally over at 27 Leggies Ernie posted some songs by Japanese band Nagisa Ni Te which were well received. Ernie's post and the music reminded me of the Japanese band Yura Yura Teikoku who I posted about once waaay back in 2010. Yura Yura Teikoku were a three piece psychedelic rock band from Tokyo, formed in 1989 and splitting up amicably in 2010. In 2009 DFA put out some of their music which is I imagine where I latched onto them. 

Hollow Me came out in 2007 and was then part of the 2009 DFA release after being featured in Sion Soro's film Love Exposure, a Japanese comedy drama. 

Hollow Me

This one is from a 2010 live album.

Ohayo Mada Yaro

Sweet Surrender is from a 2007 single, a krauty motorik psyche rock excursion that kicks up a storm. 

Sweet Surrender (Remix)

The other side of that single was Dekinai, spiky guitars and rattling drums, a thrilling slice of Tokyo psychedelic rock. 

Dekinai

The remix is even better, somewhere in a sweet spot in between Stereolab and LCD Soundsystem. 

Dekinai (Remix Extended)

Monday's Long Song

Twenty years ago Patti Smith and Kevin Shields appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank in London. Patti had written a poem for her friend and one time lover Robert Mapplethorpe called The Coral Sea, a poem she started when he died of AIDS in 1989. She tried to perform it as a spoken word piece but could never get through it all, the sheer weight of the emotions, his illness related suffering and death too much for her to complete a public reading. 

Performing it with Kevin Shields changed the performance for her- Kevin's guitar and FX soundscape altered the performance and provided Patti with a bedrock to explore the words and her feelings. They performed it live twice, once in June 2005 and once in September 2006 and released both as a double CD in 2008, each disc the best part of an hour long. It's not something one pulls out and listens to very often and it was probably best seen live, a book length poem set to improvisational and experimental guitar playing by the My Bloody Valentine man but when it hits, it's very powerful. This is Part 4 from the 2006 gig, a fifteen minute long section, the climax of the performance, Kevin's glide guitar shimmering, the drones and vibrato ebbing and flowing as Patti reads her tribute to Mapplethorpe with passion. As they egg each other on Shields' playing becomes an MBV style wall of noise, an ecstatic You Made Me Realise freak out section only a flick of the finger and stomp on an FX pedal away. 

The Coral Sea 12/ 09/ 2006 Part 4

The section from ten minutes in, where Patti is silent and Kevin drones and glistens, is ripe for sampling- put a drum beat underneath it and add some flute and whispery vocals and you could have a new MBV track out before the band do. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Neo- Indie Dance

I was never a fan of the term indie- dance back in the 1989- 1992 heyday. It seemed reductive and a little sneery, music press shorthand for guitar bands suddenly getting onto the dancefloor and finding a remixer who could help them crossover. Much of the music was brilliant but the way it was portrayed and written about was not. There was an element of bandwagon jumping too. But those records- the remixes of Happy Mondays Wrote For Luck, Fool's Gold, Weatherall's 12" remixes of songs from Screamadelica and then of everybody else, Flowered Up, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, The Soup Dragons (ahead of the pack as singer Sean is always keen to point out, releasing I'm Free ahead of Primal Scream's Loaded)- still sound like sonic gold and can still fill a dance floor. 

There's been a renaissance of the sound, the shuffly drums, psychedelic guitars, extended length tracks, cosmic synth sounds and freewheeling spirit circling back into the world. Recently Das Druid, Marshall Watson and Cole Odin, several of Sean Johnston Hardway Bros remixes, Holy Youth Movement and others have been reinvigorating a sound that is now over three decades old. The temptation to throw some of them together into a Sunday mix, a revival of the sound of Thursday night indie nights at late 80s nightclubs but with a bunch of 21st century tracks, was too much. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Neo- Indie Dance

• Strange Fruit: Monopolar
• Das Druid: Freedom
• Holy Youth Movement: Better Together (Hardway Bros Cosmic Intervention Mix)
• Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Space Flight Mix)
• Le Carousel: Echo Spiegel (Curses Liquid Metal Mix)
• Jagwar Ma: Come Save Me (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U Pt. 2 (Venus)

Strange Fruit are an indie- dance/ psychedelic/ cosmische band from Jakarta. Their forthcoming album Drips comes with remixes- Hardway bros and Tom Furse from The Horrors- and four songs, all of which mine that seam that got us shaking our action at the point were the 80s became the 90s. Shuffly drums, burbling synths, cosmische production and blissed out vocals all present and correct.  

Das Druid are from Australia, a band who are open about their influences, describing their Das Druid EP as a 'love letter to the evolving spirit of the Madchester scene'. Rather than shy away from it, they've embraced the comparisons. The EP comes with Justin Robertson remixes (in his folk- dub Five Green Moons guise), a man who moved to Manchester in the mid- 80s specifically for the music (and the university), and one from South Manchester's own Ruf Dug. 

Holy Youth Movement are from Bristol, a five piece taking cues from Primal Scream and Underworld with Jagz Kooner at the controls. Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros provided two remixes, both of which are sprinkled with indie- dance dancefloor gold dust. 

San Francisco pairing Marshal Watson and Cole Odin's Just A Daydream Away were a 2023 highlight, an EP with various versions of a cosmic/ indie- dance song, smothered in a sheen of day glo early 90s via 2020s production that glides and shimmers. Hardway Bros weighed in with a pair of remixes of this one too. 

Le Carousel's The Humans Will Destroy us is already sounding like one of the albums of 2026, a ten track synths/ guitars celebration of/ farewell to humanity. Last year's single Echo Spiegel was remixed by Berlin based producer Curses who put a  chunky 1991 indie- dance break under Phil's psychedelic/ electronics and pushed it all to the fore. 

Jagwar Ma were an Australian psychedelic/ dance trio from 2012 who made two albums between 2013 and 2016. In 2011 they released Come Save Me as a single and it came with an Andrew Weatherall remix. Between 1989 and 1991 Andrew did as much as anyone to invent a new sound, guitars and dance beats, samples and sequencers. By 1992 he was keen to move on and to leave indie- dance behind. In 2013 he remixed Jagwar Ma following a jaunt to Australia, sticking a massive indie- dance breakbeat underneath the song and in so doing reinventing a sound that he invented twenty years previously, a decade ahead of some younger bands then re- discovering the sound. Weatherall absolutely shines as a remixer here. 

Psychederek is from Stretford, a young musician/ DJ with a growing and excellent back catalogue. The sound of a psychedelic Stretford. His Thinkin' Bout U single came out last year, four different versions with the Pt. 2 Venus mix built around that indie- dance shuffle. 

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 suggestion was Breathe more deeply.

My responses were some deeply heavy dub techno from Basic Channel and Deanne Day's Hardly Breathe, Weatherall and Harrow mid- 90s deep house/ techno. Both encouraging deeper breathing. The Oblique Saturdays crowd made some excellent and varied suggestions- Blu Cantrelle's Breath, Kylie's Breathe, Warren Zevon's French Inhaler, Thandi Ntuli and Carlos Nino's experimental breathing, Kate Bush, Serge and Jane engaging in deeper and heavier breathing, Massive Attack's Teardrop and Aggelein by Valium. Thank you Jake, Khayem, Rol, Ernie, Jase, Iggy, Walter and Scaley Pecker for your contributions. Here's Kylie from 1998 with a song that as Scaley observed has a touch of William Orbit's Ray Of Light production about it.

Breathe

This week's card say this- Abandon normal instruments.

Eno was surely a man who would gladly abandon normal instruments. At first I thought about Einsturzende Neubauten, Blixa Bargeld and co. using homemade instruments constructed from scrap metal and tools, wielding angle grinders, hammers and metal plates and with jackhammers drilling through the stage at the ICA. This is Kollaps, eight minutes of industrial and experimental sounds from West Berlin in 1981...

I also remembered Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns describing Sabres Of Paradise recording what would become Sabresonic in London in 1993 and they mic'ed up Gary banging a scaffolding pole with a wrench and shaking a tray of matches to create the drum and percussion sounds for Smokebelch. 

Smokebelch (Exit)

Back in October 1988 I went to a gig at Liverpool Royal Court, a triple bill headlined by Billy Bragg with support from Michelle Shocked. The first act on the bill were The Beatnigs, a San Francisco band who combined punk, industrial and hip hop and played the bonnet of a VW Beetle with metal chains, a rotary saw and a grinder. I don't have any Beatnigs recordings but Michael Franti and Rono Tse would go on to become The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy and reworked one of the songs from Beatnig days in the new band, a hip hop/ spoken word, alt/ industrial classic from 1992. 

Television, The Drug Of the Nation

Lastly I thought about Tom Waits and especially 1999's Mule Variations, an album which uses normal instruments- brass, violin, bass, guitars, harp, pump organ and also turntables and samples- but sounds like it was made in a junkyard using bits of metal and old car parts. What's he building in there?

Feel free to abandon normal instruments and give up your suggestions in the comment box

Am I Conscious Now?

Am I Conscious Now? is the latest release on Jason Boardman's Before I Die label, an album that gets its full release today. Hawksmoor (James McKeown) has been making music since 2017 and in that time has released thirteen albums and EPs. It's ambient with a side dose of cosmische/ krautrock, expansive and immersive and full of textures. 

For this latest work, James undertook some extensive experimentation and research with a psychedelic compound called 5- MeO-DMT, a substance found naturally in some plants and in the glands of toads found in the Colorado River. Many people who've used it describe it as producing a mystical experience and what Hawksmoor himself describes as a 'total psychological reset'. He adds, 'It completely changed my life, outlook and perspective'. Not something to be taken lightly then. Am I Conscious Now? is a musical/ ambient response to that experience.

Trying to describe ambient music sometimes feels like a fool's game at the best of times. 'Language doesn't really work', James/ Hawksmoor says about the use of psychedelics, 'it's everything and nothing'. He followed this by saying that his experiences with 5-MeO-DMT culminated with him feeling like he was reborn. 

The album is it goes without saying a bit of a trip, a haunting but beautiful record that works best as one single piece. There are drones and oscillations, the Moog and Organele M producing long sounds that rise and fall. Opener Amygdalla Opening is the entry, a two note drone, layers of synths combining to push and pull. Golden Dolphins follows, chords and chatter, single key notes and an acoustic guitar, the sound of dolphin squeals and whistles and a wordless human voice. It's either deep below the surface or very high above it. Waves of echo and elements of sound bouncing back and forth. Flooding A Maze (In Slow Motion) is golden guitar chords strummed slowly and dancing, ringing sounds, things shifting slightly as the track unfolds, a diagram or oil pattern slipping in and out of focus. Towards the end a bleep comes through, like someone far away trying to make contact. On Urdhva Hastasna (a Yoga pose, the raised hands pose) two guitars pick their way round each other, one a circling finger picked part and the other a counterpoint. Behind them, there's a hazy backdrop of cosmic synth sounds. Infinite Tapestry sounds ancient, what could be a dulcimer or some other archaic instrument pressed into psychedelic service, notes and drones and ringing sounds. Water droplets fall, the guitar returns, synth whooshes rush in, a track that has both motion and stillness- the sense of sitting still while the world moves around you. 

Side two offers more. Ti Kallisti has piano and reverb, ambience that suggests... I don't know, emptiness? Fulfillment? The past? Now? Adviata swims back towards the drones and the submersion sounds, a voice possibly appearing along with an Indian sounding guitar part. Clear Light breaks the surface and lets the light in- a voice singing an ah ah ah ah part, beamed in from an ashram in 1967, George Harrison drifting in to Hawksmoor's ambient world. Into The White Sun changes the sound and tone again, bass guitar notes, cosmische drones coming via Cluster or Harmonia, the pastoral kraut sounds of mid- 70s West Germany. Our trip ends with Astromeria, three minutes of ending, the bass guitar again prodding away, warm and woody, the synths like flares of light, blasts of horn and disembodied vocals, a landing, a coming round or coming to. 

As I said, writing about ambient music can sometimes feel like a fool's game, trying to describe sounds and the feelings they provoke. Some of what's written above might look like nonsense in the cold light of day and Am I Conscious Now? is much more than I can sum up in a few paragraphs. It feels like a profound and intense album, not the kind of ambient to put on in the background but a record to immerse yourself inside and be open to the effect it might have.  

You can buy or listen to it here. 

How We Gonna Kick It?

Sometimes I think that there is no finer sound than that of The Beastie Boys in full flight in the mid- 90s. Take Root Down for example...

Root Down

A Jimmy Smith bass loop, vinyl crackle and wah wah guitar and then the three Beasties chucking rhymes and lines around, referencing Dick Hyman, Sweetie Pie, The Meters, the Fruit of The Loom guys and Ad Rock's killer line in the first verse, 'Everybody know I'm known for dropping science'.

 Later on they break off for the immortal and ever usable line, 'Oh my God that's the funky shit!' before jumping straight back in with more verses, lines and imagery flashing by like a graffiti covered train- the NY subway system, the Zulu Nation, Grandmaster Flash, Kool Moe Dee and Bob Marley are all in there before they finish with a nod to their producer Mario C, 'That's a record, that's a record 'cause of Mario'. 

There's so much energy and innovation in those few minutes, the samples and the arrangement, the voices, the dynamics... they had it all. The Beastie Boys were a visual experience as well as an audio one- here's the video. 

The mid- 90s come flooding back watching that don't they? 

Root Down was released in May 1995 as an EP with various versions of the song and some live songs, including Something's Got To Give On It, a stoned and slow anti- war jam song, the three Beasties on guitar, bass and drums, all loose and funky. This is the studio version as found on 1994's seminal Ill Communication.

Something's Got To Give

The Humans Will Destroy Us

Le Carousel's second album has been a long time in the making and finally arrived last week, ten years after the first one. It was worth the wait. Belfast based producer, DJ and composer Phil Kieran, the man behind Le Carousel, has made one of 2026's best albums to date, a blend of electronics and guitars, drum machines and synths, cosmische, shoegaze, ambient, dark disco and psychedelia, that nods its head in sound and tone towards Andrew Weatherall and David Holmes and that asks some big questions that are particularly apposite- what's happening to us? Are we going to destroy the planet and ourselves? Are we going out by climate collapse or war? Is it too late to save ourselves? 

Light The Flare stutters into life, a drum machine, a grinding bassline and a wash of synths and then several layered voices, 'This ship's going  down/ Can anyone see?' Then comes a response- 'we're not alone'- as synth arpeggios splash across the top. 'There's always someone there'. This runs into Everyone Is Gone, a shoegaze/ psychedelic guitar piece with blasts of synth and keys. The Good One is a psychedelic cosmische glide- by, followed by Destroy Us,  where there's a touch of Spiritualized in the drone of the organ chords, a slow mo analogue song with hand drum percussion and shakers that builds gradually, multi- tracked vocals coming in, unfolding over six minutes, heading towards a fragile optimism and the counter- intuitive angelic vocal, 'destroy us'. The humans are asking for it. 

Side one ends with We're All Gonna Hurt, a dark disco/ acid house delight that first saw the dark of day last year, motorik drum machine beat with layers of Giorgio Morodor syths and keys and a ghostly male- female vocal pairing, 'I want to take you away/ This way/ Sooner or later/ We're all gonna hurt'. The machines and the voices sound like they could go on forever in an endless loop of dystopic disco delight.

Flip The Humans Will Destroy Us over and Echo Spiegel opens side two, spacey Vangelis Blade Runner chords and thumping club rhythms. Parabolic is all squelchy Space Echo and wobbly vintage synths. The analogue synths and warm widescreen production root these songs partly in 1970s West Germany and partly in the late 80s/ early 90s acid house/ Screamadelica days and it sits alongside David Holmes' Blind On A Galloping Horse too, another 2020s album made in Belfast that tries to get to grips with the state of the world around it. Rough Ending fades in gently, a lullaby that suddenly goes widescreen, a wall of synths and the ghost of Peter Hook's bass. 

Goodbye My Friends- we're getting close to the end now- is strummed guitar chords and more of those floating angelic vocals, wah wah synth and hissy drum machine, Spacemen 3 at the end of their journey, Screamdelica crashed and burned. Beautifully warm, embracing departure. The Humans Will Destroy Us concludes with You're Killing Me Inside- twinkling sounds, long organ chords, FX, acres of space, and a female voice backed by a male one, 'I love you/ You're the best thing/ I love you/ But you're killing me inside'. I don't think it's an individual they're singing too. It could be a lover or a partner but more likely, I think, it's us a species, it's all of us. 

What a way to go.

You can buy The Humans Will Destroy Us digitally at Bandcamp. I think all the vinyl's all gone but there might be some in shops. It is, I think you may have picked up by now, highly recommended.