Monday's Long Song

The town of Dover was without warning subjected to a march by a large group of black clad, balaclava wearing men on Saturday who blocked the roads and the port while chanting 'stop the boats', 'the country is ours' and 'England 'til I die'. Dozens of Blackshirts marching and making claim to the nation, its identity and its streets. Dangerous times we're living in. 

In a quirk of coincidence just a day before this event, this album came my way via reader and friend of the blog Spencer, a reliable source of leftfield, lesser known and outré music. From The Edge is an album about Dover and one that is part of a project to see Dover differently. 

From The Edge is a two track album by Richard Bundy and Anna Phoebe, each track around twenty minutes in length but made up I think of many shorter tracks. The tracks are inspired by Dover, the town, its buildings, history and atmosphere. Dover is a town on the edge, built into the cliff face of southern England, a gateway to Europe and also at times a barrier. The Dover Unlocked project, which From The Edge is a part of, is a work that is imagining and uncovering a different side of the town, its historic buildings- the castle, Napoleonic steps (the Grand Shaft) and others- and its people. 

Side one of From The Edge is called The Immersion and is a blending of guitars, bass, drums, piano, a DJ, Bundy on piano, keys and synths, strings and horns and sampled voices. A twenty two minute long piece that goes through several stages, ambient and found sound sections, piano led sections and string quartet parts (that reminded me of Durutti Column's 1984 classical piece Without Mercy). 

The other side, Unspiralling The Rock, kicks in with drums and synths, drones, layers of noise and then five minutes in flips the switch into the neo- classical strings again, a stitching together of experimental, classical and cinematic sounds. Half way through the band come back in and it turns into krauty cosmische before a long slow ending. Evocative, spellbinding and yes, from the edge. 

You can find From The Edge at Bandcamp. 

Forty Five Minutes Of White Label's Voices

In 2011 a bootleg album called Stolen Voices appeared by a Scottish trio who called themselves White Label. The album featured vocals from unreleased, lost or demo recordings with entirely new tracks recorded around them. The voices belonged to Jean Terrell of The Supremes, John Lennon, Todd Rundgren, Billy MacKenzie, Jimmy Scott, Billie Holiday, Jean King, David Bowie, John Martyn and Dennis Wilson. Stolen Voices was cheeky, unofficial, illegal and audacious and highly acclaimed. Eventually White Label were advised to stop selling the album via their website although by that point the horse had bolted. I first heard about it via Drew's Across The Kitchen Table blog. The stolen voices were given full new backing tracks, a sumptuous blend of soul, psychedelia, synth pop and house. 

By 2017 various musicians and artists had shown enough interest that the band could make a second album- Borrowed Voices- using officially sanctioned vocals or producing remixes. Borrowed Voices featured the voices of Paul Weller, Mark Eitzel, Aphty Khea, Billy MacKenzie (again), Hannah Peel and Emma Pollock among others and then in 2023 White Label put out Other Voices, an album with Weller (again), one of the last recordings Bim Sherman made, Linda Lewis, Jill O'Sullivan and Syann among the line up. Other Voices is a remix album that sounds like an early 70s psychedelic experiment where a crack orchestra, Laurel Canyon Americana, 60s soul and 90s ambient house had a baby. Lauren Laverne, Don Letts, Jarvis Cocker

This is a just under forty five minute selection of eleven tracks from the three albums, the kaleidoscopic and psychedelic sounds of White Label and a load of singers in one mix. It's very much a Sunday morning, staring into your coffee and ruminating selection of songs. 

Forty Five Minutes Of White Label's Voices 

• Paul
• Jean 1
• Still Moving (feat. Linda Lewis)
• Billy 2
• Mark
• Do You Believe (feat. Bim Sherman)
• Syann
• Aphty Khan
• The Sea's Out At Night (feat. Paul Weller)
• Turn Down The Noise (feat. Syann and Billy MacKenzie)
• Emma

Paul is from Borrowed Voices, the Paul being Paul Weller who showed an interest in White Label back when the bootleg Stolen Voices came out. The post- 22 Dreams Weller is a maverick, open to experimentation and recording in a bewildering array of styles. Paul (the track) is sophisticated 70s soul, Weller sounding very at home. 

Jean 1 is from Stolen Voices, a Northern Soul reworking of a vocal from a 1972 Supremes song produced by Jimmy Webb. Jean Terrell's voice was taken from a scratchy 7" single, recorded onto a c60 cassette and then dropped into the new track.

Still Moving is from Other Voices, Linda a veteran singer who has sung with Bowie and Basement Jaxx. Slow motion, widescreen Balearic pop. 

Billy 2 is Billy MacKenzie, the much missed Associates singer who died in 1997. Billy's voice is from an unreleased song, Tallahatchie Pass (posthumously released in 2022), a homage to the cinematic 60s country of Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell. Billy 2 was on Borrowed Voices. 

Mark is Mark Eitzel, American singer songwriter from American Music Club. The song is We All Have To Find Our Own Way Out from Mark's 2012 album Don't Be A Stranger redone as orchestral soul/ folk. 

Bim Sherman's voice is on Do You Believe from the Other Voices album, a vocal from 2000, the year Bim died. On Do You Believe he is surrounded by subtle backing vocals and tripped out soulfulness. 

Syann and Aphty Khan are both from the Borrowed Voices album, Aphty's psychedelic- Greek funk and Syann's orchestral soul reworked/ remixed complementing each other very nicely. 

The Sea's Out At Night is the opening song on Other Voices, a Paul Weller song that is as far from The Jam as anything he's done- atmospheric and orchestral. The White Label pair Anth Brown and Tom Doyle wrote and produced a song on Weller's Fat Pop Volume 1 album (Glad Times). 

Turn Down The Noise is Dundee singer Syann, combined with the sampled vocals of Billy MacKenzie in dramatic 60s soul style. White Label's Steve Aungle first met Billy in 1979, when he was a drummer looking for a band. Steve's story is here in his own words. 

Emma is from Borrowed Voices, the Emma being Emma Pollock (solo artist and former Delgado). Her vocal is from her haunted torch song A Certain Compulsion, re- imagined here like the song from a Cold War spy thriller finale where a doomed pair of lovers have been trapped either side of the Berlin Wall. 

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 Spectrum Analysis.

My spectrum analysis took me to Sonic Boom and Spectrum, Aphex Twin and Sewell and The Gong. Further analysis came from Dumdedumdumdum (Oh! Gunquit), Ernie (The Dells), Khayem (Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons, Solid Space, Creation Rebel, Florence and her Machine and Seahawks with Prins Thomas), Al G (World Of Twist, Matt Berry), Mrs G (the ZX- Spectrum and Space Raiders), Weird Al (Pac- Man v The Beatles), Jase (Rain Tree Crow), Walter (Billy Cobham and Massive Attack) and Rol (more ZX- Spectrum, Jet Set Willy and Joni Mitchell).

From the above suggestions, here's World Of Twist covering The Rolling Stones...

She's A Rainbow

This week's Oblique Strategy card reads like this- Not building a wall but making a brick.

How are bricks made? I asked the internet. 

The main ingredient is clay. Another key component is sand. Sometimes other additives such as lime, iron oxide or magnesia might be used. The final crucial ingredient is water. The dry material is crushed. The soft wet clay is shaped by a mould. Once the brick has been shaped it is left to dry- the removal of excess water is important. The brick is then fired in a kiln. 

Clay

Clay is from Goldfrapp's 2013 album Tales Of Us, a lovely collection of folky album/ electronic songs. Clay tells the story of a doomed soldier during World War II writing a letter to his lover, Dave. 

Castles Made Of Sand

I don't think Jimi Hendrix ever sounded better than on Axis: Bold As Love- loose, electric blues, psychedelia. Castles Made Of Sand has some wonderful free flowing forwards guitar and bursts of backwards guitar, a tripped out solo and some autobiographical lyrics from Jimi about impermanence. 

I Wash My Hair With Limes

Obscure 1984 outliers Circus Underwater. Dreamy laid back psyche/ ambient. Stunning. 

Throw Some Water In

Lee Perry in 1978 and his Roast Fish And Collie Weed album, his first album to consist solely songs sung by Scratch himself. 

Summon The Fire

Body shaking, addictive astro- jazz/ dance- psyche from The Comet Is Coming is 2019. 

Unfortunately I can't find a song with the word kiln in the title. Killing on the other hand is very well represented. This is Moon Duo in 2009.

Killing Time

Feel free to contribute your own constructions in response to Not building a wall but making a brick in the comment box.

Spraycan Or Amulet

Two new releases today, both very much in the Bagging Area scheme of things. 

First up and out on Golden Lion Sounds today is the debut release by Spraycan, a six track download or four track limited vinyl release called EP1. Spraycan is the work of Rich Thair and Nick Abnett, the men who hold down the drums/ percussion and bass in Sabres Of Paradise and formerly The Aloof. The Sabres re- union as a touring band over the last two years led Rich and Nick to begin playing together and recording, with a 'No plan, first take, move on' approach. The two songs on EP1 are (unsurprisingly) shot through with dub but also post- punk and punk- funk. 

Italiano thuds in with bass, drums and percussion and Nick's compressed vocals, 'Your persistence/ My inconsistence...' it goes, sounding like it could be from an early 80s Factory record. 'It makes you want to/ Stop that'. The rhythms kick on with guitars and organ piling in. 'Don't come to me/ Any more'. Scratchy guitar, mutant punk- funk and cries of 'Italiano'. 

Rah Rah Rah has Nick's dubby bassline leading the way, Roland Space Echo splashes among the FX, ricochets and small explosions going off and a wiry guitar line to the fore. Nick's vocals are from the post- punk school of expressionism and all the better for it. 

Richard Sen is on hand for remix duties, two versions of Italiano, one with the vocal and one without- drum machines deployed, basslines turned into buzzing acid monsters and lysergic synth patterns dropped in, at that acid house/ industrial sweet spot.

You can find Spraycan's EP1 at Golden Lion Sounds here. Highly recommended.

Over in Wigan, just next door to Andy Burnham's new constituency, is Mark Peters, a solo artist whose records have been featured here several times before- 2017's Innerland, 2022's Red Sunset Dreams and 2023's The Magic Hour all showcase Mark's ambient guitar/ cosmische/ shoegaze sound. A new single comes out today, Amulet. Mark has hooked up with bassist Dean Roby before on Alpenglow and Magic Hour and they carried on in a disused Wigan millspace earlier this year. The warmth of Mark's guitars and Andy's melodic bass combine beautifully as the drum machine patters away underneath. 

Mark had recently begun exploring William Orbit's back catalogue in depth just before the moment when Orbit's death was announced last month. Mark went back to Amulet, then called Jam 7, and inspired by William Orbit finished the track off. It's out today, a longer and shorter version, and can be found at Mark's Bandcamp. Lovely stuff indeed. 

This is Alpenglow from The Magic Hour in 2023, Neu! rewired in Wigan.  

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