Manhattan To Manchester- The Wonders Of The Internet

Isn't the internet wonderful?
A few days ago I got in from work to open an email from a reader- Henry from Manhattan, New York. That on its own is enough to bugger up my mind a little; someone on the other side of the world has been reading my blog. Henry wrote loads of nice things in his email, how he's been exploring loads of English/British bands and acid house from twenty years ago and how Bagging Area 'helps music become a social experience' and how the internet has limitless and instant communication. Which is what blogging is all about really. Henry also sings and plays in a band, Zula, who play psych-indie pop partly inspired by the acid house/post acid house bands and partly by krautrock. Listen to this over at Bandcamp (and download it for free) and I think you'll agree that Henry and Zula have got it nailed down very well and from what he told me their hearts are slapbang in the right place.

To Bears

2 Bears have been all over the place recently. I've largely ignored them up until now. Two men in comedy bear outfits making big room house music with one member being twenty percent of Hot Chip (who seem to make music at an ironic distance) hasn't exactly set my pulse racing. But maybe I've been too soon to dismiss them- their music is a decent stab at making proper house music for dancing to and there's a line up of people whose taste I trust playing them- Andrew Weatherall, Annie Mac, Erol Alkan. On the other hand they're also recommended by Chris Moyles, Pete Tong, Paul McCartney and Elton John. So, um, I dunno. This is a free download of a remix of Work off their album (out today; the email said send people to buy it at iTunes or Amazon but I'd rather you went to a record shop), done by the ever wonderful St Etienne (who usually get the internet police to pull stuff I post of theirs).

Electronic Rudie

I don't usually post mixes but I'll make an exception for this one- Ashley Beedle's Electronic Rudie, a dub mix done for the ever excellent internet radio station Beats In Space back in 2009. This is very, very good and finds dub in some pretty unusual places. Give an hour or so over to this and you'll feel a whole lot better afterwards.

Tracklist
Generations Walking - Midnight Bustling (Francois Kevorkian Dub)
Basement 5 - Immigrant Dub
The Pop Group - 3:38
Dub Pistols feat . Rodney P - You'll Never Find (Dub)
Stiff Little Fingers - Bloody Dub
Generation X - Wild Dub
Flesh For Lulu - I'm Not Like Everybody Else (Dub Version)
The Pogues - Young Ned Of The Hill (Dub Version)
The Clash - One More Dub
Bauhaus - Here's The Dub (She's In Parties)
Leftfield - Dub Gussett
Air - How Does It Make You Feel? (Adrian Sherwood Mix)
Massive Attack vs Mad Professor - Radiation Ruling The Nation (Protection)
Reverend And The Makers - Sundown On The Empire (Adrian Sherwood On U Sound Disneydubland)
The Clash - Robber Dub
The Specials/Rico Rodriguez - Ghost Town (Extended Mix)

Electronic Rudie!

Afro-Cuban Bebop

Some nice Afro-Cuban Bebop from Joe Strummer, a short track (only a minute and a half long) recorded with The Pogues (moonlighting as The Astro-Physicians), B-side to the wilderness years highlight Burning Lights. Just to check Box.net's working for me as much as anything.

Afro Cuban Bebop

Something For The Weekend Madam?

Picking up where Lux left off last night, Memphis Minnie advising her partner to 'keep on eatin', 'til you get enough'.

Keep On Eatin'

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 44

'Calling all cows down on the farm' sings Lux Interior at the opening of this Cramps rockabilly cracker, borrowing from another older rockabilly song by The Blues Rockers. Lux then fits in more innuendo and filth than an X Rated Carry On film- 'unzip that zipper, snap that snap' 'whip that cream 'til the butter comes', 'shake that thing I'll buy you a diamond ring', 'let's get up and go get ploughed', and so on. Meanwhile the band shake their rockabilly things and Ivy provides a vicious feedback led breakdown. This version of the song from 1986's A Date With Elvis was recorded for the band's only Peel Session. Hot stuff.

Cornfed Dames (Peel Session)

Weatherall Mix Roundup 6

Fail he may. Sail he did.
He's in Australia. Some of you might like this, mix for a radio show Noise In My Head, to download in two parts here.

Funnel Of Slow

A good while ago DJ Diddy Wah who runs the excellent vintage sounds of the Diddy Wah blog had a short run of posts where he slowed down 45 rpm singles to 33 rpm. This one came up on the way home today and it has to be heard to be believed- Wanda Jackson's classic Funnel Of Love at 33 rpm, slowed down to crawl and sung by a blues wracked man. You'll love it.

Funnel Of Love 33

Thanks to DJ Diddy Wah- hope he doesn't mind me re-presenting it here.

Beat Club And Bernard

In a similar vein to yesterday's post but actually a much better record is this, Security by Beat Club. When New Order called it a day in 1991 (for the first time) manager Rob Gretton set up a label, Rob's Records, partly to put out ACR records and partly to release tracks by local bands. Beat Club were neither local nor ACR but actually from Miami, the studio project of Ony Rodriguez and his girlfriend Mireya Valls. This song is remixed by Bernard Sumner and is a fairly accurate summary of what dance music could sound like in 1991, certainly in the northwest of England. Stuff like this still has the power to get the Swiss household skipping round the frontroom and standing on the furniture.

Security (Bernard Sumner remix)

Rob's Records folded in 1999 following the death of Rob Gretton. In the 90s they had a big hit with Sub Sub's Ain't No Love (Ain't No Use), put out several decent ACR songs (personal favourite 27 Forever among them) and tracks by several other bands including Mr Scruff and Strange Brew, one half of which lived down our road when we were kids (Jake Purdy, if you're reading this, sorry about the tooth)

Electronic Shack Up

In the mid 90s A Certain Ratio got various people to remix and retool their back catalogue for an album called Looking For A Certain Ratio, which ended up coming out on Creation Records. The remixers included 808 State's Graham Massey, Jon Dasilva and John McCready, Sub Sub, Way Out West, The Other Two and Electronic. Johnny Jay turned in a remix of Mickey Way called the Manchester City Mix, which definitely won't be posted here. Nearly twenty years on there's an element of 'why bother' about some of these remixes, as they stripped away the period punk-funk and added mid 90s dance software. Electronic tackled Shack Up. You can probably guess what it sounds like- worth a listen though, Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner (I'm guessing it was mainly Sumner but don't know for sure) providing a version of Shack Up that sounds very much like music sounded in Manchester's bars at the time.

Shack Up Radio edit (Electronic Mix)

Endgame?

Given all the goings on with Megaupload and the such it possibly shouldn't be a surprise that I've just logged into my Mediafire account and found every mp3 file gone, the last month's songs. They've wiped the lot, including the files for the posts for tomorrow and Wednesday. Anyone else affected by this? Is it worth re-upping them? Switch filehost? Give up? Go legit?
Answers on a postcard...

Edit; I don't know if it's just me that's lost all my Mediafire files, if it's deliberate by them or what. A random look shows some other people's Mediafire files still working. I don't know what's going on. I've uploaded the songs for the next two posts using 4shared as I already had an account there. I'll look into Boxnet soon (although Ally reports they've deleted files from her account), and wait to see what happens with Mediafire. I'm tempted to upload some stuff using Mediafire and see what happens. The last months' worth of posts' links have gone and I can't be arsed to re-up them at the moment through another filehosting service. If anyone wants anything desperately let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I Can't Love You, I Really Don't Think That I Can

As a wee follow up to yesterday's Billy Childish post this is another of Billy's key songs, re-recorded with Medway folk-punk band The Singing Loins, although this is folk above punk in terms of sound. Sounds like it was recorded in someone's kitchen. Which it probably was. You can find The Singing Loins website here, with a biography that finishes with these words: 'Perversely unambitious, they remain untainted, uncorrupted and above all still doing it for the reason they started- love.'

I Don't Like The Man I Am

We Live In Troubled Times

I've been on a Billy Childish tip recently- his output is so varied and prolific. Music, woodcuts, linocuts, paintings, novels, autobiography, poetry. The music is much more varied than his reputation suggests. There is a lot of Kinksy garage rock, but there's also blues, gospel, English folk, Mod pop-art. He changes the name of the band every time someone leaves or joins (it's a matter of respect according to Billy). The limitations he places on himself seem to be what unleashes the creativity. Really inspiring. The sheer number of records released is also inspiring- a couple of albums a year, and every one contains two or three absolute blinders. On top of that the worldview is great- the Edwardian work clothes, militaria, Victorian whiskers, aversion to the later Twentieth century. I reckon he might do some of his clothes shopping here, which must be very nice if you can afford it. A google image search also reveals he's regularly in demand by photographers for their portfolios. He's got one of those interesting faces, often topped by an interesting hat. Mr Wild Billy Childish- I take my hat off to you sir. Long may you run.

This song is one of Billy's key pieces- recorded and played live with several of his bands, the version here is by his 90s trio Thee Headcoats.

Troubled Times

Some Grow Up And Some Grow Old

One of my favourite albums is Rancid's 1995 lp ...And Out Come The Wolves. It's not original or groundbreaking or envelope pushing. It's just a record full of two-to-three minute punk songs, with a side order of ska, brilliantly recorded guitars, gut busting vocals and guttersnipe Californian street poetry. It is, as Billy Childish might put it, placing authenticity over originality. And if you're going to listen to an American 90s punk band I'd take Rancid over the masses of also-rans and pop-punkers that came after them. Rancid meant it, man, and sounded great too.

Daly City Train

Weatherall Mix Roundup 5

You might want to have a look at this over at Soundcloud. Andrew Weatherall playing Back To Basics 20 last December. Starts and ends with Smokebelch. Two hours plus long. Free download. What are you waiting for?

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 43

Another song from the Best Of Fury Rockabilly Volume 2, as promised last week. This one was a bit of a revelation. First revelation- it's unexpectedly good, with an urgent, rocking, raw, bluesy guitar riff, great distorted vocals, real contemporary rockabilly. Second revelation- they're from Austria.

Man's Ruin

I Got Lost Inside It All

After escaping The Bunnymen Ian McCulloch released his solo album Candleland. It led with this single, a perfectly formed little song with typically McCulloch lyrics. In truth it also sounds like the last blast of the old days of the mid 80s, before 1989 turned into something else for fans of guitar bands. Still, it sounds pretty good today, twenty three years on. Yep- twenty three.

Proud To Fall

Leather Cliche

Kid Congo Powers probably doesn't have anything as prosaic as a CV (or a Resume if you're reading this in the USA) but the Former Employment section would be more interesting to read than most of us manage- Cramps, Gun Club, Bad Seeds. His third album with the Pink Monkey Birds came out last year- Gorilla Rose- and was a stylish, garage guitar goodie bag. This is from his 2005 album (Philosophy And Underwear)and has all the sort of things you'd want from a Kid Congo Powers record.

Even Though Your Leather Is Cliche

Spitting In A Wishing Well

When X Factor was reaching it's thrilling conclusion a month ago and the eventual winners Little Mix announced that their shot at the Christmas number one slot would be a cover of Cannonball my ears pricked up slightly. A girl group cover of Kim and Kelley Deal's 1993 indie-disco staple, with it's crunchy riff, shouty chorus and let's-jump-around bassline could at least be interesting. Alas it was not to be. What's more, I can't remember who the Cannonball they covered was by and can't be arsed to check. Give it another month and people won't remember Little Mix either.

Cannonball

What A Feeling

A song from 1990's Four To The Floor e.p. where Manchester's A Certain Ratio returned to the dancefloor. Good Together is possibly my favourite ACR song- it opens with a vocal sample (Lou Reed) before a 303 kicks in, the song takes over, the Beach Boys get referenced and Bernard Sumner and Shaun Ryder give backing vocal assistance too. I never get bored of this.

Good Together

Coming Round Again

Orbital are back after an eight year absence- there's a new song called Never at Soundcloud you can download for free. Listening to it, it really doesn't sound like they've ever been away. I love it already, even with its abrupt ending.

Buffalo Beat

Andrew Weatherall's remix of Soft Rocks, one of my favourite records of 2011; slapping bass, glam rock stomp, rockabilly vocals. I got the 12" back in the Autumn (which wasn't cheap) but I'm having trouble ripping vinyl at the moment so this is a shorter version ripped from youtube (and hence lowish in sound quality; the youtube ripper only rips at 128kbm). To be honest, I just wanted an excuse to post the picture...

We Hunt Buffalo Now (Weatherall Remix)

Time And Space

The Time And Space Machine, balaeric-cosmic-disco-stomp from ex-Grid man Richard Norris, have a new album out soon. The single to promote it, the magnificently titled Pill Party In India, is up to listen to at Soundcloud. It's well good, as my daughter might say.

This is the title track from 2009's album, organ led, throbbing bass and deeply psychey.

Set Phazer To Stun

Picture Post

This is one of my favourite pictures in all of rock 'n' roll- David Bowie and Iggy Pop at Copenhagen Central Railway Station, 'travelling incognito' across Europe in 1976. Bowie about to record his white hot Berlin trilogy of lps, Iggy with his best two solo albums in the pipeline and freshly sprung by Bowie from being sectioned. Neither mans' get-up would look out of place in a major city today but must have raised eyebrows at the time despite them attempting to travel in mufti. David Bowie, inconceivably, was 65 last Sunday.

Lust For Life

Swiss Guards

I'm not really Swiss. Let me explain.

A couple of friends in the real world have asked me recently why I haven't done this post and my only answer is 'it's not why I started Bagging Area', followed by 'just not got round to it really'. Maybe there's a bit more to it than that so here we go. This post does make me a little nervous.

I'm not really Swiss. Since 1997 or '98 I've sporadically made music as part of a band called Swiss Guards. Given that we've been going for fourteen or fifteen years there hasn't been more than a couple of months of action in total, partly due to geographical distances, and partly lack of time, family, work, real life. In that time we've released two albums, got a third one almost done and played four gigs. One of which was two songs at a band member's wedding. The first album (Once the Process) came out on actual compact disc, with a barcode and everything, on a small record label called Captive, based in Leicester. Mainly me and my compadre H, it's homemade and a bit of a hotch potch. The second album (One Thing After Another) was better recorded, with other musicians (Dan, Andy, Alan), had more fully realised songs but was only released digitally. Our total sales are probably somewhere near three figures. We did sell downloads to individuals on both coasts of the US though, so I think that counts as 'cracking the States'. The story of Swiss Guards is possibly another blog entirely- as in a totally different blogsite- so I won't bore you with it here. I'd be happy to give all the songs away for free via the internet. You can go to Bandcamp here if you like. In fact at a gig a couple of years back I realised you can't even give it away for free, when someone responded to my 'do you want cd of our album for free?' with 'no, not really ta.' 'Go on, it's free'. 'No'.

Two currently unreleased songs for you to download. Feel free to be polite, rude, constructively critical, or to just ignore the whole post and hope normal service is resumed soon. For the record, I do the vocals (and some guitar, though anything you can hear on the songs and is any good is definitely H). Excitingly, these may not even be the finished versions of these songs- real Swiss Guards rarities for you.

This one has guitars.

Melancholic Streak

This one is more electronic.

Heart Beating

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 42

I picked up a compilation recently, The Best Of Fury Rockabilly 2, a collection of '20 red hot 'n' rockin' tracks featuring some of the top names on the UK rockabilly scene and beyond'. I suppose it's difficult to do rockabilly now without being labelled 'revivalists' which always seems a bit sneery, and there's some stuff on this which is straight rockabilly revivalism but there's some good stuff on it as well. Like this song by Deuces Wild, a three piece who were active in the late 80s and early 90s. I don't know if they're still going. This song is pretty good- less revivalist, more modern rockabilly, although there's an even better one by The Slapbacks which I'll post next week. I like to think these guys first got the bug when they saw The Stray Cats on Top Of The Pops as teenagers, and have been following the rockabilly thing ever since.

Radiation Ranch

You Got Me Going

I've just realised I've stumbled into a series of themed posts this week, featuring mainly bands that have the definite article before their name- The La's, The Stairs, The Aloof, The Ramrods, The Wake. It's heck of a concept for a series isn't it? Today's 'The' band is The Chi-lites, and a girl who's got them going stoned out of their minds. I first heard this song covered by The Jam, a version I really like, but you can hear Bruce and Rick huffing a bit as they struggle with Paul's newfound love of soul. This is the original.

Stoned Out Of My Mind

Anyone Reprise

A while back I posted a youtube link to Jessica Brown Findlay singing Irma Thomas' Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand) from Charlie Brooker's excellent TV series Black Mirror (technology and its attendant madness was the overall theme). Jessica's beautifully sung cover version was the centrepiece of episode 2, 15 Million Merits. A different youtube uploader (Paulosham2) has since put together a cleaned up version- no voices from the show, intro and fade out sorted neatly, very nice job.

Does anyone fancy an mp3?
Does anyone fancy JBF?

Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)

No Forbidding Allowed

Mentioning the Situationists earlier reminded me of them- not that I know a great deal about them- and how they've been a part of 'music' since the 60s, with those riots in Paris in 1968 and the whole 60s subculture, Malcolm McLaren, Sex Pistols, punk's sloganeering generally, The Stone Roses and elsewhere. Greil Marcus does this sort of thing better than me and at far greater length. The slogans and graffiti have been evident over the last few years with the various protests, not least the Occupy Movement and also with silly old Banksy. Still, Situationist slogans can be pretty good even if they read more like something you'd buy on a T-shirt in Top Shop now than an actual call for change.

Be realistic- demand the impossible
Underneath the paving stones, the beach
No freedom for the enemies of freedom
Only the truth is revolutionary
Speechmaking is counter-revolutionary
Millionaires of the world unite- the wind is turning
The golden age was when gold didn't reign
Are you a consumer or a participant?
Going through the motions kills emotions
We demand games with great seriousness
When examined, answer with questions
Unbutton your mind as often as you unbutton your fly
Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking
Abolish copyright; sound structures belong to everyone
This concerns everyone
When the last sociologist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat, will we still have 'problems'?
You may only be 25 but your Trade Union dates from the last century
The boss needs you, you don't need the boss
Let's not change bosses, let's change life
Run, the old world is behind you
No replastering, the structure is rotten
Boredom is counter-revolutionary


Yeah, well, like, whatevs.

Wake Up

Some old Factory music for Thursday from Glasgow's The Wake. It's against some kind of internet law to type the words The Wake without mentioning that Bobby Gillespie was a member (leaving in 1983). The Wake signed to Factory after Rob Gretton heard them, recorded at Stockport's Strawberry Studio (a Factory hangout), toured with New Order and released several singles and two albums through either Factory or Factory Benelux. Eventually they got fed up at Factory and left for Sarah Records splitting in the mid 90s. The Wake re-woke in 2009 and have an album scheduled for this year. There was a gig in Brussels in December 2009 with former Factory bands Section 25 and A Certain Ratio which sounds like the early 80s in a nutshell, but probably with fewer raincoats and less Situationism. This was a single in 1984, archetypal in it's own way, and has Durutti Column man Vini Reilly on piano. Rather nice really.

Talk About The Past

Ghost Twang

There were thousands of instrumental rock 'n' roll groups in the US during the 50s and 60s. The Ramrods from Connecticut had a hit with a cover of (Ghost) Riders In The Sky, first a hit for Vaughan Monroe in 1949 but maybe best known to us in its Johnny Cash version. This instrumental cover has the twang and those Ramrods bend the strings to spooky and rockin' effect.

(Ghost) Riders In The Sky

One Night Stand

Can't believe I've not posted anything by The Aloof before. This remix is a stunner- Ashley Beedle's thirteen minute take on their One Night Stand from 1996. The instrumentation (dramatic and sweeping strings, tabla, the kitchen sink) is good enough on it's own but taken with singer Ricky Barrow's extraordinary voice (and self loathing of the one night stand) it's almost too much for one record to contain. The Aloof contained two Sabres Of Paradise and one Red Snapper (which sounds a bit like an alternative, clubby version of the twelve days of Christmas).

One Night Stand (The Long Night and The Samba)

Magic Bus, La

While we're visiting the cosmic Merseyside area here's The Stairs from 1991 and their none-more-1962-r'n'b song Weed Bus. Led by Edgar Summertyme (who'd pop up in a version of The La's), he's also played with Paul Weller, Johnny Marr and St Etienne as well as releasing some crooning lps as Edgar 'Jones' Jones. For authenticity's sake The Stairs recorded in mono. While stoned.

Weed Bus

Chatham Pocket

This came out as a freebie some time ago but I've only just got around to listening to it (I wrote some time ago when this post was first published, see below)- a taster for a new record by Billy Childish's latest other band The Vermin Poets (see below also). Chatham Pocket is a rocking guitar led instrumental and will go very nicely on your latest compilation cd or mixtape or playlist. A Chatham Pocket is, apparently, slang for the internal cavity where drugs can be hidden. Nice.

Edit: actually they're now called the Spartan Dreggs.
Another edit: Dunno what Blogger's playing at but this post has re-popped up tonight, without me asking it too. So I've put the link back up. It was in Weatherall's 6 Mix show last week as well. Spooky.

Chatham Pocket

The Melody Always Finds Me

I remember buying the 12" of Timeless Melody by The La's, rushing home by bus, and dropping the needle onto the groove and being dumbstruck by it. Its sheer brilliance, the perfect guitar pop song, those clanging chords, a song about being in love with the song. Funny really because as everyone knows the band hated it and the album it came off and the proper fans had to hate it too. We didn't really have anything else to go off though so the badmouthing of the album was a bit odd when it all sounded so good. I saw them in Liverpool some time later and the songs were the same but different- rougher, rawer, all wrapped up in those chewy Scouse vowel sounds. This version is from a 1990 BBC session (for Bob Harris I think) and it's, y'know, the same song but different enough for you to prick your ears up and begin to understand what the fuss with the album was all about. I'm not going to describe it- listen to it and see. Whether this version matches the sound that only Lee Mavers can hear when he hears his band in his head I don't know. There's another version here on Youtube, from an acetate of the first album that was withdrawn. Many of the aficionados reckon this is the one. I think they could be right. There's probably other versions out there. The internet seems to have been partly invented for La's fans to share alternate versions of those dozen songs off that one single album. Craig at Plain Or Pan once posted twenty two different versions of There She Goes. I still don't know which is the best. Possibly the John Leckie one. Possibly not.

This is Timeless Melody, without doubt the best version of this song released back in that week in 1990.

Timeless Melody (BBC Session 1990)

Weatherall Mix Roundup 4

Just the one mix in this post- not really a round-up is it? You can get an Andrew Weatherall mix here at Soundcloud (download it for free), a promo he's done for playing in Australia this month. Lots of Saturday night disco in this one.

Let's Do Rocksteady

Saturday morning- and wasn't that was a long week, especially as it was only four working days long. The drive to work has been grim; pitch black, blowing a gale and sheeting down. No one wanting to be back at work. Decorations and trees disappearing. As Davy has noted we need reasons to be cheerful. Thankfully few things can lift the January gloom quite like the life affirming blast of a Two Tone single, in this case from The Bodysnatchers. The three Mod girls in the picture, photographed in 1980 probably scaring the shit out of younger kids like me, agree.

Let's Do Rocksteady

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 41

A few weeks back I posted The Cramps cover version of Love Me. Here's the original by The Phantom. It's one of the great rockabilly singles, cut in one take in 1958, mad rocking guitars and Jerry Lott's ramshackle vocal. Chaotic, loose, energetic rockabilly.

Love Me

Stop And Listen...

...to The Shag. Milwaukee's Shag with this cracking 1967 fuzz riff garage band, go-go dancing 45. The Shag was, apparently, the name of dozens of bands in the US in the sixties but only Milwaukee's Shag recorded this nugget.

Stop And Listen

Sabres

Also from Mr Weatherall's 6 Mix show the other night, Haysi Fantayzee's seven minute dub-pop song The Sabres Of Paradise, from 1982. Haysi Fantayzee are best known for the A-side hit John Wayne Is Big Leggy (which coincidentally I was talking to someone about on New Year's Eve. You can't say I don't know how to have fun at an NYE party) and for one half of them being Jeremy Healy, 90s club dj and 'face' (and several other less complimentary words according to a friend of mine). Healy took the phrase Sabres Of Paradise from a novel about Cossacks by Lesley Blanche, which a different friend gave me a copy of about fifteen years ago, which I still haven't read. Weatherall took the name from the record, and the book, for a group and a record label. Got all of that?

Top song by the way.

The Sabres Of Paradise

These Are Not The Last Days

Towards the end of his New Year's Day Vinyl Only 6 Mix show Andrew Weatherall played two corkers, one a krauty song by The Early Years and the other this- Love Performance by Australian band Total Control. Very post-punk, some Martin Rev, some Wire, very Joy Divison but with keyboards all over it as well as guitars and very good too. You can get the album Henge Beat on vinyl from Iron Lung Records or as a download from Bandcamp.

Love Performance

Colder Music

One to blow those post New Year/back to work cobwebs away- this came out in 2006 which seems pretty recent but frighteningly is six years ago. Colder was the name for Marc Nguyen Tan, a French DJ, remixer and graphic designer who made some very post-punk influenced dance music. This was one of his best tunes- To The Music- remixed here by Optimo (Espacio) which means the beats are that little bit crisper, the bass that little bit tauter, it all goes a bit mad around the three minute thirty mark and increasingly mad thereafter. Blinding.

To The Music [Optimo (Espacio) Remix]

Streets Of Calcutta

Back to work tomorrow. INSET. Ho hum.

I played this at some point on NYE. How funky is this?
Very funky.

Streets Of Calcutta

Two Today

Bagging Area is two years old today. Thanks to everyone who comes here and takes the time to read my piffle and special thanks to those who leave comments, frequently (you know who you are, as they used to say) or infrequently- it's the comments that make it worthwhile really. Otherwise it's just me blathering into the internet wind. Mrs Swiss says she prefers reading the comments to my posts.

Let's see if I can keep this going into 2013. The song by is The Charlatans (or Charlatans UK if you're an American reader) and one of their most successful moments where, with The Chemical Brothers' assistance, they married a Stonesy shuffle and piano to a housey undercarriage and Tim's stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

One To Another