This came out back in 2013 to little fanfare which is a shame as it's a rather good remix job done by Weatherall and Fairplay on Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s, a sort of hypnotic, space age, techno remix. Some lovely melodies reveal themselves set off against the breakbeat. Best description I can manage right now.
Tim Burgess and Peter Gordon's Same Language, Different Worlds album is full of low key pleasures, little analogue synth parts burbling away, sax drifting in, Tim's hazy vocals. This remix of Around by Sonic Boom adds further tension, loops and some chopped up, repetitive parts.
You may have heard the sad news that Inspiral Carpets drummer Craig Gill died last week aged just 44. Friends and fans have launched a campaign to get their 1994 single Saturn 5 to the number one slot for Christmas as a tribute, so you know what to do. Back in 1990 this was the song that broke them through from a local concern to a national following.
Back before Manchester City got a load of cash United fans used to be able to sing along to this with different words- 'this is how it feels to be City, this is how it feels to be small, this is how it feels when your team wins nothing at all'. Alas, we can sing it no more.
If you ever need to explain to someone what dub is and why there are times when you should fall to your knees and hail King Tubby as a supreme musical producer and explorer, play them this. And then the rest of the Blood And Fire compilation Dub Gone Crazy- The Evolution Of Dub At King Tubby's 1975-1979. And then they'll know.
I post these up on a monthly basis and it seems worthwhile because there's more top quality new and old music to be found in them than in almost any other two hour show the internet can provide. This is Weatherall's November offering for Music's Not For Everyone at NTS Radio. As well as the usual concoction there are, count 'em, four new Weatherall remixes- The Early Years; Piano Magic; Nancy Noise, Craig Christon and Tim Hutton; and one from David Holmes' recent Late Night Tales compilation I raved about last week, Holmes and BP Fallon.
This might soundtrack the afterparty back at our's spilling over from Isaac's 18th. Cheers!
A friend tipped me off to this last night, an utterly retro but totally fresh breakbeat rave smash that was made in 2016 but sounds like 1991. That's an Emotions vocal sample in there. Guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
Chime by Orbital is one of British dance music's breakthrough moments, proof the UK could do what the US had been donig in Chicago and Detroit. Chime was written by the Hartnoll brothers in Kent in 1989. It was recorded in early 1989 onto cassette in their makeshift home studio, a cupboard under the stairs, using a recently acquired Roland TB 303 which had been bought from a working men's club keyboard player. Legend has it that it cost a fiver (a documentary I watched a while back), £3.65 (an interview where he describes having to shell out for a metal TDK cassette) or a single pound (wikipedia). Paul Hartnoll mixed it live onto a four track tape recorder and then went to the pub. Paul described the evening thus- Chime' started as a big riff from me playing this joyous Detroit-y chord progression that mirrored my mood — it was a sunny day and I was off to meet girls down the pub — and then I built a two-bar groove on the 909 that turned out to be rubbish until I decided to play it as one-bar loops.
Taking it down to the local record shop where mentor Jazzy M worked, they played it through the shop's system and people started asking for it there and then. The full twelve minute one is the one you really want. This one here is a five minute edit. Shorter but still wondrous.
If you're going to do a cover, do it like this- rip it to shreds with volume and feedback and stick an American TV preacher over the end with the sound of breaking glass.
At 7.37 am on the morning of November 23rd 1998 our eldest Isaac forced his way into the world, two weeks early. Today he turns eighteen. Some of you know his background. He was born with an incredibly rare genetic disease, Hurler's Disease (MPS1), which saw him taken off to intensive care immediately and he didn't come out for a week. Hurler's disease is caused by a missing enzyme which leads to all kind of difficulties- deafness, learning difficulties, physical disabilities and gradual loss of functions to an early death. There is no cure. Aged eighteen months he went through two bone marrow transplants that have put some of the missing enzyme into his body, a treatment that has given him the life he has now. He's had numerous operations for skeletal problems. One unforeseen consequence of the bone marrow transplant was that the chemotherapy used to enable his body to accept the donor material also destroyed his immune system which then failed to grow back. Aged ten with a weak immune system he got pneumonia which turned into meningitis, which floored him. Back into intensive care and not expected to survive the night. Coma and eventual recovery but with his hearing completely wiped out. It's been a long road.
But that's only some of the story. He is in good health currently, goes to special needs 6th form college, has trips out with friends, knows more people than I do and is having a party on Saturday where we are expecting roughly 150 guests to show up. We are transitioning into adult services from children's, both hospitals and social care, which for us is daunting. He just gets on with it. The remarkable thing isn't his continued determination to carry on against the odds or his resilience in the face of disability (though they are pretty remarkable). The remarkable thing is the connections he makes with people, the impact he has on them and the joy he gets from them.
Eighteen years ago I was totally unprepared for this- having a child is change enough. Having a disabled child is another world. Looking back now I'm not sure how we coped with some of the things he and we went through. But here we are. One of the things he wants the most on becoming an adult is to have a pint poured for him (which he won't drink but it'll be poured and sat with). So if you're raising a glass of anything tonight, have one with us.
When I drove Mrs Swiss to hospital eighteen years ago the last song that played on the car stereo cassette player was this, Cinnamon Girl- still I think my favourite Neil Young song (which I don't have on the hard drive right now).
'A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night
You see us together
Chasing the moonlight
My cinnamon girl'
Sometimes a fringe and a denim jacket is all you need. Johnny Marr's been all over the media recently including here two days ago. His guitar playing was all over other people's work too, occasionally during his time in the The Smiths and then especially in the years afterwards. In full flow in the years after the split he recorded impossibly funky Nile Rodgers style guitar onto Still Feel the Rain by Stex. I've got a real softspot for this single and even with that very 1990 drumbeat this song still sounds good today. The Grid were involved in a remixed version on the 12". Difficult to believe this wasn't a massive hit.
In the video the fringe and denim jacket have gone, replaced by a crop and baggy white sweatshirt and jeans. Time moves on, never stand still, keep looking forward and all that.
Plus Instruments were an early 80s industrial/electronic pop outfit, the work of Truus de Groot and whoever else was around (this included Jim Sclavunus from Grinderman with Nick Cave). After thirty years out of the game Truus returned recently and now Love Is Enough has been remixed for a 12" by Khidja, Luke Solomon and Richard Sen. In a piece of happy synchronicity Richard Sen did the cover art for Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch 12" which I posted a few days ago. I chanced upon the Sen remix yesterday, a dark house reworking with a thumping kick drum, trippy strings and icy vocals. The video is pretty hypnotic too.
As you probably know Johnny Marr's autobiography, Set The Boy Free, came out recently. I was in a shop and had just picked it up when my phone rang. Mrs Swiss said her Mother had just phoned saying she'd found a Christmas present for me and she was really excited because I'm 'difficult to buy for'.
'So whatever you do, don't buy the Johnny Marr book'.
I put it back, sighing slightly as I'd have to wait until the end of December to read it.
Electronic was a bolt hole for both Marr and Bernard Sumner and the original intention was to put out club inspired music with a variety of guests. First single Getting Away With It was a big hit in December 1989 so the idea of releasing things quietly and anonymously was shot to pieces there and then. Follow up Get the Message in 1991 was a brilliant piece of pop. It was followed by a remix 12" where the song structure was stretched into a dancier groove.
Back in 2013 I wrote about Towers, the second album from one man band Baltic Fleet. The one man is Paul Fleming, former touring keyboardist for Echo And The Bunnymen, who has returned with another album- The Dear One. This is the title track and single, an instrumental with more than a nod to your cosmische West German groups and a synth riff that'll stick in your cranium for days. The album takes in similar sounds, passing through Eno and Bowie's Berlin days. It's affecting and exhilarating stuff- and fully fits in with this week's mission to defy fascists with music. Avanti!
Just trying to catch up with some stuff people have recommended in various places and I come across the new one from A Tribe Called Quest. Back, back, back, backer than backer. This is how you do it...
Friday- and thank fuck for that. It's been a long and trying week. I've got my computer back and it seems to have survived the experience despite the best efforts of the staff at the shop who were borderline incompetent, had no customer service skills whatsoever and didn't even seem to think an apology was due when I listed the multiple let downs in service they've provided me with over the last four weeks.
Today's tune to lift the spirits is a follow on of sorts from Drew posting LB Bad's New Age Of Faith last week, the starting point for Sabres Of Paradise's 1993 classic Smokebelch. David Holmes took Weatherall and co's track and added a tumbling house piano guaranteed to set the hairs on the back of the neck up straight and a majorette style drumming section. Breakdowns and build ups, and end the of the night has come too soon.
If you haven't yet heard Holmes' Late Night Tales compilation you really should do so as a matter of urgency, whatever your current tastes. It is much more than a mix cd or compilation. It is an expertly put together and seemless mix of songs to guide you through the small hours, taking in psyche, folk, the weirder end of rock and roll, a children's choir, ambient and found sounds, the spoken word and some songs recorded by Holmes specifically for this album. It takes in the words of Seamus Heaney, the music of strange bedfellows like BP Fallon, Jon Hopkins, David Crosby, Buddy Holly, The Children Of Sunshine and Moine Dubh's Barry Woolnough. It tracks a journey through life, complete with loss and love and redemption. It is quite magical and proves that light always finds its way through the dark.
The two covers are kind of the inverse of each other aren't they?
Let's keep dancing but today with a tinge of sadness. It was announced on Monday that David Mancuso has died aged 72. Mancuso is something of a legend. As a dj in New York in the 1970s he created invite only parties that mutated into The Loft, the spiritual home of NY disco. His 'anything goes as long as you can dance to it' attitude to his selections, his nights as a haven for the 'disaffected and disenfranchised' of New York, his state of the art sound system, his belief that mixing spoilt the purity of the records (he would play the whole song, leave a brief gap and then play another), his view of djing as creating a mood, a scene, taking the dancers on a journey- all hugely influential. And yet he still took the view that the dj should not be put on a pedestal, that the record selector was just one part of the party.
Musically he stretched far beyond disco, playing whatever records he found that made people dance. These two songs became alternative anthems due him championing them...
Looks like Jerry missed the message about wearing red for the photo shoot.
Songs to raise the spirits and raise the roof after a week/year of shite and disappointment- Crosseyed And Painless (The Heat Goes On). In 1980 Talking Heads were the funkiest post-punk group on the planet, expanding to include new people in the studio and soon a killer line up of live musicians, with with Brian Eno continuing on production. David Byrne's control freakery had almost driven Tina and Chris out but they stuck together to make their last truly great album, Remain In Light. This is the opener and sets the tone for what is to come.
Byrne has said that the album was 'spiritual' and 'joyous and ecstatic and yet it's serious'. The groove on this song is something else, rhythms for dancing and losing yourself. The vocal parts call and respond like uptight gospel. And the lyrics defy explanation. 'Lost my shape, trying to act casual' he starts out. The phrase 'I'm still waiting' comes and goes and then towards the end he starts to list what facts can and can't do. And as we all know, we are now in a post-fact world.
'Facts are simple and facts are straight Facts are lazy and facts are late Facts all come with points of view Facts don't do what I want them to Facts just twist the truth around Facts are living turned inside out Facts are getting the best of them Facts are nothing on the face of things Facts don't stain the furniture Facts go out and slam the door Facts are written all over your face Facts continue to change their shape I'm still waiting... '
I'm entering week four without my computer. No downloads I'm afraid but the words and the non-downloadable music continues.
The right wing are on the march again. Social media is a giant echo chamber of like minded souls throwing out brief statements towards their friends and followers, glimmers of hope, analyses of what's gone wrong, occasionally funny comments on pictures of the new right wing overlords posing in front of gold plated lifts, racists gloating about how everything will soon be sorted when the immigrants are sent back/stopped from coming. It's dark- in every sense. Dark when I get up to go to work, dark when I come home from work, dark when I open a newspaper or turn on the news.
We can fight this darkness in lots of ways. One small way is by sharing 'up' tunes, songs and tracks to raise the spirits, to put a smile on the face, a melody to whistle or hum as you go to work, songs that matter to one person and to many people. Fuck fascism (and that's what we're facing I fear, the beginnings of a new kind of fascism and a newly confident fascism)- let's dance.
On And On is widely credited as the first house music track, created in Chicago by Jesse Saunders in 1984. Chicago's warehouse scene was largely for and by young black and gay men, with music of transcendence, liberation and rebellion. Saunders, a Chicago dj, had the only copy in the city of On And On Megamix by Mach, his signature tune. One night it was stolen from his record box. Jesse and Vince Lawrence decided to make their own version with a Roland TR 808 drum machine, a Korg synth, a 303 bass synthesizer and some new lyrics from Vince. From this one record came a whole new movement that would cross the Atlantic, create the last true youth music revolution in the UK and the only kind of music that a British government has passed legislation to prevent (music 'characterised by repetitive beats' being listened to by more than 20 people, the Criminal Justice And Public Order Act of 1994). Let's dance.
I got an email on Friday, unsolicited music submission, from a man called Mark. The tone of the email kept me reading as did the sentence 'Andrew Weatherall and Don Letts have been playing them'. Four links provided and I replied saying I'd listen. And I'm glad did.
This isn't really Monday morning music, it's Saturday night stuff. It's my Dad's birthday today and he wouldn't get these either. But there''s some rather excellent acid house going on here. Rude Audio are a south London and Geordie concoction, based in Peckham and Herne Hill. The first one I listened to was this, Crystal Pylons, a dancefloor stomper.
Knockemdub has been spun by Don Letts on BBC6, spaced out and dubby...
This one, User, was Weatherall's pick, played on Music's Not For Everyone back in April- a stuttering reggae style beat and echoey vocals, not too far from The Orb's Ultrabass remixes.
Half Moon Lane Glitter takes us back to the dark back room of a club, some slo-mo action...
Rude Audio's website asks the question 'where are all those chunky, dubby, riffy, mind-melting, epic, progressive, Balearic tunes when you need them?' Right here.
I've got more and more out of The Xx as time has gone on. At first I thought they were impressive but easier to admire than to love. That's changed over the years since their debut and its follow up, even more so after Jamie Xx's solo album from last year. News came out on Friday that their third album will be released in January and in advance of it comes a single called On Hold.
The opening section with Romy and Oliver trading lines starts out sounding like an 80s power ballad but stick with it. The synth stabs coming in forty seconds and then the repetitive vocal sample (Hall and Oates) at fifty seconds take it elsewhere, into higher places.
While I'm in the Xx zone this Jamie Xx edit of Sunset off second album Coexist is a wonderful bass and kick drum led thing of beauty. The repeated guitar line building up to Romy's vocal drop is magnificent use of tension and release and the end section is pretty amazing too.
I don't know about you but I could do with a lie down in a darkened room for a little while.
The KLF's Chill Out, forty four minutes and twenty seconds long, recorded in one go by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, and released in February 1990, is a mythical drive through the night up the Gulf Coast from Texas into Louisiana. Bill Drummond said at the time he'd never been to those places, it was all in his head. If you want more about the background, samples, recording, track titles and whatnot there's more here. But maybe it's best just to press play and let go.
It seems wrong to let today go by without a tip of the trilby to Leonard Cohen.
'Now I bid you farewell
I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow
To the tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby
Long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you softly
From a window in the tower of song'
Some photos I took at the Somme and around Ypres this summer, one hundred years on from the Battle of the Somme. Ninety eight years ago from now the First World War came to an end. We still remember them.
Another lost piece from the Joe Strummer jigsaw, Generations was recorded in a day in 1996 while Joe was in Los Angeles. Having spent some time driving around the surrounding areas in his Cadillac with Shaun Ryder, Bez and Richard Norris, getting hopelessly lost on occasion, Joe was beginning to get back towards a band style scenario. The Mescaleros started to come together not too long afterwards, Joe writing with Richard Norris. England's Irie, England's unofficial Euro 96 song led to Joe's only Top Of The Pops appearance with Black Grape. Joe was on the move. Contacted about a project to put out an album called Generations- A Punk Rock At Human Rights Joe went away inspired to contribute a song and wrote the lyric quickly. It was then recorded in a day in LA with Rat Scabies and Seggs from The Ruts on bass and drums. The producer Jason Rothberg came up with the name Electric Dog House. Joe's response was along the lines of 'well we're not going to come up with anything better today' so Electric Dog House it was. It's a funny song with plenty of charm- loose drumming and some organ open it up and then Joe comes in. The mix and echo on the vox make it sound quite chaotic and the instruments pile up towards the end but there's a good tune inside it, a nice chord change in the chorus and an affecting lyric- 'let's go running down the road' Joe repeats. It's a shame the three of them didn't go on to record anything else together.
Difficult to know exactly what to say after yesterday's news that other people haven't already expressed elsewhere. Right wing demagogues stoking up waves of populist revolt, people excluded economically and who see political elites as the cause of their problems, racism and xenophobia used to fan the flames, multimillionaires posing as voices of the people who represent the man in the street and tell it how it is. This has happened before, in Europe in the 1930s to give one example, and it doesn't go well.
I still haven't got my computer back either. I did manage to get into my emails last night for the first time in three weeks but haven't got the will to go through them all.
This record by Finitribe from 1986 is a blast. Just check the beat... and those bells! Dancefloor rocking stuff, electronic 80s, on the fringes of industrial, picked up by the thudding, slow mo New Beat djs in Belgium and then the Balearic scene in Ibiza and South London a couple of years later.
I remember clearly the first time I heard David Byrne and Brian Eno's 1981 album My Life In the Bush of Ghosts. This would be circa 1988 so it probably didn't have the same shock impact it may have had on listeners in 1981- sampling voices from the TV and radio was all over the place in the late 80s, as were drum machines and tracks constructed from loops and treated instruments. But it still made my head spin. America Is Waiting isn't necessarily the best song on Bush Of Ghosts but it seems the most relevant today. Snatches of ranted vocals ('we ought to be mad at the government not made at the people', 'no will whatsoever, absolutely no integrity'), distorted funky guitar from Byrne and a clattering rhythm track.
Given the choice between Clinton and Trump, there is no real choice at all. And obviously we don't get a choice, we just watch as the USA makes its decision and potentially unleashes a man patently unfit to hold any kind of public office into the White House. Let's hope they get it right. Given the way things have been going politically recently, a Trump victory is a genuine and utterly terrifying possibility. Eric B would be a much better bet.
I can't decide if it's heartening or disappointing that a group as critically adored as A Certain Ratio can pull about two hundred people to a small venue underneath King George's Hall in Blackburn on a cold night in November. Heartening I suppose that a band who have sold so few records have a devoted fanbase, many of whom travelled some distance to see them but disappointing that it was only two hundred. On the plus side there was plenty of room to have a shuffle and no barrier in front of the low stage so we were within touching distance of the group. Not that I did touch them- that would be a bit weird. One audience member did spend part of the final song on stage with them, stepping up onto the stage and being given a cowbell to bang.
As ACR took the stage Jez Kerr opened with 'Evening Burnley', a nod to the not very friendly rivalry that exists between the two Lancashire mill towns. Then it was straight into the punk-funk. The group were all dressed in monochrome, fitting the austere sound of their early 80s work. Martin Moscrop's guitar playing bringing the wiry sound, Jez's bass the funk, Donald Johnson more on it than a drum machine and Tony Quigley's clarinet a discordant edge. Do The Du is spectacularly northern, stepped chord changes and muscular rhythms. 'We'll get you dancing later' Jez quips after Flight has filled the room. Half way through Liam Mullen's keyboards start to bring us from the early 80s to the late 80s and we're into the house influenced tunes, a wonderful 27 Forever with Denise's vocals now to the fore and then into career high points Won't Stop Loving You and Good Together. ACR were always in New Order's shadow but these songs show there wasn't much between them in terms of making dance-pop. The samples kick in ('Nice outfit') and we're into full on Hacienda territory with Be What You Wanna Be. Then a wonderful, fully fleshed out Shack Up and after a brief pause we're at the encore with the samba sounds of Si Firmi O Grido, band members swapping instruments, congas, shakers, whistles, bongos, everything you can bang, tap or shake.
Everyone seemed to have a good time, the middle aged Factory heads, the former ravers, the Mums and Dads on a night out, a smattering of younger people. For a group who are no longer a full time job for any of the members, who only do one offs or sporadic bursts of gigs (they played Lille and Paris two weeks ago), they are fantastically tight, able to to turn on a sixpence and shift the rhythms around telepathically. They've just signed a deal with Mute so expanded re-issues of their 80s and 90s albums are on the cards plus something new. You can't say these nearly men and women of Manchester's music scene don't deserve it.
My ears have been very much attuned to techno recently, especially the futuristic sounds coming out of Detroit between 1987 and 1989. There are lots of discussions and arguments in music about firsts, who made the firstrecord in a particular style, who the inventor or originator was. This record, Nude Photo, made by Derrick May as Rhythim Is Rhythim, is arguably the first techno record and it is sublime, hitting the head and feet equally with its marriage of rhythm and melody, and the shock of otherness. There are arguments that Model 500's No UFOs was first or Cybotron was. Others argue that these were electro rather than techno. It gets like that. And it doesn't really matter I suppose.
We have spent some time this week emptying some cupboards and drawers, de-cluttering, rationalising and in some cases chucking shit out. Why I had kept hold of some things? Why had I saved not one, not two, but five old mobile phones? This was made much easier by listening to Innovator, a 1991 six track vinyl compilation of Derrick May's work, where he invents much of the sound of the modern world.
Would you like a blast of something loud to start your weekend? Yes? Good. Cabbage come from Mossley, eight miles to the east of Manchester, a town in the Pennine hills. Five young men with something to say and the amps turned up nasty and loud so they can be heard. If you want some old fashioned references there's more than a little punk in here, the surrealist rumble of The Fall, the snarl of Sleaford Mods, the acute and humorous observations of Nigel Blackwell even. A commentary on the Britain of Cameron, Theresa May and Brexit with other stuff shoe horned in (see It's Grim Up North Korea). Guaranteed to wind some people up.
In the second hand record shop the other day I picked up a 12" of Lundi Bleu by The Times. The Times was Ed Ball's (note NOT Ed Balls) acid house project and Lundi Bleu was his cover version of Blue Monday which I posted here several years ago. The 12" had two remixes of the track by The Grid which were what caught my eye and at £2.00 I decided it was worth a punt, having heard none of the remixes before. The two Grid remixes are both good, dubby with vocal samples, chugging away nicely. Here's The Grid's World Communications remix. It's a Youtube video only I'm afraid- my computer issues continue and ripping anything is a bridge too far at the moment.
I enjoyed both The Grid remixes, especially as being off this week I had the house to myself and could turn it up loud enough and sit back with a cup of tea. But the real treat is on the flipside with Bandulu's remix. Bandulu were from London, also on Creation and made reggae influenced dub/techno. Their remix of Lundi Bleu is a delight which defies description really- bubbling sounds and bouncing bass with an otherworldly, underwater groove. Futuristic in '92 and still sounding so today. Properly making something wonderful and new out of a track.
Dexys in 1985, when Kevin Rowland realised that nothing is further out than looking totally straight. They then released an album (Don't Stand Me Down) that the press didn't get but now can't get enough of. I Love You (Listen To This) could easily be my favourite Dexys tune (One Of Those Things off the same record runs it close, with Kevin's impassioned realisation that 'It all sounded the same'). Here are the group on performing live on The Tube in '85. Kevin's dancing at the three minute mark is a joy to behold.
I'm a big fan of Daniel Avery. His music is proper techno, minimal and purist machine music with human feeling, pristine production, superbly well constructed, full of tension and release. If you missed his Drone Logic album from 2013 you should go and investigate forthwith. This is a new one from a DJ Kicks mix compilation.
All the trees round here have suddenly gone into autumn mode, all going to reds, golds and browns from the green of summer. Last week Andrew Weatherall returned to NTS radio for another edition of Music's Not For Everyone, more mind bending music from the outer and inner reaches by bands and artists you've never heard of but go scurrying off to investigate. I do anyway.
Weatherall's had another busy year. In January and February he released two albums, one under his own name titled Convenanza and one in partnership with Nina Walsh as The Woodleigh Research Facility. Both are still in residence near by stereo. Convenanza has been remixed by various friends into a new companion album called Consolamentum with new mixes by Red Axes, The Emperor Machine, Timothy J Fairplay, Justin Robertson, Vox Low, Solar Bears, Duncan Gray, Heretic, David Holmes, Bernard Fevre and Scott Fraser. The cd and vinyl versions have slightly different tracks which means buying both if you're a sad completist. This one is the one for me right now, Scott Fraser turning the spectral Ghosts Again into a piano house monster (with a tinge of mournfulness still there).
