Monday's Long Song

Ten minutes of full on rave/ techno from The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu for today, 1991's maddest top ten single. The first half is all hammering beats, rain and rave bass, the heavy industry that made the north during the Industrial Revolution echoed in the drums and pistons firing the 12" onwards, and King Boy D (Bill Drummond) reciting the names of northern towns and cities, ending with the name of the motorway that runs east- west across the north of England, from Hull to Liverpool and back again...

'Bolton, Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley, Bradford, Buxton, Crewe, Warrington, Widnes, Wigan, Leeds, Northwich, Nantwich, Knutsford, Hull, Sale, Salford, Southport, Leigh, Kirkby, Kearsley, Keighley, Maghull, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Oldham, Lancs (Lancaster), Grimsby, Glossop, Hebden Bridge

'Brighouse, Bootle, Featherstone, Speke, Runcorn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Barrow, Morecambe, Macclesfield, Lytham St Annes, Clitheroe, Cleethorpes, the M62

Pendlebury, Prestwich, Preston, York, Skipton, Scunthorpe, Scarborough-on-Sea, Chester, Chorley, Cheadle Hulme, Ormskirk, Accrington, Stanley, Leigh, Ossett, Otley, Ilkley Moor, Sheffield, Manchester, Castleford, Skem, Doncaster, Dewsbury, Halifax, Bingley, Bramhall, are all in the North'

At seven minutes the song breaks down and Jerusalem appears through the gloom, Hubert Parry's rousing anthem a welcome coda- a socialist utopia reached through rave perhaps. 

It's Grim Up North (Part 1)

Twenty Five Minutes Of Mogwai

Inspired by a text conversation with JC (The Vinyl Villain) and also by Khayem's Dubhead blog I thought I'd try this out for Sundays, a half an hour mix (or thereabouts) of songs by one artist- not necessarily their best or most representative, just a few that work well together- starting today with Mogwai. In recent years Mogwai have started adding vocals to some of their songs. In 2017 their Every Country's Sun album was led by Party In The Dark, a beautiful piece of soaring 21st century indie- rock sounding like Joy Division but with Bernard singing. A year later they soundtracked a sci- fi film called Kin. The final song We're Not Done (End Titles) had vocals and then last year's As The Love Continues album had vocals on Ritchie Sacramento, one of 2021's best songs. I thought these three would work well together and added two instrumental Mogwai songs to stretch it out- Rano Pano from 2011's Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, guitars set to noise and distortion, and then finished it off with the rolling, skyscraping splendour of 2008's The Sun Smells Too Loud, a masterclass in post- rock groove. 

• Ritchie Sacramento
• Party In The Dark
• We're Not Done (End Titles)
• Rano Pano
• The Sun Smells Too Loud

Twenty Five Minutes Of Mogwai

Six Minutes To Sunrise

One of last year's lesser known treats was The Vendetta Suite's debut album, The Kempe Stone Portal. Remixes are out now of two of the tracks, Belfast Balearica in full effect. The 12" has a David Holmes remix on the A side, a wondrous rolling, euphoric, shimmering psychedelic Holmes version of Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise. Gary Irwin, the man behind The Vendetta Suite, gave Holmes tapes every week back in the early 90s and was eventually asked to become David's studio engineer. The B-side features two remixes of Warehouse Rock by Timmy Stewart, another long standing Belfast DJ and producer with connections to the early 90s Belfast scene. Timmy's 6 Minutes To Sunrise Remix relocates The Vendetta Suite to the Mediterranean and early 90s Italo house, a languid, blissed out groove. Buy here. 

Indicate Then

All being well, tonight I will attend an indoor gig for the first time since seeing Julian Cope at Gorilla in February 2020. One of my Christmas presents was tickets for Half Man Half Biscuit at the Ritz, bought as a surprise by my daughter. I'm a little uneasy about being at an indoor venue crammed with so many people but I'm sure HMHB fans are a considerate bunch. 

There's a new album out in February- The Voltarol Years- with the usual range of promising song titles including Tess Of The Dormobiles, Oblong Of Dreams and Token Covid Song. 

A pair of songs to celebrate. The first is from a Peel Session back in 2000, a song about traffic jams and caravan holidays in North Wales taking in Sleater- Kinney and Neil Morrissey. 

Bottleneck At Capel Curig

This one's about losing your temper with the driver in front for not alerting you to their intention to turn left before dissecting the postman's life and habits, and then closing with the desire to see the Gouranga graffiti artist/s imminent arrest. 

Twydale's Lament

National treasures is a phrase sometimes overused but it definitely applies to Nigel Blackwell and co. 

A Time Is Nigh

I've been listening to Nick Cave a lot since the end of December. At some point after Christmas while in town, stumbling around in a post-Christmas/ grief fog, I went into a record shop and bought Carnage, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis's lockdown album. It rapidly took up residence on my turntable. Recorded without The Bad Seeds it's an impressionistic, image- drenched record, eight intense, gripping, emotional and sometimes incredibly heavy songs. At times it takes my breath away. I can feel anxiety building in my chest as some of the songs unfold but then Warren's synths, the string section or (especially) the choir burst in and the tension explodes. The opener, Hand Of God, begins with paino and Nick's voice, 'There are some people trying to find out who/ There are some people trying to find out why/ There are some people who aren't trying to find anything/ But that kingdom in the sky...'. As the last syllable dies away the song lurches with a huge descending synth sound and the thump of bass drum comes in, strings sweep and Nick starts singing about going to the river. The chanting backing vocals- 'Hand of God/ Hand of God...'- fade in suddenly and unexpectedly. It's tense, dramatic and transporting, utterly convincing. Three songs later we have White Elephant, riding in on a broken drum loop and cellos, and Nick's narrator speaking/ singing about George Floyd, statues being tossed into the sea and a 'Botticelli Venus with a penis riding an enormous scalloped fan'. The violence in the lyrics increases, the elephant hunter/ white supremacist declaring he'll 'shoot you in the fucking face/ If you think of coming round here again'. Cave has often dealt with murder but this is something else, rooted in the US, Trump and race- and then again out of nowhere the song shifts completely as the choir launch in, 'A time is coming/ A time is nigh/ For the kingdom/ In the sky'. It's incredible. 

White Elephant

On Lavender Fields and Shattered Ground Nick is back where previous albums have been, songs that seem to be in some way a father trying to deal with the death of his son (this is partly why I've been drawn to Nick Cave's albums recently). Shattered Ground has a verse which seems to be about Arthur Cave- 'Everywhere you are I am/ And everywhere you are, well I will hold your hand again/ Only you are beautiful, only you are true'- and as the song finishes with Nick singing 'goodbye, goodbye, goodbye/ Oh baby, goodbye', I turn it in towards myself and it actually helps. 

I've also been playing Push The Sky Away a lot, the 2013 album with The Bad Seeds that contains at least three 21st century Cave classics- the ghostly synths and hushed vocals of the title track, the epic Higgs- Bosun Blues and Jubilee Street. From there I went into Skeleton Tree. The truth is that I've previously avoided both Skeleton Tree (largely written and recorded before Arthur Cave's death but then reworked somewhat as Nick tried to work through his grief) and Ghosteen ( released in 2019). Subconsciously and maybe consciously I swerved both. But since Isaac's death I've felt a need to deal with both albums. I downloaded Skeleton Tree years ago and it's sat on my hard drive ever since, unplayed and unburned to CD. It's a beautiful and broken album, restrained musically and raw emotionally. The music has moved away from traditional songs with verses and chorus and is much more experimental. It doesn't have the drama of Carnage or the full band performances of Push The Sky Away, Warren Ellis becoming Nick's right hand man and dealing more in ambient sounds and washes of synth. 

At times, as an album, it is almost too much. This song is about as hopeless and as real as he's ever sounded, a giant whirlpool of a song, built over hissing drums and a descending synth chord sequence, Nick and the listener being sucked down into the song's heart. 

I Need You 

'Nothing really matters anymore/ I saw you there in the supermarket/ With your red dress falling and your eyes are to the ground/ Nothing really matters when the one you love is gone'. This gaping loss is countered somewhat with the lines 'You're still in me/ I need you/ In my heart...', a glimmer of light among the horror, but it's a fucking long, slow, trawl through a man's grief and despair and it resonates with me a great deal. 'Just breathe/ Just breathe' he sings at the end. It is almost more than I can take but I am drawn back to it. I can see why for some fans this is an album that might be filed away after a few plays, admired but difficult to get through. 

That leaves me with Ghosteen which I don't own yet and feel more and more like I need to. The only song from Ghosteen I do own is Leviathan (which came via a Best Of 2019 magazine freebie CD) and which is yet another intensely emotional, visceral and cathartic song. . 

Leviathan

I'm not sure I can fully articulate the impact these songs are having on me at the moment but I have no doubt that a) they wouldn't have meant the same a few months ago and b) they are doing me some good. 

Love Is All That's Left In the End

Last week Lauren Laverne did a theme for her 6 Mix show called Desert Island Disco All Dayer, inviting various people to submit a mix of songs they'd like played endlessly on their fantasy desert island. David Holmes contributed a half hour of uplifting and emotional songs perfectly sequenced to lift the spirits. He starts out with Suicide's Dream Baby Dream, 9 by Sault, a seemingly unreleased Skylab track sampling that Joe Strummer interview where he says 'people can change anything they want to... and that means everything in the world', Chris Carter's remix of Daniel Avery's Lone Swordsman, Francesco Lupica's Heal Thyself, a scorching David Holmes and Keith Tenniswood song called I Am Somebody (also unreleased) with Andrew Weatherall's sampled voice, a French cover version of Stayin' Alive by Freedom Fry, an as yet unreleased song from David's Unloved band called Turn Of The Screw ('screw you' the chorus spits) and finishes with a short section of Poly High School Choir doing John Barry's Midnight Cowboy. It's wall- to- wall brilliance, drawing from the past to produce a dancing, life affirming, vibrant, day glo, slightly tripped out present. I just hope all the unreleased ones are going to appear soon. 

If you're in the UK you can find it at the BBC website, split over two parts. The first is here and the second here (the first five minutes run into Alison Goldfrapp's own Desert Island Disco All Dayer mix, also worth staying on for). You'll have to click through the news at the start to get to the music. If you're outside the UK (or inside and want to have the shows to keep) you can get part one here and part two here. 

Or you could download the one below- I edited the two files above into one thirty minute piece, chopping off the news at the start and the Alison Goldfrapp mix at the other end. Trying to get the two files to overlap exactly took some doing and I haven't quite managed it- the section of the David Holmes and Keith Tenniswood track with Andrew Weatherall's voice in it is a millisecond out but the very slight delay effect it creates on the vocal sample is quite pleasant so I've left it as it is. You could think of it as an exclusive Bagging Area remix of the track. 

David Holmes Desert Island Disco

And here is Poly High School's choral version of Midnight Cowboy in full- rather beautiful, probably wasted on a Wednesday morning in late January, but as the choir fade out singing 'love is all that's left in the end' you might just feel like the winter and January can't last forever.

Life's What You Make It

This is one of those songs that is always there for me, a pleasure to hear whenever it comes up and a song I'd put in a lifetime top 50 if I had to ever compile such a list- most recently it came up with this clip on Dutch TV from 1985, Talk Talk on TopPop, playing/ miming Life's What You Make It. 

The guitar is a little over the top for our 21st century ears perhaps but the proto- Balearic drums and piano and Mark Hollis' passionate vocal are perfect in every way. This is from the 12", an extended version released in January 1986. 

Life's What You Make It (Extended)

There's nothing I can say about the song that can add to it, you just have to listen to it. The words can mean as much or as little as you want them to in a way- 'Baby life's what you make it/ Celebrate it/ Anticipate it/ Yesterday's faded/ Nothing can change it/  Life's what you make it'. 

In 2009 Rowland S. Howard, guitarist in The Birthday Party and The Boy's Next Door (his and Nick Cave's first band), recorded a solo album called Pop Crimes. Rowland was unwell at the time, Hepatitis C having brought on liver cancer and he died at the end of December 2009. His cover of Life's What You Make It is heard very differently under those circumstances. 

Life's What You Make It

Monday's Long Song

Back in the 90s some of the most out there and best produced ambient house came from Global Communications, a duo formed by Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard. Strangely, in twelve years and (to date) 4, 898 posts I've never written about Global Communications. Today I'm only doing so in passing but I will come back to them soon I think. Last year Tom Middleton continued his explorations of the future and music as GCOM, an update of Global Communications for the 21st century (GCOM becoming Galactic Communications). The album E2- XO is about a journey from Earth to Mars and beyond, a response in musical form to climate change and what humans have done to the planet in the recent past. As a four sided, incredibly realised album it takes in all the electronic musical forms- ambient, soundtrack, dance music, house, the full gamut. The album closes with a celestial fourteen minute trip into the synth heavens. 

Beyond The Milky Way 

How High

'Can I kiss the sun?/ Run a minute mile/ While you hitch hike/ Love shines a light/ I'll be a winner's cup/ And I'm looking for the one who cut you up/ You're not having me/ You know the skies are mean/ And I'm hoping for a way to free you...'

I saw this graffiti in the tunnel beneath the M60 while walking from Sale Water Park last week and there was only one song that I could post with it. 

How High

A high octane torrent of guitar chords, rhythms and words from the Charlatans in 1997. I remember an interview with Tim Burgess where he said that the words were inspired by listening to Dylan's beat/ speed lyrics from '66 and the multi- rapper flow of Wu Tang Clan, the way the words tumble on top of each other, piling up lines of imagery, in a rush to get onto tape. Something like that. I liked the idea, that at the height of Britpop they were getting their inspiration from quite non- Britpop sources. Tim sings a line 'borrowed' liberally from Dylan, 'I'm gonna pledge my time til the day I die', one of the moments where the song slows slightly and the words surface before tumbling down all over again. 

Things Inside

Will Sergeant has spent over four decades as Echo And The Bunnymen's guitarist and has at times found space/ refuge outside the group to record more experimental solo material. I've written about his Poltergeist group before, swirling instrumental, psychedelic rock. I only recently discovered his Bandcamp page which is a treasure trove of material from his 1982 album Themes For GRIND album to more recent solo work. 

In 2012 Will released an album called Things Inside, ten instrumental tracks that find him playing a variety of musical instruments- a lot of acoustic guitar parts with circling finger picking riffs and lines but also toy piano, bells, autoharp and chimes- and producing some lovely hypnotic, contemplative pieces of music, some distance from his Bunnymen guitar sounds and riffs. This one is Eastern Bells complete with some hazy, out of focus landscapes and beaches in the video. Former Bunnyman bandmate Les Pattinson is in there somewhere too. You can find and buy it at Bandcamp. 

From his posts on Twitter it seems Will lives somewhere north of Liverpool where rural Lancashire meets the Fylde coast. In 2013 he released a new album as Glide, two very long pieces of music that seem to capture that part of the country very well, the slightly bleak, windswept coastline and flatlands. Assemblage One and Two are both around twenty minutes long, synths and drones with some lovely bubbling sounds and melody lines coming in and out. ideal music for headphones while out walking. Find it here. 

Will's first album as GRIND came out in 1982, a very experimental electronic album, eleven tracks, all untitled in 1982 but later renamed as numbers and now titled Scene I through to Scene XI (adding to the sense this album is the soundtrack to a film that never got made). Themes For GRIND is very much the product of time spent listening to the West German groups of the 1970s, Cluster and Faust, as well as Brian Eno. Atmospheric ambient and very good indeed. It had a limited edition vinyl re- issue last year which I missed out on but you can get the digital at Bandcamp. 

In 2000 a GRIND 12" was released with track No. 2 and No. 5 from the 1982 album coupled with two new remixes. One was by The Mindwinder (Joe McKechnie). The other was courtesy of Two Lone Swordsmen. Weatherall and Tenniswood remix Will's ambient soundscape in a style which would have easily found a home on their Tiny Reminders album from the same year, minimal abstract machine funk/ techno- static, an insistent drumbeat some whirling, spooked out synths, a juddering bass and a snatch of a ghostly choir. 

Theme For GRIND No. 2 (Reground by The Two Lone Swordsmen)

The Way I Feel

In the days immediately following Isaac's death we were overwhelmed with cards and flowers, so many that it became difficult to find space for them all in the front room. Among the hundreds of messages of love, condolences and support came a card from a friend with a quote from Raymond Carver on the front. It turns out that this little piece of poetry called Late Fragment is inscribed on Carver's gravestone.

The poem had a big impact on me when it arrived in December, in the early stages of grief while also organising Isaac's funeral and trying to pull together his eulogy. It hits me still reading it now. It's beautiful, saying so much in so few words. 

Raymond Carver wrote short stories, usually about the quiet and sometimes sad and lonely lives of ordinary American men and women. His writing tends to lean towards brevity, realism and reflection. I remember reading a book of his short stories in the late 80s, probably because I read a review of it when he died in 1988. I hadn't then thought of Raymond Carver's work until three summers ago when I read Dave Haslam's Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor and he mentioned Carver. I ordered a book of his short stories and read it while on holiday in France and found it a very different experience reading Carver and about the people in his stories in my late 40s compared to first reading them in my late teens. 

Yesterday while scrolling aimlessly through Twitter on my phone I was stopped in my tracks by a poem by Constantine Cavafy, written in 1904. Cavafy was Greek and wrote in Greek so are a few few slightly different translations but this one was the one I found and had a similar impact to Carver's all those week's ago. 

It doesn't go away, it's always there but sometimes I now find myself doing things- reading, writing for the blog, teaching, watching something on TV- where for a few minutes it has gone to the back of my mind, where it's not immediately present and causing a ball of pain in my chest and stomach. It crashes back in suddenly, hitting me anew. Sometimes it's triggered by something- a photo of him or being in a place where we used to go. Sometimes, like yesterday while out walking before it went dark, it was suddenly thinking about his hands, possibly because when we walked I'd hold his hand. Grief is a fucker, it sneaks up and crushes you and does it time and time again. Onward we go though, because there's nothing else to do, is there?

Today's music is more from James plus this blog's patron Andrew Weatherall. James moved to Rough Trade after leaving Sire and put out two singles that again should have been hits but weren't- Sit Down and Come Home. The latter was a November 1989 release, the Manchester scene well in the ascendancy, The Roses, Mondays and 808 State gatecrashing Top Of The Pops. Finally, leaving Rough Trade and washing up at Fontana, in June 1990 Come Home was re- released and made it through to radio and TV. According to Wiki it still only peaked at number 32- I thought it got much higher- but it slipped into indie disco and popular consciousness. It was remixed by Weatherall, a massive sounding summer of 90 indie- dance tune, a track that is all sirens and synths, a breakbeat and a huge bassline, a sample from Stutter, a lovely piano riff five minutes in, and that breathless Tim Booth refrain, 'and the way I feel just makes me want to scream/ come home/ come home/ come home'. 

Come Home (Skunk Weed Skank Mix)

On some releases the remix is labelled the Andy Weatherall Remix, on some the Skunk Weed Skank Mix. It seems they are the same mix. I think Skunk Weed Skank seems more likely to be what Andrew would have titled it. 

I Would Prefer To Be Anywhere Away From Here

James were an interesting group back in the mid- to- late 80s, when they were an eccentric indie- folk- pop group before becoming the arena filling band they became in the 90s. After leaving Factory (for whom they made some genuine Factory classics in 1985, the James II single and the Village Fire EP both featuring Hymn For A Village) they signed to Sire and in 1986 released Stutter, recorded on a small budget with Lenny Kaye in the producer's chair. Two years later they released Strip- Mine. Sire were looking for a hit single and became frustrated with the band. The album was pushed back by the label several times and went from a scheduled March 1987 release to September 1988. It's an album I remember buying in HMV in Liverpool, flushed with my newly arrived student grant. That didn't last long. The hoped for single which wasn't a hit was What For. It reached the dizzy heights of number 90 in the UK chart.

What For

It's a shame because What For is a cracking song but I can't really imagine in what world, especially 1988, anyone thought this was going to be top twenty material. It bounces in on jangly guitars and clipped rhythms, Tim Booth singing about the contrast between Manchester's traffic polluted air and the birds singing on a beautiful sunny day, his voice all clear enunciation and naive. The breakdown and chanted 'I would prefer to be anywhere away from here' part is a treat and then Larry Gott's highlife guitar outro speeds the song's way to its end, while Tim whistles the melody line. 

This version recorded live for Granada TV's Other Side Of Midnight is brilliant, spindly and frenetic,  almost on the verge of falling apart. At the end Tim starts to lose his jacket, whirling around, eventually falling over at the end. 

James left Sire after finding a loophole in their contract and went on to self finance One Man Clapping, a live album which closed with the song Stutter, a song dating from 1982 and which they could never get a studio take they were happy with- the One Man Clapping version has all the energy and spark needed.

Stutter

This Is Your Life

A rewind to 1991 today and to a song I posted back in 2010 when this blog was still in its first year. Banderas were a duo- Sally Herbert and Caroline Buckley- who were part of Jimmy Somerville's Communards band. They formed Banderas as a side project, signed to London Records and put this song out as a single. It went top twenty hit in March 1991. Built on one of those chunky early 90s rhythm tracks and containing a sample from Grace Jones' Crack Attack, This Is Your Life also featured guest spots from both Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner on guitar and backing vox, moonlighting from Electronic. Johnny's funky wah wah licks are easy to identify and the swelling strings and keyboards add some drama while Caroline sings, 'This is not a story/ This is not a book/ This is your life'. One of those songs that sounds like a postcard from the past, pinning a sound and a time onto a noticeboard as surely as photograph from 1991 could. 

This Is Not Your Life

It's All Illusion Anyway

I'm following on from yesterday's Neil Young post with some Pixies and some more Neil. The first time I heard Winterlong was the cover version by Pixies on a tribute album to Neil called The Bridge which came out in autumn 1989. There was a brief rash of indie tributes to 60s artists compilations around this time- I had a tribute to The Byrds but at some point that has departed from my record collection and I remember a Jimi Hendrix one but I didn't buy that one. There were several Velvets ones too I think. They were very hit and miss. But The Bridge was well worth getting and holding onto featuring as well as Pixies, Soul Asylum, Victoria Williams, The Flaming Lips, Nikki Sudden, Loop, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Psychic TV, Dinosaur Jr, and Henry Kaiser. That list alone brings back the smell and feel of the Melody Maker's pages. There are plenty of good covers in that cast and Sonic Youth probably take the gold medal but Pixies absolutely nail Winterlong, Black Francis and Kim Deal duetting over some deliciously fried guitars. 

Winterlong

Neil's own version of the song was not released until Decade came out in 1977. He'd been sitting on it since at least 1970- apparently it was likely recorded in 1974 during the On The Beach sessions but it didn't fit on that album so he held it back. I first started buying Neil Young albums in summer 1988, taking advantage of the Price Cuts discount label that was widely available then- Harvest and After The Goldrush could both be bought new for £4.49, risk free purchases for a poor student. I don't remember getting a copy of Decade until many years later- triple albums were expensive and it wasn't easy to find. 

Neil takes Winterlong at a slower pace, his voice yearning for his lost love and the guitars and performance less manic with a pedal steel guitar in the instrumental break. It's gorgeous, right up there in terms of definitive Neil Young songs. 

Winterlong

There's some really good Pixies on TV clips from the late 80s, a period where they were unmissable and didn't really sound like anyone else. Surfer Rosa and Doolittle were a unique pair of albums, a band with a sound, a worldview and four very different members completely in tune with each other. The song's topics and lyrics were coming in from the outer reaches of Black Francis' imagination and together sounded like nothing else, the rhythms, the frantically scrubbed acoustic guitars, the dry, sparse sound with violent explosions, Joey's crazed solos and David's drumming plus Kim's sheer joy at playing/ singing- they had that chemistry that some bands find for a brief period that makes them briefly unique. I lost interest after Doolittle. They couldn't match it. Bossanova felt flat to me, a bit tamed, and I didn't bother with Trompe Le Monde. People tell me the re- union albums are worth getting but I don't have the interest, I don't need any Pixies albums other than Surfer Rosa and Doolittle (and Come On Pilgrim of course). They've appeared twice recently on TV programmes, firstly this clip of them playing on BBC 2's Late Show in 1989, Monkey Gone To Heaven played late at night with no audience other than Kirsty Wark or whoever was presenting that night and the camera crew.

The Late Show must have had some bookers who were well into their NME and Melody Maker at this point. Between 1988 and 1991 they were many memorable performances. The Cramps played a deadly two song set with Lux resplendent in black leather and bra in 1990, Jane's Addiction rocked out with Been Caught Stealing, R.E.M. did a stunning performance of Half A World Away and Belong in 1991, Public Enemy and Ice T both appeared and famously in 1989 The Stone Roses blew the sound limiter and as Tracey MacLeod tried to cover the show's blushes and move to the next item Ian Brown harangued the studio with shouts of 'amateurs, amateurs' eventually deciding 'we're wasting our time here lads'. 

This clip comes from British TV, not the Beeb. I'm not sure which ITV programme this was- Pixies doing Hey. 

While looking for all of that I found this, Pixies on Dutch TV in 1988, a five song set taken from Surfer Rosa. How good is this? Very very good.  

Monday's Long Song

I've got lots of Neil Young albums, the majority the studio albums he released on his run of work from his self titled debut in 1969 through to Ragged Glory in 1990 and a handful from after that point- but clearly at some point in the early- to- mid 2000s I began to wonder if I really needed the new Neil Young album and decided I didn't. Apart from Homegrown (2020's long awaited release of the album Neil shelved in 1974) I think the last one I bought was Living With War in 2006. I can't say I've kept up with his Archive releases either but I have got the first two in that series- Crazy Horse Live At The Fillmore 1970 and Neil Young Live At The Massey Hall 1971, both pretty essential (I've got a few other live albums but all predate the Archive series). Looking at a list of the Archive live albums I'mo not sure why I didn't get Live At Canturbury House 1968 or Roxy: Tonight's The Night Live but it's difficult to keep up and as I said before- how much Neil Young do I need?

The new album Barn, recorded with Crazy Horse last year, has had good reviews and I've heard two songs on a freebie CD that I enjoyed so maybe the answer is one more. In fact I suspect Neil Young albums is the same as the old adage about bicycles for cyclists- the correct number you need is n +1 (with n being the number you currently own).  Neil Young is clearly one of the 20th century's great artists and to keep it going for over two decades of the subsequent century is impressive. The live album with Crazy Horse from 1971 at Fillmore East is the stuff of legend, Neil and the original Crazy Horse line up on stage and in the groove, their particular and unique brand of crunching, chugging, heads down acid rock with extended moments- minutes- of explosive guitar playing shown off at its best. This set includes one of Neil's greatest songs, Winterlong, a song in typical Neil fashion he chose not to release until his first career compilation Decade came out in 1977. Much of the rest of the gig is built around the first Crazy Horse album Everybody Know's This Is Nowhere. It concludes with a very long song, a sixteen minute take of Cowgirl In The Sand, Neil and Danny Whitten duelling on guitar while Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot keep it straight and simple at the back. 

Cowgirl In The Sand (Live at Fillmore East 1970)

In contrast, the Live At Massey Hall 1971 album is just Neil, an acoustic guitar or piano and a microphone and what his long term producer David Briggs said should have been the album he put out instead of Harvest (although many of the songs he plays would eventually turn up on Harvest). Just to show Neil can do brevity as well as expansion here's a superb version of Don't Let It Bring You Down, originally from 1970s's After The Goldrush, complete with the guitar being retuned into the double drop D tuning at the start. Don't let it bring you down/ It's only castles burning

Don't Let It Bring You Down  (Live At Massey Hall 1971)

Writing this I began wonder what my ten Neil Young songs for an ICA would be and I came up with this list for starters- The Loner, Cinnamon Girl, Winterlong, Powderfinger, Down By The River, Don't Let It Bring You Down, Cowgirl In The Sand, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Sugar Mountain, Heart Of Gold, Old Man, Mansion On The Hill, Tonight's The Night, Like A Hurricane, Cortez The Killer, Pocahontas, For The Turnstiles, Ambulance Blues, Barstool Blues, Fuckin' Up, Revolution Blues, Hey Hey My My, Crime In The City, Love And Only Love... 

I Am Running Out Of Time

Danish producer Trentemoller has been moving towards a new album for some time, drip feeding singles/ tracks over the last year. The album, Memoria, is out soon and this song has been released ahead of it- No More Kissing In The Rain, a gorgeously melancholic, sweeping piece of 21st century shoegaze with singer Lizbet Fritze sighing, 'My dear, I am running out of time'. 

It puts me in mind of Kid Wave, a Swedish fourpiece, who caused a minor solar flare of interest back in 2015 in certain corners of the internet with some slow burning indie- pop/ shoegaze- a similar sound and feel, that windswept, rain sodden walk through town at night with your headphones on. These two songs were on their only album, Wonderlust, which came out on Heavenly. After its release singer Lea Emmery moved to Los Angeles and the first line up of the group split up at that point. She re- appeared the following year with a new version of the band, recruited in LA, and although they toured in 2017 nothing's happened since. 

All I Want

I'm Trying To Break Your Heart

Iz Um

I've done a week back at work- not sure how when I look back at it but it's done and it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. My grief anxiety has kicked in a few times and driving in on Tuesday wasn't great when I realised it was six weeks to the day since Isaac died. That sort of significance of dates/ passing of time thing really gets to me, and in my head and gut puts me straight back into the room where we were when he died. It passes but it's not very nice at all and when I got to work I clearly didn't look great because a colleague brought me a cup of tea and a biscuit almost straight away. People are good. 

This came out two days ago, a throbbing, chugging psychedelic house monster aimed at bringing the summertime to January. Slowed dance music. Iz Um is by 10:40 (Jesse Fahnestock), an American in Sweden whose music lit up last year. Buy it/ get it for free here. 

Another track by Jesse which I didn't get around to posting last year when it came out because it got lost in everything that was going on in late November and December was one in his Jezebell guise called Thrill Me (I've just looked at the release date and it came out on Isaac's birthday which has thrown me slightly). Thrill Me is electric, acid psyche, sounding like nights in sweaty basements and dark backrooms with a vocal sample likely to trigger flashbacks. Buy at a name your own price arrangement here. 

Ronnie Spector

Ronnie Spector RIP. A genuine legend, the led singer of The Ronettes with that voice, tough and with a street edge but with a softness too and capable of taking you by surprise. There aren't many records that can compete with Be My Baby, a song that is one of the foundation stones of rock 'n' roll/ pop music, a song that raises the hairs on the back of your neck from the moment that kick drum and snare thump into earshot. I've said it before when I posted Be My Baby back in 2014 but you can put it on any playlist, any compilation tape or CD with any other song either side of it and it works. 

Be My Baby

As a bonus here's the vocals from Baby I Love You, on their own. 

Baby I Love You (Isolated Vocals)

I have a real soft spot for The Ramones cover of Baby I Love You from their 1980 album End Of The Century, a record I used to play to close sets back when I did that kind of thing. The Ramones hated it, all refusing to play on it except Joey who was forced to sing on it by Phil Spector, allegedly at gunpoint. Joey loathed the song saying it didn't sound anything like The Ramones but I love it despite it all. 

Baby I Love You 

Ronnie survived her brief marriage to Phil, a marriage that was abusive and controlling on every level. She fled Phil's mansion in 1972, barefoot and without a penny to her name, fearing for her life. Ronnie was further tormented by Phil in the years following their marriage and then divorce as her tried to prevent her recording, singing and receiving any royalties until the late 90s when he was ordered to pay her over $1 million in royalties. She stuck it all out, outdid him (eventually) and outlived him. 

RIP Ronnie Spector. 

I Sit At My Table

This clip from R.E.M.'s TourFilm came my way at the weekend, World Leader Pretend filmed during R.E.M.'s 1989 world tour to support their major label debut album Green. 

I was at the Liverpool gig at Royal Court 21st May 1989, the only time I saw R.E.M. live. I didn't see them earlier because I only got into them around Document and didn't see them later on because of my general aversion to arena and stadium gigs (and drift away from them in the mid 90s)- probably a mistake on my part especially when you watch the 1999  Glastonbury performance where they look like a band on fire. On the other hand, I saw them once in a relatively small / medium sized and it was so memorable and so good, that maybe once was enough. 

In the clip above Stipe introduces World Leader Pretend by whacking a metal school chair with a drumstick. The white suit, dark smear of eyeliner and intense demeanour under bright lights is pretty arresting on film and was very much more so in the flesh. On that night, a warm evening in north west England towards the end of my first year away at university, R.E.M. were highly anticipated. Green had been out for six months already so everyone knew the songs inside out and the Royal Court was packed from before the time the support band took the stage (The Blue Aeroplanes, fantastic that night incidentally). Their set pulled from their back catalogue as well as Green, opening with Pop Song '89 and finishing with It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), a song taken at breakneck speed, the entire crowd waiting and then almost missing the 'Leonard Bernstein' part. In between they sprayed us with their 80s brilliance, Buck whirling around, white shirt and Rickenbacker or Les Paul, and Mike Mills at the front stage left, his backing vocals high in the mix. The website SetList FM says they followed Pop Song '89 with These Days, Turn You Inside Out, Disturbance At The Heron House and Orange Crush. They slowed down a bit for the next few- King Of Birds, Sitting Still, Feeling Gravitys Pull and Coyahoga. Then they played World Leader Pretend before pitching it up again with Begin The Begin, Pretty Persuasion, Get Up and Life And How To Live It. I don't really remember too much of the details and I couldn't have listed that setlist without the help of the internet. I just recall the overall blur and energy of song after song, harmonies and guitars, and Michael Stipe's presence out front and a crowd lapping it up. I clearly recall Michael calling somebody out who was throwing beer around in the crowd- 'that better not be styrofoam'- and the intro to Orange Crush where he stood in a single spotlight singing acapella 'be all you can be/ in the army' before Bill Berry crashed in with his drums. 

The encores do stick in the memory- Stand, Belong (then unrecorded, a song that would appear on Out Of Time in 1991) and You Are The Everything. They went off again and then re- appeared for a Hugo Largo cover version, a brief run through Gershwin's Summertime and a crunching, loud Finest Worksong. Following that they played Perfect Circle, one of early R.E.M.'s highlights, a beautiful, fragile song, Stipe introducing it as a song 'we only play when we've played really special gigs'. They finished with their cover of The Velvet Underground's  After Hours and we all disappeared into the summer night, giddy/ drunk on our own youth and music. 

This photo appeared on Twitter some time ago, a postcard from the past, Stipe with his megaphone at the Royal Court taken by someone nearer the front than I was. 

Green was the first album for Warners and seems like both the end of the first chapter and the start of the next one. It is still clearly the work of the same band who made Document and Lifes Rich Pageant, a record stuffed full of singles, clarity, direct statements and loud guitars played in major keys. I still like the silly songs, the singles, that some people can't stand- Stand and Get Up. Turn You Inside Out and I Remember California are dark heavy guitar rock, forerunners of Monster perhaps. Green also feels like the first album in the trilogy that made them enormous, turned them into genuine stadium superstars, the mandolins and acoustic guitars and softer spaces of Hairshirt and The Wrong Child paving the way for Losing My Religion, Low, Half A World Away and Automatic For The People. It's an album that the band have said is haphazard and scattershot, experimental even, but to me it's a complete piece of work (and an instant return to being eighteen and nineteen too). 

World Leader Pretend was clearly a big song for Michael Stipe, a grand statement. The lyrics were printed on the inner sleeve, the first time R.E.M. had done that and no other song from Green got that honour. It's straightforward and direct, no mumbling or confusion, no oblique images stitched together, just Michael Stipe. Apparently the vocal on the record was the first and only take. The instruments jump around in the mix, the acoustic guitars, mandolin, the cello and pedal steel taking it in turns to have a moment in the foreground while Stipe sings, a song he says was in part a tribute to Leonard Cohen. Despite speculation about it being about political leaders the song seems to me much more personal, an admission that he/ the narrator isn't the centre of the world, that not everything is about him, and what we hear is a humility from someone about to become a superstar- Stipe's inner conflicts and past mistakes writ large. 

World Leader Pretend

I've Been Playing Concerts In The Mud

I've posted this song before but it always cheers me to hear it when it returns into my musical orbit. Back in the early/ mid 2010s Converse had a marketing project called 3 Artists 1 Song where they, yep, got three artists to collaborate on one song and hoped everyone would buy a new pair of pumps after hearing the results. Often product tie in makes me run a mile but I appreciate I'm of a generation where this type of thing is seen differently and that music- product synergy is broadly acceptable now. Also Converse can't be too near the top of the list of evil mega- corporations, we've all pairs of Converse haven't we? (I'm now worried that if I run a search for Converse I'l find all sorts of unpleasant things I didn't want to know involving child labour, shady union practices and Nazi gold). In 2014 Frank Ocean, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, and producer Diplo came up with a song called Hero. It looks like they were grouping the two former members of The Clash together as one artist. In 2014 Mick and Paul were coming off the back of touring together as Gorillaz. Frank Ocean was hot news but has been very quiet for the last few years. Diplo I don't know much about other than his work with M.I.A. (and depressingly having just done a Google search I've read that allegations were made against him in 2020 from three women including singer/ rapper Azealia Banks regarding sexual behaviour and revenge porn). 

Hero is a blast, a splicing of old and new sonically with guitars and beats and a stuttering effect. Frank's voice is both honeyed and raw as he sings of being young and black in the USA in the 21st century- 'I'm a bad boy/ I'm a punk/ I'm a black man/ I can dunk...' Mick and Paul''s bass and guitars swim around, clanging heroically through the chorus. Then the West Los Angeles Children's' Choir come in and the second half goes all California sunshine and 70s TV. Lovely stuff. All over in under three minutes and it could easily be longer without losing anything. 

Hero

I'll Lie Here Forever

It's difficult to find adequate words to say about Sinead O'Connor, the loss of her son Shane, and the pain she and Shane's father must be feeling at the moment. Even with everything we've been through recently to lose a child to suicide is just unimaginable. Her Tweets over the weekend have been full of rage and anguish although she had softened her tone towards the hospital yesterday. I hope she can find some way through it. 

This song was from her 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, the album that brought her the worldwide fame that seems to have blighted her life ever since. The words to I Am Stretched On Your Grave are from an anonymous 17th century Irish poem titled 'Táim sínte ar do thuama', translated by Irish writer Frank O'Connor. For her version with Nellee Hooper producing, Sinead sings over Clyde Stubblefield's famous drum break from James Brown's Funky Drummer while a very Massive Attack bassline bubbles away. The final minute, where the Irish fiddle takes over, is some finale too. 

I Am Stretched On Your Grave

In Love With Life

Some optimism for Monday morning, a quality in short supply. In 2017 Hifi Sean released an album called Ft. , every song featuring a different vocalist or collaborator. Sean was once the singer and leader of The Soup Dragons. After the band ended he became a DJ, living and playing in New York in the mid- 90s and then based in London in the 00s. The album has a range of musical partners, from Norman Blake from his Bellshill guitar band days to Billie Ray Martin, Alan Vega and Bootsy Collins but nowhere does it sound better than on this song with Yoko Ono. 

In Love With Life

The chunky drums and sweeping synth strings are lovely and Yoko's spoken word vocal tops it off beautifully. There's a nice animated video too. 

Yoko Ono is a much maligned figure for various reasons, some of them unpleasant 'isms' I think. I haven't seen Get Back but reviews suggest it's gone some way towards painting her in 1969/ 70 a little differently from the woman who split up the world's favourite pop group. 

That's The Way It Is

More 80s pop, this time from Bruce Hornsby And The Range in 1986. There's a lot to enjoy in The Way It Is- those extended piano lines and shifts in tempo, the verses about the civil rights movement, the divisions between rich and poor and black and white and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and (not least) the chorus imploring you/ us not to accept things the way they are. 

The Way It Is 

It seemed an appropriate song to post with Sidney Poitier passing on Friday. RIP Sidney. 

No Memory

I went back into work yesterday- I was quite anxious about going in, seeing colleagues for the first time since late November when Isaac was still alive and then the whole thing about teaching teenagers and dealing with life in a secondary school and whether I'd be ok with all of that. Grief is a terrible thing and I suppose there's no right or wrong way to do it. I've got a planned return to work in place and we'll see how it goes. 

We were up at the grave on Thursday, tidying it up, removing flowers which were going brown and putting Christmas ornaments friends and family had left for Isaac in a box to bring home. We bought a plastic box and filled it with some plants and flowers to sit at the top of his grave while we get a headstone sorted. All of this felt quite good although walking away from his grave still feels hard. Isaac is in a new field. The old cemetery was full so he's up in the corner with a few other people, which over time will also fill up. Since we'd last been there was a new grave dug out next to him on the left and another marked out to be dug on his right. It goes on doesn't it, life and death. On a nice day the view from his grave is good (as you can see in the photo above), green fields and blue skies with some industrial infrastructure in there too, pylons marching across the grass. When it's clear you can see over the fields towards Carrington, the towers of the power station blinking and puffing steam out in the middle distance, and beyond that all the way to Winter Hill near Bolton. 

Here's a blast of uptempo pop from 1987 for Saturday. Scarlet Fantastic were a duo of Maggie K. De Monde and Rick P. Jones (both previously been in Swans Way). No Memory is four minutes of exuberant, catchy as you like pop perfection with a strange key change into the chorus which sticks long in the memory. It's a song made for the 7" single. My copy is a little the worse for wear, slightly scuffed surface with a sleeve that has seen better days but it's none the worse for it. The tune shines through. 

'We have no memory tonight/ We have the sun in our hair/ The moon in our eyes/ We just don't give a damn cos we're free'. There's today's earworm for you. 

No Memory

The 12" came with extended mixes. The pick of the two was this one, eight minutes long with pulsing bassline, isolated guitar solos, crunchy drum machine beats, everything dragged out for extra pleasure. 

No Memory (Extra Sensory Mix)

For the full mid- to- late 80s experience here they are doing No Memory on Top Of The Pops, October '87, thirty five years ago. 

Throughout The Dark Months

My recent rediscovery of The Cocteau Twins continues. Last week I found myself in a record shop with some Christmas money burning a record sized and shaped hole in my pocket and among other things I bought a very nice re- issue of their 1986 mini- album Victorialand, a record of theirs I didn't already own. The Cocteau Twin's music is such an immersive experience despite being quiet at times and ethereal (to use a word that the music press often used about their sound). It demands you stop what you're doing and listen to it, not just have it on. 

Bassist Simon Raymonde was absent in 1986, involved in making the This Mortal Coil album. Robin Guthrie and Liz Fraser went ahead without him, making a largely acoustic album, stripped of basslines and percussion/ drums. It's a minimal, stripped bare Cocteau Twins, Guthrie's acoustic guitar, FX and melodies and Fraser's unique lyrics and vocals producing something approaching ambient- indie. Occasionally some sax or tuba joins in. It's beautiful and stark- like the polar caps that inspired much of the record. 

Throughout The Dark Months Of April And May

This song's title came from the commentary of a David Attenborough wildlife documentary about the Arctic and the album's title is the name of part of Antarctica claimed by the British in the 19th century. 

Factory Made Her

More Factory today, partly because I've had this photo sitting unused for two months and following yesterday's post it made sense to use it. This is the door to a building on the corner of Princess Street and Charles Street in Manchester, near the legendary Lass O' Gowrie pub and just behind the old Oxford Road BBC building (now demolished). Factory bought the building in 1989 and began to undertake expensive renovations to turn it into the new Factory headquarters, moving the running of the record company from Palatine Road and various rooms above the Hacienda into prestigious new premises. At this point they'd already proved that running the most famous nightclub in the world and a bar (Dry 201) were not easy matters financially but undeterred they went ahead. The top floor was the boardroom and famously had a very expensive, Ben Kelly table for board meetings, a table suspended by wires from the ceiling. The HQ, Fac 251, opened in 1991. During a photo session with Happy Mondays, various members of the group sat on the table which promptly broke the cables and the very expensive table crashed to the floor. 

This is a picture of the table (not mine I hasten to add). 

In happier times before its renovation Factory covered the entire building with posters to promote Bummed, the Happy Mondays 1988 masterpiece (again, not my picture). 

After Factory went bust the building was sold to pay creditors and by 1993/4 it had become Paradise Factory, a gay nightclub with DJs laying over three floors. It was in dancing here I first spoke to my future wife (but that's another story). Later on, around 2005, it became another nightclub- Factory 251 (which Peter Hook has some involvement with as backer/ promoter/ owner and Ben Kelly involved in redesigning the interior). In a neat turn of the wheel, my daughter has been clubbing here. These days it mainly plays indie and rock 'n' roll. The Trip Advisor reviews are fairly uncomplimentary about the manager and the bouncers but my daughter had a good time on the occasions she's been. 

Yesterday's Factory post and music were from the early years, the 1978- 1981 period, a time which is easy to romanticise and look at with dewy eyes. Early 90s Factory is less so- they lost their way a little with their signings, refused to release dance music (which is one of the most bizarre decisions Wilson made- he could have had Ride On Time among others, million selling singles. Mike Pickering was urging them to do it. They decided not to). Some of the groups could be underwhelming (Northside, The Wendys, The Adventure Babies all had a decent single/ songs in them but they don't really stand alongside to Tunnelvision, The Distractions, ACR and Durutti Column). Cath Carroll, local face, musician and music journalist, should have been a massive star. Wilson certainly thought so. Factory released two singles by her group Miaow before she went on to make a solo album called England Made Me, an album which tied together early 90s synth pop, moody dance music and bossa nova, it's a forgotten gem. 

In March 1991 Select Magazine gave away a free cassette, The Factory Tape (Fac 305c). Cath had two songs on the tape, the Brazilian rhythms, horns and whistles of Next Time (Edit) and a seriously good piece of northern dance music called Moves Like You. Both would be on England Made Me when it came out in June.

Next Time (Edit)

Moves Like You

Use Hearing Protection

On Monday I got to the Museum Of Science And Industry to see an exhibition which has been open since the start of June and which I finally got to on its final day- Use Hearing Protection, a version of the Factory records story. Manchester has been drowning in its own nostalgia for many years now but this exhibition was excellent all the same and really skewered the period when Factory first started, those early years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Looking at the flickering film footage playing with OMD's Electricity on the banks of tv screens at the entrance to the exhibition was like looking at another world and also the city I remember as a kid- derelict buildings, the Arndale Centre, dirty orange buses. There was an introduction to the main players- Wilson, Hannett, Saville, Gretton, Erasmus, Granada TV, Situationism- and the teardrop guitar Ian Curtis plays in the Love Will Tear Us Apart video.

There were many posters from the time, many loaned by Rob Gretton's family and Tony Wilson's family. These ones stand out, designed by writer Jon Savage, advertising gigs by Durutti Column at the Lesser Free Trade Hall and a Joy Division gig with support from A Certain Ratio and Section 25 (which would set you back £1.25). 

The central room was an exhibition of all the items that make up Fac 1-to Fac 50 in the Factory catalogue- not just singles and albums (though they were all there with sleeve proofs and sketches) but the posters (Fac 1, Fac 15, Fac 26), the menstrual egg timer (Fac 8), the film scripts, the Factory notepaper (Fac 7), the badges (Fac 21) and much more. The major releases, Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Still and Movement, were accompanied by extras- film clips and interviews and pieces of Martin Hannett's studio equipment. There was an appreciation of the somewhat unsung role women played in the early years of Factory- Ann Quigley, Lesley Gilbert, Linder, New Order's Gillian Gilbert and Lindsay Reade. 

In the room next door (see picture at the top of this post) there was a wall of floor to ceiling screens with nine different live performances projected, starting with Joy Division and ending with New Order. In between this start and end point were some lesser known Factory acts such as The Names and Section 25 and the totally bewitching clip of The Durutti Column playing Sketch For Dawn in a park in Finland in 1981 (later released as part of a Factory video, Fact 56). 

The next room had photographs of Manchester during the period, to put some historical and social context around what was going on at Palatine Road, The Russell Club and The Hacienda. Photos of the Hulme Crescents, the multi- racial crowd enjoying themselves at a Rock Against Racism concert in Alexandra Park, grainy shots of footbridges and people, children playing on bombsites, a post- industrial city on the verge of something even if no- one can really see it at the time. On the way out you could walk through a mock up of the edge of the Hacienda's dancefloor- the future it suggests, the way out, Manchester's rebirth as a modern city begins here. 

There are so many single releases in the first 50 Fac numbers that are from the fringes of the culture, pieces of minor brilliance that Factory's team saw something special in and put out in beautifully designed sleeves that set out to make a statement (and for Gretton, Wilson and Saville to subvert as well). ACR's All Night Party. OMD's Electricity. ESG's You're No Good. X-O- Dus' English Black Boys. The Distractions' Time Goes By So Slow. Section 25's Girls Don't Count. Crispy Ambulances' Unsightly And Serene. Stockholm Monsters' Fairy Tales. And this one, a long time favourite of mine, a one off single by a group of teenagers from Blackpool called Tunnelvision. They'd split up by the time a second single was suggested, leaving one sole 7" single as their legacy- a doomy, sombre, rough- edged slice of post- punk beauty called Watching The Hydroplanes. 

Watching The Hydroplanes

December And Ultramarine

Richard Norris' subscription model for music worked well for everyone last year- a monthly payment (three tiers, download, CD or vinyl) and in return a long form piece of music, twenty minutes of ambient/ deep listening released on the first on the month. On top of this regular physical releases throughout the year including his Hypnotic Response album, the long awaited Circle Sky album, a collaboration between The Grid and Robert Fripp made up from guitar parts and soundscapes recorded in the 90s and reworked by Richard and Dave Ball, plus triple CD box sets compiling the year's Music For Healing releases. All of these releases are long term commitments, music to come back to time and time again. In 2020 the Music For Healing project started with numbered pieces. In 2021 they became named for the months of the year. In 2022 each monthly release is named after a colour and will be in two parts, the final full version and an additional version, stripped back to pull the focus onto the bassline or some of the layers of drones and synth parts. 2022 kicked off with Ultramarine and is a dive into the sine waves, oscilating drones and synths. Find Ultramarine and Ultramarine 2 at Bandcamp. 

When we got out of hospital just over a month ago I couldn't face any music for a few days. I couldn't work out what I wanted to listen to and didn't want to forever taint something with it always being associated with Isaac's death. In the end the first thing I pressed play on, a month ago today, was December's Music For Healing release- a twenty minute piano piece, rippling notes and reverb with some gentle washes behind it. It did the trick, broke the blockage and sounded like just what I needed, some much required musical balm. December is here. 

To finish off, one from each year of the project, this is the shorter four minute version of Music For Healing 10, from the end of 2020. More piano and a lovely warm bass string keeping it grounded.