Space Station

My Easter weekend gig bonanza ended on Sunday night with Andy Bell's Space Station, upstairs at Gulliver's on Oldham Street. The venue is a first floor room above a pub, small stage at one end and at 9pm Andy Bell with his Telecaster, pedal board and twin decks for drums and other sounds (one of the decks fails throughout the hour but it really doesn't matter too much). Andy's recent records as himself and as GLOK are full of psychedelic, trippy electronics and guitars. The idea of Space Station is Andy plays for an hour, no gaps between the songs, a seamless mix of solo songs and GLOK tracks. Late 80s/ early 90s indie dance with the progressive sounds of the cosmische and the motorik and dance music influences underpinning it (especially the GLOK material), sometimes picking up where the trippier Stone Roses songs (Don't Stop say) left off but if John Squire had been a massive fan of Michael Rother rather than Jimi Hendrix or Spacemen 3 but if they'd been into acid house instead of heavy opiates. Andy flits between the decks, setting the drum tracks off and triggering other sounds including vocals and then playing guitar over the top, various pedals getting stomped on and off and at times on his knees twiddling the knobs on the pedals, distorting and stretching the guitar. Debut solo album highlight Skywalker is played, the vocals coming through the PA while Andy's guitar spirals on top and the set finishes with two GLOK tracks, the 1970s West German sounds coming through loud, filling the small room above a pub on Easter Sunday night, the music both intimate and expansive. It's a lovely way to spend an hour.

Back when the GLOK album was repeatedly delayed by the queue at the pressing plant and then an unsatisfactory pressing Andy gave this track away to those who had bought the album, six minutes of the Space Station sounds. 

Somaside