What Do The Stars Say To You

The new album by Chicago house and techno legend Ron Trent, What Do The Stars Say To You, is causing a bit of a stir and rightly so- it's a repeat play, engaging, innovative and enchanting record, one that already feels timeless. Across the album's ten tracks (fifteen on CD) Ron Trent uses the studio, electronics and a range of live instruments with a slew of guests and collaborators. Every track is stunning- the production is sumptuous, the synths, instruments and drums perfectly mixed. Taken together, it's a fluid, grown up, richly musical album that has space to breathe and a general sense of wellbeing, that when it's playing, things are ok. 

On an album where every track could be a favourite here's a handful of highlights. Admira, recorded with ambient/ Balearic artist Gigi Masin, starts out slow with drums and cymbals and is suddenly interrupted by discordant synths and a noodly leadline. Gradually it builds, layers of sounds gliding in silkily, hand drums pattering away, toplines picking out melodies from somewhere. By the five minute mark it's weightless, floating off and away. 

On Sphere, created with French violinist Jean- Luc Ponty, the sheer warmth of the production and the dazzling melody lines (violin and synth) hark back to the 80s but also make something that feels very now. It's got jazz and house in its grooves but also something of a smoothed out version of early 80s New York avant noise. 

It's followed by WARM, a sultry, softly padding piece of music with keyboards and guitars going off at different points and an undulating bassline. Nothing stays the same for long and it's all so fresh and lively, endlessly finding new ways to repeat itself. 

The album is full of contributions from others. As well as Ponty and Gigi Masin, there are tracks with Venecia, Brazilian duo Azymuth, Lars Bartkuhn and recent Glastonbury smash hits Khruangbin, and a host of 70s and 80s influences- Tangerine Dream, Herb Alpert, Jan Hammer, Grace Jones, Vangelis, Prince, early Kraftwerk and Dinosaur L all get mentioned by Trent. On Flos Potentia (Sugar, Cotton, Tobacco) Trent and Khruangbin kick up an Afrobeat storm, propulsive grooves and euphoric chords. 

Back in 1990 Ron released Altered States, a definitive piece of US techno, thirteen and a half minutes of kick drums, synth strings, basslines, hi hats and raw but gliding, futuristic techno. He has recorded and released hundreds of records since, a back catalogue deep and wide, but Altered States remains untouchable. 

Altered States

The Most Beautiful Girl In Hackney

Another Top Boy related post following yesterday's Fuck Buttons double bill. At the end of episode three, series one, Sully says to his young daughter, 'You're the most beautiful girl in Hackney y'know', a line I instantly recognised (Sully is played by rapper and grime artist Kano). It took me a moment to pinpoint where I'd heard it before...

Girl

Girl is the final song on Jamie Xx's solo album In Colour from 2015, a dizzying swirl of synths and beats and a voice, chopped up and distorted singing 'I want your love'. The album, seven years old now, is a peach, a thoroughly modern mish mash of samples, voices and songs, spanning the range from bedsit broken heart laptop ballads (like Loud Places) to massive club tunes (such as Gosh). As well as the line of dialogue from Top Boy Girl samples Brian Wilson and Freeze's I.O.U.

Loud Places, with vocals from his Xx bandmate Romy, was remixed by John Talabot twice. This one is the pick of the pair, a stunning ten minute remix that builds gradually but incessantly, synths and voices climbing euphorically, drums padding softly and then a part of Romy's vocal- 'Didn't I take you to/ Higher places, you can't reach without me?' The second half, after six minutes, takes off elsewhere with the bassline leading and Romy's vocal shifting to breathy mutterings about ecstasy and, in a kiss off moment, not being around when he/ she/ they come down. 

Loud Places (John Talabot's Higher Dub)

Sweet Love

We've been watching Top Boy recently, all four series, back to back. Set in a fictional north London housing estate in Hackney called Summerhouse and detailing the lives of its residents, Top Boy is centred mainly around two young men, Dushane and Sully, who make a living selling drugs. The first two series were on Channel 4 in 2011 and 2013. After that it was dropped and then picked up by rapper Drake and Netflix and two further series were made, one in 2019 and the fourth this year (with one more underway now). One of the episodes at the end of series one saw the tension rising, violence between drug gangs increasing and lives being ended or ruined, quickly and brutally, and the unmistakeable twinkling sounds of this track began to play, looped a little, fading in and out as the drama unfolded. 

Sweet Love For Planet Earth

Fuck Buttons released Sweet Love For Planet Earth on their Street Horsing album back in 2008, a monstrous piece of post rave/ post rock melodic noise, the sound of continents colliding and planets crashing into each other. It's a monumental piece of music, building to a chaotic conclusion. The same year they put out a 12" single of Colours Move with an Andrew Weatherall remix of Sweet Love... on the B-side. 

Sweet Love For Planet Earth (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Weatherall keeps the strange and beautiful melodies and the sheets of noise while welding a huge rhythm underneath, a crunching kick drum and throbbing bassline and lets everything go on and on, in ever whirling circles, building the tension before a heart stopping pause and re- entry at four minutes forty. It's the far end of the arc of a curve he stated back in 1991 with his remix of Soon for My Bloody Valentine, noise refitted for weirded out dancefloors. Exhilarating stuff. 

Monday's Long Song

Out last year but new to me (via David Holmes playing it on the June edition of God's Waiting Room at NTS) is this vinyl only four track EP by Berlin's Alex Kassian. The long songs for today are both on the B-side, the sumptuous Spirit Of Eden. Long and lightheaded electronic joy, dub teetering into jazz/ deep house, beautiful melodies and floating production, Spirit Of Eden is the sort of thing that for the duration it spins, totally transports you somewhere else- and that's exactly what we want music to do sometimes isn't it?

The 12" follows Spirit Of Eden with a Bill Laswell dub which at eight and a half minutes is slightly longer and taken at a slower tempo with a lovely flute part that comes and goes as the refrain from the original drifts in and out. 

Half An Hour Of Spacemen 3

Pontins at Prestatyn, North Wales, has hosted all sorts of weekenders over the years from soul weekenders in the 80s to Northern Soul and Motown revival nights to an 80s weekender taking place there this very weekend, featuring in no particular order Chesney Hawkes, Black Lace, Aswad and Sonia (poor Aswad, how did they get mixed up in that?). To the best of my knowledge Spacemen 3 never played Pontins in Prestatyn but they did play a health spa in not too distant Chester in the late 80s with spectacular results (an event described in bassist Will Carruthers' book, Playing Bass With Three Left Hands), an evening where a group more familiar with opiates were introduced to ecstasy for the first time and played one of their best gigs. 

This Sunday half hour mix takes in Spacemen 3's dreamier, spacier, more ecstatic songs, less of the supercharged Stooges influenced sound and more of the 'lie back and think of Rugby' grooves, selected from their three albums- 1987's The Perfect Prescription, 1989's Playing With Fire and the final album 1991's Recurring (released after they'd split with Sonic Boom and J Spaceman unable to work together in the studio and taking a side of the album each), plus a lovely recent re- edit by Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40.  

Half An Hour Minutes Of Spacemen 3

• Ecstasy Symphony/ Transparent Radiation
• Just To See You Smile
• How Does It Feel? (10:40's Terrace Moonshine Dub)
• Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here)
• Ode To Street Hassle
• I Love You

Saturday Theme Sixteen

Today's Saturday theme is one of the great Theme records, a song which turned spring 1988 upside down- a joyous, ecstatic, sampledelic splash of neon colours, smiley face, acid house crossover mayhem. A song guaranteed to fill a dancefloor, at any occasion, still. Theme From S'Express is one of the best records of the 80s and if I was forced to put together a list of my favourite fifty singles (or something similar) it would undoubtedly feature highly. 

Theme From S'Express

Mark Moore and Pascal Gabriel constructed the track largely out of samples. Moore was a DJ, Gabriel a producer (who had recently co- written Bomb The Bass' hit Beat Dis, another sample- heavy smash in both the clubs and the charts). Moore turned up with a bag of records, they sequenced the parts they wanted onto cassette and turned everything up to ten. 

A few years ago at his A History Of Dubious Taste blog Jez pulled together the songs that provided Mark Moore with his source material which is where I got most of the mp3s I've used for what follows. I've attempted to sequenced the songs that S'Express sampled for Theme From S'Express into one continuous mix- it was a bit of a challenge, getting the sequence and the segues somewhere near right. It starts and finishes with some spoken word science fiction, goes all disco and New York, borrows from acts as diverse as Sam The Sham and Gil Scott Heron, some early 80s synthpop and the genuinely jaw dropping, X rated Tales Of Taboo by Karen Finley, a song that once heard is never forgotten. 

Theme From S'Express Samples Mix

• Laura Olsher: The Martian Monsters
• Rose Royce: Is It Love You're After?
• Peech Boys: Don't Make Me Wait
• TZ: I Got The Hots For You
• Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson: The Bottle
• Crystal Glass: Crystal World
• Alfredo de la Fe: Hot To Trot
• Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs: Oh, That's Bad, No That's Good
• Debbie Harry: Feel The Spin
• Karen Finley: Tales Of Taboo
• Stacey Q: Two Of Hearts
• Yazoo: Situation
• Gene Roddenbury: The Star Trek Dream

This Is Something

At the tail end of last year Sean Johnston released a cover of Willow's Song, the haunting, freaked out folk song from The Wicker Man, recording as The Suummerisle Trio. It came out as a 7" on Golden Lion Sounds, vinyl only but you can listen to it here. The Trio were/ are Sean, Duncan Grey and singer Sarah Rebecca. 

Sean's now expanded the trio to a six piece, pulling in Andy Bell on guitar, Jo Bartlett on vocals (from It's Jo And Danny), Kevin Sharkey (ex- Undertones and That Petrol Emotion) and Mick Somerset Ward on sax (Clock DVA, Crooked Man). On top of that line up he's got Rico Conning in on remix duties (ex- Torch Song, the early 80s electro- ambient outfit he started with William Orbit). The resulting song is a shift on again, into late 80s/ early 90s territory with a pulsing sequencer line, a thumping, propulsive groove, spacey sound and Jo's vocal soaring on top and the sax skronking away inside the mix, a sort of indie- dance/ disco/ acid house synthesis. The full extended mix is eight minutes, an end of the night anthem. The dub mix is a beauty too. Rico's remix ten minutes of Balearic splendour. It came out on 12" a couple of months ago and is now available digitally on Sean's new label Outre- Mer- you can listen and buy here. 

There Goes The Cure

I started bereavement counselling in April, a session a week for eight weeks. It came to an end yesterday with my final session. I didn’t go into counselling expecting that it could in some way ‘fix’ me- there’s no cure for bereavement, grief and loss. Isaac’s death will always be there and that’s that in a way, what we have to do is learn to live with it and try to find a way to rebuild our lives without him. Bereavement counselling also isn’t the type of counselling where there is a flash of light as everything shifts, or falls into place or suddenly a new path becomes clear- at least that’s my experience. It has been a weekly opportunity for an hour to talk about ‘it’- Isaac, grief and loss, life going on and all the other stuff that starts to bleed in- with someone who is trained to listen and to prompt and question (at times). It’s been useful as somewhere to drop all my emotional stuff once a week. I think I’ll miss it now it’s gone but am probably better equipped to manage without it. It has helped me untangle some of the thoughts, find my way through them- and my counsellor has been really good at helping me do that. 

Our bereavement counselling has been provided by MacMillan. Their counselling (staffed by volunteers mainly) is available for any adults who have suffered a bereavement, it doesn’t have to be cancer related. I don’t think this is widely known. The occupational health team connected to my workplace didn’t know this. This also confirms to me the state of affairs at the moment. My referral for counselling to our local health care trust brought me to an assessment quite quickly but I was then advised that an appointment for counselling through the NHS could take ‘up to three months’- they don’t have the staff or the budget to see anyone quicker than that unless they are suicidal. Charities like MacMillan step in to the gap of an underfunded and under resourced NHS.

One of the most unpleasant side effects of grief, particularly present back in the period from January through to April, was a series of flashbacks I suffered. When Isaac died the three of us were with him. The consultant who had seen many people die from Covid told us what would happen and it was largely as he described. In Isaac’s last hour we were sitting on his hospital bed with him. I was sitting facing him, holding his hands and looking at him. When the moment came I was right in front of him and with him, looking at him. For some time afterwards, I would unexpectedly get flashbacks to the moment he died. They started happening on Tuesdays- Tuesday was the day he died- and would often come when I was driving. For an instant I was back in the room, holding his hands and looking at his face. I would smell the room and feel the pain. They would pass fairly quickly but for the moment the flashback was present, it was deeply unsettling and very unpleasant. I started to dread Tuesday mornings. Once it got past 12.45pm (the time he died) I would be ok, it would pass, but then I’d be waiting for the next Tuesday. When I started counselling in April I described all of this in one of my early sessions (the woman I spoke to from occupational health at around that time said the flashbacks were 'rather concerning' and commonly associated with PTSD). A few weeks ago, on an evening in early May as I pulled onto the motorway to drive to Tuesday night 5- a- side, I had a horrific flashback, the full on ‘back in the room’ experience. It left me short of breath, completely overwhelming me, knocking the wind out of me. Luckily the motorway was quiet and it passed quickly, I focussed on the road and sort of pushed it away. When I pulled in at the car park I got my phone out and wrote it down as a note, just described what had happened. I talked about it at counselling two days later and last week we went back to it and discussed strategies for dealing with it. We talked about it again yesterday and the realisation I haven't had one now for some time and about how I'd deal with one if I did. I haven’t had one since that one in May. Maybe the counselling, the talking, the passing of time and the acceptance has helped. 

I don’t mind some of the aspects of grief. That sounds weird I know. As time goes on and the raw, physical pain lessens, redcues as a permanent feature of living, as a day to day emotional state There are times and triggers when the crashing waves of grief and loss still come. Visiting Isaac’s grave does it. When we go, the sheer enormity of what has happened, of him dying, hits me anew (not every time but most). There are little things that trigger it: a photo popping up in my social media memories; the memory of somewhere we went or something we did; an encounter with someone who we haven’t seen since he died or who didn’t know; a memory of him randomly crossing my mind. When it comes I let it happen, I don’t try to suppress it. I almost welcome the fact that even now, nearly seven months on, it can poleaxe me, take my breath away, cause me to gulp and well up. It provides a link to him. I can feel it and then come up out of it, almost like diving into water and then getting resurfacing as you get through the surface and breathe air again. My counsellor described finding something to ground yourself at these moments, something tangible. The pain feels real and then it passes. 

Counselling has helped me with all of this. There’s no cure for what’s happened. It becomes a matter of accepting it and finding ways of coping. I’m relieved the flashbacks seem to have gone for the moment. Some of the other physical symptoms remain- the tinnitus is still present first thing in the morning and at occasions where it’s silent and I suddenly notice that my ears are ringing. My jaw clenching and tooth grinding is still there but also lessened, less acute than before. Sleep is still a bit hit and miss at times. But we agreed yesterday at the end of my final session that I've made progress- the fact that other, day to day stuff has become a bit more pre- occupying suggest that I'm moving on in some way, thoughts of Isaac and the grief are not ever-present like they were. She said there's still a 'heaviness' about me but I've come a long way from the person who turned up at the first session back in April. And that is good. 

There Goes The Cure

This 1993 song by One Dove with Andrew Weatherall on magic dust sprinkling  and production duties suggested itself to me while writing this post. Listening to it as I finished tidying the post up I thought it might be too close to the bone, and lyrically it is almost too much... 

'One cut too many/ One more life to go... losing a shadow/ Losing another soul/ So many echoes/ He's gone'. 

Tears come, again. But it fits very well and with those pianos and the post acid house/ comedown production, and that part where the dubby bass pushes its way through especially, it also feels like dawn has come and there might be a way forward after all. 

The Chill Out Tent

There are a slew of interesting and musically wide ranging compilation albums hitting the shelves at the moment, both digital and physical releases, so much music that it feels difficult to keep up sometimes. In recent weeks I've been delving into various Various Artist albums- Luke Una presents E Soul Cultura, the Spun Out Agency's More Of That Frightful Oompty Bumpty Music, Paul Hillery's We Are The Children Of The Sun and The Chill Out Tent Volume 1 to name but four. Eventually I'll get round to posting something about each of these, but I'll start today with the last one- The Chill Out Tent Volume 1. 

The 1990s/ early 2000s really marred the chill out compilation CD. More often than not just an excuse for some identikit blandness to play in a bar while wearing bad sunglasses- it became a very debased concept, piles of double CDs destined for bargain bins in motorway service stations. The Chill Out Tent compilation, put together by the Chill Out Tent crew, is a very strong attempt to renew the concept with a twelve track album of Balearic/ dance/ dub/ reggae tracks, based around what they call 'acid house hippy'. There's so much to enjoy inside it the compilation- all exclusive to the album- from opening pair of songs onwards, starting out with the sitars and dub burblings of Calm's Summer Night Dream and the Uptown Top Ranking sampling of Turbotito's To Feel In Love. Balearic DJ and producer Chris Coco contributes remixes and versions on six of the twelve songs with his remix of Sauco's Sun Goddess and a collaboration with Hear And Now both already sounding like high summer and his remix of Projections Original Cell is drifting, ambient/ Balearic bliss (I've posted some of Projections music before here). The album finishes with a song from Mallorca by Joan Bibiloni, five minutes of sounds to watch the sun go down to- whistles, hand drums, Spanish guitar, synths. Nottingham's Balearic duo Coyote are on there too. Home Grown is a beauty, slowly edging forward with keys and padded drums, in no hurry to get to it's destination. 

The Chill Out Tent Volume 1 can be bought here, out in full at the start of July. 

Earlier this year Coyote released a new EP on French label Citizens Of Vice, two new tracks- As The Crow Flies and Steely Dad (song title of the year alert). It came with some remixes including this one of As The Crow Flies by Chris Coco, which has some of the most heart tugging, happy/ sad piano chords you'll have the pleasure of hearing today. Buy it here if you're so inclined.

Acid Solstice

I found an old mp3 player recently- not even an iPod but one produced by Creative- and wondered if it still worked. Charged it up, had a poke around inside the folders to see what was on it and then put it in the car to accompany my commute. It's a bit clunky but works fine, stays charged for a good while and will even let me delete files and add new songs. Driving on Saturday afternoon with Eliza in the car with me, this song came on and as the kick drum banged away, the juddering bassline came in and then the layers of acid/ techno wonkiness piled up increasingly filling the car with the sparse fullness of the song and then that stentorian vocal faded in, 'acid funk/ acid funk/ acid funk...' and the snare rattled like a rock on a metal roof, Eliza said, 'well, this is intense'. And I could only reply, 'Yes. It is'. 

Acid Funk (Scott Hardkiss Mix)

It's also ridiculously funky, absorbing, next level stuff from the Hardkiss family back in 1996. Hawke and God Within with Scott Hardkiss on remix duties. I imagine it could still cause mayhem at a club if dropped at the right time and for the right crowd. It came on again driving home last night, the sun beating down on the M60, and it sounded just as good, building and building, ever increasingly, yes, intense. If you want something to add a little edge to your morning routine, to get you moving as you make your tea/ coffee or get your packed lunch together, stick Acid Funk on for a few minutes. 

It's the summer solstice too, something to celebrate or at least to note. The longest day is always a little double edged- summer's only just arrived and in calendar terms we've already peaked. But happy solstice, if that's your thing. 

Monday's Long Song

Al MacKenzie is one half of Field Of Dreams (along with Chris Kentish), a Birmingham based duo who make music and put on club nights. Al has written and recorded a seven minute tribute to Andrew Weatherall, who supported their music, played at their nights and remixed their 2018 single Nothing Is Perfect. Sail On is a gorgeous way to spend seven minutes with synths bobbing about, a throbbing sequencer line, chuggy drums, a nod to Smokebelch, and eventually voice singing 'sail on' and a lovely wandering piano. It finshes with a horn and the sound of waves crashing on a beach. You can get it here, free or pay what you want (any monies raised are going to a charity for the homeless in Birmingham). Sail On is, I think you'll agree, rather lovely way to start the week.

Back in March Field Of Dreams released a single with a slew of accompanying remixes, the chunky, spine tingling, acidic, dancefloor monster You Feed Me. 

The remixes are well worth hanging around for with Bagging Area favourites Rude Audio and Justin Robertson on board. Rude Audio's remix is a sticky, sweltering version and with the bassline pushed up front has a New Order- esque feel.

Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s remix slows things down, cowbell and whooshes, a bit of darkness on the dancefloor. 

The full package- original mix, instrumental and edited versions plus the remixes above and another from Joey T- can be found at Bandcamp. 

Forty Minutes Of The Beastie Boys

It's easy to forget sometimes that the best and most influential band of the 90s weren't one of your Britpop suspects, not one of the grunge bands either or the millennial tension bands (Radiohead et al) but a trio from New York who started out as a punk band, found global fame as snotty cartoon rappers and then retreated, regrouped and made a run of albums that easily knock the crown off the heads of any of those implied above. From 1989's Paul's Boutique to Check Your Head in '92 and then Ill Communication (1994) and 1998's Hello Nasty, the Beastie Boys were a threeway rap/ punk machine, sampling liberally from their extensive record collections and firing off lyrics that were frequently brilliant, memorable and hilarious. 

Their cultural reach was enormous- old school trainers and tracksuit tops, 70s clothes, videos recreating 70s cop shows and sci fi/ disaster movies, the Grand Royale magazine (credited with the first recorded use of the word mullet to describe the haircut that despoiled the 80s and has become mystifyingly popular recently. It also published a wide ranging but very niche series of articles- from Bruce Lee and Lee Scratch Perry to ramen), human rights for the people of Tibet. They headlined Lollapalooza, toured arenas (with Mixmaster Mike and Money Mark on turntables and keys respectively) and could make an arena show feel like a both a gig and an event. They peppered their songs with arcane references and tips of the hat. Sure Shot, one of their finest moments, is built around a flute sample (from Jeremy Steig) and drops the names of Dr. John, Lee Dorsey, the Pelham 123, Kojak, John Woo, Rod Carew, Lee Perry and Vaughn Bode as well as apologising for their younger sexist selves and calling for an end to the disrespect of women. They were colossal, hugely influential and when Adam Yauch (MCA) died from cancer in 2012 it was the end of an era. Mike D and Ad- Rock called it a day, retiring the Beastie Boys name

This is just a sampling of some my favourite Beastie Boys songs, plenty of witty, amped up, danceable hip hop, some stoned funk rock, some wonky reggae and three blasts of punk rock. As the man in Root Down says, 'Oh my god, that's the funky shit!'

Forty Minutes Of The Beastie Boys

• Sure Shot
• Johnny Ryall
• Egg Man
• Super Disco Breakin'
• Root Down
• Something's Got To Give
• Looking Down The Barrell Of A Gun
• Dr Lee, PhD
• Mullethead
• Sabotage
• Time For Livin'
• Intergalactic 

Saturday Theme Fifteen

Back in 1989 E.J. Robinson (otherwise known as Marcello Catalano, an Italian producer and studio and label boss) recorded an Italo- house version of the theme from the Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise comedy/ drama Rain Man. If you didn't previously know you needed an Italo- house version of the theme from Rain Man in your life, you do now. This is a wonderful piece of late 80s music, various barriers being dissolved as the 90s hove into view. 

I've never seen Rain Man (in fact I realised recently with all the hype about the new Top Gun film I never seen Top Gun either. Switching briefly to a list of films starring Tom Cruise I now see that I've not seen a single Cruise film with the exception of The Colour Of Money. I am quite happy with this state of affairs). But this slice of '89 Italo house is magical, all Funky Drummer breakbeat, big synth chords, bongos, piano and a keyboard with the button marked panpipes pressed in. 

(Theme From) Rain Man (Dance Version)

Theme From Rain Man is one of the ten tracks on a 1989 compilation called Sueno! Essential Mediterranean Dancetrax, a moment in time captured. The album can be picked up really cheaply- Discogs currently has copies starting at 67p and copies from UK sellers are only a couple of quid- and is well worth it for the uptempo, holiday soundtracking, piano house contained within its grooves. A further note of interest is that the liner notes on the back of the sleeve are by Andrew Weatherall, then largely unknown, and legend has it the money he was paid for writing the sleeve notes paid for his first pair of Technics turntables and mixer. 

Chaos Energy And Bliss

I'm a big fan of Daniel Avery's ambient/ industrial techno. His run of albums from Song For Alpha in 2018 to Illusion Of Time (with Alessandro Cortini in 2020, just as the first lockdown kicked in) to Love + Light (also from 2020) and then last year's Together In Static have been as much part of my listening habits over the last few years as anyone else's. He recently announced the release in the autumn of his next one, Ultra Truth, which will include Lone Swordsman, his affecting, emotional tribute to Andrew Weatherall. The first taster for Ultra Energy came a few weeks ago with Chaos Energy, five minutes of heart stopping, intense, vibrant melodic techno. After two years of difficult times and pent up emotions, reflected in Daniel's music, uneasy and dark in places, this feels alive and celebratory. 

Yesterday the B-side to Chaos Energy came out digitally. Daniel says Bliss is 'shoegaze rave', made to play live, and driven by rapid, rattling drums and some of those synthlines that send shivers running up and down your central nervous system. Ultra Truth is out in November. 

I'm Living In The Eighties

Not too far from yesterday's Ministry and Adrian Sherwood post, today's songs come from Killing Joke and their 1984 single Eighties (from their fifth album Night Time). Eighties is a pulverising, semi- manic but tightly controlled assault, Jaz Coleman typically intense on vocals, and a post- punk bass, drums and guitar groove that would fill dance floors with a mess of hair, leather, beer and eyeliner. The 12" came with the Serious Dance Mix on the A-side. How hard are those drums?

Eighties (Serious Dance Mix)

The Killing Joke In Dub three CD pack is loaded with superb versions and remixes of Killing Joke's songs. The Voodoo Dub Mix of Eighties is still pretty fast and furious, emphasis on the voodoo more than the dub maybe. 

Eighties (Voodoo Dub Mix)

All Day

When I worked at HMV in the early 90s the shop's assistant manager and another colleague were both massive fans of Ministry, the American industrial/ metal band led by Al Jourgenson. Occasionally, when the boss was not in and it was getting close to closing time, they would clear the shop of the final few shoppers by putting some Ministry on and turning the volume up. Within minutes the shoppers would rush to the tills to pay for their items, the shop would empty, we could pull the shutters down and head home, another day in the retail industry successfully completed. 

In the early 80s Ministry started as a synth- pop outfit and evolved into full blown grinding industrial metal. Jourgenson also served time as the frontman and leader of Revolting Cocks and Lard and featured heavily in Lollapalooza in the early 90s. At some point in the mid 80s he crossed paths with Adrian Sherwood and Sherwood remixed All Day. Sherwood was working on Keith LeBlanc's solo album Major Malfunction at the same time as producing Ministry's Twitch and a lot of the rhythm tracks got shared between the two. All Day came out as a single in 1984 with Sherwood's remix coming out on Twitch in 1986. 

All Day Remix is a superb example of the cut and paste approach of both Jourgenson and Sherwood, with sampled voices, synths and juddering drum machines, plus that general sense of the tension and unease of the times, the mid- 80s of Reagan's America and Thatcher's Britain, and it's not a million miles from either New Order or Depeche Mode. 

All Day Remix

Nineteen

Today is my daughter Eliza's nineteenth birthday. She'll be spending it in Liverpool where there's a week of partying going on, end of  the first year university partying and birthday partying. I spent my nineteenth birthday in Liverpool too, back in May 1989 so there's funny circular/ history repeating itself thing going on for us. With everything that we've gone through since the end of last year, the fact that she's gone back to university and made a success of it is incredible in itself- we're very proud of her (obviously) and how she's dealt with things since Isaac died. Happy birthday Eliza, have a blast and hopefully you won't be too hungover when we arrive to take you out for tea tonight. 

One of our songs is Halo by Beyonce. Our shared vocal take on it, usually when in the car with us switching lead and backing vox effortlessly and intuitively, is probably the definitive version of the song. Unfortunately it remains unrecorded so here's the original from I Am... Sasha Fierce in 2008 instead. 

Halo

Back in May 1989 Dinosaur Jr had just released their cover version of The Cure's Just Like Heaven. Last year they released a live album, Emptiness At The Sinclair, recorded in Boston. The version of Just Like Heaven on it is a blistering, sonic assault, J Mascis' guitar and wah wah pedals feeling the heat while drawls his way through one of Robert Smiths' finest moments. 

Just Like Heaven (Live At The Sinclair)

Monday's Long Song

Rude Audio made one of my favourite tunes/  EPs of 2021, the summer sounding skank- chug of Railton Ruckus. They've now returned to do the summer of 2022 a massive favour with a new track and EP, Big Heat. The title track is six and a half minutes of chuggy electronic dub house, the metronomic drums pushing ever on while the synths rise and fall and the timbales clatter around. There's a terrifc piano line that gradually works its way to the front of things.Big Heat is a proper groover, ideal for dancing to in dark basements or back gardens. 

The EP comes loaded with a pair of remixes, an eight minute one from Bedford Falls Players and a slightly shorter Rich Lane remix. 

The Bedford Falls Players remix extends it out and strips it down, focussing on the rhythm track and those timbales, then bringing the acidic squiggle of the 303 to the fore. The remix gets split in the middle by some samples, Hollywood coming to South London, before cutting back to the action.

Rich goes more laid back, steel guitar and washes of bliss, and then all dubbed out. 

All three versions of Big Heat plus two further Rude Audio treats, Rudely Fresh and Dust Devil remixed by Al MacKenzie, can be bought at Bandcamp, forty minutes of dubbed out house sounds for summer for just £4. 

Forty Minutes Of Peaking Lights

Peaking Lights, husband/ wife duo from the US (variously San Francisco, Wisconsin, Los Angeles but now resident in Amsterdam according to Wiki), have been releasing albums since 2008, putting out a lo- fi, trippy, sun dappled type of psychedelic pop, heavily laced with dub. I first encountered them on their 2011 album 936 (Piccadilly Records record of the year I think) and then got the follow up Lucifer and its side version Lucifer In Dub. I've not kept up to date with everything they've released but what I have I love- their sound is a swirling, heady kaleidoscopic brew, the dubbier ones particularly hitting the spot. 

Beautiful Dub is from Lucifer In Dub, released in 2012. Tiger Eyes (Laid Back) and All The Sun That Shines were both on 936 which came with a bunch of remixes, including the one here by On U Sound's Adrian Sherwood. In 2015 they remixed four songs by Sinkane, his Sudanese electronic funk- pop splattered with their psychedelic dub. Beautiful Son is from Lucifer- John Talabot's remix is a gorgeous low key thumper from 2013. 

Forty Minutes of Peaking Lights

• Beautiful Dub
• Tiger Eyes (Laid Back) (Adrian Sherwood On U Sound Remix)
• All The Sun That Shines
• Yacha (Peaking Lights Mix)
• Beautiful Son (John Talabot's Acetate Dub)

Saturday Theme Fourteen

Saturday's theme today comes from the former bassist of Magazine and one time Bad Seed, Barry Adamson, a man whose solo back catalogue is littered with delights and treasures. In 1992, on his Soul Murder album, Adamson recorded his take on the James Bond Theme, a version that has been sent to Jamaica and infused with ska and a big band orchestra, a sample from the original 1962 John Barry and Monty Norman Bond theme and a spoken word vocal that imagine a world where Bond is from Kingston and Bond is black. 

007 A Fantasy Bond Theme

I know it's close to pop culture heresy but I've never been that fussed about the Bond films. Some of the 60s ones have a period charm- the suits are well cut, the women are beautiful and the villains villainous, but it quickly became a joke that wore increasingly thin. I like the voodoo nonsense of Live And Let Die, I must have watched that at an impressionable age on a wet Sunday afternoon at some point. The modern Bonds don't do much for me at all. Is it just me? Have I got Bond all wrong?

I Do Know How I Survive

Even the North Sea can look beautiful at sunset sailing away from Rotterdam and back to Hull. This song has been going round in my head since Vangelis died two weeks ago and since Khayem's epic forty minute State Of Independence mix at Dubhed. The Donna Summer and Moodswings versions are my go to ones but there's no denying the original, Jon and Vangelis in 1981. Lilting, euphoric, futuristic electronic pop. 

State Of Independence 

The saxophone is played by Dick Morrissey who also turned up on Vangelis' Blade Runner score, especially on Love Theme (which I posted here last month). The sax solo on Love Theme, with a penny dropping flash we all realised recently, references State Of Independence. 

Donna Summer's 1982 over version became a hit, top twenty in the UK and number one in the Netherlands, whose coastline you can just see fading into the horizon in my picture up top. I love it when things come together accidentally like this. 

One Day In Rotterdam

We spent Thursday last week in Rotterdam, a day trip to a city we haven't been to before. We had a North Sea ferry voucher left over from a cancelled trip from my 50th in May 2020 and decided to use it to get out of the country while the jubilee was taking place (or at least for some of it). Travelling overnight on the ferry Wednesday from Hull to Rotterdam, a full day in Rotterdam on Thursday and then the ferry back on Thursday night. Rotterdam is a fantastic city. It was almost completely destroyed during the war and has been rebuilt from scratch since, in modernist and post- modernist style. The market hall above is stunning, full of places to eat and drink. Nearby are the Cube Houses, a residential development designed by architect Piet Blom in the 1970s and completed in 1984, inspired by tree top living and designed to optimise space. 

Almost all of the 38 cube house properties are currently occupied. One is an art gallery and one is available to visit, entry price three euros. The inside of the apartments are fascinating. The houses are all cubes tilted on their sides. Windows are angled and rooms maximising space. The top floor of each one is an inside garden (photo below).

We wandered round the city centre, stopped off for snacks, lunch, beers, popped into record shops (Rotterdam has several, well stocked record shops, selling new and second hand records), walked to the surviving old town, Delftshaven, wandered round  and enjoyed being somewhere else. The architecture is brilliantly diverse, from this building near the waterfront...

...to the Euromast...

... to this piece of Bauhaus in Rotterdam

One of my current favourite albums, only recently bumped off my turntable by the arrival of the new Michael Head and The Elastic Band album, is A Mountain Of One's Stars Planet Dust Me, eight songs that run the gamut from deep, dark Balearica to trippy Yacht Rock with some synth pop and alternative, cosmic dance thrown in. It's a beautifully produced record, sumptuous in places, highly seductive but always with an undercurrent, as if something dangerous or unexpected might be about to happen. It's an album that has  baked in the sun all day and gone straight out on the tiles, stayed out too long and too late, gained some hard won wisdom on the way and is still looking for something. I can't recommend it enough. This is the title track, descending synths and organ with chanted vocals, a psychedelic Balearic stew. 

Stars Planet Dust Me 

Cease To Know

This mural of Nico by an artist called Trafford Parsons adorns the gable end of a building, not far from the Apollo in Ardwick (a walk from the Piccadilly town of about fifteen to twenty minutes). The building is Spirit Studios, something I didn't know when I took the picture at Easter. Amusingly, the front entrance to Spirit Studios is on Downing Street. I'll leave that hanging there- you can probably fill in your own joke/ remark. 

Nico had a history with Manchester, moving here in 1981. Her past as a model and then member of Andy Warhol's Factory set, role in his Chelsea Girls film and her vocals on The Velvet Underground's first album are the stuff of legend. Her solo albums of the 70s too, The Marble Index especially, with Nico taking up the harmonium, a very un- rock 'n' roll instrument, at the suggestion of Jim Morrison. She lived with John Cooper Clarke for some of the 80s (in Brixton) but spent much of it living in Prestwich (home to Mark E Smith) and Lower Broughton, Salford. She was deep in the grips of heroin addiction. Fall guitarist Martin Bramah said she liked the less salubrious parts of inner city Manchester, gazing at Manchester's dirty post- industrial mills and saying they were romantic. Some of Manchester's musical scene treated her like royalty but she equally preferred to played pool in the pubs of Prestwich, go to Chinatown for a meal or pop to the local shops on her bike. She played gigs to pay the bills/ support her habit and various members of The Fall, the Factory set and promoter/ manager Alan Wise tried to get her to write and record but accounts suggest she drifted, burning bridges and chances, and would lose interest easily. Eventually she began to clean up, switching to methadone and taking up cycling and healthy eating. She died while on holiday in Ibiza in 1988 while out on her bike, suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, and is buried in Grunewald, a cemetery near Berlin. 

Her life as a child, born in 1938, adds yet more to her story- her father was conscripted into the Wehrmacht during the war and there are multiple accounts of his death, some attributed to Nico and her frequent changes to the story- variously shot by a French sniper resulting in terrible head injuries and then being shot by his commanding officer or ending up in a concentration camp or living out his final days in a psychiatric hospital or fading away from shellshock. Whatever the truth, after the war Nico and her mother ended up in Berlin, a far cry from their wealthy background in pre- war Cologne. 

This song, Afraid, is from 1970's Desertshore album, an album she made with John Cale, and seems imbued with all the life she'd lived up to that point.  

Afraid

Across the Kitchen Table

Three songs for Drew today who is in the midst of some tough times. His blog Across The Kitchen Table was around way back in the late 00s and was one of the reasons I started this. Since striking up an online friendship (beginning with posts about Weatherall records if I remember right) we've met in real life on several occasions in Glasgow and Manchester, even venturing out to watch lower tier Scottish football at Airdrie back in 2017. All the best Drew, take care of yourself and each other. 

First song is by The Fall, der gruppe he loves as much as any. I could pick almost any Fall song at random. On looking in my Fall folder I went for this one, prime late 80s Fall with Mark and Brix chanting something about Baghdad space cog analysts before the scabrous Mancabilly fires in on all cylinders and MES goes off about guest informants, cheap hotels and miserable Scottish hotels that resemble Genesis and Marillion album covers in 1973. I guess touring in the 80s really didn't agree with him. 

Guest Informant

Secondly round about this time of year when Drew's blog Across The Kitchen Table was active he would post this Jonathan Richman song, a slightly calmer and less unhinged way to start your Tuesday. 

That Summer Feeling

And finally, The Pale Fountains in 1985...

... From Across The Kitchen Table

Monday's Long Song

I found this last week, one track from an EP by Anatolian Weapons, a DJ/ production team from Athens, Greece (released on the always worth watching Byrd Out label). Desert Track 66 is eleven minutes of 303 slowed down acid intensity, a trip out to somewhere else. Ticking drums, murky sounds, the acidic squiggle of the 303 burbling away, with the occasional pause as the rhythm track drops out and then back in again. Impossible to click play on and not be drawn in. And there's definitely something of the desert about it- the heat, the vastness and the sense of it going on and on into the distance as night falls. 

The rest of the EP, Selected Acid Tracks, is similarly good and can be bought digitally at Bandcamp. There's a limited vinyl edition too if you want to seriously test your speakers out. All the other tracks hit the spot, Acid Research 20 and Acid Research 63 both driven by higher tempos and equally wigged. 
 

Half An Hour Of The Durutti Column

I've been listening to Durutti Column and the music of Vini Reilly since the late 1980s and I still regularly find new things to enjoy in Vini's back catalogue, songs and tracks that I've missed or not heard properly before. Vini was so prolific that he often gave music to labels other than Factory, just to get it out there. A friend recently lent me the Sporadic Recordings CDs, three limited edition discs of recordings that came out at various points between 1989 and 2007, and there's a wealth of songs on the discs, some of which I knew (some were released as extras when his Factory albums were repackaged and re- released, some I've stumbled across on Youtube or gone looking for via interviews). I thoght some of these, together with some other possibly lesser known Durutti Column songs, would make a good thirty minute mix for my Sunday series.

Half An Hour Of Durutti Column

• Sketch Of A Manchester Summer 1989
• Royal Infirmary
• Dry
• 30 Oldham Street
• Take Some Time Out
• Bordeaux
• People's Pleasure Park (Version)
• [Canadian Customs]

There's a strong sense of place in Vini's songs and their titles. He often names songs for or about places. This mix kicks off with a Sporadic recording track, one of my favourite DC songs, recorded on a very rainy day in June 1989, Vini taping the sound of West Didsbury rainfall and playing along with it. Royal Infirmary is from 1986's Circuses And Bread album, a minimal, haunting piece for piano and guitar. Dry was the title track of a 1991 album that came out on Materiali Sonori, an Italian label, and is named after the bar Factory opened on Oldham Street, Manchester. The drum machine and synth backing to Vini's guitar playing is superb- it's followed by a version of the same song, this time named after Dry's address (released on the Sporadic Recordings). Dry had it's own Factory number- Dry201. When it opened there wasn't much else like it in Manchester and it was in a then very unfashionable and semi- run down part of town (today's Northern Quarter). 

Take Some Time was recorded for Factory but shelved until 2012 when it was on the Short Stories For Pauline album, a lost/ found treasure trove of Durutti Column songs. Bordeaux is on 1983's Another Setting (Fact 74). People's Pleasure Park is from the Sporadic Recordings- the original version came out on 1989's Vini Reilly album, Bruce Mitchell's drumming particularly on point. [Canadian Customs]  closes The Sporadic Recordings Disc 2 (from 2007) and is a couple of minutes of Vini playing guitar followed by some audio of the group going through customs on their way from Canada to the US. When challenged by the border guard about what kind of music they play Vini shoots back, 'avant garde jazz classical'.

Saturday Theme Thirteen: Bumper Sabres Of Paradise Edition

I'm surprised it's taken me thirteen weeks to get around to posting this theme but here we are. It's a bank holiday weekend here in the UK (and I'll pass over all the nonsense of the platinum jubilee other than to say I think that democratic nations should elect their leaders, even ones with no real powers). But as a bank holiday bonus I thought we'd have a bumper edition of the Saturday Theme theme with not one, not two,  not even three or four but five versions of Theme (or The Theme) by Andrew Weatherall's magnificent 90s dub/ techno outfit The Sabres Of Paradise, all sequenced together in order in one mix. 

Sabres Themes 1- 4 Plus Remix

• Theme
• Theme II
• Theme III
• Theme 4
• Theme (Underdog Vs. Sabres)

Theme was released as a 12" in 1994, a Richard Sen graffiti adorned sleeve housing a massive piece of music, almost eight minutes of crunchy hip hop drums, distorted guitar and a blaring horn sample (which a Discogs user has spotted as being from Yello's Jungle Bill. Weatherall/ Sabres previously remixed Jungle Bill in 1992). There's some clattering percussion halfway through and the repeated build up of bass and horns. The long fade out with sounds twisting round and round themselves, ricocheting round the speakers is very nice. 

Theme II came out via a freebie magazine cassette giveaway, the long gone Select Magazine Secret Tracks tape, attached to the front of the magazine in April 1994, a six minute version of the original, taking the less obvious route and with some metallic percussion straight from the Haunted Dancehall sound bank and a load of reverb laden sounds at the back of the mix. 

Theme III was on the Theme CD single, a five minute version that starts out like underwater dub, the sound of wire being stretched, a muffled kick drum, percussion distorted and bent so much they're turning in on themselves, the two note bass throb isolated at the fore and a lot of echo and hiss- the drums eventually break through but it's all slower and hazier

Theme 4 was on Haunted Dancehall, and picks up where Theme III left off, a sub- two minute ambient/ dub take, the original completely deconstructd, a version of a version of a version. At the time Weatherall said PiL's Metal Box was a big influence and you can hear that on the multiple versions of Theme, especially II through to 4, the ghosts of Lydon, Wobble, Levene and various drummers making themselves known. 

Theme (Underdog Vs. Sabres) is a remix by The Underdog which came out on 10" in 1994, following the release of the original 12". It starts with some uptempo house allowed to run for a few bars before a needle is abruptly pulled off the vinyl and drums burst in, and rapper Dominick takes the mic, South London pirate radio style all over the Sabres, ragga vocal and samples dropped in ('move and groove like a pit bull', 'you could get a slap for that'), gunshots, a grinding bassline, some of the original's horns and guitar surviving the makeover. Apparently Underdog (Trevor Jackson) believed Sabres to be a straight house act (hence the piss take opening section of his remix) and thought the original Theme was a half arsed attempt at hip hop. He sent back a remix which showed them how to do it properly. Weatherall reportedly thought this was hilarious, ensuring that the remix came out as a standalone 10" release.  

And Then There Were Four

One of 1990's most celebrated releases round this way was Sheer Taft's Cascades (together with the Hypnotone remix), a joyous, bubbling, magical piece of acid house released when Creation suddenly realised drum machines, samplers and synths could go alongside guitars and FX pedals. I've posted Cascades before, several times. Sheer Taft, sometimes shortened to Sheer, is the recording name for Thomas Taft, Glaswegian now resident in Spain. In 2018 Sheer found himself on the back end of a messy night involving the Spanish version of Pernod, Pacharan, and decided (having found the name ... And Then There Were Four) to start recording an album of spaghetti western inspired folk/ post- punk/ indie, with the intention of creating an album that could be a 1986 compilation tape made anew. With new partner Ed Chapman and friends/ Primal Screamers Martin Duffy, Andrew Innes and Darrin Mooney plus singer Justine Petty- Burrows and violinist Rachel Hewitt, the album took shape- the first Sheer Taft release for twenty five years. Duffy and Mooney manged to escape Spain just before lockdown hit in March 2020. Now, two and a half years later, the album is set to be released. The title and opening track, ... And Then There Were Four, is six minutes of Morricone inspired acoustic guitars, bells, horns and violin. The album follows in August- there are a few pre- orders of the vinyl edition at Bandcamp if you're quick. 

Warmth Of The Sun

Pye Corner Audio's newest release, Warmth of The Sun, is a four minute edit of a longer seven and a half minute album one, the closing track from an album due out in July called Let's Emerge. Martin Jenkins has moved from the dystopic, submerged/ dark rave he's been putting out in recent times to something much more summery and optimistic, with guitars from Andy Bell (returning the favour of the Pye Corner Audio remixes of The View From Halfway Down a couple of years back). Warmth Of The Sun is all shimmering synths and drones, echo- laden haze and pulsing bass, a cosmic/ shoegaze sound for the summer months. The full seven minute version, all slow build, is here. Martin refers to The Beach Boys, Stereolab and Spacemen 3 for inspiration if you need any further persuasion. 

Push

New out last week (in advance of an album, Diablo, in September) comes another floor shaker from Gabe Gurnsey, with Tilly Morris on vocals. Gabe's day job is half of Factory Floor but back in 2018 he released a solo album called Physical which was one of my favourites from that year, a record built around relentless Hacienda rhythms, warm, chunky synths and deadpan, veering on blank, vocals. The twin singles were massive highlights- Eyes Over and Harder Rhythm, the album soundtracking a night out gradually unfolding. 

This time around Gabe has gone back to similar sources and by the sounds of Push, come up with equally insistent and compelling results. Mid- 80s synth squiggles and rushes, a massive synthesised bassline, juddering programmed drums and Tilly's cool vox, icily declaring 'your touch is heaven... let's push together'. For the full fat version, you'll want to get the seven minute extended mix at Bandcamp. You might have twigged also from the surname and the looks of Tilly in the video below that she is daughter of New Order's Other Two, Stephen and Gillian Morris.