More mid- 80s Liverpool following yesterday's Pink Industry song- today Frankie Goes To Hollywood's over the top, everything turned up to the max cover of Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run. When Trevor Horn and Frankie recorded 1984's double album Welcome To The Pleasure Dome the massive hit singles Relax and Two Tribes had already dominated the airwaves. The Power Of Love and 1985 title track single were further smashes. This left the rest of the album being a bit of a ragtag bunch of skits and covers with a few originals.
Springsteen's anthem with its dreams of flight and escape from dull lives and dead end jobs- 'this town's a death trap, a suicide rap'- was possibly felt very keenly in mid- 80s Liverpool, a city abandoned by the government into 'managed decline' with high unemployment, derelict buildings and a falling population. For Springsteen the highway offers freedom, even if it's 'jammed with broken heroes... everybody on the run tonight/ But there's no place left to hide'. Holly Johnson gives it his all vocally, a screaming, high octane performance as the drums, bass and guitars pound and squeal, 'tramps like us/ baby we were born to run'.
On the album and sadly missing from the mp3 below there's a brief bit of dialogue to plant Frankie's cover firmly in Liverpool rather than New Jersey, a man signing on at the dole office and getting short shrift from a DHSS employee who threatens to put him on daily sign on. The humour of that brief exchange places the song and Springsteen's outsider road anthem in a slightly different light. You can get in the car, hit the M62 but they'll stop your giro and you'll be skint very quickly.
The population flight from Liverpool was something Pete Wylie noted in Wah!'s epic single, also released in 1984, Come Back, a home made epic on a Springsteen scale and a plea to his fellow scousers not to go elsewhere but to stay, stand your ground and fight. 'Come back/ I'm making my stand/ Come back'.
A song from forty years ago. Pink Industry were formed by Liverpool legend Jayne Casey after the break up of her previous band Pink Military in 1981, Jayne with Ambrose Reynolds (previously in Big In Japan and an early member of Frankie Goes To Hollywood). Pink Industry were more electronic than Pink Military had been, the Yamaha
In 1983 they released an album called Low Technology on Zulu Records, based on Liverpool's Bold Street.
Spindly guitars, a crashing Yamaha drumbeat and a very FXed bassline with Jayne's melancholic vox on top, darkwave/ goth electronic rock, several years before Depeche Mode (among others) took this sound to the stadiums of Europe and the US. One of those songs that has slipped through the net but a sound that seems very contemporary.
Andy Bell's album with Essex duo Masal is a thing of wonder, a four track album that floats in the spaces between ambient, shoegaze and astral jazz. The four instrumental pieces all have long titles- Murmuration Of Warm Dappled Light On Her Back After Swimming, The Slight Unease Of Seeing A Crescent Moon In A Blue Midday Sky, Tidal Love Conversation In That Familiar Golden Orchard and A Pyramid Hidden By Centuries Of Neon Green Undergrowth- inspired by Felt's long stream of consciousness song titles. The music on the opening track, Murmuration Of Warm Dappled Light On Her Back After Swimming, glides by slowly, drones, waves of sound, sporadic bursts of wandering psychedelic guitar, and on top a harp. Like lying back in a warm bath with the sun on your face, and gently drifting in and out of being awake/ half asleep.
Murmuration... is the longest track here too at nearly fifteen minutes long with the rest are all coming in between seven and ten minutes long. The album, Tidal Love Numbers, can be bought at Bandcamp although the CD and cassette versions are long since all sold out.
Last week Khayem at Dubhed posted a recreated 1997 mixtape which included a Hypnotone remix of The Lilac Time's Dreaming, a remix that did not go down well with Stephen Duffy at the time but as Khayem points out is 'pretty close' to 'Hypnotone's high water mark remix of Sheer Taft's Cascades (that remix of Cascades is a desert island disc for me). The post sent me into the Hypnotone's back catalogue and today's mix is the result, forty minutes of Hypnotone remixes and their own material to light up Sunday.
Hypnotone were Tony Martin, a Manchester producer with Martin Mittler (bassist from Intastella and Laugh) and later Cordelia Ruddock (who Tony discovered at a fashion show). Hypnotone signed to Creation which led to work with Primal Scream and The Lilac Time, both Creation acts at the time. Their self- titled mini album from 1990 is a lost gem, an early 90s time capsule.
Dream Beam was the debut release, a 1990 12" on Creation from that point where Alan McGee wanted Creation to be a dance label and briefly did it very well indeed. The much missed Denise Johnson is on vocals, 'feel so high', sung over chilled dance bleepy house. I saw Hypnotone play live at Sefton Park in Liverpool in the summer of 1990, this track floating over the lake in the summer darkness, everyone very chilled as Denise's voice rang out. It was remixed twice, once by Danny Rampling and once by Ben Chapman, the latter being the pick of the pair for me, perfect 1991 dance music. The robotic voice repeating 'hypnotise us... hypnotise us...' is very hypnotic and as the track comes to a close the collapse into the final vocal message, 'I don't know if I'll ever see you again...' is a blast.
Hypnotonic, all piano house, rattling 808s and a very early 90s rap courtesy of Carlos (2 Supreme), was a 1991 single was recorded at Out Of The Blue in Manchester, a studio in the then semi- derelict Ancoats area, now part of the ever growing regeneration of central Manchester.
Atlantis was a 1991 12" single by Sheer Taft, remixed by Tony. The Hypnotone remix of Cascades, also from 1991, is a genuine classic of the era, a record that was big everywhere from Ibiza to Manchester and in between. It appeared on the Creation dance compilation Keeping The Faith which is a definitive document of a time.
Dreaming was a 1991 single by The Lilac Time, a pair of remixes that sound great today, dubby Balearic house- why Stephen Tin Tin Duffy didn't like it is a mystery.
Come Together, Primal Scream's second Screamadelica- era single, is better known in its Weatherall and Farley remix forms but the Hypnotone remix is a belter too, harder and faster, distorted voices, thumping 808 kick drums, horns, bubbling bass, everything piling up in an ecstatic rush. It was on Keeping The Faith and released as a white label 12" along with the fourth and largely missed BBG remix of Come Together. Tony co- produced the cover of Slip Inside This House that appears on Scremadelica too.
Electraphonic was on the second Hypnotone album, Ai, released in November 1991.
Can live on Rockpalast in 1970, the full on krautrock experience, in a tent being recorded by a very staid looking camera crew and production unit. Jaki Liebezeit's rhythms and Holger Czukay's bass provide the foreground/ backdrop for Irwin Schmidt and Michael Karoli's trebly, rattly organ and guitar while Damo Suzuki does his thing. The youthful audience look suitably bemused, shuffling about a bit and nod heads, as can get into Can's unique groove. The four musicians play with a real sense of equality and parity, no one in the lead, all playing with each other and for each other. Over an hour and a half they work their way through Sense All To Mine, Oh Yeah (with Karoli's guitar sounding at least a decade ahead), the thirteen minute freakery of I Feel Alright, Don't Turn The Light On (Leave Me Alone), Mother Sky, Deadlock, a monstrous, majestic version of Paperhouse and Bring Me Coffee Or Tea.
The context of Can is inextricably part of them- born in the aftermath of World War II, growing up on the frontline of the Cold War and wanting a music and culture that was entirely theirs, not traditionally German, and not Americanised either, against the backdrop of generational tensions in the FRG (general 60s ones about Vietnam, the police, authority and youth but specifically West German ones too with the rising tide of Baader- Meinhof and young West Germans poking at the scab of their parents generation who had adopted a collective amnesia in order to move on from the war and build a new country- 'what did you do in the war?). Holger Czukay (I think) said that in the late 60s their go- to- phrase was 'don't trust anyone over thirty'. Out of all of this comes Can's music.
I've rediscovered a few Andrew Weatherall remixes recently so I thought I'd start a series of Weatherall Remix Fridays, a weekly post that pokes around in the Andrew Weatherall remix cupboard, shining a torch onto some of those remixes that are a little overlooked, forgotten or less appreciated. The eagle eyed among you may have noted that WRF are also the initials of one of Andrew's musical outlets, the Woodleigh Research Facility, which is a nice coincidence. Some of you may say that I don't need to do this as a series, Andrew Weatherall remixes are posted here all the time anyway- which is true but a series is good for blogging, adding structure to what can be a bit scattershot at times.
In the late 80s Andrew stated out as a DJ but really made his name as a remixer- his early remixes of Primal Scream, Happy Mondays, James and My Bloody Valentine are well known. There are many more obscure and lesser known ones from those early years, '89- '92, where the flipping over of a 12" single sleeve in the racks and seeing the words Andy Weatherall Remix in brackets were enough to buy a record unheard. His remixes then morphed into Sabres Of Paradise remixes (with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns) and then from 1996 onwards Two Lone Swordsmen remixes (with Keith Tenniswood). In 2007 he began to remix under his own name again and in 2008 really showed he was back his remix best with his versions of Primal Scream's Uptown and Fuck Buttons' Sweet Love For Planet Earth. From there he entered a purple patch that went on through the next decade. In 2011 Andrew remixed Runaway Love by Alice Gold.
Some of what would become standard 2010s Weatherall remix sounds are present from the start of this- the hissing, steam powered drum machine, the dub FX and wonky siren sounds and the pushed to the fore section of bassline. This one is relatively restrained by Andrew's standards, a trim six minutes thirty seconds, with a snatch of the vocal looped and smothered in echo. The rhythms, bass and FX pile up, break down and re- enter, crunching forwards. It's that head nodding, slower- tempo, early evening sound, one that he'd revisit a year later with his remix of Heathen Child for Grinderman (a remix for another Friday perhaps). Timothy J. Fairplay was Andrew's in house engineer at this point, a partnership which would become The Asphodells.
Alice Gold was a London based singer/ songwriter who released five singles and an album on Polydor between 2010 and 2012, toured with Eels, The Twilight Singers and Athlete and played Glastonbury in 2011. Discogs describes her sound as power pop and psychedelic rock- despite having owned this remix for thirteen years (digital only, there was no physical release for the remix) this is the first time I've heard the original version of Runaway Love. There's nothing after 2012 in terms of releases so I'm guessing Alice gave up music and headed elsewhere.
Islandman, a trio from Istanbul led by DJ and producer Tolga Boyuk, make music from an intersection of electronic/ dance and Turkish folk, a melange of drums, percussion, chanting, flutes, strings, jazz, North Africa and whatever else they feel ready to throw into the pot. The latest release from them is a three track remix EP, the new versions coming courtesy of the hardest working man in cosmic chug, Sean Johnston.
Following his remixes of Holy Youth Movement that hit an early 90s indie/ dance sweet spot, the three Hardway Bros remixes here mine that seam even further, a blast of pure indie/ dance gold. The Hardway Bros remix kicks in with shimmering guitars, a wobbling synth part and a rhythm that sets the controls for the heart of the chug, with multi- tracked, blissed out vocals riding on top of seven minutes of sun dappled fun.
The Live at The SSL Dub opens with the same chiming guitar part but the bass and drums shift it somewhere else a little deeper and darker, the undertow of bass and FX churning away with the vocals ever more distant, with more and more echo.
I’m not a superstitious person. I don’t have any routines or
beliefs about black cats or knocking on wood. We were taught to salute a magpie when we were
kids but I’m not sure why and I stopped doing it decades ago. I’m not
religious either. I tend to require scientific or empirical evidence for the existence
of things and religion doesn’t fit into that for me. I understand why religion works for other people and I can see why it brings comfort especially when dealing with
death and questions about the afterlife.
I was out cycling on Sunday morning. I try to get out on my
bike every weekend and do a couple of hours on the roads. One of my routes can bring me back past the cemetery where Isaac is buried. From one of the roads,
especially in winter when the hedges are bare, I can see him from the road more
or less, the line of graves at the top of rise clearly visible. At first I couldn’t cycle past without stopping and going in to see
him but now I can ride past, look to my right, nod or wave, and keep
going. We usually go down to see him once a week anyway so I don’t feel
compelled to call in on him every time I’m riding past.
There’s a bus route that runs down the road too. It drops people at the end of the road near the cemetery and then carries on towards Lymm. Isaac loved
public transport- buses, Manchester’s trams, trains all ticked his boxes- and it’s amazing how many
times we’ve stood at his graveside and seen the bus run past in the distance, all the more amazing because there are only two an hour. It always makes me smile to see it,
and in a way it’s become Isaac’s bus (I know that the appearance of the bus is
entirely coincidental, that it's not appearing because we are there or because of Isaac. Confirmation bias is real).
When Isaac died a friend gave us some wind chimes. She said
we should hang them in the garden and when the breeze makes them move and
chime, we’d think of him. Which they do and in a good way. 'Oh, hello Isaac', Lou sometimes says when she's out in the garden and it happens. Again, I don’t think that the chimes are actually
Isaac trying to make contact from beyond the grave but it does happen as our friend said and it’s a nice reminder of him, one that brings a smile.
On Sunday morning I wasn’t planning on going to see Isaac as part of my bike ride but hadn’t fully decided which route to take to get home. I
stopped at some traffic lights on the outskirts of Lymm and immediately a white feather droppedout of the sky and landed on the road right in front of me. I
turned my head to the left and in the hedge next to me was a robin,
looking at me. It fluttered and flew off. Some people believe that white
feathers are a sign that someone is watching over you, a message from the deceased. Some believe that robins
are the dead visiting us, that they appear when loved ones are nearby.
My scientific head tells me that neither are very likely (and that if Isaac was trying to contact us he wouldn't necessarily appear as a white feather or a robin) but the combination of the two at the same time startled me a little. A mile or two
further on I pulled into the lanes that run near the cemetery and Isaac’s bus
appeared from round the bend in front of me. At that point I took the signs for
what they seemed to be- ‘alright, Isaac, alright' I thought to myself, almost saying it out loud, 'I’m coming'. I cycled to the
cemetery, said hello, had a little tidy up of his grave and then headed for
home.
The Spangle Maker was on a Cocteau Twins EP from April 1984, a slow burning sea of noise that breaks into a crashing, swooning torrent of reverb, guitars and Liz Fraser's otherworldly voice, a song that almost feels like someone making contact from another realm.
Grian Chatten, singer and lyricist in Dublin punk- poets Fontaines D.C. has a solo album out and a first single from it came out last month. Grian's song The Score follows from their contribution to a forthcoming album of covers of Nick Drake songs, and their stunning version of 'Cello Song, an off kilter, thrilling, modern/ post- punk take on one of Nick's most affecting songs.
On The Score Grian seems to have been soaking some of the Nick Drake acoustic feel. Along with the finger picked acoustic guitar part and some softly padding electronic drums, there is his voice. Grian's voice and delivery are a big part of what makes Fontaines D.C., his Dublin brogue and street poetry a very distinct part of their twin guitar attack. On The Score he's softer, more melancholic but warmer too. It's quite something, the blend and layers of those three components.
Two weeks ago this one came out too, Fairlies, with a fiddle and loudly strummed acoustic guitar to the fore, all sots of melodies and harmonies, all summoning up some kind of dreamlike state. Pretty stunning and quite unexpected. The album, Chaos for The Fly, is out at the end of June.
The sunshine has finally arrived in north west England this weekend bringing with it blue skies, heat and life lived outdoors. I appreciate some people don't like the heat and go bright red at the first contact with the sun but it doesn't half help to lift the spirits and make everything seem a little bit better. Manchester city centre was heaving yesterday- no one would say Manchester has a beautiful or even scenic city centre but its scruffy charm looks miles better with blue skies and the sun beaming down. A month ago all the trees were still bare- now they're all green.
This ten minute track by Mi Ami, first released in 2012 and then again as part of a compilation put together by Gatto Fritto in 2018 (The Sound Of Love International Vol. 1), is all summer sounds, percussion and drums and shimmering synth sounds, some dub FX giving everything a hazy wobble. Ideal for this kind of weather.
A few of Justin Robertson's early 90s remixes today, chunky beats and tempos, samples and trumpets- lots of trumpets- and indie bands transformed into dancefloor monsters. Ideal for the spring sunshine that has finally arrived this weekend in this part of the world.
The Sugarcubes: Birthday (Justin Robertson 12" Mix)
The Stone Roses: Waterfall (Justin Robertson's Mix)
Bjork: Big Time Sensuality (Justin Robertson Lionrock Wigout)
Lionrock: Packet Of Peace (No More Fucking Trumpets)
Yargo: The Love Revolution (Justin Robertson's Scream Team Remix)
Inspiral Carpets: Caravan (No Windscreen Mix)
Justin's remix of Birthday by The Sugarcubes turns singular Icelandic post- punk oddness into seven minutes of dub loveliness. Released on vinyl in 1992 along with remixes from Jim and William Reid and Tommy D.
I was of the opinion once that remixes of songs by The Stone Roses were totally unnecessary. I've come round to some of them, not least this remix of Waterfall, Reni's drums replaced by a skippy drumbeat, some echo- laden cymbal splashes and Ian's voice sitting above the music with John's guitar drizzled on top.
Big Time Sensuality was inescapable in 1993, not least in Manchester's clubs and bars, and enjoyed every time. I met my wife on the dancefloor at Paradise Factory dancing to it. Justin's remix, in his Lionrock guise, was a big hitter too, a slo- mo groove, with those massive trumpets and Bjork's barely contained sense of gleeful abandon.
Justin, Mark Stagg and rapper MC Buzz B were Lionrock. Packet Of Peace was their 1993 12". The remix here is Justin's own Lionrock remix of Lionrock and clearly by the title, he'd had enough of his signature trumpet sound by this point. I can keep enjoying those trumpets ad infinitum.
Yargo were Manchester's best kept secret, an urban funk/ soul/ blues group graced by the honeyed voice of Basil Clarke who are probably best known for their song of the same name being the title music to Tony Wilson's Other Side Of Midnight, a semi- legendary music programme from the late 80s (which The Stone Roses appeared on, playing Waterfall- see above). The Love Revolution came out as a 12" in 1990 with co- vocals by guest singer Zoe Griffin and samples the drums from Fool's Gold. Yargo's 1987 album Bodybeat is something of a lost classic. The follow up, 1989's Communicate, didn't manage to crossover outside Manchester but is (again,) one of the period's lost gems. As is this remix
I posted this Justin Robertson remix of Inspiral Carpets a couple of weeks ago, a 1991 acid house banger complete with the 'you play consciousness expanding material' vocal sample and general '91 madness. A numbered 12" vinyl release in a run of 10, 000. 10, 000!
The awful, sad news yesterday that Andy Rourke had died of pancreatic cancer aged just 59 stopped me in my tracks. He was a local lad, growing up in Ashton on Mersey just up the road from here and in bands with Johnny Marr from a young age. Johnny recruited him for The Smiths. Later on he lived in Chorlton and was a regular in various pubs and bars there and in town. He always seemed like a lovely man. The Smiths hit me hard in the 80s, c1986, and still can when I hear them now, songs and performances first heard in my teens that can cross the decades and drop me back in 1987, a bequiffed seventeen year old with The Queen Is Dead, Hatful Of Hollow or Strangeways blasting out of my bedroom ghettoblaster.
Whatever the importance of Morrissey and Johnny Marr to the band there's no doubt, whatever some might say, that the other two, Andy and drummer Mike Joyce, were absolutely essential to their sound, their image and their songs. Andy's bass playing is propulsive, melodic and dynamic, much more than just a bass player following the root notes and playing with the drummer. By the time Meat is Murder came out the band were stretching out musically and the basslines and the bottom end are as important as the words and the guitars. On this session version of Rusholme Ruffians Andy's rockabilly bassline opens the song and provides the twang and the railway rhythm.
Meat Is Murder is a full sounding, urgent, wide ranging album. On Barbarism Begins At Home, while Morrissey yelps and Johnny riffs, Andy is playing a lead funk bassline ripped from New York's discos and relocated to south Manchester, at the heart of the song and a million miles from the jingle jangle their detractors claimed they were (and never really were anyway), as this live version of Barbarism Begins At Home in 1984 at Queen Margaret Union in Glasgow makes perfectly clear.
This two song set from The Tube in April 1987 lives long in the memory, the late period Smiths in full flight, Sheila Take A Bow and Shoplifters Of The World Unite- and don't they look great.
It's my 53rd birthday today. They say that when going through bereavement and grief anniversaries are always tough and we've found this to be true- a friend with experience in this told me 'the first everything fucks'. The second ones do too I think. Isaac loved a birthday, his or anyone else's, so they're always going to be tinged with his excitement about them and maybe that's what I need to try to remember.
Glasgow record label 53rd and 3rd (named after Dee Dee Ramone's song about his experiences as a male prostitute in New York in the mid- 70s) was a brief but brightly shining beacon of indie nuggets, founded by Stephen Pastel, Sandy McLean and David Keegan. It released a total of twenty one singles and seven albums (two of which were label compilations) between 1986 and 1988 by indie royalty, the likes of The Shop Assistants, The Vaselines, Talulah Gosh, The Pooh Sticks and BMX Bandits.
Safety Net was the label's debut release, a 7" single from The Shop Assistants in 1986, the kind of record that entire scenes are built around. If it were the only record The Shop Assistants made it would be enough. Three minutes of rumbling bass, buzzsaw guitars and sing- song vocals from singer Alex Taylor.
Teenage Superstars was on The Vaselines 1988 EP/ 12" Dying For It, a song that is part feedback driven indie thrum, part manifesto (David Keegan, Shop Assistants guitarist appears on the EP, Stephen Pastel produces). Makes me want to wear tight black jeans, leather biker jacket and love beads and grow my hair long. Things are most likely not going to happen aged 53.
Out today is the new album from Galen and Paul, Galen being the daughter of Kevin Ayres and Paul being Paul Simonon. The songs are all acoustic guitars, reverb and twin Nancy and Lee style vocals with plenty of gap toothed Simonon charm. This one, Hacia Arriba, is sung in Spanish- much of the record was written in Mallorca, where Paul spent much of lockdown. He has busked in the streets of Palma in recent years, which would have stopped me in tracks if I'd happened to be there at the same time.
Two Heavenly Records acts played live in Manchester on Tuesday night, both bands surely ones that will go on to play bigger venues than the small but perfectly formed back room of a Victorian pub. The Castle Hotel is on Oldham Street, a long standing Northern Quarter favourite. The back room is a wooden panelled gig venue that has a capacity of eighty people (although that would be uncomfortably full). There were fewer than that number present lat night to see Revival Season and Eyes Of Others (whose debut album comes out tomorrow after a series of single releases since 2017 including an Andrew Weatherall remix back then and two sublime releases this year in the shape of New Hair New Me and Big Companies Large Tentacles).
We were there for Eyes Of Others and Revival Season, about whom I knew nothing pre- gig, were something of a surprise- two men, Jonah Swilley shaven headed and playing machinery, the other Brandan 'Bez' Evans, dreadlocked and rapping.
They burst into life from the stage, attacking the gig as if they were playing to a much larger crowd, Brandon's rapid fire raps and stream of rhymes fired out as he prowls the stage, eyeballing the front row and hollering. Not a man who reels his performance in for a small venue and small crowd, this is full on and exhilarating stuff. Behind him, bent over a small table with a synth, drum machine and sampler and a mic for occasional backing vox, Jonah keeps a barrage of beats, dub FX and noises, looping bits of vocal and prodding the pads to fire samples out. At one point Jonah finishes a song as Bez has wound up his vocals by adding simply, 'we're from Georgia'. Their excursions into dub add an extra layer to their hip hop and they were hugely impressive. This track, Chop, a slower jam than some of their set, came out a few days ago.
Eyes Of Others is John Bryden, an Edinburgh musician who makes 'post club music for people who can't get into clubs'. Synths and drum machine rhythms, swirly psychedelia with detours into 808 acid house, bits of guitar, handclaps and lyrics that suggest an underlying sense of disquiet and unease, the sense that living through late stage capitalism hasn't quite lived up to the promise. Tonight John is centre stage, a Korg synth and microphone with mate/ musical partner to his left on FX pedals, boxes, synth and occasional acoustic guitar.
The set is lovely, songs played and sung with only a few elements but fully realised and affecting, lots of space, slightly trippy, melodic and affecting. John is a little like a more subdued David Byrne, dancing on the spot and caught up in the act of performing, using different singing voices and catching you unaware at times- there are shades of early Beta Band on show too. One song is sung from the perspective of a cow waiting in line at an abattoir. New Hair New Me is deceptively simple, carried along by a funky bass riff, some catchy synth melodies and John's voice.
Once Twice Thrice is introduced as a song about deodorant- skittering drumbeat, rising and falling synth line and doleful vocals, an exercise in twitchy, dubby hypnosis.
Eyes Of Others finish with Big Companies Large Tentacles, a song I posted back in March and one which is a beaut, lyrics about being told he belongs on 'Freud's chaise longue', powered by an insistent drum pattern and with a sudden hit of acid house and 808 madness that definitely pops in recorded form and positively explodes on stage.
The tour concludes at Leeds tomorrow night, they play a weekender in Totnes at the end of the month and are then back in Edinburgh for a gig in early August. The self titled debut album is out on Heavenly on Friday too. Go see them while they're playing the small stages.
A chance encounter with this song two weeks ago brightened my day, a song I haven't heard for years, decades maybe. Don't Tell Me came out as single in March 1984, the third single from Blancmange's second album Mange Tout, a song from the mid-80s that sounds utterly fresh to my sometimes jaded 21st century ears. The tabla and Eastern keyboard line ride in on top of a chunky synth- pop rhythm and Neil Arthur's irresistible words and vocals, all howling wind, wounded stars, mountains, skies and devil's friends. The run into the chorus and the key change towards the end are ridiculously good.
I got an offer from my brother who had a spare ticket for ESG at Band On The Wall on Saturday night- a sold out gig in a small venue by New York dance/ funk- punk legends. That's not something to say no to. The sun shone on Saturday, town was busy with shoppers, drinkers, fans coming and going to and from Old Trafford and the general buzz of the first nice day of the spring. Unfortunately having a drink at Night And Day meant we arrived at Band On The Wall at 8.45pm only to be told the group had been on stage since 8.30 so we missed the first few songs but walking in it was clear that ESG were delivering the goods to a very enthusiastic crowd.
ESG's history with Manchester dates back over four decades, to 1981 when Tony Wilson saw the Scroggins sisters and friend Tito Libran playing at Hurrah in Manhattan. Three days later they were recording with Martin Hannett, a three track single released on Factory in June 1981 (FAC 34 catalogue fans). You're No Good had three songs on it, the title track, Moody and UFO, the last one recorded quickly because Hannett saw there were three minutes of master tape left unused and two minutes fifty four seconds of that tape went on to become one of the most sampled songs in hip hop history, its sirens, beats and descending guitar line recognisable in hundreds of records. ESG supported A Certain Ratio in 1980 when ACR played in New York (at least two Ratios, Martin and Jez, are present in the audience tonight) and Hannett was producing ACR's To Each... at the same time as the three ESG songs that came out on the Factory single. ESG played the opening night of the Hacienda. Accordingly they're welcomed here tonight like long lost relatives, honorary Mancunians.
Renee Scroggins is centre stage, seated, rapping and singing in her unmistakeable Bronx twang, a spit and snarl where necessary- 'I got sampled so often I decided I was gonna sample myself', she tells us by way of introduction to one of her songs tonight. Around her is that skeletal but funky, New York, mutant No Wave dance/ punk funk sound, all bass, drums and percussion, with the basslines clear and crisp and sounding huge through Band On The Wall's sound system. Stage right Nicholas Nicholas plays congas, cowbell, shakers, tambourine and woodblock, frequently breaking away from the percussion to dance around and across the stage, arms raised and with a big grin. Moody, from FAC 34, is played mid- set and the years are rolled away as the bass pumps and the rhythms clatter.
It's as much a celebration as a gig, ESG clearly enjoying themselves and the crowd completely onside. There's very little in the way of treble or melody, it's all about the bass and drums, music stripped down to a minimalist sound, a gleeful kinetic groove. Towards the end an audience member is helped up onto the stage to dance. She brings her friend up and they co- ordinate spontaneously, switching places on stage. At the end, as Renee is helped off stage, the bass and drums continue, Mike Giordano rolling round the kit and bassist Nicole exhorting us to join in the chant of 'ESG, ESG'.
Dirt Bogarde is from Stourbridge and makes the sort of music that really needs to be heard through a large and expensive speaker system at high volume- chuggy, acid house/ dark disco/ trippy Balearica with a huge emotional pull. Last month Dirt released Heavy Blotter, an nine minute tour de force with wobbly synths, thumping kick drum, rattling snare, a pulsating topline and bags of last track of the night feelings. When the female vocal and bassline kick in after two minutes and then a little later when the synths go mad, it's all almost too much. Seriously heady stuff.
It's available only at Bandcamp and costs just one pound. Dirt's back catalogue is worth working your way through too. Backroom Sunrise, from March this year, is a joy and from the end of last year Kuiper Estasi pulls at similar places, a six minute slice of dark, after hours dance music. Buy it here.
Some West German motorik cosmische musik for Sunday, from the combined talents of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger. Rother and Dinger formed Neu! in Dusseldorf in 1971, after both left an early incarnation of Kraftwerk. Rother, a calm, reflective man brought up in Munich, Wilmslow (!), Karachi and Dusseldorf played guitar and keys. Dinger, a lively, opinionated and extroverted drummer. In the studio Conny Plank produced and mediated between them. The clash of personalities and styles produced some of krautrock's greatest music- Neu!'s 1972 debut, their follow up a year later Neu! 2 and the third album '75.
Between them they forged a new sound- Dinger's motorik drums, a repetitive, gliding, four four beat (that he preferred to call 'endlose gerade', which translates as endless straight, and later on he renamed the Apache beat) with Rother's guitar and keys layered on top, a futuristic, non- blues based, Mittel Europa music. Hallogallo, ten minutes of sensational, perpetual momentum bliss, opens the debut album, Neu! sounding forever new. Rother went off in various directions, to Harmonia and solo, coming back to Neu! and then off again. Dinger formed La Dusseldorf with his brother Thomas and Hans Lampe. Rother's solo albums are all worthy of investigation, not least the first four and especially 1977's Flammende Herzen and 1979's Katzenmusik. The mix below is built around the forever sound of motorik drums and melodic/ rhythmic guitars and keys, a blissed out but insistent way to spend forty minutes on a Sunday morning.
Flammende Herzen is from Michael Rother's 1977 solo debut of the same name, a five song instrumental album recorded with Conny Plank and with Jaki Liebezeit of Can on drums. He really knew how to pick drummers.
Rheinita is from La Dusseldorf's 1978 second album Viva, an album a friend once described to me as sounding like 'a happy Joy Division', which it does. Viva is the title track.
Hallogallo opens Neu!'s 1972 self- titled debut, the sound of motorik announcing itself over ten glorious, relentless minutes. Hallogallo comes from the German slang word halligalli, meaning wild partying.
Isi was a 1975 single by Neu! and the opening track from 1975's Neu! '75, another example of the relentless, hypnotic interplay between Dinger's beat and Rother's music. By 1975 the pair had diverged, Rother's more ambient direction and Dinger's more rock styles coming back together to some kind of compromise, each directing a side of '75.
Fur Immer is the eleven minute opening track from Neu! 2, Rother's fluid, harmonic guitar playing pushed ever onwards by the drums. Somewhere, this song is still playing.
Minutemen, San Pedro's DIY punk heroes, live at The Metro in Chicago in 1985. No fuss, no frills, no backdrop or guitar changes, just D. Boon, Mike Watt and George Hurley playing their songs. This being Minutemen they rattle through their short songs in quick time, thirty five songs including many from their then recently release double album opus Double Nickels On The Dime plus covers of songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Blue Oyster Cult, The Who and Richard Hell. It's scratchy, grainy, trebly, life affirming stuff.
Also in 1985 they played Acoustic Blow- Out on public access TV. This is one of my favourite Minutemen live appearances, the three men sitting in a circle playing their songs for each other, slowed down and relaxed. Watt opens proceedings speaking directly to the camera, 'I never gave a damn about the meterman, until I was the man who had to read the meters, man' and then they're into Corona, Themselves, I Felt Like A Gringo, more covers, History Lesson Pt. II and Little Man With A Gun In His Hand. In many ways, a perfect band.
Sadly D.Boon died in December 1985, not long after Acoustic Blow- Out was filmed, falling out of the back doors of the van in Tucson as it swerved on a bend. Mike Watt, even today when asked what kind of bass player he is, replies, 'D. Boon's bass player. I'm D. Boon's bass player'.
Mark Lanegan's Blues Funeral, a 2012 album contained a few songs where he broke away from the gnarly post- grunge, industrial/ blues rock that usually accompanied his voice- a voice that sounded like it was carved from granite cliffs and blasted in an foundry- and moved into synthpop territory. On Ode To Sad Disco he did this so well, so perfectly, that it made me wonder why he didn't pursue this more often.
It must be seen as at least partly a homage to 80s New Order, happy/ sad dance music with sequenced basslines, descending synths and shimmering keys (plus a guitar line weaving its way through). On top of this celestial synthpop Mark sings of subterranean eyes, hollow headed mountains, a white horse that drowned on parade, diamond headed serpents, mountains of dust, Arcadian twists and other equally biblical sounding imagery. The drum machine kicks on, the synths shine, the guitar rings and Mark concludes, almost like Bernard does in Temptation, 'here I have seen the light' (in fact you can sing 'oh, it's the last time' quite easily over the end of Ode To Sad Disco). Glorious stuff- dancing with tears in our eyes as Ultravox put it.
At the end of May it will be eighteen month since Isaac died. I noticed recently that I've largely stopped noticing the days and dates- at first, every Tuesday was significant, each one marking the number of weeks since he died and the 30th of every month was loaded with importance. After the first anniversary of his death in November last year, the 30th of each month has been less marked for me. That, I suppose, is just the passing of time. Sometimes I think I've reached some sort of equilibrium with the loss, that in some way we are 'doing ok' and 'getting on with things' but it doesn't take much to be whacked without warning and plunged right back into the worst feelings of grief and loss. A couple of incidents recently have shown me just how close to the surface those feelings are and how easily they resurface.
There are days where I think I've been ok but I realise I've been on the verge of tears all day, and there's a crushing feeling that overwhelms me as I set off to drive home. A few days ago, I had a day spent back in the pits of grief but able to be distracted by work/stuff but I think that just pushed it a bit further down the road, to be dealt with later on. Last weekend, there was an unexpected incident (I won't go into the details here) that triggered the absolute worst feelings again, leaving me surprised and a little frightened by the strength of the emotions that were dredged up.
We all had a difficult time over the Easter holiday in April, feeling very out of sorts in different ways and at different times. At times, I can be fine and enjoy things- the AW60 weekend, the ACR gig, a few other social occasions, have been great and in many ways a break from the almost ever present, just below the surface sadness.
At the end of last week an envelope dropped through the letterbox, addressed to Isaac. It contained his college certificates, details of the courses and units he'd done while at college in 2019/ 2020. Someone must have been emptying a filing cabinet and posting uncollected certificates dating back to pre- Covid. Arriving completely out of the blue, it threw us off balance a bit.
On Saturday morning I pulled out my Manic Street Preachers compilation CD while pottering around in the kitchen and making breakfast. I think I wanted to play Repeat in honour of King Charles III. In the end I just put the disc in to the CD player and pressed play. Forever Delayed starts with a run of four songs- A Design For Life, Motorcycle Emptiness, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next and La Tristesse Durera- that got to me in both sad and happy ways, the emotion laden, 90s guitar heroics of the Manics hitting all me in all the spots, and that mix of feelings that the Manics could pull off in song, elation and despair, often at the same time. This song did me in a bit, 'The sadness will never go/ Will never go away/ Baby it's here to stay'.
It made me love James Dean Bradfield's massively overblown guitar solo too, which I don't think has been the case before. The fifth song on Forever Delayed is You Love Us. By that point that was playing I was laughing at the absurdity of it all, James, Nicky, Richey and Sean's 1991 glam- punk howl of self- adoration giving me a lift exactly when I needed it.
Steve Cobby's newest album- The New Law Of Righteousness- joins a long list of solo albums he's released in recent years, Sweet Jesus, Nostalgia Intensa, Stevie (written in Cyrillic script), I Loved You All My Life and Shanty Bivouac. All these albums are full of Steve's signature grooves, jazzy keys and guitar playing, pianos, acoustic/ folk guitar, mellotrons and Fender Rhodes, live drums and drum machines and bumping basslines, running the gamut from funk and jazz to ambient and Balearic. Each one is full of good tunes from start to finish as well as songs that have made huge connections with me- As Good As Gold on Sweet Jesus, Swimming In Amber of Nostalgia Intensa, both 45ft Tide and Life And Consciousness And Mind And Memory And Thought And All Creation from Shanty Bivouac and Dandylion Clocks on Stevie have all been big favourites round here and songs I go back time and time again.
The New Law Of Righteousness, available to listen and buy at Bandcamp, is no exception, ten songs long and the usual high quality of writing and playing evident from the moment you first click Play, an album with depth that really rewards playing through in its entirety. It seems unfair to pick out any of the songs over any of the others but these three are my current highlights-
Tang Ping starts out with synths and flute, a big 70s synth bassline and finger picked acoustic guitar. At one minutes thirty it finds a groove and turns into a lovely, languid summer soundtrack, a synth topline wiggling its way onwards.
Bernal Spheres is a warm and inviting four minutes, with a metronomic drum pattern, 70s synth sounds, electric piano and a lovely buzzing bassline.
All The Faith I Had Had Had Had No Effect has more of that fluid, folky acoustic guitar that decorates so many of his songs, eventually with two or three guitars playing with each other, melodies twisting and circling around each other.
A pair of remixes from Rude Audio to bring some deep dubby/ disco to Tuesday. The first is a remix of Sweet Spot by Perry Granville (previously available in unremixed form on the Higher Love Vol. 2 compilation from Brighton's Higher Love label). The Rude Audio remix (buy/ listen at Bandcamp) is ten minutes of low slung dub- chug, the railway- like rhythm thudding away slowly at goods train speed with all manner of dub FX. A fragment of wordless vocal floats in and out. Laid back, hypnotic and meditative, and very good indeed.
The original, from last autumn, is three minutes shorter, an ambient/ Balearic excursion (probably by boat across a deep blue sea to an island somewhere hot). It's a very persuasive and evocative six minutes forty seconds of music.
Meanwhile over at Leeds' Paisley Dark label Rude Audio have remixed James Rod as part of a seven track EP release titled Synthetic Glory, out at the end of last week. The Rude Audio remix of Arabiklan is a more dancey affair, starting out with bleeps and space. A drum machine kicks in followed by Arabic strings and some of those tumbling timbales- six minutes of dark Middle Eastern acid disco business. James Rod's original tracks, Arabiklan and the title track, are joined by remixes courtesy of Man Power, Mindbender, Hogt I Tak and Hunterbrau. The whole package is available at Bandcamp.
If the temptation of this languid, sumptuous, utterly absorbing ten minute Bill Laswell reworking of Bob Marley weren't enough, I could add that the source material for this mp3 is a pair of CDs Andrew Weatherall burned when he went to DJ at The Beat Hotel, two CDs of the highest quality dub you can imagine. The CDs were uncovered recently and shared with The Flightpath Estate and the mp3 of Rebel Music was copied from there to here- so there you have it, a coronation treat, your own Weatherall/ Marley/ Laswell ambient dub mp3.
The remix is originally from a 1997 album titled Dreams Of Freedom (Ambient Translations Of Bob Marley In Dub). I can recommend the whole thing, the entire eleven song album is an ambient dub treat- but the remix of So Much Trouble In the World, fading in with found sound and then hand drums and ambient orchestral strings is currently flipping my lid.
A week ago at The Golden Lion in Todmorden a very special event took place, the stars aligning and everything coming together just so, creating two days that will live long in the memory (or at least, the bits that I can remember- my recall of some of late on Saturday night is sketchy in places). AW60 has been pulled together by Lizzie, Andrew's partner, and Ian, his brother, over four venues that had big connections to Andrew. The fourth and final leg of the month was also due in no small part to the ever generous hosts of The Golden Lion, Richard and Gig, who run what can only be described as The Best Pub In The World. There are lots of other pubs, you may know them, that are brilliant, great places to go to drink, to eat, to socialise, to sit on your own or with friends, to chill out and have fun and that feel like homes from home. But The Golden Lion is something else,- a pub in a town in the West Yorkshire hills, that combines a proper pub vibe with a gig venue, nightclub, and Thai restaurant (plus a record label)- and also much more. AW60 pulled together a crowd of fans, friends and family of Andrew and threw a birthday party for him. I was lucky enough to be part of the DJ line up for the Saturday, the five man Flightpath Estate DJ team playing from 1pm through until Justin Robertson taking over at 10pm. We took an hour each in the afternoon and then took it turns to play three tracks each, rotating back to back after 7pm, a nine hour DJ set that flew by in the blink of an eye.
Upstairs a raffle, merch stall and exhibition were in full swing. Later on upstairs Timothy J. Fairplay played, an hour of synths and thundering drum machines that finished with Tim performing some of the songs he wrote with Andrew as The Asphodells, songs never played live before- Late Flowering Dub, We Are The Axis and One Minute's Silence. Over the road there were DJ sets by Dave Beer and Bernie Connor, both long standing friends of Lord Sabre.
Sunday saw Andrew's old friends Sherman and Curley take the reins at the DJ booth, playing some tremendous, earth shaking dub. In the evening Chris Rotter, the guitarist on Andrew's solo album A Pox On The Pioneers, played a set of songs from that album with Ride/ Glok's Andy Bell accompanying him on guitar. These songs have never been played live before either, Chris reworking them, singing and playing them pared down and full of emotion. It was quite a moment. Sunday night began to raise the tempo and temperature again as Heidi and Lovefingers DJed.
The atmosphere on the Saturday afternoon and evening were something else, with people arriving from all over- Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, London- and filling the pub. Our sets weren't recorded but we have spent part of this week recreating them. They may not be 100% accurate but they are there or thereabouts, versions of our hours, inspired by Andrew's own music, the music he played on the radio and at gigs and shows, and music in the spirit of his never ending quest to unearth more.
Me and Baz arrived at the Lion first, welcomed by Richard and then given the run of the DJ booth. Once we'd located the On button and got set up, Baz opened, an hour of songs beginning with Selective Walking, the instrumental that Andrew used to open some of his radio shows with. From there there's Two Lone Swordsmen, OMD, The Jesus And Mary Chain, New Order's Your Silent Face, a song that came and went throughout the two days in various forms, almost the weekend's theme tune, and plenty more.
Martin took over from Baz. His set is at Mixcloud. It kicks off with some ambient Weatherall/ Tenniswood and includes Coyote, Chris and Cosey, Ananda Shankar, Gene Vincent, The Pistoleers cover of The Clash's Bankrobber, The Summerisle Trio, Sabres Of Paradise and Section 25.
I took over from Martin and played a set that went something like this...
Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
Sabres Of Paradise: Jacob Street 7AM
The Liminanas: Garden Of Love (Lundi Mouille Andrew Weatherall Remix)
Alex Kassian: Spirit Of Eden
The Vendetta Suite: Purple Haze, Yellow Sunrise (David Holmes Remix)
Durutti Column: For Belgian Friends
Andrew Weatherall: The Confidence Man
A Certain Ratio: House In Motion (Demo Version 1)
The Clash: The Street Parade
Madness: Death Of A Rude Boy (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon
This may not be completely correct because I'm sure I also played this in my afternoon set (unless I overran a bit which is entirely possible or maybe I played it later, memory fails me slightly here). Habbanera is a gorgeous slice of Italian prog remixed by Balearic stalwarts Leo Mas and Fabrice.
I know I played it because I took a photo of it as it span for some reason.
The excitement at playing, the nerves dissipating, the songs coming out of the sound system- I don't want to get too carried away and too breathless but it was incredible, the sort of thing that made you pinch yourself occasionally to check it all was actually happening.
Dan went next. His hour is also at Mixcloud. Dan's set flows beautifully, taking in a lovely Bob Marley/ Bill Laswell remix, Dominik von Seger and Montezumas Rache, Peter Gordon and Daniel Avery's tribute to Andrew Lone Swordsman, Dan's mixing absolutely spot on.
Mark picked up the headphones next and played for ninety minutes (being stuck on the decks while the rest of us got fed). The first half of his set is recreated at Soundcloud and features a forthcoming remix by his own Rude Audio (a little self promotion never goes amiss), Boy George and Spatial Awareness, David Harrow, Neil Young, Sabo, Acid Arab and James Rod (again remixed by Rude Audio). By this point we were heading into the evening, the pub was filling, excitement and anticipation growing, Mark's dubby dance keeping it building.
As the energy levels rose and the atmosphere with it, we went back to back, three songs each, and it all turned into a blur- at some point I played Mark Lanegan's Ode To Sad Disco, Roisin's All My Dreams, Bjork's Violently Happy (remixed by Fluke), the Soulwax remix of A Hero's Death by Fontaines D.C., the Tribal mix of Pete Wylie's Sinful and Sub- culture by New Order (the Lowlife version). What everyone else was playing in their three song sets is lost to me right now- Martin played Wilmot at one point in an attempt to pull the tempos back a bit. Photographer Scott took this shot of me as I scanned the display, about to cue something up...
And these pictures show four of the five of us at work/ play... (smiling obviously something that was beyond most of us when the shutter was clicked). Baz was elsewhere.
Edit: here's Baz at the decks.
At around 9.45 we had fifteen minutes until Justin Robertson took over from us. I had two of Justin's remixes in my bag which I decided we should play in advance of him playing. I'm not sure this was the coolest idea anyone's ever had but once I'd committed myself to it there was no going back. First up was his 1991 remix of Caravan by Inspiral Carpets, a chunky, dancefloor filler with a vocal sample intoning, 'you play consciousness expanding material', and some cracking pianos....
I followed it with Justin's Most Excellent remix of Saturday's Angels by If?, uptempo, progressive indie- dance/ house from 1992. By this point Justin was in the booth next to me, pulling the pitch control down slightly to cue this up with his first track (which turned out to be Andrew's remix of Soon by My Bloody Valentine which caused something close to mayhem).
Justin then played three hours of perfectly pitched dance music to a room of friendly, smiling faces, pausing briefly while sixty candles were distributed and happy birthday sung to an absent friend. The music kicked back in with Don't Fight It, Feel It. After that, well, after that my memories are mainly of dancing and being lost in it all. The tracklist Justin posted up midweek shows a mixture of music, old and new, by Andrew and others climaxing with Smokebelch, St. Anthony and Come Together.
It was quite the day and night. I was pretty nervous in the week leading up to it and needn't have been, everyone was friendly and there to enjoy themselves. I don't think anyone really noticed (or cared) if a mix or cue was slightly off. Someone said a day or two afterwards, we had the best time with the best people in the best pub with the best hosts, and that does sum it up. This picture, taken in the early hours and for some of us, in a state of some dishevelment, captures it too. The whole thing, from start to finish and top to bottom was, to borrow a phrase from the lovely Mr. Robertson, most excellent.
Left to right- Dave Beer, Justin Robertson, Tim Fairplay, Baz, Gig, me, Bernie Connor, Martin, Dan, Richard (Mark missing, somewhere in the Golden Lion).
