Unauthorised item in the bagging area

Friday, 30 June 2023

Weatherall Remix Friday Six

When I started this series the idea was to focus on some lesser known Andrew Weatherall remixes, the less celebrated or widely known ones. That's pretty subjective and my idea of less well known may be different from yours or from the man in the streets. I'm also jumping around in a fairly haphazard fashion rather than working in any logical order. When I posted my Hardway Bros mix last Sunday Cal Gibson, the man behind The Secret Soul Society, left a comment saying 'Sean [Hardway Bros] works on advice from Mr. Weatherall when remixing: pick 3 or 4 elements from the original and go from there'. 

Andrew's remixes from c.2009 onwards are cases in point, where usually either with Timothy J. Fairplay or Nina Walsh as studio engineer/ assistant, he'd select a few of those elements from the source track and add his own, extending them out for several minutes longer than the original. In 2012 he remixed Brighton five piece Toy, a group who were already fairly psychedelic/ krauty/ shoegaze. 

Andrew sent Toy further into motorik, cosmische, 1970s West German heaven than they'd previously been- a buzzing synth/ organ riff, a meandering, wobbling synth part, and maybe some distorted guitars are joined by Andrew's echo- clap drum track, cavernous space and FX. A two finger keyboard part that picks out a melody at three minutes in and at five minutes a very Michael Rother- esque lead guitar line takes up the foreground. Delightfully absorbing, head nodding, transportative stuff, that glides on and on towards eight minutes before ending. 

Dead And Gone (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Thursday, 29 June 2023

Unchanged Changed

Dot Alison's new album, Consciousology, is out at the end of July and to date the only song available to listen to from it has been Unchanged. Andy Bell in Glok mode has remixed that song, a deeply mashed up, weirded out and dubby take on Unchanged, a sort of fractured folk/ dub/ psychedelia that makes everything feel like its happening very slowly but speeding up too with echo, dub bass, cymbal crashes, stuttering drums and Dot's voice floating in and around. It has a similar feel to Brendan Lynch's epic 1993 remix of Paul Weller's Kosmos and some of Adrian Sherwood's productions. 

The original version of Unchanged has Andy playing guitar alongside Dot, a song that manages to take in British folk music and The Velvet Underground.



Wednesday, 28 June 2023

Bring On The New Messiah

I came across this clip recently and thought it might make a good starting point for an irregular series- bands performing in places they really shouldn't be. This is Echo And The Bunnymen in their 1985 pomp, miming to their then current single Bring On The Dancing Horses on The Wogan Show

In 2023 this maybe doesn't seem so odd, a big alternative act taking advantage of early evening television to sell their new single to a wider audience. In our post- irony world Terry Wogan is looked back on fondly, the man with the chuckling commentary at Eurovision. In the mid- 80s Wogan had no cool at all. The show was as mainstream as you could get. The Bunnymen approach it with customary insouciance, Mac all in black and miming his croon through his fringe, pale, beautiful and with those legendary full lips. Will, also all in black but with leather trousers and customised guitar. Les looks like James Dean with a bass guitar. Pete, again all in black, playing to the side not at the back, as they often set themselves out. Dry ice gathers round their ankles and the BBC's Wogan set flashes behind them. They do give the impression that they'd be somewhere else.

Bring On the Dancing Horses is a shimmering single with tons of hooks, Ian's vocals gliding on top of the synths and Will's gorgeous guitars. It's a real favourite of mine, a tug at the heartstrings song, one they still play live today. Some Bunnyfans are less enamoured with it- too poppy for some, too covered in Laurie Latham's slick production. The 12" version add two extra minutes, extending the intro with more guitars, more synths and FX. 

Bring On The Dancing Horses (Extended Version)

This is an early version of the song before it got it's full name and Latham's production, rough and ready and everything overloaded. 

Jimmy Brown



Tuesday, 27 June 2023

Blackbox Life Recorder

Aphex Twin dropped a new track last week, fairly unexpectedly, ahead of an EP out at the end of July. Blackbox Life Recorder 21f has much to recommend it and it's definitely a grower too, revealing a little more on each listen. The drums are superb, joined by a low key synth part and then there's a shift in rhythm at one minute six, the drums picking up and more layers being added. Lots going on, some of it very subtle and some more upfront- there's pause at two and a half minutes, even more drums/ percussion and what sounds like a voice, taking us through to the fade out.  

There's some real beauty tinged with melancholy in the track, a trick he's been pulling off since Selected Ambient Works. You can order it digitally or physically here. I do baulk a little at the £21 price for a 12" single but suspect it will sound very deep and rich on black plastic. 

This is from Syro, his return record back in 2014, a track that is both minimalist and has lots going on. 

Minipops 67 [120.2] [source field mix]

Monday, 26 June 2023

Monday's Long Song


In August 1994 Future Sound Of London released Lifeforms as a single, an edited version actually ending up being played on Top Of The Pops with a none- more 1994 computer graphics video. Lifeforms was recorded with Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser on vocals- but Liz ended up expressing some dissatisfaction with the final result, saying she sang her heart out for 'eleven fucking hours' but her vocal ended up sounding like a sample. FSOL's Brian Duggan disagreed. 

The full EP release came in seven parts, Paths 1- 7, sequenced as one long ambient piece. The original version was Path 3 (coming in with a tempo change at eleven minutes forty in the download below and the edited single version Path 4 (about twenty minutes in). It was also judged by the Guinness Book of Records to be the first to be the first internet download.

Lifeforms Paths 1- 7

Lifeforms is a very good piece of ambient/ ambient house- experimental, futuristic, ambitious and richly layered, a little time locked to the mid- 90s maybe but very enjoyable and engaging with tribal drums, birdsong, thumping kickdrum, tabla courtesy of Talvin Singh, piano and synths and multiple shifts in pace, tone and tempo.  

Sunday, 25 June 2023

Forty Five Minutes Of Hardway Bros Remixes

After A Love From Outer Space at the Golden Lion in Todmorden last night and yesterday's ALFOS post I thought Sean Johnston in Hardway Bros mode would be a good subject for a Sunday mix. I first attempted it weeks ago but for some reason lost the mix- the lost mix is always the best version. Then, trying again more recently, I tried to bite off more than I could chew, including remixes old and new and some of Hardway Bros original music, while trying to keep it around forty five minutes (much of Sean's music, remixes and original, comes in at ten minutes long). I went back to the drawing board, decided to only use remixes this time around and sling together a bag of cosmic chug, house/ disco/ dub and indie- dance- there's a transition in this which is a bit untidy but I've left it as it is. There are so many more remixes that could have been included here. Something to come back to at a future date. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Hardway Bros Remixes

  • The Secret Soul Society x Hardway Bros: Yo We've Landed (Hardway Bros Remix Redux)
  • Islandman: Godless Ceremony (Hardway Bros Remix)
  • Marshall Watson and Cole Odin: Just A Daydream Away (Hardway Bros Remix)
  • Out Cold: Lovin' Arms (Hardway Bros Remix)
  • Peak High: Was That All It Was (Hardway Bros Remix)
  • Aimes: A Star... In The Sky (Hardway Bros Remix)
The Secret Soul Society Yo We've Landed came out in 2021, one of many remixes Sean did that year, Secret Soul's Cal Gibson's head spinning psychedelia bent into disco- dub shapes. 

Islandman's Godless Ceremony came out earlier this year, psychedelic Turkish folk/ dance music turned into wobbly, chiming indie- dance. 

Marshall Watson and Cole Odin's Just A Daydream Away came out just a few weeks ago, another slice of indie- dance Hardway remix heaven. 

Out Cold's Lovin' Arms came out back in 2013. Out Cold is Simon Aldred who was also Cherry Ghost. When I posted this remix about a decade ago Sean saw the post and said he'd forgotten he'd even done the remix. Classic house sound and feel on this one. 

Peak High's cover of the Jean Carne's disco classic Was That All It Was came out at the tail end of last year and I played it and both of Sean's remixes to death including on a car journey at Christmas where my daughter Eliza said she'd heard it, all three versions, so much she never wanted to hear it again. 

Aimes' A Star... In The Sky was a 2020 release about which I know very little other than it came out on 12" and Sean's remix kicks like a mule- dark, spaced out cosmic techno. 

Saturday, 24 June 2023

Saturday Live

Tonight three fifths of the Flightpath estate DJ team- me, Martin and Dan- are back at Todmorden's Golden Lion (Baz and Mark are at Glastonbury). Sean Johnston is headlining tonight, the A Love From Outer Space travelling discotheque returning to one of its spiritual homes, the Golden Lion. We have been asked to play some records this afternoon/ evening between three and eight. When we DJed there to support David Holmes last October and at the Andrew Weatherall birthday celebrations at the end of April, we were somewhat nervous. AW60, two months ago, went really well and we're a bit more relaxed about this one. So, watch us mess it up today. 

Back in 2010 Andrew and Sean hatched a plan to start a club night that would be 'an oasis of slow in a world of increasing velocity', tracks never exceeding 121 BPM and to be held in small, intimate venues. The first was in a basement at The Drop in Stoke Newington. ALFOS then travelled round the country popping up in Glasgow, Belfast, Manchester, various London venues, a few other places besides and in Todmorden. Since Andrew's death in February 2020 Sean has flown the ALFOS flag solo. This is a mix by Sean that was given away as a free CD to first few punters through the door at ALFOS in Stoke Newington back in 2010, an hour and twelve minutes of cosmic chug that opens with a voice saying, 'sure you want to trip into the future...'

Brother Johnston's Outer Space Consultation

In 2020 Sean put this mix together, three hours to celebrate ten years of ALFOS. If that's not enough, here's one from 2013 at Islington Mill, Salford, five and a half hours of DJ excellence recorded live.



Friday, 23 June 2023

Weatherall Remix Friday Five

1990's Andrew Weatherall output is pretty definitively Weatherall- Loaded, Come Together, Soon, Come Home, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Hallelujah, Bomba- technicolour, widescreen, everything thrown in, acid house/ indie- dance madness, era- defining stuff. There are a few outliers from 1990 though, remixes that don't quite fit into the ecstatic nature of the list above, like this remix of Meat Beat Manifesto, with The Orb's Thrash assisting on studio technical duties...

Psyche Out (Sex Skank Strip Down)

Bass heavy skanking with dub- techno rhythms, a scratchy vibe with a fragment of female vocal, a moan. It's got an underground, afterhours, everything gone south feel that prefigures the Sabres sound by a few years and some of his DJ sets of the mid 90s that had a hip hop groove. There's some of the Two Lone Swordsmen Virus With Shoes minimalism in there too. 

Meat Beat Manifesto's industrial hip hop was trip hop before it was a thing, before it had a name, massively influential. Main Meat Beat man Jack Danger's released Radio Babylon in the same year, a destroyer of a record, with a huge rapid fire breakbeat, the chant of 'Babylon' and fuzzed up bassline capable of causing mayhem. Combining samples of Cheryl Lynn, Boney M, The Troggs and Mikey Dread on one record is genius enough in itself. 

Radio Babylon


Thursday, 22 June 2023

Bad Toys

I posted Matt Gunn’s Learning Through Loops, a track from his album Mostly Fiction, a week ago, last Monday. Coincidentally, the following Friday Matt released a new EP called Bad Toys, containing two new tracks Sun Mobil and Wonky Tonka. Both are jammed full of those lovely, feel good, uptempo, summer sounds, the sort of songs you like to imagine you might hear in the hour before sunset at Glastonbury, not on the main stage but somewhere further afield, one of the stages/ tents at the fringes of the festival. Again, not necessarily coincidentally, quite a few people I know are heading to Somerset today or already there. 

Sun Mobil rides in with a bounce, an urgent drum sample and repeating synth part, the bassline thumping in after thirty seconds. There are long waves of synth chords and a choppy rhythm guitar followed by a lovely, sunlit lead guitar. A squiggly acid topline enters and starts to do its work. Then there's a piano breakdown at four minutes, sending everything higher followed by a vocal, lines about chasing the warmth of summer, ‘Come on and find the sunshine/ Come on and find the sun’. It repeats and then everything crashes back in- drums, bass, guitar, synths, joined by a long, keening melody line.

Wonky Tonka is even giddier, a buzzing synth part, sirens, bumping rhythm and vocal sample, A funked up guitar part moves to the foreground and then the whole thing switches, percussion and drum breaks and a fully wigged out distorted synth sound, rising and falling. The way Matt keeps switching between the different sections has a bit of an old school hip hop vibe, the DJ cutting back and forth between the breakdown from two different records to keep the party going, the decks and speakers powered by electricity from the street lights. On it goes, the funky guitar riff cutting in and out and the twitchy synth part twisting itself round and round. Get Bad Toys here

Wednesday, 21 June 2023

Midsummer

Today, 21st June, is the summer solstice, the midpoint of the year and the time at which it's lighter longer and later than at any other point- something worth celebrating. It therefore also has to be noted that we start crawling back after tonight, we can't have one without the other. Something Rich Lane noted on his chuggy, slow mo Balearic classic from 2020 titled Solstice

According to the Christian church midsummer is officially 24th June, six months before/ after Christmas, but given that any midsummer celebration almost certainly pre- dates Christianity let's go with today. 

In 1990 Saint Etienne's glorious second single, their shuffly indie- dance cover of The Field Mice's Kiss And Make Up was remixed twice by Pete Heller, the Midsummer Madness and Midsummer Dubness versions, both versions arguably superior to the original single. They didn't release the remixes until October 1990 which seems a missed opportunity. Both are full of the spirit of the times, that joyous sense of freedom and possibility that the period had- although maybe that's partly because I was just twenty and everything was in front of me. The world was changing though. Thatcher gone, people power across the eastern Europe contributing to the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Nelson Mandela's release. Let's kiss and make up.

Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)

Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Dubness Mix)

Room for one more? This is Midsummer's Dream by DJ and producer Massimiliano Pagliara, southern Italian by birth but resident of Berlin. This track, seven minutes of thumping drums and trancey synths and acid toplines, came out last year and sounds much more Berlin than Lecce. 

Midsummer's Dream 


Tuesday, 20 June 2023

Konforming

The phrase Hardway Bros remix is turning into a weekly thing at the moment- recently Sean Johnston's applied his magic remix touch to tracks by Marshall Watson and Cole Odin (psychedelic indie- dance gold from California), Islandman (psychedelic indie- dance gold from Istanbul) and Holy Youth Movement (shuffly indie- dance gold from Bristol). 

Now we get two remixes of Nuremberg's Konformer, a group mentioned here at the weekend in my Bagging Area/ Ban Ban Ton Ton mix after I reviewed Konformer's album. The title track of Konformer's album is a ten minutes of instrumental, cosmische splendour, synths, bass and drums combining, all seductive dark grooves and circling melodies. 


Sean's Hardway Bros remixes don't mess about. The Hardway Bros Remix is ten minutes of mayhem, tempo doubled and rhythm toughened, the sort of thing that wears the carpet out at parties. The Hardway Bros Techno Remix is even more so, a jacking house groove, nagging hi hat and snare rolls kicking hard. The third remix of the package,  the Iron Curtis remix is courtesy of Berlin DJ Iron Curtis, a wiggy, tripped out workout, crashing cymbals and acid squiggles. The three track remix EP can be bought digitally here

Monday, 19 June 2023

Monday's Long Songs

AP Organism is Torquay based musician/ producer Andy Pitman, one half of Deep Space Organism who released several singles and an album back in the early 00s. On his own AP has just released this two track EP on Mighty Force, Space Docks And Moon Rocks, a twenty minute exploration of space- analogue ambient/ ambient techno. The first track is Space Docks, a blissed out eleven minutes of floating, dubby ambience, a never standing still, constantly evolving piece of music. Headphones music for long walks. 

Second track Moon Rocks, nine minutes of bleeps and drum pads and an insistent rhythm, synths firing off sci fi sounds into the furthest reaches. Get both at Bandcamp

Sunday, 18 June 2023

Bagging Area/ Ban Ban Ton Ton Mix

For some time now Dr Rob, the man who runs the standard setting blog Ban Ban Ton Ton, a one stop shop for all things Balearic and otherwise, has been asking me to write reviews for him. Since the new year I've written some album reviews which I don't think I've linked here, so today's Sunday mix post pulls those reviews from the first half of 2023 together for those who might be interested in them, and provides a sampler in the form of a forty three minute long mix below. 

Ban Ban Ton Ton/ Bagging Area Guest Review Mix

  • Jon Hassell: Neon Nights
  • Konformer: Konformer
  • Tolga Boyuk and Kenneth Bager: Betrayal
  • TECWAA: I Terra Dub
  • Roe Deers: Can't Remember
  • Yargo: Marimba
  • Sorcerer: Zero Return
  • Eloah: Logan Ede
Jon Hassell was a pioneering New York based trumpeter/ composer. His Fourth World music fused primitivism and futurism in the late 70s and 80s and led him to work with Talking Heads, David Sylvian and Carl Craig among others. Psychogeography is a compilation of late 80s recordings combining avant- jazz, soundtracks, psychogeography, ambient music and Situationism, which sounds off- putting but is great fun. My review is here

Konformer are a three piece from Nuremburg, signed to Manchester's Jason Boardman's new label Before I Die. Five lovely synth- led cosmische instrumentals. Reviewed by me here and highly recommended (the album I mean not the review). 

Tolga Boyuk and Kenneth Bager wrote and recorded a soundtrack to a film that hasn't been shot yet, East Is North, in two days. Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and John Carpenter all feature as reference points. Read my review here

TECWAA is from York and has released an EP on New York's Throne Of Blood, a label on something of a hot streak. My review said something like 'sci fi, deep house, cinematic psychedelic dub'. Here

Roe Deers were one artist on a compilation put out by Parisienne label Lumiere Noir, twelve previously unreleased slices of 'deep and dark electronics'. Read my review here if you've got this far down.  

Yargo were a Manchester blues/ funk/ dub group who missed the boat in the late 80s Manchester boom but are fondly remembered. Their proto- house/ Latin B-side features on the new compilation from DJ Luke Una, E- cultura soul Vol. 2, a multi- artist tribute to late nights, dancing and the widest spread of music you can imagine. Eloah's Logan Ede comes from the same album, Brazilian soul from the late 1970s. My review is here

Sorcerer is from Califronia and his second album Bubble Funk is a blast of short, funky instrumentals celebrating skateboarding, cassette culture, home studios, 70s funk and Balearic pop. Reviewed here

I also reviewed Reinhard Vanbergen's Meditation On Modern Modes, an hour long ambient tour de force from Belgium's multi- instrumentalist but couldn't work any of the ten minute pieces onto the mix above. Read and listen here

Saturday, 17 June 2023

Saturday Live

Spiritualized offer a full on live experience, Jason at the microphone and with Fender guitar and a group of musicians- drummers, bassists, guitarists, keys, horns, strings, backing vocalists- capable of transforming the expansive sounds of his albums on stage, starting softly and quietly and building. This is a full performance from the end of August 2019, Spiritualized live at Nox Orae in Switzerland. 

The set opens with Hold On and then catches fire with Come Together, a reliable live favourite with Jason's story of Johnny and the ape who lives on his back. From then it's one after another- Shine A Light, Soul On Fire, She Kissed Me (And It felt Like A Hit)- Jason's cut and shut of guitar rock, drug addiction and gospel blues seeing us through to the end an hour an half later with Oh! Happy Day. Emotional and epic stuff. 

A lot has changed since the days of 2019. The album And Nothing Hurt came out the year before but it's follow up, Everything Was Beautiful, recorded at the same time and really sounding part of a whole rather than two separate records, was delayed until 2022 due to Covid and all that came with it. Jason's taking the band out again this autumn, a gig at Manchester's New Century Hall already in my diary. 

I've got quite a lot of Spiritualized live tracks on my hard drive. Here are three. First, I Think I'm In Love from the Royal Albert Hall in 1997, the band touring the then just released Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space album that remains their high watermark, a version floating in on free jazz sax and discordant guitar, twelve minutes inside Jason's burning world- 'Sun so bright I'm nearly blind...' he coos with the choir singing softly behind him. It all kicks off later as you'd expect. 

I Think I'm In Love (Live at The Royal Albert Hall)

This is Soul On Fire live in Reykjavik in 2010, Jason on acoustic guitar, the strings and backing vocals swelling behind him.

Soul On Fire (Live in Reykjavik)

Finally, seventeen minutes of Spiritualized live at the Hultsfred festival in Sweden in 2002, bootlegged as an album titled Light Of The Sight Side, a run of three songs as one, overloaded fuzz guitar and frazzled psychedelic rock as standard.

Shine A Light/ All Of My Tears/ Electric Mainline

Friday, 16 June 2023

Weatherall Remix Friday Four

In 1992 Andrew Weatherall made the move from being the solo remixer and DJ, ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on many of his genre- busting, name- making early remixes to becoming part of a group. In part this was a desire to head away from the light, away from the Balearic and indie- dance scenes and mine something darker and deeper and less obvious. Rumours in the NME (often placed there by his friend Sherman who edited the dance music page) suggested Weatherall was forming a new band- Sabres Of Paradise- with a record label of the same name and the similarly named Sabresonic club night under a railway arch at Crucifix Lane, London. Hugo had become a part of Primal Scream's onstage set up and Andrew had begun working with Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner. The trio would become Sabres Of Paradise, putting out several key singles- Smokebelch, Theme, Wilmot- and two albums- Sabresonic and Haunted Dancehall before Andrew shifted things around again and formed Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood. 

Somewhat overlooked in the Weatherall/ Sabres back catalogue of releases and remixes is the debut release on Andrew's Sabres Of Paradise label, the 12" known as listed as PT001 in the Sabres catalogue numbering system. Discogs has this listed as a 1993 release but several people online recently have said it came out in autumn '92 (at least in white label version). The first run of twelves was on red vinyl (rare) with a black vinyl run following (less rare). It seems that PT001 came out before both Secret Knowledge's Ooh Baby and Pleasure by SYT (I appreciate this is probably unimportant to most people, unless you are compiling a comprehensive, definitive discography of Andrew Weatherall releases- hi Martin).

PT001 is a remix, or total reconstruction, of Throbbing Gristle's United (a 7" single, 1978). There are two versions, the A-side eleven minutes of 1992 Weatherall, the perfect marriage of the newest sounds and styles spliced with his influences, in this case the music of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. Repetitive bleeps, tribal drums, samples screeching, metallic cymbal crashes and then a crunching, thumping four- four kick.  Three and a half minutes in the TG synth riff surfaces, loops round and then the tribal thumping returns. A piano run appears at five minutes thirty, giving that hands- in- the- air moment and then a proto- Sabres bassline joins in. Everything begins to pile back in again for the run in, building in layers and intensity, tempos and noises colliding. Thirty years old and still capable of causing strobe light flashbacks and goose bumps.

United Mix 1

United Mix 2 is shorter, only brief five minutes and forty seven seconds, starting with the tsk tsk tsk of a hi- hat and then the drums, all about percussion and rhythm, harder and tougher. Eventually sirens arrive, wailing away on top, a techno alarm call from the early 90s.

United Mix 2


Thursday, 15 June 2023

Ghosts

I don’t believe in ghosts, at least not in the paranormal apparitions sense where the soul or spirit of the deceased, dressed in white, hang around the physical realm. There are times though, when I’m in the house or the garden, that I can hear Isaac. I know it’s not him, either physically or astrally, he’s not actually there. But sometimes when I’m doing something (usually something mundane and ordinary) I hear him (in my head) speaking, commenting on what I’m doing, saying something he’d often say in those circumstances or asking me a question- 'Where you going Dad?' or 'What you doing Dad?'. Rationally I know it’s my mind or my memory playing tricks on me but it can be quite bewildering because it comes unexpectedly and with no trigger that I can discern.

It’s a strange phenomenon and makes me realise that in the past, in a world of dimly lit, smoky houses full of shadows, with a lesser understanding of science and a more religious or superstitious mindset, that a belief in the existence of ghosts was easy to have. The flicker of shadows, a door that was ajar closing and the voice of the departed suddenly playing in a person’s head. Ghosts feature in almost all recorded human societies. I think this experience I have when I hear Isaac’s voice must be universal.

In the kitchen on Sunday morning, his voice in my head asked me why I was taking my breakfast outside. Because Isaac, it’s beautiful out there and the sun is shining on the garden table.

It makes me stop in my tracks when it happens. And then it goes away. It doesn’t carry on or turn into a conversation, it's just me hearing him, on occasions, at home. Grief- it's a fucking weird, heavy and intense thing to live with. 

Science Of Ghosts

Khidja are a Romanian duo based in Bucharest making experimental electronic music, trippy house and on this song, which is perfectly named for this post, strange, off kilter science fiction techno, Vangelis on mushrooms. The EP, released in 2022 and titled Something In the Water is here.

Wednesday, 14 June 2023

Twenty

Twenty years ago today our daughter Eliza was born, arriving at five to four in the morning. I'd like to say she was kicking and screaming and causing a fuss but she was the most chilled baby. One of the nurses in the maternity ward said at only a few hours old, how alert she was. She's had a lot to put up with recently and continues to attack life with the alertness, wit and zest she's had since she was very small. All parents want to be proud of their children but Eliza truly continues to make us proud, every day. Happy birthday Eliza- have fun tonight. Slay.

This song is a twenty, from Mark Peters' beautiful 2017 album Innerland. This is Twenty Bridges in remixed form, remixed by German producer and DJ Andi Otto, with Mark's guitar FXed and reworked and Andi's self built instrument, the sensor extended cello bow, added. 

Twenty Bridges (Andi Otto Remix)

Eliza wouldn't be much fussed by that piece of music- sorry Mark and Andi- she has a tendency to say that any of this kind of music I have on is 'just a load of weird noises' and calls it 'ambient shit'. This is much more up her street, Beyoncé twenty years ago with her debut solo song built around a Chi- Lites sample, performing Crazy In Love in July 2003 (when Eliza was a month old). When Beyoncé performs, it's a full performance, she doesn't hold back. 

Tuesday, 13 June 2023

Just A Daydream Away

This came out at the start of the month, a lovely piece of psychedelia from California courtesy of Marshall Watson and Cole Odin called Just A Daydream Away. It's got a real lighter than air quality, the sounds all drifting forwards together powered by chuggy drums and whispered, echo- laden vocals. 

The remixes take things further. The Joe Morris Remix is eight minutes of lazy poolside action, electronic drums and synths that gather pace and turns into something really quite expansive. 

Then there's the Hardway Bros remixes. Sean Johnston's on an indie- dance trip at the moment, his previous remixes for Islandman and Holy Youth Movement both hitting the sweet spot. The Hardway Bros remix of Just A Daydream Away is a ten minute epic, chiming indie/ folk guitars, chugging drums and a sense of wide eyed possibilities. The Daydream In Dub (Live At The SSL) Mix is, uh, dubbier. 

In conversation with a friend a while ago, I was told that sometimes 'you' just need to forget all that 'boy stuff' about lists, recordings and equipment/ technology/ instruments. The only thing that matters with music is how it makes you feel. Just A Daydream Away, all the versions but Sean's Hardway Bros Remix especially, make me feel good, like a summer afternoon that will never end. 

Buy the EP here

Monday, 12 June 2023

Monday's Long Song

Matt Gunn released an album back in April titled Mostly Fiction, an album I missed at the time and only found recently. It's nine tracks of cosmic and sonic adventuring, full of sounds from the machines of Moog, Behringer and Roland. This is the closing track, an eight minute sweet spot, a glide by of synths, electronic drums and FX called Learning Through Loops. The piano run that kicks in at three and a half minutes is spine tingling and the subsequent five minutes are pretty transcendent. Buy Mostly Fiction here




Sunday, 11 June 2023

Forty Five Minutes Of Beth Orton

A couple of weeks ago I was crate digging in Altrincham, flicking through a box of records that even though it was outdoors smelt like it had been recently recovered from a damp garage. In among the finds and the rejects was a Beth Orton 10" single, Touch Me With Your Love, from 1996. Weirdly while the sleeve was in bits, water damaged and splitting at the seams, the record was in really good condition and though there was no inner sleeve around the disc the free postcard (a black and white photo of Beth) was inside with the record. The 10" single had four songs, the title track (from her debut album Trailer Park), an instrumental version, the B-side song Pedestal and a live version of the epically beautiful Galaxy Of Emptiness recorded at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in November 1996. I took it along with a copy of Bruce Hornsby And The Range's The Way It Is on 12", a compilation of Pentangle on Pickwick Records from the late 1960s and Warm Leatherette by Grace Jones, paid my tenner and shuffled off. 

As a result, a Beth Orton Sunday mix seemed to be a good idea. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Beth Orton

  • Galaxy Of Emptiness
  • It's This I Find I Am
  • Bobby Gentry
  • Touch Me With Your Love
  • Anywhere (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix)
  • Water On A Vine Leaf (Underworld Mix Part 1)

Galaxy Of Emptiness is the ten minute closer from Beth's debut Trailer Park, an Andrew Weatherall produced epic, with Red Snapper's Rich Thair and Ali Friend on brushed drums and stand up double bass. It's one of Weatherall's greatest 90s productions, full of space and atmosphere.

It's This I Find I Am was the B-side to the Someone's Daughter single from 1997, another Weatherall production and a bit of a lost gem. 

Bobby Gentry, named after the singer of 60s classic Ode To Billie Joe, came out a 2003 compilation that followed her Daybreaker album called The Other Side Of Daybreak. It's been a favourite of mine since I first heard it twenty years ago, a cinematic beauty with strings and heartbreak lyrics including this piece of poetry- 'Collecting dead rainbows/ From puddles and mires/ Taking them home to warm by the fire'.

Touch Me With Your Love was a 1996 single as mentioned above, CD and 10" vinyl on Heavenly. 

Anywhere was remixed by Two Lone Swordsmen, with some superb Keith Tenniswood programming, Beth sent into electro heaven, TLS remix gold. Anywhere was on Daybreaker, Beth's third album from 2002. There were Adrian Sherwood and Photek remixes too.

Water On A Vine Leaf was one of Beth's first vocal appearances, the result of studio time with William Orbit. This single from 1993 is one of the year's and William Orbit's best. Some of the songs Beth and William worked on resurfaced on Trailer Park under different names. There are several remixes that are right up there in terms of 90s acid house/ progressive house brilliance, three from Underworld and the Xylem Flow remix by Spooky. I could have chosen any and went for Underworld's Part 1 mix. 


Saturday, 10 June 2023

Saturday Live

It seems a bit late in the day to be talking about bands coming to 'save rock 'n' roll', the outlaw gang of brothers and all that sort of thing, all very 20th century. Boys with guitars and cheekbones. Leather jackets. Cigarettes and alcohol. Maybe its my age- we've been through the cycle a number of times and on the whole they'll only disappoint you in the end (or maybe somewhere not long after the beginning). 

Dublin guitar group Fontaines D.C. are half my age and have released three albums since forming in 2017- 2019's Dogrel, 2020's A Hero's Death and last year's Skinty Fia. Twin guitars, post- punk influences, grinding basslines, rocking drums and a street poet for a vocalist. I'm not about to declare my undying love for them and stencil their name on my denim jacket but I think they really have something, and sound like the sort of group who if I was nineteen probably would declare 'the saviours of rock 'n' roll'. If nineteen year olds still do that kind of thing. 

Don't mess it up lads. Don't cheat the keyboard player out of the money. Don't cut people out of the credits and then treat them as hired hands when they've been in the band for three decades. What sort of band would do that?

Last May while promoting Skinty Fia they appeared at Seattle's KEXP and played a four song set- Nabokov, Big Shot, How Cold Love Is and Roman Holiday- where they look and sound like the real deal. 

Also last year they played in the afternoon at Glastonbury, the song I Love You, a song about their home country, its murky corruption, historical atrocities and politics and singer Grian's love/ hate relationship with it. 


Friday, 9 June 2023

Weatherall Remix Friday Three

Week three of my spotlight on some of Andrew Weatherall's lesser known or more outlying remixes. The definition of that may be quibbled with- for some Weatherall heads, none of these will be overlooked or less well known. 

In the rush of his early remixes, the period from 1989 to 1992, Andrew redefined what a remix could do and be- this wasn't just tinkering, extending the intro or adding disco drums, this was new music made from the source material and Andrew's record collection, spun into new shapes and pushed way beyond where the original song started in many cases. Along with Hugo Nicolson, the list of remixes from this era contains wall to wall brilliance, genre smashing, dancefloor filling mayhem, a new psychedelia splicing acid house and dub with indie/ leftfield guitar bands and the music from the margins of the previous twenty years. Primal Scream, Happy Mondays, The Grid, James, Saint Etienne, My Bloody Valentine, Jah Wobble, That Petrol Emotion, The Orb, S'Express and A Man Called Adam were among the music paper friendly names that gained the words Andy, Weatherall and Remix in brackets after their song titles. Lesser known acts- Meat Beat Manifesto, The Impossibles, Airstream, Finitribe, Love Corporation, The Moody Boys, West India Company and Word Of Mouth- all saw their music remixed to glorious effect too. 

As 1992 ticked on things changed a little, with Andrew's remix of Yello and Future Sound Of London pushed things more techno and less Balearic/ indie dance. Caught somewhere on the cusp of the technicoloured first flush of remixes were three remixes of Galliano's Skunk Funk. Galliano's spoken word/ beat poetry/ acid jazz was good fun if not to everyone's taste. Their albums In Pursuit Of The 13th Note and A Joyful Noise Unto The Creator (1991 and '92 respectively) had Blue Note typography and sleeve design, Rob Gallagher's semi- stoned rhymes and insights, Mick Talbot on keys, a Beatnik Bez with a staff called Snaith and reggae, skull caps and ponchos, soul, funk and rap stirred into a smoky pot. I saw them play at the Hacienda, the venue nowhere near full and loved them. Skunk Funk was one of A Joyful Noise's standout moments and Andrew's remixes were released as a standalone 12" single. The lead remix was the Cabin Fever mix, a nine minute and forty second lesson in how to remix. Opened with Valerie Etienne's backing vocals, 'a woah woah woah woah woah woah woaaaah' rising and falling and some scratchy FX. A rhythm begins to start up a minute in, the whole thing smothered in a fug of smoke. Bells ring, bubbles pop, timpani tumble and percussion rattles. A didgeridoo smatters about. The entry at two minutes of the drums and bass lifts us suddenly onto the floor, the groove now everything. The drums pause now and then leaving the bassline at the fore, a massive, isolated, woody bass loop. There's a clipped guitar riff , more clattering drums, more didgeridoo, then a guitar solo, the bass in and out, instruments being thrown in and out of the mix and in the final minute some vocals finally break through. Massive fun and a sense of controlled mayhem. 

Skunk Funk (Cabin Fever)

The Cabin Fever Dub kicks off with Jean Binta Breeze, the dub poetess whose album Tracks from 1991 also provided Andrew with the vocal samples for his remix of Saint Etienne's Only Love Can Break Your Heart. 'And when the music plays, we hollah!' Jeans says and the bass kicks in. The Dub mix is shorter, only five minutes long, a distilled version of the Cabin Fever mix, with the vocals and elements re- arranged again, the rubber bassline right at the front and snatches of voices and vocals.

Skunk Funk (Cabin Fever Dub)

There is a third remix, the Soldier's Mix, which was the version I played at Blossom Street Social when we DJed there back in April but I don't have an mp3 of it (or if I do, can't find it) and it doesn't seem to be on Youtube either. 

Thursday, 8 June 2023

Cloud Walkin

A few weeks ago I wrote a post/ raved about Dirt Bogarde's Heavy Blotter, huge sounding, emotive Balearic acid beauty. Dirt's back with more new music, this time with a track called Cloud Walkin, seven minutes thirty seconds of chuggy, cosmic, sunset sounds, at first sounding quite chilled but becoming insistent and intense in the second half. Buy it at Bandcamp

Just over a year ago Dirt released another walking track, this time Windwalker, a dark, thumping groove with rattling snares, echoic bass squiggles and a massive, speaker- testing bassline. 


Wednesday, 7 June 2023

Let It Burn

I've been watching the three part BBC series The Gallows Pole, a Shane Meadows version of the novel by Ben Myers, based on the true story of a group of poverty stricken workers in 18th century West Yorkshire running a coin counterfeiting scam. Shane Meadows version is huge fun, with some familiar Shane Meadows tropes- an ensemble cast of actors with regional accents, many scenes that appear improvised, copious swearing (and I mean copious fucking swearing on an industrial fucking scale) and some very strong female characters. Shane Meadows approaches period drama as if people were the same then as they are now, just in different clothing and it's a very refreshing take on the past- in one of the scenes the unemployed weavers and farm workers discusses the behaviour of the royal family, concluding 'fuck the king'. 

The lead character and coin clipper David Hartley appears at the start of each episode in dreamlike visions with stagmen (all of whom have thick northern accents). At the start of episode one he stumbles around the moors in the mist, a stab wound in his side, the stagmen appearing out of the gloom. The soundtrack is equally striking, a mixture of weird, old English folk, traditional ballads and broadsides, early 70s rock from the likes of The Groundhogs and blistering modern psyche- rock. The opening titles are a blend of 18th century unemployment and 60s psychedelia, men with stag's heads, trippy swirls and distorted guitars. 

Each of the three episodes finishes with this song from 2018 by mystic Swedish psyche rockers Goat, a riot of super fuzzed guitar, a drummer running round the kit, spindly lead lines, wailing vox, a flute solo and some hair raising distorted wah wah. 

Let It Burn

Tuesday, 6 June 2023

Acid Bangles

You didn't know you wanted, no, needed, an acid house reworking of Walk Like An Egyptian by The Bangles did you? You'd never listened to the song in all its Los Angeles 1986 glory and thought you needed it redone in huge acid chug style but, as they say, here we are- and you do. Thank Rich Lane who produced just such an artefact for a DJ gig he had a couple of weeks ago at The Evil Acid Barons Weekender in Devon. You can find it here- it was available for a limited time as a download but I think Rich may have switched that off due to potentially problematic copywrite issues. 

I think this is the ideal opportunity to post this snippet of video heaven- the Susanna Hoffs side eye. 

Written by Liam Sternberg the song was first offered to Toni Basil, then Lene Lovich (who recorded a version but didn't release it) before The Bangles got to record it. In September 1986 they played it while appearing on Whistle Test. The decision by producer David Kahne to have drummer Debbie replaced by a drum machine for the song caused ructions within the group and they didn't work with him again. It may have Rich's job a little easier though. 




Monday, 5 June 2023

Monday's Long Songs

Last Friday saw the release of Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright's new album Psychedelic Science. Mark and Dan recorded it holed up in North Wales and brought into being an album which marries dub with 60s psychedelia and the voices of American guru Ram Dass and Ken Kesey's bus driver Ken Babbs'. Not only do they manage to pull those seemingly disparate ingredients together into a cohesive whole but Psychedelic Science is already sounding like one of the albums of the summer. 

The album opens with Be Love, a slo- mo, blissed out dub groove with the voice of Ram Dass setting the scene for what follows over the next eight songs, an eight minute excursion that sounds like waking up after you've had exactly the right amount of sleep to find the sun shining and the day ahead looking good.

Over the course of the next six songs Mark and Dan take their chunky, cosmic dub to new places- from the bassline led, sci fi cover of The Grateful Dead's Fire On The Mountain to the chuggy bounce of The Fever and the off kilter, bass rumble of El Qasr. They cover Bowie's Heroes, a spoken word dub cover no less, with Ken Babbs from the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test on vocals. 

Control has a lovely snaking melody, chopped up vocals and wandering bass. On the spaced out Talking To The Sun Dan sings, his voice cut through the glorious fug. Finally, they reach some of kind of conclusion with the closing track, the twenty minute Patience Dub (A Prog Odyssey), the kind of thing that in lesser hands would be too much. Mark and Dan make a twenty minute track seem, if anything, too short. Music to be enveloped by and to drift away to. Buy Psychedelic Science digitally or on CD at Bandcamp


Sunday, 4 June 2023

Forty Minutes Of Depeche Mode

I recently watched 101, D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film from 1989 that showed the group preparing to play the 101st gig and final leg of their world tour the year before. It was good fun, a time capsule peak into the world of 1988, with a van of radio competition winners travelling to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to see DM with live snippets of the group interspersed. 

It's fair to say that I'm a fan of some of Depeche Mode's songs rather than an outright fan of the band. Their story is interesting, electro- pop boys from Basildon who survive the departure of their songwriter becoming a pop sensation and then a stadium size electronic rock group. The death of Andy Fletcher last year showed a fairly unique aspect of the group too- Fletcher was the man who made the group work but whose contributions weren't predominantly musical. For the mix below I've concentrated on the late 80s/ early 90s era of the group, mainly singles with some remixes. I seem to have omitted Personal Jesus which is an error on my part. 

Forty Minutes Of Depeche Mode

  • Happiest Girl (Orbital Mix)
  • Never Let Me Down Again (Tsangarides Mix)
  • I Feel You (7" version)
  • Enjoy The Silence (Rich Lane A&E Cotton Dub)
  • Blasphemous Rumours
  • Barrel Of A Gun (Underworld Soft Mix)

From 1990 The Orb's remix of Happiest Girl confusingly titled as the Orbital Mix (how both The Orb and Orbital mist have wished the other had chosen a different name). The remix is typically Orb- like, downtempo ambient house with Dave Gahan's words on top. As well as a 12" single in 1990, it came out on The Orb's compilation of their own remixes in 1996, alongside a welter of other remixes- Pop Will Eat Itself, Erasure, Killing Joke, Primal Scream, Yello, Innersphere and Wir all feature. 

Never Let Me Down is a throbbing, growling, druggy electro- rock single from 1987 and from their Music For The Masses album. The Tsangarides mix is from the 12", a remix by Chris Tsangarides. My favourite DM song, one that has worked its way into my musical world in recent years. 

I Feel You was a 1993 single, screeching tyres, glitter stomp and blues guitar riff. 

Enjoy The Silence was a 1990 single and from their massive 1991 album Violator. Synths, monochrome gloom, a lush darkness made for those sunset moments in stadia round the world- along with Personal Jesus it's the 90s Mode in excelsis. The version here is a re- edit by Stoke- on - Trent's Rich Lane, a man who knows his way round a re- edit better than most. 

Blasphemous Rumours came out in 1984, a song about suicide, survival and religion that baited the religious, including those in the band. The crunchy synth sound and industrial drums show the way ahead. 

Barrel Of A Gun was a single in 1997, the lead song for their Ultra album. Underworld's remixes, three of them, showed the two sides of late 90s Underworld- the Hard Mix is nine minutes of thumping, hard and fast drums that don't let up. The Soft mix (included here) is Underworld in dreamy, floaty mode and proof that Underworld were still capable of great remixes and of creating some lovely, low key, intimate moments.

Saturday, 3 June 2023

Basking



Stockport sits six miles south of Manchester (and only a ten minute train ride from Piccadilly). It is a town that has until recently stubbornly refused attempts at regeneration and gentrification- and in some ways that has been part of its charm. Over the last few of years the market hall and Underbank area have undergone a change, with shops and bars opening, a food hall, an upturn in fortunes attracting a different, newer crowd. Opposite the railway station a new plaza area has been created with a bar, Bask, opening a year ago. Bask runs all sorts of events as well as serving food and drink among them acoustic nights, late nights at the weekend with DJs and a regular Wednesday night slot called Express Yourself. On Wednesday this week, 31st May, it had Manchester poet Mike Garry performing. There was a full line up of support, starting with Matt Jacques, a singer songwriter with acoustic guitar telling tales of bandit country (North Reddish, a short bus ride away), his intention to haunt his wife if he dies first and a cover of Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. There were three poets (and sadly I don't know their names but all were were excellent): a young woman with personal poetry about her body and autism; a young man with laugh out loud funny poems about getting the number 50 bus from East Didsbury to Salford and middle aged men who say nothing's happened in Manchester since Factory, that the old days were better and that Beetham Tower is too tall; and a male poet with poetry filled with righteous anger, about politics, givng up watching the news for reasons of self- preservation, life, near death and the NHS. There was a stand up comic whose main theme was being a worrier and the things to worry about and lastly the excellent Test Card Girl, a one woman act, keys and vocals playing synth/ folk. The event was hosted by David Scott, a Manchester radio and Twitter who has recently published an alternative history of Manchester since the 90s titled Mancunians (which I'm half way through and enjoying a lot- he is ten years or so younger than me so sees the city and its culture in a different way which is always a good thing to expose yourself to. The range of contributors to the book is varied and interesting too).

Mike Garry is Manchester's foremost wordsmith, a performance poet and librarian who always puts on a good show, who can veer skillfully from funny to hard hitting to emotive and back again. His best known works are Gorton Girls Know All The Words To Songs By Chaka Khan and (mainly) his tribute to Tony Wilson, St Anthony- An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson. Mike gives us ninety minutes tonight and in a small venue like this shows he's capable of bringing the house down. There's no need to ask people to be quiet while he's on- everyone is silent while he speaks and sings. At times, between poems, to keep the flow and the mood going Mike finishes a poem and asks/ instructs us not to clap, as he moves straight into his next work, giving a sense that it's all part of a bigger piece, a life's work. He opens by approaching the mic and singing, lines about it being a very cold sea and a very deep sea. He then segues into a poem about immigration, migrants and their children crossing the Channel and the lack of humanity that's seen in the tone of the debate about these people, undertaking huge risks. He talks about football, and his love/ hate relationship with the BBC (and the money they offered him to write something for the Beeb's coverage of today's all Manchester cup final- at first he wanted to refuse it, as a United fan unable to write about City. The money he tells us soon changed his mind- he reads a poem about the sky being blood red but then switches it so it's sky blue). He reads and performs a mixture of old poems and new ones, some so new the only place they exist is on his phone. He can fire off words at a million miles an hour and stop suddenly, delivering heavy truths and slices of life. Mike jokes with us that he's become obsessed with death and that his poems are mainly now about death- and they may be so, but really they are about life, and loss (which becomes part of life as you age), and they are celebrations of life and lives. 

When Mike kicks into St. Anthony I find myself, seated near the back, mouthing the words to myself as he says them. It's a poem that often moves me when I listen to the recorded version and it doesn't fail to do so tonight. His next poem floors me and Lou, a poem called Son, written for his son who now lives in New Zealand, with lines about him being so far away, wanting to see him and wanting to hug him. Given our situation with Isaac's death eighteen months ago almost to the day, it has a predictable effect on us both, both in tears as Mike speaks. He stretches the evening out, pushing the time limit and giving us more, the audience of a hundred or so lapping up every word. At the finale, he gathers his things from the stage- books, phone, coat- packs into his bag and puts his jacket on, all the while still reciting his lines and then with no little drama delivers the last line and walking off the stage and exiting into the toilet laving the room briefly silent and then in applause.

I've seen Mike four times in recent years, once at the old Granada Studio building for the launch of the St. Anthony single in 2015, once at a free, open air event in Altrincham a few years ago, attended by a few dozen people and most recently supporting John Cooper Clarke at the Bridgewater Hall in 2022. The performance at Bask this week outdid them all- spellbinding stuff from a master of his craft. 

Friday, 2 June 2023

WRF Two

WRF, a series for Fridays celebrating remixes by Andrew Weatherall focusing on the lesser known or overlooked remixes, began last week with the 2011 remix of Allice Gold's Runaway Love. Today's remix jumps forwards two years by which point Andrew was so firmly back in the remix game and so on it in terms of quality that a list of remixes released in 2013 is almost an alternative best of album-

  • Trentemoller: Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider Go! (Andrew Weatherall Prinz Remix and Sky 81 Mix)
  • Toy: Dead And Gone (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
  • Baris K: 200 (Asphodells Remix)
  • Madness: Death Of A Rude Boy (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
  • Emiliana Torrini: Speed Of Dark (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
  • Moby and Wayne Coyne: Another Perfect Life (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
  • Primal Scream: 2013 (Andrew Weatherall Remix and Dub)
  • Jagwar Ma: Come Save Me (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

In the midst of this purple patch came Andrew's remix of The Emperor Machine. The remixes above, done with Timothy J. Fairplay as trusted assistant and engineer (and in The Asphodells, whose album was released in 2013 also, musical partner), there can be found sky scraping cosmic dub, thumping glam rock/ Brix- era Fall, dubbed out ska, twisted Turkish acid, widescreen joyous Balearica and hypnotic krautrock heaven and uptempo indie- dance- I'll let you decide which of these labels applies to which remix. The remix of Like A Machine stands out from all those, darker and deeper, more electronic and more acid, fat bass and synth arpeggios, relentless Belgian New Beat, more the sound of sweaty basements than the open air. For vocals just two voices repeating two words, 'electric desire'. 


The Emperor Machine is Andy Meecham from Staffordshire whose first taste of musical fame and glory came with Bizarre Inc. Their rave singles were massive in the late 80s and early 90s, in the clubs and the charts- singles such as Bizarre Theme, Such A Feeling, Playing With Knives and I'm Gonna Get You. He was in dub disco purveyors Chicken Lips. His back catalogue as the Emperor Machine is wide and extensive. Recently he's remixed and collaborated with A Certain Ratio, including in 2021 to bring things to a neat conclusion on a track dedicated to Andrew.  




Thursday, 1 June 2023

We Stand In The Atlantic

This came out in April 2022- Coyote's Balearic dub re- edit of Kate Bush's Nocturne, released on the Notts duo's Magic Wand label. It's stunning.

Starting out with a very slow drumbeat which a few seconds in shifts up a gear, as if changing the rpm selector from 33 to 45, Kate's voice stutters in and then her vocal in full over the most gorgeous drifting synths. Kate's lyrics are cosmic, loved up and luscious, singing of wanting more, of being one with it all, of floating, of being alone while standing in the sea, of becoming panoramic. An acoustic guitar begins to seep in, muted but there, and then it moves to the fore with a finger picked part, the stars and the sea and the dust all coming together in the lyrics and the music. There are still some copies of Coyote's edit on vinyl around in some parts of the internet- I found one recently. The original version of Nocturne appeared on Kate's 2005 album Aerial.