The Seagull

Today's boarded up pub is The Seagull, Crimdon Dene, on the outskirts of Hartlepool. We had a few days in a caravan up there in April- the pub sits at the entrance of the caravan site. When I posted this on a social media platform a friend (of a friend) commented that it was the pub he and his friends used to drink in when they were teenagers. There were a few pubs in the area that were open but The Seagull was by no means the only abandoned one. 

Author and film- maker Michael Smith is a son of Hartlepool. His books The Giro Playboy and Unreal City are highly recommended. In 2013 he recorded sections of Unreal City with Andrew Weatherall, his East Yorkshire tones perfect over Andrew and Nina Walsh's ambient backdrops. More recently he recorded an EP with Steve Queralt, bassist from Ride. The EP, Sun Moon Town, had four tracks, Steve's music ranging from swelling post rock to glitchy electronics to psychedelic dub. In July Steve and Michael released a further version of Sun Moon Town, eight new takes on the songs with remixes from GLOK, Nina Walsh, Flug 8 and Nandele together with four instrumentals. Sun Moon Town Versions is at Bandcamp.

Much of Michael's writing and spoken word material deals with a resigned bewilderment at the nature of 21st century capitalism and the effect it has on our cities. Michael is a flaneur, one who wanders the city observing, a stroller who meanders, something the tracks on Sun Moon Town demonstrate brilliantly. 

The Flug 8 remix of Glitches is a throbbing, pulsing electronic monster, nine minutes long with Michael talking about finding himself in a a new part of the city, a re-developed hyper- capitalist shopping centre (Westfield) surrounded by shops, flats and skyscrapers, glass and steel, cardboard cut out policemen in shop windows to ward off shoplifters. As the drums kick away and synths swell, Michael sees the city mutating into a megacity with million pound customers, where the windows of shops selling suits promise that you are 'living the dream of a beautiful tomorrow', leading Michael to ask, 'What kind of a cunt's dream is this?' before speculating about the end of the world, the euphoric techno coupled with/ playing against Michael's prose. Dance while the world ends. 

On In A Wonderland he describes a return to London and his memories of his old life there. Nina Walsh takes the original and fills it out for twelve minutes, a wash of ambient sound, strings and synths. Unfolding gradually the Wonk On The Gnosis Mix, Michaels' voice wanders flaneur style, ending up with the tale of mushroom picking with a chef as Nina's soundscape rising and falling. 

Steve's bandmate Andy Bell records as GLOK and contributes a remix. The GLOK remix of Chaldean Oracle is chiming, propulsive cosmische, synths and drum machines gliding away into an infinite distance, bassline pumping and as a child/ robot voice intones in German. 

On the Nandele remix of Vespertine warm synths and keys and pattering electronic drums form a glittering backdrop to Michael's ever compelling words, prose describing a moment of blissed out contentment and some 'strange magic'.