Two Years

Isaac died two years ago today. In normal terms two years would seem like a long time but under these circumstances it doesn't feel like very long at all. Part of me still thinks he might come in through the front door at some point, dropped off by his college bus after a week away. I can recall the last few days at home and then in Wythenshawe hospital so clearly and vividly that it could have happened yesterday and it doesn't take much for me to be back in the room in the hospital with him, those days and hours that led up to him leaving us, at 1.45pm on Tuesday 30th November 2023. Or standing in the car park on the phone to my parents. Or the walk I took behind the trolley with the two porters through the hospital corridors to leave him at the mortuary. Or arriving back at home in the dark without him, the three of us suddenly in a new world we didn't ask for. I don't think about these things that often but I have done this week in those moments where I haven't been distracted by something else, driving to and from work especially. I'll be glad when today is over I think, another anniversary navigated and survived. The anniversary of his death and his birthday exactly a week earlier are paired in away which is really difficult. Last week we took him some goodies for his birthday. Today we'll go to the cemetery and take him some flowers and try to remember him as he was. 

Nick Cave writes about grief a lot. At his Red Hand Files he encourages people to write in to him and he'll reply, unfiltered. A lot of people write to him about their own grief or his and he replies eloquently and with experience and wisdom. A lot of it rings true with me. On Carnage, the album he made with Warren Ellis in 2021, an album I bought while in a record shop in Manchester in the hazy, unimaginable weeks after Isaac died, there's a song called Lavender Fields. Carnage has many great, explosive, funny, horrific and image laden songs, songs about white elephants, Black Lives Matter, Botticelli Venuses with penises and the hand of God. Lavender Fields is none of these things.

Lavender Fields

On Lavender Fields Nick sings of being 'appallingly alone on a singular road', walking through the lavender fields and how the flowers stain his skin. He describes the world as furious and how he is over it (the world). The line, 'Sometimes I hear my name, oh where did you go?', I assume is about his son Arthur, who died in 2015 (and the whole song is I think, although Nick said at Red Hand Files that the song is about change, about 'moving from one state to another'). Warren Ellis' music is simple and stately, rising and falling organ/ synth/ strings, church music. It becomes elegiac and choral, the backing vocals swelling as the synths ascend and then fades out slowly. 

'Sometimes I see a pale bird wheeling/ In the sky/ But that is just a feeling/ A feeling when you die'. 

Nick then shifts up again, emotionally and spiritually, the song transporting him (and us- well me anyway)...

'We don't ask who/ And we don't ask why/ There is a kingdom in the sky'

At Red Hand Files recently he was asked about writing about grief through music. This is a part of his reply...

When I started to write Ghosteen, my intention wasn’t to write a record about the death of my son, but as I scribbled away, Arthur inserted himself into the process. He became the ruling force, perched there at the end of every song to exert his sovereignty. He showed me how to write the record and I simply had no choice in the matter.

Nowadays, when I sit down and begin to write, I feel the dead, all the dead, ferrying the words forward. They are not necessarily the subject of the songs, rather they are the spiritual energy that runs through them. The dead are always with us, holding us in their sway. We, the living, are the exuberant and temporary anima of their departure. As songwriters we scratch away, writing ourselves into existence in order to enliven the spirits of those who have passed on.

I can't articulate or explain exactly what Nick means here but I get it. It reminds me of the poem we had read at the graveside, The Dead by Billy Collins. 

'The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,

which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes'

A few weeks ago I met Mat Ducasse aka Matty Skylab. Mat makes music, once as part of Skylab and more recently under his own name. I've posted some of his music here before- Love Theme and Bunny's Lullaby are both impossibly beautiful, cosmic ambient pieces, profound and emotive. In September he put out a two track release called Juniper Songs and I'm not going to attempt to describe the two songs on it, I'm just going to point you towards them. You can find them here. We had a chat for a few minutes and we asked each other how we were. 'We abide, we endure', Mat said to me, and those words are as true as anything anyone has said to me recently. Thank you Mat. 

Stay Down

In all the excitement about the 30th anniversary of Sabresonic the 25th birthday of Stay Down got a bit overlooked. Released in October 1998 Stay Down was Two Lone Swordsmen's follow up to the four sides of vinyl explorations of 1996's The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate) but doesn't sound anything like it. Like all the TLS releases, Stay Down sounds like it exists in a world of its own, it's not a staging post on the journey to another album, it's not part of a progression, it's an album that is in and of itself. It's also the Two Lone Swordsmen album which I think has grown the most since its release, revealing new depths and nuances. 

Stay Down is twelve short tracks, each one a self contained piece of ambient techno. The sound is deep, submerged, subaquatic ambience with drum loops and sub bass, and twinkles, bloops, blurps, stutters, synth stabs, bleeps, strings and samples, Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood operating like the pair of deep sea divers on the cover, drifting in a world far below/ aprt from the one everyone else was living in in 1998. It's analogue, ambient and noodly but focussed too, one track flowing to the next. The section where We Change The Frequency kicks in is a moment of excitement, a change of pace and tempo, but mainly it flows by, like the slow motion bursts of squid ink and spine bubbles that two of the tracks are named after.

The track titles are themselves a series of cryptic, tantalising Weatherallian clues to be pondered and pursued. Two of them have taken on a poignancy not intended on release, both beautiful, low key ambient moments - Light The Last Flare and album closer As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye... The opening track Hope We Never Surface sets the tone as far as song titles go, a suggestion to stay below, to stay within the grooves of this record, to be present inside it. The Big Clapper, Alpha School and Ivy And Lead all conjure up vivid imagery. Mr Paris's Monsters is a mystery. We Discordians (Must Stick Apart) is named after Discordianism and everything that that entails, the number 23 included (I was told recently that when producing numbered vinyl editions and art prints Andrew always kept number 23 for himself). No Red Stopping was named after Andrew arrived for a DJ gig in a newly liberated nation in the former Yugoslavia and was picked up by a driver to take him to the club, who then sped through every red light at every junction between airport and nightclub. Eventually, knuckles white and tension rising, Andrew asked the driver why he didn't stop for red lights. Snipers, was the reply. 

We Discordians (Must Stick Apart)

There's precious little information on the sleeve other than the track titles and recording details- recorded at Rotter Golf Club, copyright Warp Records, made in England, mastered by 'amidst very unprofessional behaviour' Frank Arkwright- and Andrew's very recognisable handwriting. The only extra is a quote via Primal Scream's Andrew Innes and the source of the record's title, Andrew's advice in what to do in conflict situations- 'sometimes in a fight it's best just to stay down'. 

Geordie Walker

The news of Geordie Walker's death in Prague following a stroke was announced at the weekend, drawing the curtain on one of the most innovative and distinctive guitarists of the post- punk period (and beyond). Alongside Jaz Coleman Kevin/ Geordie was the only constant member of the group, forming Killing joke with the singer in 1979 after replying to an advert, his guitar playing was enormous, his Gibson hollow bodied guitar tuned down a whole tone lower than standard tuning. His set up and style, melody lines as opposed to solos, crunching metallic rhythm parts, ringing feedback, a seemingly effortless approach that created the sound of several guitars playing at once. 

Some music from the Killing Joke back catalogue in tribute to Geordie Walker.

Turn To Red was from Killing Joke's debut release, a 7" EP from October 1979. They were always into the idea of remixing their music, and the multitude of dub versions and remixes are all worth investigating. This dub of Turn To Red is fast, heavy dub, rimshots, echo, noise and thump.

Turn To Red Dub

Eighties came out in the middle of the 80s, a single and also on the album Night Time. Kurt Cobain famously purloined the guitar riff for Nirvana's Come As You Are. The Serious Dance Mix is as hard as anything from 1984, a stomp with Geordie's guitars up front. In fact, it's a song with everything up front. 

Eighties (Serious Dance Mix)

In 1992 Thrash of The Orb took Requiem and gave it the full 1992 Orb remix treatment, with sound effects, space and echo, bass, coiled guitar parts, stuttering synth parts, rain and wind and whatever else he fancied, the song stretched out for eleven minutes, trance dub, a long strange trip down the river. 

Requiem (A Floating Leaf Always Reaches The Sea Dub Mix)

In 1993 Andrew Weatherall played his first Essential Mix. Those tuning in back in November 1993 or listening later on tape, copies passed around and re- copied time after time, would have heard Killing Joke's Millenium opening the show, not the first time Weatherall confounded expectations and played something unexpected and made it work, Killing Joke sounding perfectly at home among the early 90s techno of Sabres Of Paradise, Plastikman, LFO and Black Dog. 

RIP Geordie Walker. 

Monday's Long Song

Back in May 2021 The Orb's Alex Paterson and old friend and colleague Andy Falconer released an album as Sedibus called The Heavens. It was a single disc, eight track album that arrived in amongst a slew of Orb related albums, Orb albums, Or remix albums, OSS albums and more besides but one that really struck a chord with me, there was something about the samples, the ambient dub house and lightness of touch that really worked. Alex and Andy have got a second Sedibus album ready to go, this one titled SETI (Search For Extra- Terrestrial Intelligence), out next February, just five tracks and three of them part of a three piece suite. This track, Purgatory, came out last Thursday, a nine minute space flight with BBC announcers and mission control samples, piano, a gentle chug and that widescreen cosmic ambience that Alex does so well. And has done for over three decades. 

This is Papillons from The Heavens, a track that starts with a voice asking big questions about space exploration, neolithic people, the stars and what people saw and wondered when they looked up, and follows it with ten minutes of ambient music. 

Papillons

Forty Five Minutes Of The KLF

On Thursday 23rd November 2023 The KLF re- appeared with a website KLF Kare (providing 'branding solutions to independently owned care homes'), a song (a cover/ version/ premix of Harry Nillson's Everybody's Talkin' At Me, with Ricardo Da Force on vocals and a lengthy introductory sample from Top of The Pops. You can hear it here) and in Toxteth, Liverpool a night time event including the laying of bricks for The People's Pyramid, a procession across the Mersey and an afterparty at Future Yard in Birkenhead. 23rd November 2023 was always likely to be a day of KLF action, the number 23 being highly significant in KLF world and Discordianism and 23rd November being significant previously in KLF activities. 

The 23rd November was also Isaac's birthday and the age he was when he died. I've written before about 23 and Isaac, including the fact that I was reading John Higgs' book about the KLF when he died and how when I picked the book up a few weeks later, the first chapter I read was about the importance of 23 to The KLF and in Discordianism. When I woke up on Thursday, which was a really tough day all round, I found The KLF in my various social media feeds, the above 23 graphic jumping out at me. A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me a photograph of the famous KLF ice cream van, which turned up at a KLF event she attended, the number 23 emblazoned on its side. I left a comment on one of her posts, coincidentally (or not) 23 minutes after she posted it. Etc etc etc. 

Today's Sunday mix therefore suggested itself- demanded itself really. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The KLF

• I Believe In Rock 'n' Roll
• Jerusalem On The Moors
• Kylie Said To Jason (Full length Version)
• Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)
• 3 a.m. Eternal (Blue Danube Orbital)
• It's Grim Up North Part 1
• Last Train To Trancentral (White Room Version)
• What Time Is Love? Live At Trancentral (Radio Edit)

I Believe In Rock 'n' Roll is from Bill Drummond's solo album The Man, an album recorded and released by Creation in 1986 when he was 33.3 years old and ready for 'a revolution in my life'. This song is fairly self explanatory and contains lyrical and musical references that would appear in his public life thereafter- pedal steel guitar (Chill Out), Penkiln Burn (his website) and his belief that Elvis is king among them. 

Jerusalem On the Moors was the fourth track on the CD single release of It's Grim Up North, a weatherblasted orchestral take that fades into techno. It's Grim Up North was recorded as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu and released as a single in 1991, a list of northern towns set to industrial  techno, two men with the world at feet and the freedom to do whatever they wanted to. It's Grim Up North Part 1 is ten minutes long, starting out lyrically in Bolton and ending in Cleethorpes, taking in Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley, Bradford, Buxton, Crewe, Warrington, Widnes, Wigan, Leeds, Northwich, Nantwich, Knutsford, Hull, Sale, Salford, Southport, Leigh, Kirkby, Kearsley, Keighley, Maghull, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Oldham, Lancs, Grimsby, Glossop, Hebden Bridge, Brighouse, Bootle, Featherstone, Speke, Runcorn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Barrow, Morecambe, Macclesfield, Lytham St Annes, Clitheroe, Pendlebury, Prestwich, Preston, York, Skipton, Scunthorpe, Scarborough-on-Sea, Chester, Chorley, Cheadle, Hulme, Ormskirk, Accrington, Leigh, Ossett, Otley, Ilkley Moor, Sheffield, Manchester, Castleford, Skem, Doncaster, Dewsbury, Halifax, Bingley, Bramhall and the M62 in between. 

The KLF released Kylie Said To Jason in 1989, the only survivor from the pair's road trip film, The White Room, with the titular stars of Neighbours and SAW set to a track that is the full fruits of Drummond and Cauty's Pet Shop Boys obsession. It was designed to sell bucket loads of records and establish The KLF in the charts. It failed to make the top 100. 

Justified And Ancient was released as a single on 25th November 1991 and while typing this I see that this is today's date, thirty two years later, which wasn't planned but doesn't surprise me either. Do you need me to explain the genius of this song, of Tammy Wynette, stadium house, King Boy D, Rockman Rock and an ice cream van, all bound for Mu Mu Land? You do not. Bring the beat back. 

3 a.m. Eternal was The KLF's second monster, a top ten hit. This mix from the 12", the Blue Danube Orbital Mix, is by The Orb, a sound collage/ ambient house version and sounds like part of Chill Out that went missing and resurfaced, the Blue Danube waltz section in the middle the interruption to the chilled out bliss. 

Last Train To Trancentral was a single in 1990, released as per in multiple versions and mixes, Pure Trance, Live From The Lost Continent, Iron Horse and several others. This is The White Room version, from the album with rap from Ricardo da Force and vocals from Black Steel, Maxine Harvey and Wanda Dee. Trancentral is The KLF's spiritual home, a place they were bound for, Mu Mu Land, the lost continent. It was also their recording studio in Stockwell, south London (also Jimmy Cauty's squat)

I had to include What Time Is Love?, in many ways the definitive KLF song, a genuine acid house classic, one that straddles borders and slips into The Live At Trancentral Version came out in 1990, an extraordinary moment of brilliance as the sincere, surreal and chaotic world of Drummond and Cauty collided with mainstream culture and the stadium house trilogy went overground. The radio Edit here brings this mix in at just shy of forty five minutes and so would fit on one side of a c90 cassette. As the beats hammer away, the siren blares and the rave riff repeats, let me ask you a question... 

Saturday Live

Sons Of Slough, the duo of Duncan Gray and Ian Weatherall, were reborn in 2021 with an album called Bring Me Sunshine, seven new tracks of squelchy chuggy nu- disco/ acid house with a couple of remixes thrown in for good measure. Duncan and Ian had re- united previously that year to record a heartfelt cover of New Order's In A Lonely Place as IWDG, releasing it as a 12" for Record Shop Day with remixes by David Holmes, Hardway Bros and Keith Tenniswood. Following that burst of activity (and a remix of Primal Scream earlier this year) they played three gigs in 2023, one in their home town, one at The Golden Lion in August and one in late September at Convenanza in Carcasonne. If we apply New Order's standards of what constituted a global tour in the mid- 80s*, then that's a Sons Of Slough world tour achieved in 2023. 

An EP came out yesterday, three tracks recorded live completely as played at Convenanza, in the courtyard of the castle, straight from the sound desk with no overdubs. I saw them play at The Golden Lion, a night to remember with a full on performance from the duo and by all accounts Convenanza was even better. 

The first track is One Up From Five, thumping tom toms, an upfront bassline, a keening guitar line and some lovely melodica. A sleek, dark groove with a big dubby undertow. It's followed by Boston Crab, a six minute thumper, a more urgent track with an always rising, distorted bassline and some Detroit inflections, synth toplines dancing about, as the rhythm pushes on and on. 

The EP finishes with Without A Plan, a low rumble of bass and skittering percussion, whooshes and rushes, lights glancing off mirror balls and 21st century acid chug bouncing off the stone walls of a Medieval castle in south west France. There are some synth/ vocoder breakdowns that set pulses racing and ominous keyboard parts. When the vocoder resumes at four and a half minutes, there's a hint of Without A Plan turning into Man To Man Meets Man Parish's Male Stripper, a cheeky nod to the early 80s perhaps, chug and throb and heavily distorted robotic voice coming together perfectly. 

The latter two tracks were both filmed in this clip from the live gig in Slough in July.

Sons Of Slough (Live EP 2023) is available at Bandcamp and other digital retailers. They've got t- shirts too.

* The story, possibly apocryphal, is that Tony Wilson demanded a New Order world tour to bring some cash into the Factory coffers. Bernard was unwilling to tour but eventually relented telling the Factory boss, 'ok Tony ok, we'll do a world tour. The first gig's in Macclesfield, you choose the other three'.

You're On Your Own Now

1995's Top Of The Pops repeats continue to reward, frustrate and amuse in equal parts. This recent clip was definitely in the reward section. April, 1995, Bjork singing Army Of Me, a piledriving and huge sounding song with Ms Gudmundsdottir issuing stern words to a boyfriend. In the clip she looks extraordinary, standing on the very lip of the stage, the audience visibly shrinking back slightly in her presence, dressed in an enormous black, floor length puffball skirt and a Ren And Stimpy t- shirt. 

Army Of Me was a single from her second solo album, 1995's Post. Co- written by Graham Massey, it is led by a weather system of a bassline, one that could have been borrowed from the heaviest metal song and then slowed down and made louder. Bjork issues instructions - 'stand up/ You've got to manage/ You're alright/ There's nothing wrong/ Self sufficiency please'. Futuristic modern dance/ rock and streets ahead of the rest of the pack. In classic random Top of The Pops style, they go straight from Bjork to Deuce, a shockingly identikit two boy two girl Europop foursome who finished third in the race to represent the UK at Eurovision. Watching the episode segue from Bjork's otherworldly and electrifying performance to Deuce is one of those moments where you just have to shake your head and applaud the brain scrambling quirks of mid 90s pop television. 

Army Of Me

Two weeks later she was back with Skunk Anansie for a different version of the song, an episode presented by a very cool looking Whigfield, with a version that is furiously mid- 90s industrial rock, Skin and Bjork giving it all and singing live. 

The Skunk Anansie version came out on CD2 back when record companies released multiple versions across multiple releases. This was one where both CDs were packed full of goodies.  

Army Of Me (feat. Skunk Anansie)

The CD single also included Graham Massey's Masseymix which distorts everything further, slows the pitch down and chops it up, a total deconstruction job. 

Army Of Me (Masseymix)

In honour of Bjork's t- shirt in the first Army Of Me performance, here's some classic Ren and Stimpy, Space Madness, with Ren losing his mind. Again. 

Twenty Five

Today, 23rd November, is Isaac's birthday. He would have been twenty five today had he lived. His birthday last year, the first since his death, was very difficult. I'm not sure if we thought it would get easier with time but maybe we hoped the second would be less rough than the first. First anniversaries are terrible, the loss hitting in new ways each time a date is reached. This second birthday since he died doesn't really feel any better, it hurts just as much, and the build up to it since November began three weeks ago and especially over the last week, have been just as hard. I broke a filling last week, caused by me clenching my teeth and jaw in my sleep. I wake up knowing I've been doing it. I've found myself doing it while driving and while typing. His birthday is massively overshadowed by his death, exactly a week later. They are tied together- and then it's straight into December, the anniversary of his funeral and Christmas. 

People who have gone leave themselves in those left behind in all sorts of ways. On Tuesday night I popped to the supermarket for some bread. I wandered down the crisps aisle and as I passed the tubes of Pringles could almost hear him next to me asking me to buy some for him. I picked up a tube of Sour Cream and Chives and headed to the drinks section and to get a blackcurrant Fruit Shoot for him too. For a moment it felt very futile, buying snacks and a birthday card for someone who has died, and I paused to wonder if I was being a bit stupid or sentimental, but I put them through the scanner and paid for them anyway. Walking round Sainsburys while fighting back tears isn't a great place to be either. 

Today we'll go to the cemetery to see him, wish him a happy birthday, and leave some offerings for him. I'm not sure what else we can do. Some day in the future his birthday may feel like a celebration for us I hope but two years on from the last one we celebrated with him, it still feels like a loss. 

This track by Laraaji is track number 25 on an ambient compilation put together by Coldcut and Mixmaster Morris called @0, released in November 2021 (the month of Isaac's 23rd birthday and the month he died- which I hadn't realised until I looked up the album's release date for this post so there's something providential or just coincidental about that). Illusion Of Time is a lovely, calming six minutes of ambient music courtesy of Laraaji, with piano and zither and probably other stringed instruments as well. Happy birthday Isaac. x

Illusion Of Time

Crystal Beams

Mighty Force have had a very good 2023, the Exeter label putting out several high quality electronic releases, albums from Boxheater Jackson, Fluffy Inside, Shrieky, KAMS and M-Paths and EPs from AP Organism and Davd Harrow plus some compilations. The latest release is a three track EP from Yorkshire Machines titled Firing Up. Yorkshire Machines are a duo with a history, Mark Franklin and Stuart Brown, with back pages taking in Warp, 90s clubbing and bleep techno and goth. 

Crystal Beams arrives slowly, long synth chords and some dramatic tension before the bassline is released, more tension builds, ghostly voices rattle about and then the acid kicks in. Dark and intense and very good.

Track two is the magnificently named Existential Dread O' Clock, a voice intoning about time, matter and motion and then slow motion clanking drums, heavy duty rhythms and the sound of steel mills, acid basslines, and lots of lovely bleeps. 

The third track is LS3 03 opens with a Yorkshire voice, Sean Bean,  talking about shopping centres and investments (sampled I think from the televised version of David Peace's Red Riding series from a few years ago I think) followed by the bleepiest of bleep techno, a wild, trippy and speaker busting six minutes, the Roland 303 being put through its paces. Crowd noises, echo, snares, kick drums, rumbling bass, acid squiggles, the lot- and finally, 'this is the north!'

Firing Up is available at the Mighty Force Bandcamp site. 

Yes

This song, Yes by McAlmont & Butler, came out in mid- May 1995. In eighteen months time it will be thirty years old, which seems ridiculous- as does the idea that the mid- 90s are now three decades ago. Bernard Butler and David McAlmont had both left their previous bands in acrimony, Bernard walking out of Suede and David out of Thieves, and when they bumped into each other, in the Jazz Cafe in Camden, both were looking for some kind of statement to announce their return and to kick back against their former bandmates. Bernard had written the song as an instrumental and was coming out of 'a very dark place'. It was , he has said, 'a very liberating song'. McAlmont had a verse and the voice of an angel. Between them they recorded this enormous piece of 60s inspired, Wall of Sound pop music, a song to be sung loudly and in that sweet spot between anger and celebration. 

Yes

I turned 25 four days after Yes was released. Isaac would have been 25 this week had he lived. When I heard Yes last week it struck a chord with me, a song about survival and sticking up two fingers to the world, but sitting here typing this now, three days before Isaac's birthday, I'm not sure I do feel that much better. It still feels really shit. 

Yes, to paraphrase McAlmont, I do need November to be over. 

David McAlmont has recorded an album with Hifi Sean, a producer, songwriter, musician and DJ and also the former/ current singer of The Soup Dragons. Their album Happy Ending came out either last year or this year- the full vinyl release was this year so I think it counts as a 2023 album- and is a joy from start to finish, a beautiful stew of dance rhythms, synths, Bollywood strings, pulsing bass, piano and McAlmont's extraordinary voice. A psychedelic electronic soul soundtrack according to Last Night From Glasgow, and they ain't wrong. 

All In The World

Monday's Long Songs

One of this blog's readers Spencer regularly sends me musical tips and recommendations and he's rarely wrong. On Friday he sent me a link to an EP by Rosco, The Call of The Cosmos (volume Unit Number 2). Rosco, aka Sterling Roswell, was the some time drummer in Spacemen 3 (he left in 1989 having played on The Perfect Prescription and the live album Performance). He also writes, records, plays guitar and other instruments, produces and fronts The Darkside. Spencer was listening to Call Of The Cosmos, three pints in admittedly, and sent me the link, calling it 'mind melting electronic psyche'. 

Opening track, The Call of The Cosmos, is twenty minutes and twenty seconds long, more a long, strange dream than a piece of music. It is sounds and colours and yes, mind melting electronic psyche. Set aside twenty minutes of your day and listen to it here.

There's more- Trip Inside This House is eight minutes of cardboard box drums, swirling organ, peels of feedback, sound effects and drones. A Second Variety is a walk on the moors after dark, wind rushing through the speakers, ominous drones and chanting. Eventually a pipe of some kind plays a lament. There are three shorter songs too, Ojos En Llamos 8mm Film Soundtrack, Watkins Rapier 44 Blues and El Rosco Rides Again, all of which drink from the same well. Nothing on Call of The Cosmos is conventional or expected, it's experimental psychedelia and totally absorbing. Listen/ buy here. 

This is from The Perfect Prescription, the second Spacemen 3 album, released in 1987- the year is there in the song's lyrics, '1987, all I want to do is fly'. Come Down Easy roots the Spacemen's music in gospel and the blues, specifically the song In My Time Of Dying, a song first released by Blind Willie Johnson back in 1928. Spacemen 3 turn repetition into into religious experience, the rhythm and riff repeated endlessly.

Come Down Easy

Forty Minutes Of The Fall

Putting together a forty minute mix of songs by The Fall is the easiest one I've ever done. 

• Go into the folder marked The Fall and start selecting songs.
• Sequence them into an order that is pleasing.
• Note that this process could be repeated three, four , five more times over and the quality would not dip.

Mark E. Smith famously said that 'if it's me and your nan on bongos, it's The Fall' but there's no doubting the musicians who came and went through the ranks over the years added a significant amount to the songs the group wrote and played. The songs here would sound different if Brix Smith, Steve Hanley, Craig Scanlon, Simon Wolstencroft, Karl Burns, Marc Riley, Martin Bramah, Spencer Birtwistle and all the rest hadn't been members of The Fall. Mark E. Smith may have been an intolerant and difficult person to be in a band with as time went on but he was also a singular and endlessly electrifying presence, as the songs below demonstrate. The lyrics and vocal delivery are of course central and the ones here find room for the Kennedy assassination, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Frank Zappa, Australians, Oprah Winfrey, Nelson, Tolstoy, Jeanette Fletcher, forty year olds in coloured shirts, the Flintstones, Star Wars, Nietzsche and the hip priest. 

Forty Minutes Of The Fall

• Cruiser's Creek
• Australians In Europe
• Free Range
• Oswald Defense Lawyer
• Touch Sensitive
• Two Librans
• Big New Prinz
• Blood Outta Stone
• High Tension Line
• Dead Beat Descendant

Cruiser's Creek is a single released in November 1985, one of the first songs written and recorded for This Nation's Saving Grace, when Brix joined the band and upped the ante a little in terms of sound and melody. John Leckie produced. The intro, MES shouting through a megaphone or over a tannoy, 'What really went on there? We only have this excerpt', is a brilliant way to open any song/ mix/ compilation tape.

Australians In Europe was a B-side to Hit The North, released in October 1987. Hit The North is a great single, 80s indie/ alternative night dancefloor gold.

Free Range came out in 1992, on the album Code: Selfish and a single in the same year. There are dance/ techno influences finding their way in to The Fall's sound, partly brought by new recruit on keys Dave Bush. At some point in the mid- 90s Andrew Weatherall was lined up to produce a Fall album but it became clear to him that his way of working ('You will give complete control of songs and production over to me and I will turn the vision in my head into a wildly expansive album') and Mark's ('I am The Fall and I say what it sounds like') would not be conducive and he backed out. A Weatherall produced Fall album is one of life's great What If's....

Oswald Defense Lawyer is from 1988's The Frenz Experiment, my first Fall album and hence one of my favourites (I think it ranks fairly low among The Fall's cognoscenti). There are Fall fans who say the cover of The Kinks song Victoria (also from this album) and There's A Ghost In My House are the worst songs The Fall did. Similarly there are Clash fans who hate Should I Stay Or Should I Go and Rock The Casbah because they sold in large quantities and were hits. Generally, I distrust these views. A good song is a good song regardless of how many or few people bought it.

Touch Sensitive came out in 1999. I'd drifted from The Fall by this point and this single bought me back, a dancefloor friendly, catchy as you like, thundering rumble of Mancabilly, filled with MES one liners. It opened the album The Marshall Suite, the 20th Fall album and last one in the 20th century. 

Two Librans came out on 2000's The Unutterable, the first Fall album of the 21st century, and proof that the band and Smith were as vital as they'd ever been.

Big New Prinz is a contender for my favourite Fall song, the first song on  October 1988's I Am Kurious Oranj (either my second or third Fall album purchased I think). The album was conceived as the soundtrack to a ballet performed by Michael Clark and Company, a performance based on William of Orange's ascension to the English throne in 1588, the so- called Glorious Revolution. Big New Prinz is based on 1982's Hip Priest. The album also contains their cover of Jerusalem which is priceless.

Blood Outta Stone was on 1990's The Dredger EP, a four track 12" led by the cover of White Lightning. It was later on added to CD re- issues of Shift- Work.

High Tension Line is another favourite of mine, also from 1990, a period when they seemed to release 12" singles almost weekly. It was produced by Grant Showbiz who did a lot of good work with them around this time.

Dead Beat Descendant is prime late 80s Fall, the B-side to Cab It Up. The title apparently comes from an episode of The Flintstones, Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty sent into the 21st century by The Great Gazoo. The four of them are chased out of Fred's company by George Slate the 8000th, Fred's $4 loan from prehistory now ballooned into a $23 million debt, Slate shouting 'come back here you dead beat's descendants!'

And should you require it, here is Wilma using the word bollocks...

Unknown Territories

Rikki Turner has a past. He is a former Paris Angel, a veteran of Manchester bands The New Southern Electrikk and The Hurt and more recently San Pedro Collective. He has been working on a project recently that he says will be his last, that once it is done he will retire from music. Rikki always knows who to work with. His previous groups seen him write and play with among others Wags (a Paris Angel who went on to Black Grape), Suddi Raval (of Hardcore Uproar fame), Simon Wolstencroft (The Fall, pre- Stone Roses Stone Roses). 

His latest and last musical outlet is Unknown Territories, a collective based in Manchester's Spirit Studios, with Martin McLaren and bringing ex- Inspiral Carpet Tom Hingley on board along with Sean Crossey and Esther Maylor (from Heavy Salad) and with production courtesy of Callum Croston and Lewis Jones. Rikki wears his heart on his sleeve and has been sending me snippets of the forthcoming album for some time, always with the promise that it is for Isaac. The first fruits of Unknown Territories came out yesterday, a single called Broken...

Broken is heavy duty 21st century music, the lead vocals of Esther front and centre, underpinned by deep electronic bass and the tsk tsk tsk tsk of hi hats, skittish bleeps and crunching drums. There's more to follow with an album forthcoming featuring both singers and spoken word pieces, and a one off gig at The Eagle Inn, Salford, in December. 

Back in 1990 Paris Angels caught the wave of interest in Manchester bands following the explosion of 1988/ 89. The group were from east Manchester, the unfashionable side of the city, out in Guide Bridge and Ashton- under- Lyne. Regulars at The Hacienda and the Boardwalk they were soaking the influences that were in the air- 60s guitars, sequencers, dance rhythms, New Order's late 80s marriage of all those- kaleidoscopic sounds that saw them sign to Sheer Joy and release three singles, All On You (Perfume), Scope and I Understand, before they signed to Virgin for the album Sundew. 1990's All On You (Perfume) is the one everyone talks about (and rightly so) but Scope, released the same year, can also hold its own, both at the time and now, thirty three years later. 

Scope

Other Skies

Jesse Fahnestock and Emilia Harmony's new musical outfit Electric Blue Vision release a four track EP today on Brighton's Higher Love label, making a late dash for those lists that people are busy compiling at this point in the year. Jesse sent me a version of the original mix of Other Skies a while back and I was smitten from first play, the swirly organ intro and warm thud of bass joined by Emilia's whispery vocals, everything a lovely hazy shade of blue but tinged with some yellow and amber. 

Jesse has said he was aiming high with Other Skies, looking to Higher Than The Sun and One Dove's Fallen for inspiration. Other Skies has that widescreen, wide eyed ambient/ psychedelic feel, the drums and bass pushing it along but it has a sense of drift and yearning in the vocals too, Emilia singing, 'Can you help me to find my way? Do you know the way back home? I'm ready to go, I said I'm ready to go...'. It's late at night, the venue's closed and moved everyone left at the bar out onto the pavement, the streets are cold and lonely, home is calling. It's a lovely song and I can't recommend it enough. 

If you're not convinced by all of that, there are three remixes to turn your head. Balearic Ultras give it some heavy bass, drums and FX, filtering everything through a heat haze stripped back and minimal. The Tambores En Benirras remix goes for shimmer and shimmy, a slo mo thud of kick drum, twinkles of guitar and echoes all over the voices, a few lines isolated, 'up down spin me round', nodding in New Order's direction, and there's a piano line near the end that sends shivers up and down the central nervous system. Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray join forces again as Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown, a dubbed out, melodica led stomp, percussion rattling round and Emilia looped into infinity. The bass of Wobble and the ghost of Augustus Pablo battling it out in other skies. 

You can (and should) buy the Other Skies EP is here. 

Brothers, Sisters...

Every Wednesday for the last five weeks my friend Stevie at the Charity Chic blog has posted songs under the title Brothers, Sisters... and every Wednesday morning when I open up the internet and see his posts I hear this running through my head...

'Brothers, sisters, one day we will be free/ From fighting, violence, people crying in the streets...'

The warm pulse of bass and 125bpm drum track follow, running through my mind, the tom tom fill at the end of the 8th bar crash in, the synth strings start to play, the Roland handclaps and cowbells dink in and I'm swept away by Joe Smooth's 1987 single. Promised Land was/ is the song that, as much as any, suggested house music was an open invitation to all, that the dancefloor was a place of inclusivity and openness, where colour, sexuality and differences were swept away by the power of dance music. 

Promised Land

In 1987 Joe Smooth was on tour in Europe with Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk and was blown away by the way European audiences had taken to house music. He wrote the song inspired by this and wanting to capture something of the spirit of Motown's classic singles, music as a call for unity and brotherhood/ sisterhood. 

'As we walk hand in hand/ Sisters, brothers, we'll make it to the promised land...'

The song was re- released in 1988 and 1989 and as the tide of history turned in Eastern Europe and then South Africa, Promised Land seemed to offer a soundtrack to those events. Lyrically it can't help but reflect Martin Luther King's famous I Have Reached The Promised Land speech too, the one he gave in Memphis the day before he was assassinated. The utopian dream of early house music. 

As a song it's a tempting one to cover, dance floor friendly, with two rousing chords, a pumping bassline capable of moving feet and vocals that provide a warm, misty eyed glow. Paul Weller caught the house music bug at the tail end of The Style Council and recorded a cover in 1989. The Style Council's cover is exactly the sort of thing mods in the late 80s should be doing, Paul and Mick on twin pianos, all slicked back hair and loafers while Dee C Lee stomps and dances centre stage. It was their final single- the house inspired album Paul presented to Polydor was the end of the road for them. 

In 2006 Findlay Brown covered Promised Land. Findlay's laid back, dreamily nostalgic and melancholic music was based in folk, ambient and pop- his cover of Promised Land was released as a single with a variety of mixes, versions and edits in 2010 including this one by French producer/ DJ Pilooski. 

Promised Land (Pilooski Edit)

Disco Renegade

I've been meaning to post this pair of tracks, original mix and remix, for some time and one of the songs mentioned in yesterday's David Holmes post- specifically something he played during his DJ set at The Golden Lion- has given me the nudge and a link to it. See if you can spot it.

MSOM's Disco Renegade came out in October, a five minute slice of dance floor action courtesy of MSOM's Michael Mikkelson, slowed down cosmic disco from the top drawer, with pulsing synths and timbales.

Rude Audio's Mash Up remix stretches the fun out for an extra few minutes, pushing some of the sounds to the fore and giving it more echo, more space and room. Both versions are available here for just £3. 

Lions, Horses, People, Hope, Love, Resistance

I was back at Todmorden's Golden Lion on Saturday night for the launch party for the new David Holmes album Blind On A Galloping Horse, the man himself DJing for four hours to what was once again a packed and enthusiastic pub. I've said it before and it never fails to strike me, the absolute wonder that is The Golden Lion. From the outside, a fairly ordinary looking pub, standing by a canal in a northern town nestled in the hills where Yorkshire meets Lancashire. On the inside, another world. Holmes arrives and begins slowly, some floaty sax easing us in, the red lights already bathing the pub in a warm glow and the mirrorball throwing sparkles round the room. Things heat up fairly quickly, the heartbeat thump working its way in. This thumper courtesy of Golden Bug and The Liminanas is played...

Variation sur 3 Bancs

... and is followed by David's own remix of Jo Sims' Bass (The Final Frontier), a record I've played on repeat this year. David then drops in the instantly recognisable riff from Sign 'O' The Times and Prince's Fairlight synth and lyrics about Aids, the space shuttle and Hurricane Annie filling the pub. 

Holmes pitches things more and more for dancing with tracks from Khidja, Roe Deers and Pete Shelley and then, a slight easing up with the appearance of Senor Coconut's Trans Europe Express (I should add here I'm indebted to Martin and his Shazam app- my memory would not have recalled much of this amount of detail). There are tracks by Soft Rocks, Decius, Rich Lane's edit of Sinead O'Connor, Patrick Cowley, there is She's A Rainbow (I'm not sure about this, it wasn't the World Of Twist cover but didn't sound exactly like The Stones either), and this slinky disco chugger with happy/ sad house piano chords from 2012 by Roberto Rodriguez...

Mustat Varjo

It went on and on, The Human League's The Things That Dreams Are Made Of provoking much joy, and there was much more music besides, a proper night out with a lovely, friendly crowd and everyone there to dance, culminating in the ten minute epic from this year, Radio Slave's reworking of Audion's Mouth To Mouth, intense, rumbling, ecstatic techno with an irresistible ascending synthline that buzzes like a jar of wasps. 

David and Raven Violet's album has been on repeat since arriving at my house on Friday. It's a proper album, a complete piece of work with lyrical concerns and themes that tie the fourteen songs together across four sides of vinyl and seventy five minutes. The four singles released from it so far have all been huge songs for me- Hope Is The Last Thing To Die and It's Over If We Run Out Of Love lit up 2021 and 2022 and Necessary Genius, a rollcall and tribute to those who have gone who inspire him from Weatherall to Samuel Beckett, from Angela Davis to Sinead O'Connor, has done the same to 2023. Recent single Stop Apologising too. The rest of the songs stand alongside those four from the long opener When People Are Occupied Resistance Is Justified, a song surely born in David's upbringing in Belfast and directly relevant to the world today. Scattered throughout are the voices of refugees, speaking in their own languages with gentle synths and FX behind them, the voices of the repressed and downtrodden given space next to David's words and Raven's voice. 

Emotionally Clear and Yeah x 3 show a gentler, poppier side to the album. On the former Raven sings, 'Do you believe in the absence of evidence/ Do you believe in unjust punishment? Do you believe in cognitive dissonance?, and then the chorus erupts into a girl group swell of bells and synths. On the latter chiming synths and the sound of heads clearing and clouds parting, optimism and the word 'yeah', one of the oldest sounds in pop music. 

There are several nods to Andrew Weatherall, David paying tribute to his friend and inspiration: the title of an instrumental called And You Will Know Me By The Smell Of Onions, lighter than air synths, piano and a pattering drum machine; a cover of Laugh Myself To Sleep with Timothy J. Fairplay's guitars adding some post- punk/ Mick Jones fire to Raven's voice and Weatherall's words (from Andrew's unreleased second solo album of the same name); and the repeated line in the song Too Muchroom, Andrew's comment about 'if you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room'. 

The album flows through to side four and the final three songs, that show the breadth of what David's created with Blind On A Galloping Horse. Tyranny Of The Talentless calms the pace, a slo mo drum track and lyrics about 'the ashtray of history'. It's followed by Love In The Upside Down, a tripped out monster led by fuzz bass and splinters of guitar, a giddy, swirling psychedelia filled with a sense of momentum, of other worlds, of awakening and possibility. Quite a rush. 

That just leaves the title track to carry us home, the sound of the end of a journey and finding strength in song and community despite the horrors of the world outside. Over strings and padded bass Raven sings, 'They will push you out/ And pull you in/ Whatever happens now/ We mustn't mustn't let them win', and the track fades with another speaking voice, this time I think speaking in Gaelic- a song about personal resistance, completing the loop back to the start. 

Blind On A Galloping Horse a beautiful packaged album as well, as all proper albums should be, with photos by Belfast street photographer Bill Kirk and artwork and text by British artist Jimmy Turrell, and a print of Sinead and the lyrics to Necessary Genius. As an album it feels like a statement, a personal account, a record that David had to make. Sonically, musically, philosophically, politically and emotionally, it feels very much like the album we need at this point in 2023, a response to both the inner and outer worlds, a call to action but one that also says we can still find hope out there somewhere, if we look in the right places. 

Monday's Long Songs

Earlier this year Marshall Watson released an EP called Foothills. Marshall is nineteen years into a career as an ambient/ Balearic writer and composer and the five tracks on Foothills (four new ones plus a Seahawks remix) are just the ticket- long instrumentals, long synth chords that allow the listener to have that sense of drift, with textures added by pianos and guitars, everything covered in a warm glow. It's music that seems to be the very opposite of a grim Monday morning in November in North West England but maybe that's exactly why it strikes such a chord for me. The EP can be bought here. 

High Desert

Also this year Marshall recorded a track with San Francisco's Cole Odin, a DJ and producer equally fired up by dance music and life affirming rock 'n' roll. The song Just A Daydream Away was a perfect slice of sunshine indie dance,  the sound of summer 1989 wrapped up for 2023. The Just A Daydream Away EP came with two versions of the song and three remixes, two from Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros and one from Joe Morris. Chuggy rhythms, chunky bass, glistening psyche- folk guitars and whispered vocals. This is the Space Flight version, seven minutes of blissed out magic. Buy the whole package here. 

Last week's Psychemagik post prompted me to dig back through my folders and nudged slightly by Jesse I went back to this, a 2019 Psychemagik remix of Cole Odin's Dawn's Approaching. Almost eight minutes long and not a second wasted Psychemagik bring everything in their bag to this, gentle building, expansive, vocals drizzled in warm waves, a beautiful flow of synths and drums and then just when you think it not going to change Psychemagik press the button marked Rez and it all goes off in fine style. Buy it here.  

Forty Six Minutes Of Twenty Three

Two months ago this weekend, the day before we were taking Eliza back to Liverpool for her final year in university, the three of us were sitting in a cafe in Didsbury village, one of our afternoon walk and a brew haunts. Eliza said, out of nowhere, 'I think we should all go and get a number 23 tattoo for Isaac'. Lou and I looked at each other and both said, 'yeah. ok'. It was very spontaneous, none of us ever really thought abut getting a tattoo before. Me and Eliza had joked about but very much in a 'we won't ever do this' kind of way. But at that moment it suddenly seemed like a good thing to do. Unfortunately the tattoo parlour in Sale couldn't fit us in on the day so we booked in for a month later- it felt like something the three of us should do together and Eliza didn't want to come back from Liverpool for a while. It also gave us some time to think about fonts and parts of the body.

The number 23 has become associated with Isaac. I've written about it before this year. He was 23 when he died and his birthday is the 23rd November (just a couple of weeks away now with the 2nd anniversary of his death a week later). In the last year the number 23 has kept appearing in front of me- on street signs, graffiti, electricity boxes, random tv countdown shows suddenly channel surfed onto, the only available table in a pub. I don't think it necessarily means anything- it's just something I've started noticing and when I see a 23 now it makes me think of him and smile. Getting a 23 tattoo might trigger the same reaction (and a month later, I'm happy to say it does). We got the tattoos done a month ago. Mine is pictured above, a type writer font on my forearm. Lou got a smaller 23 on her side and Eliza got an even smaller, fine line 23 on her upper arm. 

The number 23 has a rich history. I've written before as well about it's part in KLF mythology, with their interest in Discordianism and numerology. When Isaac died I was reading John Higgs' book about The KLF. A few weeks after he died I picked the book back up and the first chapter I read was about the significance of 23. I finished the chapter and put the book down, totally freaked about. I read it again the next day and it had a similar effect. When I was looking at fonts for my tattoo I thought about a KLF block 23 but it would very inky and take some time to do. I fancied a type writer font. On the morning we were due to go I suddenly wondered what 23 would look like in a factory/ Peter Saville font and started going through my various Factory art books. What, I asked myself, was Fac 23? A quick search later and I realised Fac 23 was the 7" release of Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division. Which caused me to stop in my tracks for a moment. In the end I didn't quite go full Peter Saville Fac font but it played a part in my thinking. We're all really glad we got them done. At the moment, all autumn chilliness and long sleeves, its often covered up, but when I see it, it makes me smile. The upcoming anniversaries are weighing quite heavily and I'll be glad to get November over with- but the tattoos feel like a positive and I'm not sure a year ago I'd thought that would be possible. 

This mix is 46 minutes of songs connected to the number 23. I was going to bring it in at 23 minutes but that felt too short so went for double 23. Two of the songs below were also released in full 23 minute versions which felt too long for a Sunday mix but they're here in shorter versions to represent their 23 minute long brothers. 

46 Minutes Of 23

• Chris Rotter And The Bad Meat Club: 86'd
• 10:40: Sleepwalker
• Local Psycho And The Hurdy Gurdy Orchestra: The Hurdy Gurdy Song (Mothers Of The New Stone Age Remix)
• 23 Skidoo: Coup
• Jah Division: Jah Will Tear Us Apart
• The Vendetta Suite: Eye In The Triangle
• Two Lone Swordsmen: 23rd Street
• Mogwai: U235
• Gorillaz: Aries
• Psychic TV: Godstar
• The KLF: 3am Eternal

Chris Rotter was the guitarist in the live band incarnation of Two Lone Swordsmen and played on and co- wrote songs on Andrew Weatherall's solo album A Pox On The Pioneers. I became friends with Chris online and then in real life. When Isaac died he wanted to record a song for Isaac. I asked him to do 86'd, a song I heard Andrew play on a radio show, a glorious chiming krauty instrumental. Chris went and re- recorded 86'd in new form, 23 minutes long. For reasons of space I've included the shorter one here. The full length 86'd (For Isaac) is here. 

Last December Jesse represented the entire 10:40 back catalogue as an advent calendar. This was the track for the 23rd December, the sleek psych and somewhat krauty Sleepwalker with Ben Lewis on guitar.

The KLF and the number 23 I've mentioned above. Read John Higgs' Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds for more detail. Local Psycho And The Hurdy Gurdy Orchestra are ex- KLF Jimmy Cauty and ex- Pogue Jem Finer. Their hurdy gurdy, neolithic celebration drone came out on 12" came out earlier this year complete with a 23 minute mix. I've included the shorter remix here but the 23 minute version is the one really. 

23 Skidoo are here for obvious reasons. Coup is a block rocking post- punk/ punk funk track from 1984. In a further Andrew Weatherall connection, it was one of the songs on his 9 O' Clock Drop compilation from 2000. 

Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, as I said above, was Fac 23. Factory's numbering system was central to their ethos. All Joy Division and New Order singles ended in 3. Rather than include the original I decided to put Jah Division's dub cover in- it fitted better. Jah Division released an EP of four dub covers of Joy Division songs  in 2004. If you ever see a vinyl copy, please give me a ring. 

The Vendetta Suite are from Northern Ireland, the work of Gary Irwin. In 2017 Gary released an EP titled Solar Lodge 23 from which this piece of cosmic dubbiness is taken. 

Two Lone Swordsmen- yes, them again- released their first record in 1996, a 12" that contained four tracks- Big Man On The Landing, Azzolini, The Branch Brothers and the one here, 23rd Street, a few minutes of abstract Swordsmen sounds. 

Mogwai's move into soundtrack work has paid off. This is from the soundtrack to Atomic, a bit of a cheat maybe numerically but 23's in there and the track fits.

Gorillaz have played with the number 23 frequently in their imagery and artwork. This song Aries was a single in 2020 and has the unmistakeable and melancholic/ uplifting sound of Peter Hook's bass at its heart.  

Psychic TV, Genesis P Orridge's experimental psychedelic/ acid house band had some interest in 23. In 1986 they began a series of gigs to be recorded and released, 23 in total, each played on the 23rd of a month for 23 consecutive months. Godstar is a single from 1985, a tribute to Rolling Stone Brian Jones.

The KLF's 3am Eternal was the second of their stadium house trilogy, released in 1991 (after a previous version in 1989 and a subsequent one in 1992). The version here, the 1991 single and chart topper, took this mix to 46 minutes. 

Saturday Live

Plenty of people have been critical of John Lydon over the last few years/ decades and with good reason- the Sex Pistols reformations, the butter adverts, the support for Trump and Brexit, the professional contrarian. I read his autobiography a few years ago, Anger Is An Energy, and in the end found it exhausting, the constant need to settle scores and self- aggrandisement. A softer side of him was revealed recently following the death of his wife Nora and his role as her carer during the final part of her life. His recent PiL albums have shown that although the music and songs are variable, he still cares enough to want to keep doing it and play with it, to keep moving. 

Back in 1980 John was still at the forefront, the post- Pistols warrior making one of the period's best albums- Metal Box, a groundbreaking fusion of dub, post- punk, avant garde guitar music, sound experiments and Lydon's then still extraordinary vocals and lyrics. For some reason, at the end of a US tour, on 17th May 1980 PiL found themselves at the TV programme American Bandstand, a US musical institution hosted by the clean cut Dick Clark. Bands on American Bandstand mimed in front of a live audience. PiL had been asked to play two songs- Careering and Poptones were the two they chose- but to cut the running time down to fit in the ten minute segment in between ad breaks. Lydon was apparently genuinely bemused by the request. What followed shows that despite some of the lowspots of later years Lydon was once a singular, exhilerating, wilful and genuinely anarchic character, a one off. As the clip begins the three musicians, Levene, Atkins and Wobble start to 'play' Poptones. Lydon sits by the side of stage staring with that look on his face. He gets up, makes a few moves and immediately after crossing the stage breaks the performer/ audience barrier, half miming the words, half mad Pied Piper, walking into the crowd to whoops and cheers. 

Then he brings a girl from the crowd to the stage and goes back, encouraging more of the audience to join the band, the cameras following him. The stage area is soon filed with dancing audience members, Lydon occasionally returning to the band, prowling and glaring, barely contained glee at upsetting the norms. Between songs Clark tries to suggest the audience go back but Lydon says no and then career into careering, the entire studio now awash with dancers. Lydon disappears to the back of the studio, the band swap instruments, the cameras can't keep up. When the cameras do find him, John barely bothers to mime, often just grinning at the mayhem he has created. Considering not a note is played live it is one of the best music performances ever screened on TV. 

Weatherall Remix Friday Fifteen

The idea of Weatherall Remix Friday when I started it a few months ago, was to feature some of the less well known, less celebrated Andrew Weatherall remixes. Andrew produced hundreds of remixes during his lifetime- under his own name (with a range of studio conspirators including Hugo Nicolson, Steve Boardman, Timothy J. Fairplay and Nina Walsh), with Sabres Of Paradise and with Two Lone Swordsmen. There are some artists he came back to time after time, remixing their songs across the decades- Primal Scream for one and David Holmes for another. David's first solo album since 2008's The Holy Pictures is out today on Heavenly, a record titled Blind On A Galloping Horse, one which I've been eagerly waiting for since Hope Is The Last Thing To Die came out in October 2021. There's a launch party night at The Golden Lion on Saturday night with David DJing. The last time he played there, in October last year, was very memorable indeed. Hopefully Saturday will be similarly roof raising. 

Andrew's remixes of David, in reverse order, take in his versions of Unloved (Devils Angels from 2019, a Weatherall remix of When A Woman Is Around from 2016 and two remixes of Guilty Of Love in 2015), the wonderful Andrew Weatherall remix of I Heard Wonders (from 2008) and then before those two remixes of Gone, a song with Sarah Cracknell on vocals from Homer's 1995 debut solo album This Film's Crap, Let's Slash The Seats (an album recorded with Andrew's Sabres Of Paradise partners Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns co- producing. Jagz, Gary and David were three members of the four members of a 1993 one off group/ record Four Boy One Girl Action which I might come back to at some point soon). Lots of links and connections between them then resulting in lots of music. It's the remixes of Gone I thought I'd focus on here today, both dating from 1996.

This Film's Crap... was a double album, very much made under the influence of being active for half a decade in 1990s club music, a dark, moody, downtempo album with nods to techno, trip hop and house and the signs of David's future work in film soundtracks there to see. Gone, with Saint Etienne's Sarah on vocals, was an obvious single, one of the few tracks on the album with a vocal, Sarah lamenting, 'I gonna hide/ She don't even know/ You can never go home anymore'. 

Andrew and Keith Tenniswood had just begun to release records as Two Lone Swordsmen. They released their first full length album, The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), the same year and these remixes sound like they came from similar sessions and times. Gone came out as a single with various remixes in March 1996, several months before The Fifth Mission in August. TLS had released a pair of 12" singles- The Third Mission and The Tenth Mission- ahead of the album, but the Gone remixes are some of the first fruits of the Swordsmen sound.

First Night Without Charge is a sublime, subtle, atmospheric early Swordsmen, those submerged and subaqua TLS sounds and motifs appearing, with double bass bassline and breakbeat taking the lead- not dissimilar to the sound and feel of The Fifth Mission. Sarah's voice is nowhere to be found- as Jagz and Gary confirmed at our Sabresonic Q&A last weekend, vocals are the first casualties of the remix. In the fifth minute a horn bursts through the smoked out jazz club murk.  

Gone (First Night Without Charge)

Second Night Without Charge is a different beast, opening with kick drum and the rumble of sub- bass, more tense, with some bleeps riding on top. A minute in the percussion and snare hit and they raises it up a notch. The track then winds and unwinds, various sounds entering and exiting, for the next seven minutes, all the time the drums and bass pushing on- for want of a better description, abstract deep house. 

Gone (Second Night Without Charge)

When This Film's Crap, Let's Slash The Seats was released on CD in the US in 1998 it came with a second disc of extras, the remixes and B-sides from the UK releases in 1996 compiled into a second album bookended by the Two Lone Swordsmen versions of Gone, opening and closing things in a way that made it sound like they were planned to do exactly that.

More Bands In Places They Shouldn't Be

After a hiatus of a few weeks the Bands In Places They Shouldn't Be series returns. Previous outings have included bands appearing on unlikely tv programmes- Echo And The Bunnymen on Wogan, Ice T on The Late Review, Aztec Camera on Pebble Mill At One, that sort of thing- and a few weeks ago JC of The Vinyl Villain blogging fame wrote a Scottish bands guest special. Today we find ourselves in the early/ mid 90s and some televisual feats that made many of us blink, rub our eyes and question what was going on. 

In 1993 New order released Republic, an album that was made under forced circumstances (to prevent Factory from going bust- it didn't work and the single and album came out on London, irony of ironies) and which features some fairly uninspired songs, especially on side 2, but the lead single was classic New Order, released in April 1993. It was the first new New Order song since World In Motion, a long three years earlier, and had a Bernard Sumner guitar riff, deadpan lyrics, Hooky's bass clanging through and all seemed well with the world. The band found themselves promoting the single in the USA and in a Top Of The Pops live satellite link up, appeared from Venice Beach, California, the set of early 90s swimsuit show Baywatch, a recording complete with an appearance by David Hasselhoff (a man who tried to take some of the credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall). 

New Order don't look dressed for the beach or for Baywatch. They look more dressed for Dry Bar on Oldham Street. They proceed to mime their way through Regret in bright sunshine while California's beach bums sun themselves and play volleyball. Hooky is wearing leather trousers. Gillian is all in black. Everyone ignores everyone else. Hasselhoff roams the beach. A kayakist paddles past. Dissonance reigns supreme. 

In 1992 the Premier League took over top flight football in England. One of the innovations of this brave new world was Monday Night Football. In September 1992 the crowd at Highbury and watching at home/ in the pub were treated to the bizarre spectacle of The Shamen performing their chart topping single Ebeneezer Goode at half time, the launch night of Monday Night Football

Colin Angus and Mr C give it a go, all wrapped up in black plastic and leather, techno guitars and a song that most definitely wasn't a celebration of taking ecstasy. Another Sky innovation, a cheerleader troop called The Sky Strikers dance in the centre circle. Mr C looks a bit like he already knows this is a bad idea. As the performance went on the crowd chanted over the top and booed (Mr C is a Chelsea fan and this was well known to some of the Arsenal faithful). 

The match went on to finish one- nil to Arsenal, Manchester City being the losers, so not all bad eh? Sky dropped both The Sky Strikers and half time musical acts within six months. Given the rapacious nature of hyper- capitalist 21st century football, this all looks quite quaint now but again as with New Order at Baywatch, who thought this was a good idea?