The Bagging Area 2024 End Of Year Lists

The end of year list is a bit of an indulgence but also a good way to look back, revisit albums and songs and enjoy again the music that's made my year. People like lists. The exact positions are very arbitrary. What does it matter if I think something was the 26th or 27th best album of the year? It doesn't. But pulling together my favourite releases of the calendar year is always a fun thing to do and a good way to draw a line under the year. Last year I wrote a massive piece with multiple sections, categories, sub- categories and sub- lists, the total number of releases heading up towards three figures. I must have had more time to think about it and to write it last year than I do now. This year I've slim- lined it to two lists, one for albums and one for singles/ EPs/ remixes, each numbering thirty. 

Some years feel like singles years and some feel like album years- 2024 has been a big year for albums, some big hitters and 80s/ 90s bands and artists with big comebacks. I like to think I keep up with new music to some extent and the number of 'old' artists in this list makes me wonder how accurate that is, whether I'm kidding myself about that. But, as they say, it is what it is. Inevitably I will have missed something out from one of these two lists, if not both. Equally inevitably, I will buy an album in the new year that came out in 2024 which should have been in  the top 30. Nothing is ever fixed. Maybe that's the way it should be, a constantly fluid and shifting list. 

Singles, EPs and remixes

30 Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)

29 The Liminanas and Bertand Belin: J'Adore Le Monde

28 Richard Norris: Weatherall's Last Stand

27 Jezebell: Weekend Machines EP

26 Causeway: Dancing With Shadows

25 Hinds with Grian Chatten: Stranger

24 David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson: Revolvalution EP and Rude Audio Remixes

23 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson: Voyager

22 Mick Harvey: When We Were Beautiful And Young

21 Electric Blue Vision: Trance Stance

20 BTCOP: The Custom 88 EP and Rude Audio Remixes

19 Mildlife: Return To Centauri

18 Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)

17 Pandit Pam Pam: Pass A Wish EP

16 Theis Thaws: Fly To Ceiling (David Holmes Remix)

15 Ammomite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)

14 Ride: Last Frontier

13 C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remixes)

12 Acid Klaus: PTSD By Proxy EP

11 Raxon: Your Fault

10 Peak High: Dance Hall Days

9 Psychederek: Alt! EP

8 Iraini Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- animation)

7 Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)

6 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

5 Galliano: Cabin Fever Dub

A limited edition 7" single that was a very timely release with its line, 'don't want to take my country back man/ Want to take my country forwards', arriving to coincide with the Farage race riots in the summer, Galliano making a return to action and being a voice of reason. The song sampled Andrew Weatherall's remix of the band from 1992's Skunk Funk and borrowed Joe Strummer's vocal phrasings from This Is Radio Clash, and was a very unexpected treat. 

4 Amyl and The Sniffers: Big Dreams

As was this, a single ahead of the Melbourne pub punk's third album that showed a different side to the band. Over a picked, circling guitar riff and some spacious production Amy sang a punk rock torch song for all those people stuck in dead end towns and dead end jobs amid a cost of living crisis who want to get out and realise they're another year older and still stuck. The video for Big Dreams, with the band on motorbikes in the desert, was pure rock 'n' roll cool. 

3 Alex Kassian: E2- E4 (A Reference To E2- E4 By Manuel Gottsching)/ Mad Professor remixes

Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds of perfection- pulsing spaced out synths lines that lit up the summer. Not that summer really happened in the north of the UK this year. But when E2- E4 played it felt like it did. 

2 Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast

Tonight In Belfast, Mike Garry's beautifully moving poem and voice over David Holmes' remix of Orbital's Belfast, a re- imagining of the Hartnoll brothers 1991 masterpiece is as good as anything else released this yea. It could easily be my number one. David remixed Belfast for the Orbital 30 project, updating it for the 2020s. DJ Helen got Mike Garry to speak his Tonight poem over the top. Mike's words speak to me in all sorts of ways. When I first heard it, so many of the lines for me were about Isaac, it seemed almost like he'd written it for me. Transcendent and emotional, everything music can/ should be. Magical. 

'Tonight I want to paint pictures of you/ Write poems and songs and novels all about you/I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit'

'I love to speak your name aloud/ Simply 'cos I love its sound/ It feels like I'm kinda calling yer/ It feels like I'm kinda talking to ya/ It feels like I'm trying to break through/ You know across this divide'

'I'll tell you what/ Let's slip beyond the confines of this world/Let's forget every single thing we've learned/ Let's rewrite the way this world can turn'

1 Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

This came out in June, a 12" remix of one of the songs from Fat White Family's latest album Forgiveness Is Yours. The Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix takes Bullet Of Dignity, already a fucked up, sordid and groovy number and spins it further, kicking off with percussion, timbales, early 90s kick drum and then a squelchy bassline that oozes dance floor action. It builds, echoes rattling around and the rhythm gathering steam, some piano stabs and then finally, after a drop out and pause, Lias' vocal comes in, a blur of standout lines and attention grabbing phrases- 'You say you're just thirty one/ What's that in cannibal years?' I have no idea what it's about but it keeps giving with imagery, lines about fatal caricatures and suicidal cassettes, words walking in pairs, and how the dialogue's dubbed. There's a Middle Eastern/ North African guitar line that appears and re- appears. At five minutes it takes off even further, the groove and rhythms bouncing around, moving ever forwards. 

Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

There are a couple of singles that should really be heading up the singles list but they're both going to appear as part of the albums near the top end of this second list, as much for variety as anything. 

Albums

30 The Jesus And Mary Chain: Glasgow Eyes

29 Fat White Family: Forgiveness Is Yours

28 Reverb Delay: The Storm Has Passed

27 SubDan: Inhale, Exhale, Repeat

26 Duncan Gray: Five Fathoms Full

25 Saint Etienne: The Night

24 Richard Norris: Oracle Sound Volume Three

23 Khruangbin: A La Sala

22 Mick Head and The Red Elastic Band: Loophole

21 The Woodentops: Fruits Of the Deep

20 Dirt Bogarde: Love, Sweat And Beers

19 M- Paths: Submerge

18 Coyote: Hurry Up And Live

17 Klangkollektor: Dub Tapes Volume 1

16 Various Artists: Virtual Dreams Volume II (Ambient Explorations In The House And techno Age, Japan 1993- 1999

15 David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse Remixes

14 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

13 Fontaines DC: Romance

12 Richard Sen: India Man

11 J- Walk: Broken Beauty

10 Five Green Moons: Moon One

9 Sedibus: Seti

8 Underworld: Strawberry Hotel

7 Four Tet: 3

6 Jamie Xx: In Waves

5 The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World

I had no idea, along with thousands of other people I imagine, that what I really needed in late 2024 was a new album from The Cure. The opener, Alone, released as a single in the autumn, was an exercise in majestic beauty and beautiful gloom, a three minute instrumental intro and then Robert Smith singing as well as he ever has, about life, love, loss, mortality, and 'the end of every song we sing'. Stunning. The album continued in that vein for the next seven songs, meditations on aging and loss, ending inevitably with Endsong.

4 GLOK/ Timothy Clerkin: Alliance

Electronics and guitars, swirling, woozy modern psychedelia recorded remotely after the pair met at Andrew Weatherall's funeral. A collision of early 90s sounds and 2024 trippiness. For some time it was all I played, a totally addictive seven track album. 

3 Bill Ryder- Jones: Iechyd Da

This could easily be album of the year, a January release that I keep returning to. Beautiful songs with acoustic guitars, pianos and grand, sweeping strings, a children's choir from a Birkenhead primary school, Mick Head reading Ulysses, a Gal Costa sample, and amazing stirring production- and then Bill's battered and beaten voice, sounding like a man who's reached the end of the road, has nowhere left to go, broken. The pain he sings about is from experience, the death of his brother as a child (Daniel fell off a cliff while they pair where on holiday, his family forever scarred) and mental health issues ever since. 

Nothing To Be Done

In the end though he gets there and we do with him- 'I'm still lost/ But I know love/ I know loss/ But I chose love'.

2 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Wild God

Wild God was a step into the light, a conscious decision by Nick Cave to choose joy over sorrow- a line that appears in the song Joy where Nick is visited late at night by a ghost, a boy with giant sneakers and laughing stars around his head, who tells him, 'we've all had too much sorrow/ now is the time for joy'. It shakes me when I hear it. 

By this song, the fourth on the album, its clear we've stepped into a new Cave world. The first song, Song Of The Lake, explodes orchestrally Nikc mmuttering 'never mind, never mind...'. It's follow by Wild God, with its heart stopping cry of 'bring your spirit down'. That is followed by Frogs, easily one of the best songs of this year and one of Cave's best, a song where Nick walks home on a Sunday in the rain, amazed at the wonders of the world around him- frogs in the gutter, the rain, Kris Kristofferson. The band sound reborn too. The previous albums were so grief stricken and spectral it was difficult for them to find a way in, Warren Ellis's synths were the core of the sound. Final Rescue Attempt tells of Nick being saved by a woman, and how after that, 'nothing really hurt again/ nothing ever really hurt/ not even real pain'. It's extraordinary stuff, magical, life affirming songs. By the end of side two, when former partner Anita Lane's voice appears (from Nick's answer phone. She died in 2021), we've gone through the wringer and come out the other side, the sheer joie de vivre evident throughout, no more so than in the fade out to Conversion where Nick and the choir sing/ shout, 'Stop! You're beautiful!', at each other.

Both Frogs and Wild God could have been near the top end of the singles list- I've not listened to any songs more than either of those two all year- but now they're fully part of the album as a whole, an album that when I put it on, I play all the way through and one I imagine I'll still be playing long into the future. 

Joy

1 Various Artists: Sounds From The Flightpath Estate

What else could it be? I did wonder whether I could/ should put the album me, Martin, Dan, Mark and Baz pulled together into my list, if doing it was a bit much. But in the end, it has been the album of the year for me. This time last year we were receiving tracks from the artists we'd approached, music from Justin Robertson, David Holmes, Timothy J Fairplay, Richard Sen, Hardway Bros, Sons Of Slough, Rude Audio and 10:40. Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch arriving at the last minute was the cherry on top. An unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track too.  

We knew we had something good, all the music was so strong, everyone had really responded so well to us (a bunch of unknowns let's be honest). But we did not expect what then happened. Selling out 500 vinyl copies in a day. Repressing 500 more and selling all of them too. Three of the tracks being played on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show. Having the window display in Piccadilly Records. 

Giving a copy to Paul Simonon at The Golden Lion was as memorable and surreal as anything else that happened in 2024. Appearing in two end of year lists (Piccadilly records and Uncut). All of it has been unreal and yet, there it is, it happened. It would have been nothing without the music though- from the chunky cosmic chug of Sons Of Slough (recorded live at The Golden Lion) to Tim Fairplay's centurion dub, Justin's weird folk/ dub collision and Richard Sen's massive sounding Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, the dub techno of Rude Audio and 10:40's fairground swirl, Hardway Bros writing our own theme, Theme For Flightpath Estate, and Holmes' magnificent Human: Remains, to Andy's gorgeous cover of Smokebelch, it's a brilliant and beautiful thing and it's my album of the year. To everyone involved, all the artists, my Flightpath friends, Waka, Gig and Matt at the Golden Lion and GLS, Andrew Liles, Rusty for his incredible sleeve art, and the memory of Andrew Weatherall (for whom it is a tribute)- thank you. 

Did someone say Volume 2? Sequels are hard....

Six Hours Of The Flightpath Estate Supporting David Holmes At The Golden Lion

On Saturday 6th December The Flightpath Estate DJ team were fortunate enough to be playing support to David Holmes, another excursion to The Golden Lion in Todmorden. On this occasion the team was myself, Martin and Dan, starting out at 3pm and going through until 9pm when David took over. We took i tin turns playing in batches of threes (occasionally fours, sometimes twos and as time ticked on one on, one off). We never take this for granted and are genuinely honoured and grateful to be asked to play. The pub started to fill up late afternoon and we had an audience by the time evening arrived. The set wasn't recorded live but we've done our best to recreate it (copious note making while DJing by some, working from memory by others) and you can listen to the full six hours and eleven minutes at Mixcloud.  

If I do say so myself, I think we played some pretty good records and sequenced them pretty well too. The tracklist is below, a set that starts out with The Pogues and ends six hours later with Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve's remix of Ulysses by Franz Ferdinand, a track that David smothered in dub effects and slowed right down so he could take over. Later on he was joined by Michelle McKenzie and the pair took the roof off- David always does at The Lion. 

Adam

• [0:00] The Pogues - Summer In Siam 
• [5:00] Arthur Russell - In The Light Of The Miracle 
• [18:00] World Of Twist - She’s A Rainbow 
• [22:00] Planet 4 Folk Quartet - Message To Crommie 

Dan

• [25:00] Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves) 
• [34:00] Hoodie x James K - Scorpio 
• [41:00] Sault - We Are Gods 

Martin

• [46:00] Saiko Tsukamoto - Higher Than The Sun (Being Borings Remix Demo)
• [51:00] Minotaur Shock - It All Levels Out
• [56:00] Andrew Wasylyk & Tommy Perman - Communal Imagination 

Adam

• [59:00] Klangkollektor - Midnight Express 
• [1:05:00] Lark - Can I Colour In Your Hair (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• [1:09:00] Electric Blue Vision - Other Skies (Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown Version) 

Dan

• [1:16:00] Andrew Weatherall - Youth Ozone Machine 
• [1:20:00] Autumns - Purely Reasonable 
• [1:23:00] Bill Laswell - Nonmatter 

Martin

• [1:27:00] Boozoo Bajou - Re-Tuff
• [1:29:00] Coreysan - Heavy Load (Nina Walsh Remix)
• [1:36:00] Antoni Maiovvi - Glyph

Adam

• [1:39:00] Five Green Moons - Spider Dub 
• [1:44:00] Totem Edits - 12 Feel 
• [1:51:00] Coyote - Habitual Illusions 

Dan

• [1:56:00] Bill Frisell - 1968
• [2:00:00] David Holmes - Rodney Yates 
• [2:06:00] Frankie & The Heartstrings - Fragile 

Martin

• [2:12:00] Subway - Persuasion 
• [2:18:00] DJ Oil - Addis 
• [2:25:00] The Aloof - Never Get Out The Boat (The Flying Remix) 

Adam

• [2:31:00] Grinderman- Palaces Of Montezuma 
• [2:34:00] Fontaines D.C.- ‘Cello Song 
• [2:39:00] Spacemen 3- Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here) 

{Dan}

• [2:49:00] Scientists Of Sound - Step On Stage (Underdog Remix Instrumental) 
• [2:54:00] Bootman - To The Hip 
• [2:59:00] Rek Shit Rebulz - Bounce (To The Beat)
• [3:01:00] Bedford Falls Players - Cosmosapien Revisited (The Long Champs Remix) 

Martin

• [3:08:00] Smith & Mudd - Janet 50 (I-Cube Remix) 
• [3:15:00] Anatolian Weapons feat. Seirios Savvaidis - Tarachti Katarrachti
• [3:20:00] Apiento - Things You Do For Love (Machine Version) 

Adam

• [3:24:00] Cantoma - First Nothing (Noche Espanola Remix)
• [3:28:00] Deadstock 33s - Minus Shadows 
• [3:33:00] Les Negresses Vertes - Zobi La Mouche (William Orbit Remix) 

Dan

• [3:40:00] Quiet Village - Reunion 
• [3:47:00] Speedy J - Beam Me Up!
• [3:52:00] The Black Dog - Cost II

Martin

• [3:58:00] Miguel - Beams Of Light 
• [4:02:00] Donato Dozzy & Tin Man - Test 3 (Unreleased vocal version) 
• [4:08:00] Troels Yuri - Nebular Drift 

Adam

• [4:15:00] Big Hard Excellent Fish - The Imperfect List Version 1 
• [4:22:00] The Durutti Column - The Together Mix 
• [4:27:00] The Clash - This Is Radio Clash 

Dan

• [4:32:00] David Holmes - Yeah x 3 (X-Press 2 Remix) 
• [4:37:00] Depth Charge - Depth Charge 
• [4:42:00] J-Walk - African Custard 

Martin

• [4:45:00] Toddla - Gratitude Is The Attitude Riddim (Raf Rundell's Ever Living Dub) 
• [4:48:00] Andrew Weatherall - Built Back Higher 
• [4:52:00] Eyes Of Others - Safehouse 

Adam

• [4:56:00] A Certain Ratio - All Comes Down To This 
• [4:58:00] Fat White Family - Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve Re-Animation) 

Dan

• [5:05:00] Hugh Mane - Live Drama
• [5:12:00] Round - Glass

Martin

• [5:17:00] Mr. Beatnick - ile Flottante
• [5:21:00] Blancmange - Living On The Sealink (To The Bone's Dub For Vernon) 

Adam

• [5:27:00] The Fall - Touch Sensitive 

Dan

• [5:30:00] Andrew Weatherall - Privately Electrified

Adam

• [5:36:00] Ben Hunt - Shimmering Lights (Cosmikuro Remix) 

Martin

• [5:43:00] Max Essa & Eddie C - Melon Steppin 
• [5:50:00] Steve Cobby & Third Attempt - B Human 

Adam

• [5:54:00] LCD Soundsystem - Freak Out/ Starry Eyes 
• [6:06:00] Franz Ferdinand- Ulysses (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Remix) 

V.A. Saturday

The 21st December is the winter solstice. After today, it starts getting a little lighter every day. It may not be noticeable tomorrow but in a month or two it will. Something that is always worth noting I think.  

In 2006 Rough Trade celebrated a significant birthday by releasing a double CD compilation titled The Record Shop: 30 Years Of Rough Trade Shops. Across the two CDs, packaged in an expensive looking hardback book complete with dust cover and sixty pages of text and photos, were a wide range of leftfield and alternative music- thirty songs chosen by thirty different Rough Trade and adjacent people, from Geoff Travis to james Murphy, Daniel Miller and Seymour Stein to Jon Savage, Bjork and Jeff Barrett. Bobby Gillespie, Thurston Moore, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee, Ana Da Silva and Erol Alkan all get selections, as Rough Trade punters. In the book it says that the selectors are all Rough Trade customers, and asked to choose a favourite record from the 30 years before 2006 and a memory or tale to go with it. As a result, it's wildly inconsistent as a listen but great fun and does actually sound like what a proper record shop staffed by obsessives could sound like on a busy Saturday if everyone got one go on the instore stereo.

The songs include late 70s punk cuts from The Modern Lovers, Swell Maps, The Mekons, Blue Orchids and The Rezillos, 80s indie from Mighty Mighty, Bongwater and Pixies, 90s alt from Bikin Kill, Stereoloab and Matmos and 00s randoms such as SchneiderTM vs Kpt. Michi. Gan's cover of The Smihths, The Carter Family and James Luther Dickinson and LCD Soundsystem. I've cherry picked four tracks, two from each disc, more or less randomly with two artists who have never appeared at Bagging Area before. 

Holger Czukay's Persian Love is from 1979 and was chosen by Don Letts. The Can man is in fine form on this track, sampling Iranian singers from short wave radio while his bass bumps along underneath, with a guitar line and some percussion. It's all rather lovely and sounds very contemporary, it could easily be slipped into an afternoon DJ set. 

Persian Love

Erol Alkan picked The Power Of Lard by Lard, a 1988 song from Ministry's Al Jourgenson with Paul Barker and Jeff Ward. Late 80s US Industrial rock that hit deep with the skateboarding crowd. 

The Power Of Lard

Gary Walker, the founder of Wiija Records, chose Bikini Kill's Capri Pants, a song that first appeared in the 1996 as a US import single, a period when punk was revitalised and kicking in all directions. Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill sound cool as fuck on Capri Pants, buzzsaw guitars, crashing cymbals and white hot vocals. 

Capri Pants

Lastly, Jeff Barratt's choice. As founder of Heavenly Records Jeff knows his musical onions and he plumped for Karen Dalton and a  1969 song re- issued in 1997, folk blues of the sort that, as Jeff says in the sleeve notes, 'you ain't never going to hear on the radio- word of mouth is the only way'. Word of mouth and record shops. 

In The Evening (It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best)

Shapes And Patterns And Burning Floors

Let's end the working week, the last full week before the Christmas holiday, and the end of the school term with some more new music- both electronic but with a world of difference between them. First is a track from M- Paths who I first encountered at Mighty Force, with a really impressive pair of albums. This new one is self- released, a four minute burst of Aphex Twin inspired ambient electro/ techno called Shapes and Patterns that has rapid, rattling drums, dancing synths and repetitive melodic passages interrupted by bursts of bass, the music never settling for long but constantly twisting and turning.

Out today on the ever wonderful Tici Taci is a new EP from Jack Butters, an original called Floor Burner and a pair of remixes. The vocal sample, 'I think it's time to make the floor burn', should leave no one in any doubt about why this track exists. Drums and synths judder and chug, the bassline descends, wobbly FX fire off all over the place. 

The remixes come from Rule Six and The Time Machine Drop Outs. Rule Six go for the low slung, slow burn, the bassline pumping on as the synths and FX glitter around it. Time Machine Drop Outs are Matt Gunn (see yesterday's post) and Chad Jackson (of the Hacienda and hearing drummers getting wicked among other things). The tempo is low, the guitar is funky, the floor is burned. 

Another Pleasant Valley Death Cult

Matt Gunn has appeared here before but in leftfield  electronic/ cosmic chug/ psychedelic dub disco mode. In his youth Matt played in guitar bands and it turns out there are occasions when the rock 'n' roll juices flow, the guitars get plugged in, the amps turned up and jams are kicked out. Last Friday Matt unleashed an album as The Matt Gunn Band into the festive hell of mid- December, an eight song slice of, as he puts it, 'songs about stuff using real instruments first, then tech', an album called Another Pleasant Valley Death Cult. The title alone should give you some idea of what to expect. 

Ego To Go Go kicks in with a drummer counting us in and then raw and dirty fuzz bass, psyche rock guitar chords, summer of '69 vibes, ah ah ah backing vocals and then growly lead vox. The kind of guitar rock that 00s bands inspired by the Mary Chain made- Crocodiles and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club both spring to mind. Different League is funked up indie with a killer bassline. What Do You Think Of Me Now? channels The Cramps- in fact, Lux and Poison Ivy are never far away on Another Pleasant Valley Death Cult- but with 70s punk vocals. Testing One Two is looser and more experimental, more post- punk. Crushed comes in with a repeating organ riff, then crunchy drums and an indie dance feel, recalling both That Petrol Emotion and Big Audio Dynamite, if they'd come from Windsor. Infiltrator starts with synths, the sort of sound Matt produces more usually, but then diverts with a driving, propulsive throbbing bass, FXed vocals and a surf guitar solo. Full Of Lies is slowed down, the dub influences seeping in, FX and bleeps, the guitars not turning up until a couple of minutes in. Another Pleasant Valley Death Cult finishes with Shock Value, an eight minute epic, again riding in on synths and then a sneered vocal, 'take this...', as the bass and drums crunch about. Matt sings of AC/ DC and voltage running through him. The psyched out section, backwards guitars over thumping drums, is a joy, the song switching back and forth and then building for the last few minutes, guitars, synths, FX, drums, throbbing bass, a hefty dose of the experimental early 90s indie/ guitar bands fed through dance remixes and producers reconstituted for late 2024. You can listen and buy at Bandcamp.

Not long ago  Matt released some cosmic chug for Tici Taci, a three track EP called The Ringmakers Of Saturn. I wrote about it here- and need no excuse to repost this Simon Sheldon and Monkton remix, a wonderful piece of skanking sci fi dub. 

Astoria

There's something about this time of year, the long slow fade through November and December towards Christmas that particularly lends itself to ambient music and found sounds. The fact that it's almost permanently half light, seemingly always either dark or dusk, the constant hubbub of half heard sounds of shoppers, radio, conversations, and the jangling, ambient- esque festive noises of bells and choirs, give the end of the year an ambient feel. The new Saint Etienne album, The Night, dropped onto my door mat this week and is sweetly timed, an album of street noises, slow drifting synths, and Sarah's spoken word songs and lists, the sound of bedding in as the sun goes down at 4pm. This EP, Astoria, by former- Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie came out at the star of November but I only heard it recently and it fits in to mid- December perfectly, four slices of ambient dream pop. Opener A Most Remarkable Woman is short, just two and a half minutes, washes of synth and a bassline and then suddenly Robin's guitar, that chiming/ breaking glass sound he conjures ending almost as swiftly as it started. 

The three that follow are cut from similar cloth. Starting Fires is glacial and stately, drums giving it a push behind the cinematic, winterscape guitars and synths.  Third track Jura is the longest on the EP,  over four minutes of calming sounds, layers of ambience- a  few minutes of calm at a time of year when its often the exact opposite. In 1986 The Cocteau twins collaborated with ambient/ minimalist Harold Budd, The Moon And The Melodies, an album that has only grown in stature since its release. Jura nods back in that records direction, synth shimmer and slow motion chord changes, a blissed out balm. Astoria closes with Smoulder which swells into earshot with piano over an ambient backdrop, layers of sounds and warm drones building- the piano edges forward and eventually drums thump in. Smoulder reminds me of Mark Peters' Innerland album of  2017, an ambient/ guitar album specifically about place (north west England), a similar blend of guitars, synths and drums, forming pictures of landscapes and winter, time and place. Robin recorded Astoria in France, in Brittany, where he's lived for a long time now. You can get Astoria here, on both digital and CD. 

Time Takes A While

Three years ago today we buried Isaac at Dunham cemetery. The recent anniversaries- his 26th birthday on 23rd November, the third anniversary of his death on the 3oth November- were heavy and gruelling, the weeks of build up as they loomed over us and then the days themselves. The anniversary of his funeral is a bit different, it doesn't feel as heavy somehow although I had a couple of twinges yesterday when it bumped up against my emotions. 

I was down at the cemetery on Sunday, just popping by to say hello and check the flowers were all still ok. It struck me that we've developed all sorts of little acts of remembrance in the three years since his funeral. The weekly visits to see him (and now when we go it doesn't feel like we're going to see him- at first it felt awful, a bottomless hole of grief, standing in a wind and rain blasted field staring at his plot, but the more we've been the more it's changed): the replacing of the flowers; the way that when they're in season I always want to have sunflowers in the vase next to him; the bringing back of trinkets and mementos from holidays for his grave; the association with the number 23; the thing with robins I wrote about last week; the busses that go past on the road in the distance; even the electricity pylons that cross overhead very close by and the pigs that live in the field behind the cemetery have become part of the whole. When we go to the grave I always touch his name on the headstone before leaving. All these have become mixed up in his death and in his grave. I'm not a religious person but I understand why people light candles in cathedrals. Acts of remembrance and little rituals that bring some kind of comfort. 

We played some songs for him at the funeral- North Country Boy by The Charlatans as we entered the chapel, You And Me Song by The Wannadies (Eliza's choice), Sketch For Summer by Durutti Column as a slideshow of photographs of him played, and then at the graveside Race For The Prize by The Flaming Lips and the Beatless mix of Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch. 

Isaac's Funeral Mix

I can listen to them all now, something I wasn't sure I'd be able to do three years ago- You And Me Song has the capacity to move me to tears and North Country Boy still packs a powerful punch but when I hear them I want to listen to them play in full, I don't reach for the off button. Three years on from that day it does feel like a lot of time has passed while seeming like it was just yesterday too. 

In 2023 Daniel Avery followed his Ultra Truth album with a seven track collection of B-sides and bonus material which included this beautiful piece of weightless ambient techno...

Time Takes A While

Monday's Long Song

Some time ago it was established that a song had to be six minutes and forty nine seconds long to qualify for a Monday long song slot. I can't remember who established this or why but it makes sense and I'm happy to go with it. Your Fault by Raxon is six minutes and forty eight seconds long and that one single second is not enough to keep it out of today's posting. One second matters not.

The emotional heft of this piece of off kilter dance music, four four drums and synths that glide and wander all over the place, is something that has to be felt. Click play and let it hit. I hadn't heard it until recently. It's as good as anything you'll hear today. Jesse wrote about it at his Facebook page and linked it to wonky chocolate and said 'It's euphoric, groovy, and loaded with attack; but mostly it's just *wrong* in exactly the right ways', and as he always is, he's right. He added this...

'As someone who produces music in a roughly similar style, I feel like I should be able to explain what's going on here, but I'm not sure I can. On a simple level, the basic volume of the track and subtle loudness of the elements are all over the place; more mysteriously, it seems sort of un-mixed, with elements operating on separate planes and in randomly shifting keys, whooshing around each other like electrons jumping between shells, constantly changing perspectives on the same fractured image. I think the best comparison isn't music at all: "Your Fault" *sounds* like a cubist painting looks. It's a Picasso for 2024'.

I'm so up for music being compared to Cubism. Picasso for 2024 is so up my street I don't know what to add. You can and should buy it here. 

2024 In Dub

The list making has started. Some of my blogging compadres have already pressed the Best Of 2024 button. At some point before Christmas I will post an end of year review and list. In the meantime, here's some of 2024's highest quality dubwise sounds wrapped up in an hourlong mix- there's much more that could have fitted into this mix too but in the end I wanted to keep it to under sixty minutes. Repetitive, bass heavy, echo- laden and spacious sounds for Sunday. 

2024 In Dub

• Coyote: Living In Heaven
• BTCOP: Sabre 540 (Rude Audio Remix)
• Five Green Moons: Garbage Van Exhaust
• Uj Pa Gaz: Roxy (Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown)
• David Harrow and Little Annie: End Of Times (Rude Audio's Immutable Remix)
• Hugo Nicolson and David Harrow: Revolvalution (Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio VIP Remix)
• Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s: In Minus Shadows
• The Woodentops: Dream On (Rolo's Dub)
• Richard Norris: Fever Dub
• Coyote: OMG

In early December Coyote released a dub 12", two huge dub tracks,Living In Heaven and OMG,  that are in their own description 'light as a feather- heavy as lead'. 

Living in Heaven sounds like it be from side six of Sandinista!, a massive compliment in this household- it also has a touch of the Sabres Of Paradise Ysaebud single. Rattling bassline, echo and vocal sample. Coyote add some strings. Lovely deep stuff

Rude Audio's remix of BTCOP's Sabres 540 came out on Tici Taci in February, a remix that Rude Audio's Mark Ratcliff thinks his among his best work. He's right. 

Five Green Moons is Justin Robertson's latest venture, a post- punk/ pagan dub excursion, an eleven track album that continues to reveal new depths with each play. Justin appears later on too, with a track from the EP he released on the excellent Pamela label in April, four tracks all to some extent infused with dub. 

Uj Pa Gaz is from Tirana, Albania, a Tici Taci recording artist, producer and DJ. Roxy came out in late July and appears here in Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown remix , heavy duty dub action from Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray. There is a very beguiling Middle Eastern melody line that plays out from the start, tumbling percussion, rimshots, delay and the deep hit of dub bass.

David Harrow has turned sixty this year and has celebrated with a release every month, a treasure trove of music emanating from his LA studio. His EP with On U legend Little Annie, the New York post- punk/ dub poet, had the original version of End Of Times, an instrumental, an acapella, and six remixes, two by Rude Audio- the Immutable and Protean Remixes. The Immutable is the dubbier of the two, a dubbed out rhythm underpinning Little Annie's poetry, 'this is not a happy hour'.

And Rude Audio turn up again, their third appearance here, now with the assistance of the wonderful Dan Wainwright. They took a track recorded by two former Andrew Weatherall cohorts- David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson and spun out into psychedelic dub complete with a brain melting ukulele solo. There are Sabres Of Paradise sounds scattered throughout it.

The Woodentops released a new album in April this year, Fruits From The Deep, a deep and rewarding trip under the sea. Dream On was one of the highlights, remixed in dub style by main Woodentop Rolo McGinty. Dream On (Rolo's Dub) starts and ends with an airplane taking off. Flying off to somewhere warm seems like a dream right now. 

Richard Norris' Bandcamp subscription service rewards on a monthly basis, a project that started with his Music For Healing ambient project but has blossomed into other areas, not least his Oracle Sound series of albums. Oracle Sound is (currently) three albums of superb, home grown dub. Fever Dub is from 2024's Oracle Sound Volume Three. 

V.A. Saturday

Be Music was the name used by members of New Order when they undertook production work outside the band. Peter Hook used it first when producing what became a Stockholm Monsters B-side in 1982. After that all four members used it at one time or another. Bernard's interest in synths, production and the studio meant that in the period 1983- 85 he used it often, co- producing and/ or programming on some groundbreaking singles and tracks by a raft of Manchester and Factory acts, often with ACR's Dojo (Donald Johnson) alongside him- their work on 52nd Street's Cool As Ice, Section 25's From A Hilltop and Marcel King's Reach For  should be lauded from the hilltops, sung from the rooves of the tower blocks, but these are songs largely unknown. Tony Wilson said Marcel King's Reach For Love should have been Factory's biggest hit single. Unfortunately in 1984 for ideological reasons Factory eschewed things such as promotion and pluggers and so hardly anyone got to hear it. 

Reach For Love

In 2003 LTM compiled an album of Be Music tracks, all from the period 1983 to 1985, called Cool As Ice: The Be Music Productions. Reach For Love is on it, as the other two I mentioned above. The compilation has twelve tracks on it, a selection of the Be Music catalogue. Every single one is streets ahead of the competition. Here's a handful of them.

Quando Quango were Mike Pickering's band, formed in The Netherlands and then relocating to Manchester. Mike and Hillegonda Rietveld were electronic/ electro pioneers making two ahead of their time singles and an album (Pigs And Battleships). One of those singles was Love Tempo. The other was Atom Rock which featured not just Mike and Hillegonda but also ex- ACR singer/ percussionist Simon Topping and a moonlighting Johnny Marr with Bernard and Dojo producing (recorded in Cheadle Hulme south Manchester suburb/ geography fans!) and released on Factory as Fac 102. Futuristic Manc- funk. 

Atom Rock

Far more obscure are/were Nyam Nyam, a band from Hull discovered by Hooky. He produced a single, released on Factory Benelux in 1984, recorded at Strawberry Studios, Stockport. Factory- esque, flat northern vocals with rippling Moroder synths and that grey sheen of Be Music production. 

Fate/ Hate

Section 25 were from Blackpool. They released several records on Factory, albums and singles. All are worthy of investigation. Looking From A Hilltop uses an 808 and as as innovative as anything else anyone was doing in 1983. Bernard also produced Beating Heart, a 1983 single on Factory (Fac 68), dance gloom, synths and very Sumner sounding guitars and more lovely northern singing, 'My beating heart/ Beats for you/ Only you'.

Beating Heart

Be Music Theme was recorded by Hooky in 1983, designed as intro music for Stockholm Monsters gigs (Peter often mixed their sound live). It is I suppose the first solo New Order track, years ahead of Electronic, Revenge and The Other Two. It came out on a 1986 compilation, The Quick Neat Job (out on Crepescule, a French label Factory had links with). Otherwise, Cool As Ice is the only place its ever been released. 

Be Music Theme 

Shimmering Lights

The 12th of December is possibly leaving it late for delivering old school style acid house/ wonky techno monsters into the world but this is a time for gifts and giving and Paisley Dark are offering a brand new EP of the finest quality today- its not free, you'll have to pay for it, but its worth every penny. Ben Hunt's Shimmering Lights is deliberately nodding its head   towards classic, early 90s Underworld. The monstrous wobbling 303 bass and synapse bothering synths are one thing- the vocal sample, 'I see patterns in everything/ Everything everything', is another. Cowgirl here we come. It really kicks up and off after the midpoint, everything coming together...

Shimmering Lights comes with six remixes courtesy of Mindbender, Cosmikuro, Ben himself with label boss John Paynter, Rude Audio, Keith Forrester, and Airsine. Mindbender hits the settings marked 'sci trance'. Ben and John's Space Age Freak Out twists the original even more and adds a synth whistle. Keith Forrester strips things down for an acid techno ride. Airsine cuts the tempo for early set chug. 

The Cosmikuro remix really stood out for me, a beautifully handled trip from the a Leeds based electronic psychedelicist, found sounds taking the Shimmering Lights out into the forest, the 'everything everything' sample at the centre along with that bassline and a big old kick drum prodding onwards. Lysergic delights. The other one that I've been clicking replay on is from South London's Rude Audio remix. Rude Audio take us on a dubwise excursion in their remixes, but here Mark goes for early 90s dancefloor adverting, bringing the thump of acid house early and aiming for the lasers, the dry ice and the strobe. Rude Audio four four dub techno with timbales and 303 mayhem. Get the Shimmering Lights EP here.

Leeds to Sao Paulo is a journey of 5, 978 miles according to the internet. In Sao Paulo lives Pandit Pam Pam, a Brazilian musician/ producer who has lit up 2024 with an album, singles and remixes (by Jezebell). Earlier this week Pandit Pam Pam released his now annual Christmas single- fear not, this is no novelty Christmas song but some lovely, chilled, slightly woozy electronica. Equipe Exploratoria Papai Natal III is blissed out, southern hemisphere Four Tet and will do very nicely for winding down on a Friday night. 

I Know So Many People Who Think They Can Do It Alone

Today's post comes from the box of CDs that have come cover mounted on music magazines over the years. I scooped this one up a while ago, and wasn't sure that I'd ever even listened to it- and it contains two recent Bagging Area postees in shape of Saint Etienne and The Liminanas. The CD came free with Mojo in June 2012, a Beach Boys/ Pet Sounds cover story with articles on Rufus Wainwright, My Bloody Valentine, Sandy Denny, Buzzcocks and Michael Kiwanuka all also trailed on the cover along with the return of Public Image Limited and (gulp) Rush. The free CD is Pet Sounds related.

It's more than related, it's a bespoke re- recording of Pet Sounds in full with Saint Etienne, Magnetic North, The Sand Band, Tim Burgess, Jeffrey Lewis, The Neil Cowley Trio, Tom McRae, The Flaming Lips, The Liminanas, Jodie Marie, Gaz Coombes, Human Don't Be Angry, Here We Go Magic and Superimposers. Some of these names mean as little to me now as they did in 2012. 

Pet Sounds is such a heavyweight, canonical album but with such a lighter than air sound that I guess it could be difficult to know how to go about doing a cover one of its thirteen teenage symphonies, Brian Wilson's beautiful melodic songs, those sing song vocals and Tony Asher's perfectly weighed words, lyrics that stand as some kind of mid- 60s poetic pop highpoint. Many of the artists take the standard route and stay pretty faithful to the source material. Saint Etienne open up with Wouldn't It Be Nice...

Wouldn't It Be Nice 

It's very sugary, the first minute or so just Sarah's voice and some backing vocals. The band come in, easy listening style before building into a bit of a 60s swirl. 

Tim Burgess, at that point releasing his excellent Oh No I Love You solo album, covers Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), acoustic guitar, a ton of reverb, and musical box melodies- pretty, also very faithful to the original. The fade out and ending is lovely. 

Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)

The Neil Cowley Trio (who I've featured before in remixed form) cover Let's Go Away For A While, modern jazz style, piano and rattling snare drum. 

Let's Go Away For A While

The Flaming Lips come along to rip things up a bit, the ones who don't hand in a standard cover, but go with distorted guitars, a psychedelic haze and wobbling synths, Wayne warbling the famous words, 'I may not always love you/ But as long as there are stars above/ You never need to doubt it/ God only knows what I'd be without you...' A lovely, frazzled, drift towards the centre of the sun. 

God Only Knows

The Liminanas, French psyche/ beat duo take on I Know There's An Answer, with authentic 60s groove and heavily accented vox- they sound like they're having fun, dropping out in the middle and then thundering back in and adding what sounds like a theremin twanging away. Hang on to your ego. 

 I Know There's An Answer

The Way I Feel Is Like A Robin

The Totem Edit Bandcamp page is a treasure trove of delights, edits of a wide range of songs by Leo Zero and Justin Deighton. This one has been hitting the spot recently, six minutes of Balearic dancefloor folk called Feel. Free/ name your own price here. You'll thank me. I've been hitting play endlessly. 

Feel is a 2024 edit of The Way I Feel by Gordon Lightfoot, from Gordon's album, Lightfoot! in 1966. The guitar playing is beautiful, and Gordon's lyrics tell a story of loss- 'The way I feel is like a robin/ Whose babes have flown to come no more/ Like a tall oak tree along and crying/ When the birds have flown and the nest is bare'.

The Way I Feel

I have developed a thing about robins. The one above was photographed while we were queueing for a ride at Alton Towers back in March, just sitting there along side us. Robins have been associated with the dead for centuries. Some people think that robins appear to bring messages from the dead, that they are messengers between the living and the dead. I don't know if I was aware of this before Isaac died but I've become aware of it since. The idea that Isaac would choose to reveal himself to us in the form of a sweet little robin redbreast seems a little unlikely and I'm a pretty rational person. But when I see one, I think of him and it makes me smile. We saw one in the hedge at the cemetery once which was a bit of a moment. There was one that lived in the tree behind out garden in the spring. It often fluttered into our garden, zipping here and there, occasionally landing on the kitchen window sill, before flying back to the holly tree. 

One morning in April I was preparing for a job interview (I didn't get it, they appointed someone younger and cheaper, something that happened twice earlier this year), the robin sat on the sill while I was looking out. Later on, when I got out of my car at the interview, a robin was on the pavement looking in my direction (I know it wasn't the same robin- I told, you I'm a rational person). It's become a thing, like some other things have become things since Isaac died- the number 23 for one. I don't mind these things that have become things, in fact I like them. Anyway, all this is related loosely to today's post and Gordon Lightfoot's song about feeling like a robin and this photo of a robin which I've been saving since March for just such an opportunity. I didn't even make the connection between the song, the photo and robins until I started writing. Funny how that happens sometimes. 

Half Life

Three years ago Saint Etienne returned with an album called I've Been Trying To Tell You. It was largely well recieved but I think a bit of an opinion splitter too but I loved it- the album was steeped in the mists of memory and the recent past, based around the long gone optimism of the period 1997 to 2001. According to Bob Stanley it was about 'optimism, the late 90s and how memory is an unreliable narrator'. The songs are sample based, Pete Wiggs taking elements from unlikely sources from that time period- Natalie Imbruglia, Honeyz, Lighthouse Family, Samantha Mumba, Tasmin Archer and The Lightning Seeds- and combining them with found sounds and synths/ laptop programming. The songs are all drenched in a woozy haze, a slowness, fragments of a dream, a weird nostalgia for a period that feels disconnected from today despite being relatively recent. It also refused to draw any firm conclusions about that period- what was it? Were things getting better? Did it just feel that way because we were younger? 

Pond House

The album was followed by an Christmas EP, led by the magnificently wintry and melancholic Her Winter Coat. 

The EP also had this song, Lillehammer, an instrumental that takes the laptop ambience that forms the background to I've Been Trying To Tell You and breaks things further apart, the sound of dusk at 4pm in December. 

Lillehammer

Now Saint Etienne are about to release a new album, The Night, out this Friday. It's been preceded by a single, Half Life, which is the feel of the songs from I've Been Trying To Tell You and the Christmas EP but even more so. Half Life is less than two minutes long, an ambient Saint Etienne lost on the edge of town as darkness falls, far away from things. Sarah whispers. Washes of synth drift by. A mistreated piano plays an out of tune melody line. Bass bumps away slightly. On its own it floats by quickly, only just there. As part of an album I imagine it will be surrounded by similar songs, part of a late 2024 ambient Saint Etienne treat.

Monday's Long Song

Spacemen 3's Big City was released in January 1991, not long after the band broke up. Relations between Pete and Jason had grown increasingly strained and on the fourth and final Spacemen 3 album, Recurring, the two men had a side of the album each, barely even being in the studio at the same time. The sole song they appear on together is When Tomorrow Hits, a Mudhoney cover. Big City came in various lengths according to format and release- the album and 7" had a short, edited version, the 12" and CD singles had the longer eight and a half minutes one. And then there is this one, all glorious ten minutes and fifty one seconds of it

Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here)

Pete had been caught up in rave culture a little and the kick drum, throbbing bassline and synths all nod to acid house and dance music. Over the pulsing, blissed out music, and the psyche guitar line that runs through it, Pete whispers 'Big city/ Bright lights/ Cool people/ Everybody I know can be found here' and then 'let the good times roll', and most aptly, 'Waves of joy' and then finally, 'Yeah I love you too'. I played this song at The Golden Lion on Saturday afternoon- it sounded ace through the Lion's wonderful sound system. Later on, the pub packed out for David Holmes' latest appearance at the Lion, he played it too and with the volume pushed up for Saturday night and dancing, it sounded even better.

Forty Five More Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

Last Sunday's fifty minute mix of remixes of songs from David Holmes' Blind On A Galloping Horse album was well received and I promised a second volume. In an unplanned coincidence me, Dan and Martin played support to David at The Golden Lion yesterday afternoon, the third time we've warmed up for him and its a pleasure and honour every time. Heavenly commissioned and released so many Blind On A Galloping Horse remixes of that I could probably do a third volume. Given that I've still not included in either of these mixes the Rich Lane remix (which came about due to a connection made by a post at this blog), the Hardway Bros Meets Monkton remix and various others (Robin Wylie, Daniel Avery, Darren Emerson, Working Men's Club...), a volume three would seem to be the order of the day at some point. 

Last time I started slow, some ambient/ chilled remixes before ramping it up in the second half. This one kicks in quicker. Last time I didn't include any remixes of the same song- this time I have, both Yeah x 3 and Necessary Genius feature twice but I liked the way the two remixes of Yeah x 3 worked together and the Necessary Genius remixes are very different animals. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

• Yeah x 3 (Sonic Boom and Panda Bear Reset Remix)
• Yeah x 3 (The Vendetta Suite Reason To Live Remix)
• Necessary Genius (Lovefingers Dub And Response)
• Too Muchroom (Hardway Bros Too Much Acid Dub)
• Stop Apologising (Cosmodelica Extended Mix)
• It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Lovefingers and Heidi Lawden High Tide Mix)
• Necessary Genius (Decius Remix)

Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's Reset album was a 60s pop/ psych bubblegum adventure, reworkings/ samples of 60s songs filtered through a 21st century bubblegum box of tricks. It was followed by an Adrian Sherwood dub of Reset that raised it up a notch. Sonic and Panda's version of Yeah x 3, the most 60s pop song on Blind On A Galloping Horse, is a whir of drum machine rhythms, layers of glassy psychedelia and Raven's space echo vocal on top. 

The Vendetta Suite is fellow Belfast producer/ DJ/ musician Gary Irwin. He remixed Yeah x 3 twice- the weightless ambient drift of Reason To Drift was on last's week mix. This one, the Reason To Live remix, is more direct, led by a pulsing bass and wall of synths. 

Lovefingers is Andrew Hogge, the owner of the ESP Institute label, a DJ, producer and promoter. His remix of Necessary Genius is a deep one, with rapid fire drums, pumped up bass and Raven's vocal chopped up and FXed, and a hypnotic, repeating piano line thunders away. David list of inspirations- Tony Wilson, Weatherall, Guy Stevens, Nina Simone, northern soul, Peter Meadon, rock 'n' roll, Rastafari, Bernadette Devlin, David Keenan, Sinead O'Connor and refugees among them- rattle by. 

The lyrics for Too Muchroom come from an Andrew Weatherall quote- 'if you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room'. Andrew's influence is all over Blind On A Galloping Horse. There's a cover of Laugh Myself To Sleep from his unreleased second solo album (still unreleased due to a difference of opinion with engineer Steve Boardman who claimed co- writing credits and held the tapes/ hard drive hostage. Andrew's response was to say 'fuck him/ it' and move on, do the next thing. In a radio show he said he quite liked the idea of having an unreleased and legendary lost solo album. Appropriately Andrew's partner in The Asphodells, Tim Fairplay, played guitar on Laugh Myself To Sleep). Andrew's ALFOS partner Sean Johnston remixes Too Muchroom, one of several remixes Sean did of Galloping Horse songs. This one is exactly what it says it is- acid dub. The vocals are in there, twisted to pieces and just about audible. 

Cosmodelica is Colleen Murphy, New Yorker, DJ, producer and radio show host. Her Balearic Breakfast show and compilation albums are second to none. Her remix of Stop Apologising is like being dropped back into a scuzzy indie/ electro basement, dry ice and sticky floors, where the room smells of poppers and cigarettes and the crowd are ridiculously beautiful and elegantly wasted. 

Lovefingers makes a second appearance along with Heidi Lawden, and a remix of Its Over, If We Run Out Of Love, one of the songs that is the at the centre of Galloping Horse, heartbeat of the album. They did two, the Low Tide remix and this one, High Tide. Dark, repetitive acid disco. 

Necessary Genius returns for the ending, remixed by Decius, the London band made up of Fat White Family singer Lias Saoudi, brothers Liam and Luke May and Quinn Whalley from Warmduscher. Decius make brilliant, sweaty, sleazy, gay sauna acid house/ techno, tongues in cheeks, needles in the red and tempos pushed up high. They take Necessary Genius to its extreme here, the vocal reduced to staccato syllables and the drums galloping on and on.