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Monday 22 January 2024

Monday's Long Song

Andy Bell played a run of live gigs in 2022 and 2023 as Andy Bell Space Station, Andy on guitar and synth, occasional vocals, and a pair of decks for drums and other parts, playing versions of his solo songs and GLOK tracks, in some cases extended out way beyond the recorded versions. For a while at his Bandcamp page there were a limited run of CDs with three hours worth of music from the gigs available and also a zine, again limited and now sold out, which came with a download code to get hold of these tracks. Taken together or in chunks they are a superb document and stand as an album in their right, Andy's guitar playing very much spinning out in the kosmische area, shades of Michael Rother and late 80s John Squire (the floaty, trippy Squire rather than the heavier, bluesy Squire of The Second Coming) but also very much Andy Bell. 

I could post any of the twenty two tracks, very calming and chilled and a perfect way to ease into a Monday in January. Many of them play out beyond the ten minute mark-  Pattern Recognition comes in two parts, both over ten minutes, opener Melting Hours is fourteen minutes long, a combined version of Pulsing and Dissident clocks in at sixteen minutes and there are two versions of Spiral Away, a song that hits me in all the emotional places, that together reach twenty minutes. This one is First Wave Of Love, nine minutes thirty eight seconds, an extended ultra- kosmische instrumental version of Andy's 2020 single Loves Comes In Waves. 

First Wave Of Love

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