I'm a big fan of the music of Dirt Bogarde. His run of singles, rounded up at the start of this year in an eight track compilation called Blowback Vol. 1, contains some of my favourite electronic/ cosmic/ chuff dark disco from the last few years- check out Heavy Blotter as a starting point and then go onto Cloud Walkin', Backroom Sunrise and Triumphe Der Liebe.
Today marks the release day of Dirt's first album, eight tracks under the title Love, Sweat And Beers. It is in part a love letter to the Stourbridge scene of Dirt's youth, the pub The Mitre which played a key role in the bands who came from Stourbridge in the 80s- PWEI, Diamond Head, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, and The Wonderstuff all came through the pub. Upstairs the pub had rare groove nights and the proximity of a local art college with its tribes of acid house kids, indie kids, shoegazers, grebos, rockers and goths made the place lively and inspiring. Not that Love, Sweat And Beers sounds like much of those types of music (acid house excepted) but roots are deep and it's clear Dirt (Adrian) sees The Mitre and everything that went with it as foundational for him.
The album is a class act, electronic music to fill the back rooms of pubs and basements. Opener Gramercy Riffs is heavy duty slo mo chug, grinding bassline and synths firing off. Den Of Thieves is pulses and chugs, snatches of vocals bouncing around. From The Full Moon is wide eyed Balearica, rippling organ riff, ticking percussion and multi- tracked voice, the waves lapping gently on the beach as the moon replaces the sun. The Escape Of Roger Dean is deeper, darker, a swirling psychedelic murk with crisp snares and an acid line that rides in and pushes to the fore. The second half keeps the darker sound rolling with Speedball, ominous synths and a big breakbeat. After that comes Real Slow, a distorted voice chanting the title, the synths taking an age to kick in, a descending bassline eventually arriving to give the track a push and then lighter keyboard chords, like clouds parting to let the sunshine in. Rothko 61 is the longest track on the album, nearly nine minutes of burbling synths, crunchy drums and fat bass. Mark Rothko's painting Untitled 1961 is one of those giant canvasses he painted, one that you can lose your self in, a pair of orange/ red blocks against a darker background- the sound of the track works similarly, a huge block of repetitive sounds to lose yourself in. Love, Sweat And Beers finished with Je Le Savais, more moody synths, touch drums and atmosphere, plenty of atmosphere. Dirt Bogarde likes to live in the shadows and there are shadows all over this album, eight tracks that have that balance of light and shade, of darkness and bright colours, machine music made with synths, keyboards, computers and filters but with a very human element running through it from start to finish. You can listen and buy it at Bandcamp from today, a pay what you like deal. After that, at the end of August, it'll go onto all the streaming services.
There will be nothing here now for a week. We're on holiday, seeking some sunshine on Fuerteventura, a sandy Spanish island in the Atlantic, off the coast of Morocco. See you next week.
A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This is one of 2024's most played albums round these parts. Last week they announced the release of a 7" single, a song and a dub of the song recorded during the sessions for the album with producer Dan Carey- Clockwork Orange. ACR have refused to stand still and repeat themselves. This song shows them continuing to break new ground- it kicks into life with Jez's FXed voice intoning, 'tock tick tock tick', and a grimy industrial groove, a bassline that buzzes ominously and then a second Jez vocal, verses and choruses about cruelty, hatred and a clockwork orange. The distorted, grinding rhythm nods to one- time Factory label mates, early 80s Cabaret Voltaire, but this is still very much ACR being no- one else but ACR.
More new music? I shared Er... Hello? by OBOST earlier this year, an absurdly accomplished and wonderful album made by seventeen year old Bobby Langfield and an EP of remixes of his song I Don't Want To Be Alone (including one by Richard Sen whose forthcoming album India Man promises to be one of 2024's highlights). Bobby/ OBOST has recently remixed the work of a classical pianist Christian Blandford, taking tracks from Christian's album The Waves and editing/ remixing them into one piece, The Waves (OBOST Unification Mix). There's a minute of juddering, out of time and out of sync sound, pianos glitching, and then it all suddenly snaps into place- a drum track rattles away, layers of piano and synths come and go, all flowing onwards and together/ against each other. Really good stuff. Find it here.
Let's complete a Tuesday new music trio with Sheffield's Crooked Man whose It's My Pleasure- Part 4 came out at the end of last week in three versions- a lush, mid- tempo nine minute main mix, an instrumental and an acapella. There's a lot going on, layers of synths, drums, ripples of sounds, a house vocal, and an insistent groove that grows increasingly percussive and intense. The EP is at Bandcamp. In a neat link to the Cabaret Voltaire sounds of the ACR song that opened this post, Crooked Man aka Richard Barratt was one half of legendary Sheffield bleep techno pioneers Sweet Exorcist along with the Cab's Richard H. Kirk. Cab it up.
Rich Lane has been producing music under his Cotton Bud name for ten years- delicious, space age chug straight outta Stoke- on - Trent (or Newcastle- under- Lyne more accurately). In his spare time he disappears into the woods with just a rucksack, some Belgian beer, a stove and a tarp and camps under the stars. His edits and remixes of tunes from the 1980s and 90s are stunners- see his versions of New Order's Vanishing Point, Sinead O'Connor's Jackie, The Bangles' Walk Like An Egyptian, Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence, Love Corporation's Give Me Some Love and LFO's LFO (that last one was totally rebuilt from scratch if I recall correctly).
His own productions are all worth checking out too- the Chug Norris EPs, Coyote Tan, Camo, Hooky Street, Solstice, Barry Island, and City Of Culture in particular. To celebrate the ten years since the release of the first ever Cotton Bud Originals, Rich has remastered and remixed the first ever Cotton Bud track, a beauty called Shelves. The original has been remastered for 2024 and he's remixed it as Chug Norris. Both versions of Shelves 2024 are at Bandcamp.
The Chug Norris remix is nine minutes of Balearic Cotton Bud synth chug, kicking off with washes of synth chords, a melody line picked out on melodica (or harmonica or keys, I'm not sure), thudding four- four drums and then a synth stab chord sequence that gives it a stars bound lift off. The vocal is the icing on the cake.
Ten years ago Rich filmed himself jamming Shelves live using 202, 303, 606 and 707. Compare and contrast.
On Thursday 18th July the northern chapter of The Flightpath Estate played an all vinyl DJ set at Club Solo, in person and streamed live on the third Thursday of every month out of Head in Stretford. Head is a fantastic bar, located in a former bank with pop culture and 60s/ 70s kitsch all over the walls and a lovely crowd. Me, Dan and Martin turned up to play with a box of records each and ended up overrunning the scheduled end time of 11pm by an hour. I took with our Flightpath Estate knitted Weatherdoll as a mascot, knitted by the talented Claire Doll and given to the Flightpath team after AW61 back in April.
The set can be streamed from Mixcloud or downloaded here. It's three and a half hours long- the Mixcloud stream is a little quiet it seems but if you download it and play it through your music player you might be able to pump the volume up. As ever, our tune selection outweighs our technical ability- some of the segues and mixes are a little, erm, idiosyncratic. In terms of spirit though, I think the set is spot on and builds well. That the three of us don't really co-ordinate what we're bringing with us in advance, it's amazing that we can play records back- to- back and make it even vaguely coherent. We had loads of fun playing, thanks to Stephen for inviting us, and to Club Solo and to Head for having us.
In terms of records it starts out dubby, gets faster and thumpier and ends with the Bunnymen. Richard Norris is well represented (under his own name and under his Time And Space Machine and Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve bands/ remix guises), there are a pair of tracks from our Sounds From The Flightpath Estate, a smattering of Andrew Weatherall records, a Mad Professor remix of the wonderful new Alex Kassian cover of E2- E4, and a superb, unreleased, white label cover version of Talking Heads' Once In A Lifetime by Joshua Idehen.
Tracklist
{Dan}
[0:00] Montezumas Rache & Dominik Von Senger: Tangerine (Krauter Mix)
[7:00] Panda Bear & Sonic Boom: Everything’s Been Leading To This Dub
[12:00] Giorgio Tuma with Laetitia Sadier: Through Your Hands Love Can Shine
{Adam}
[16:00] Peaking Lights: Beautiful Dub
[23:00] Justin Robertson: In Minus Shadows
[28:00] Iraina Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation)
{Martin}
[35:00] Snowblind: Easy Girl (J-Walk Remix Vocal)
[41:00] The Time & Space Machine: Good Morning (Coyote Balearic Mantra Remix)
Don Letts is a bit of a various artists compilation guru- the man who introduced the punks to reggae, who ran Acme Attractions clothes shop on King's Road, who filmed The Clash and then became integral to Big Audio Dynamite, who managed The Slits, and who made The Punk Rock Movie and Westway To The World. He put together two compilations for Heavenly back at the start of the 21st century (the Dread Meets B- Boys Downtown one I featured a couple of Saturdays ago and his Dread Meets Punk Rockers Uptown which pulled together the 7" singles he played at The Roxy between December 1976 and April 1977).
In 2021 Don compiled an album for the Late Night Tales label and series. Late Night Tales is a rich seam of V.A. compilations in itself. Don's Late Night Tales, Version Excursion, is a tribute to the sound systems and sound clashes, to the music of Jamaica, the Jamaican diaspora and bass culture. It's also a compilation with a sense of humour, a celebration of the unusual cover version, an alternate history of rock 'n' roll with a dub perspective.
The Beach Boys' Caroline No is for many the apex of mid 60s pop, the heartbreaker that closes Pet Sounds, the song that seems to foretell the end of innocence, the Kennedy assassination and the death of the American Dream, the end of the 60s, Vietnam, Nixon, Altamont, anything you want really... Maybe it is just the words of a man disappointed that his girlfriend has cut her hair short. 'Where did your long hair go? Where is the girl I used to know?'. It's not a song that naturally suggests a Lover's Rock cover but Zoe Devlin Love and Tim Hutton make it their own.
Sixteen Tons, a coalminer's song written by Merle Travis but made best known in the Tennessee Ernie Ford version from 1955. It was a Clash favourite, a tour bus favourite and gave its name to a 1980 tour. 'You move sixteen tons and what do you get?/ Another day older and deeper in debt'. This dub cover is by OBF.
On his Late Night Tales Don finds the sound system spirit all over the place- Love Will Tear Us Apart, Black Box Recorder's cover of Uptown Top Ranking, covers of White Rabbit and Lost In The Supermarket- and also in this by the man himself as The Rebel Dread, a cover of Big Audio Dynamite's E=MC2 with Gaudi and Emily Capell, with the film samples re- created, and Mick's song turned into a skank...
SUSS play ambient country/ ambient Americana, the sound of dusk falling over wide open spaces, roads disappearing into the horizon, dreams of the American west and all that kind of imagery. The SUSS trio are actually from New York, so their cosmic America is in reality as much an urban vision as a rural one. Their latest album, Birds And Beasts, is another beauty following in the tyre tracks of several previous ones. I got on board with Promise, an album released in December 2020 when things were pretty bleak, one lockdown gone, various waves of Covid compounded by government fiascos leading to a second lockdown incoming- the winter lockdown felt very different from the spring and summer 2020 one - and SUSS's ambient music was part of the soundtrack of that time, a hideaway from the world. The band say that this album is no less connected to world events, an articulation musically of the fragility of the natural world and the lack of balance in it- both birds and beasts abound. One of the tracks- Migration- features the late Gary Leib, SUSS's synth player who died suddenly in 2021. The rest were written and recorded for the album. The dominant instrument is the pedal steel guitar, often over a wash of synths and drones, various other guitars and loops creating a widescreen, emotive soundscape. It's frequently very moving, perfect music for sitting alone with late at night. Beasts is the second longest track on the album, a ten minute minor epic in no hurry at all to get wherever its going.
The album is available to download from Bandcamp and on yellow and pink vinyl elsewhere. The pedal steel guitar has a long tail in ambient music, most obviously in Brian Eno's Apollo and The KLF's Chill Out. SUSS have placed it back at the centre again, along with fellow travellers in the cosmic Americana/ ambient country sphere, Nashville Ambient Ensemble and Luke Schneider. This is a three minute track from their EP High Line- B- sides from 2020, psychedelia, ambient, loops, e- bow guitar and pedal steel, a low key, mini- symphony.
Isaac's headstone was fixed in place at the cemetery yesterday. It's been a long road to get to this point. For a long time we couldn't do it. There's a finality about a headstone we just couldn't face- it'll be there long after we've all gone and it had to be right. We had a planter and two flower pots which have done the job for the last two and a half years, the various plants, shrubs and flowers changing with the seasons, different colours coming and going, and for a long time they were enough. The sunflowers became part of it too, bought from the supermarket down the road and bringing a big splash of sunshine every summer. A year ago we got to a point where we felt we needed to get him a headstone. It's taken a year since then to get it as we wanted it. We wanted a natural stone- at first we wanted slate but it was prohibitively expensive and very difficult to get hold of, so we went for grey sandstone instead. Ordering the stone, getting the wording right, getting everything as it should be, has taken a year but it's been worth the wait, to get it right, for us and for him. Mainly now, it feels like a relief, that it's done and in place and that it looks so good and so right- and maybe it feels like the end of something too, or at least the end of a part of this whole thing.
The inscription at the bottom comes from the Covid memorial in London, written on the wall by a friend in the days that followed Isaac's death, 30th November 2021. It has felt for a long time now that that these were to be the words for his headstone.
Isaac's middle name Neville was the name of my maternal grandfather. He died the year before Isaac was born and it seemed right to pass the name on. In one of those coincidences that could never be planned, one of my younger brothers has become a father this week for the first time. His son is four days old today and has also been given the middle name Neville, passing it on again, which is lovely and very moving.
For those are are interested in the details, this is demo version of the song, recorded by Bob Dylan in June 1973 while visiting his publishers in New York. The song then appeared on Planet Waves in two versions, one slow paced and like a lullaby and the other faster and rockier. Dylan became a parent for the first time in 1966 and wrote it while in Tucson, presumably early in 1973. According to the liner notes of Biograph, he wrote it, 'thinking about one of [my] boys and not wanting to be too sentimental... I certainly didn't intend to write it... the song wrote itself'. The demo version is my favourite and I've been waiting for an occasion to post it.
'May your heart always be joyful/ May your song always be sung/ And may you stay forever young'
More new music, today from Coyote, the Nottingham duo who put out release after release of top quality music all of it worth the time and pennies they ask of you. Their latest is a two track EP, Habitual Illusions and Embrace It, both sounding ripe for the summer sunshine we're long overdue. First up is Habitual Illusions, big bass, dub grooves, laid back percussion and drums and a lovely, wobbly guitar line, all surrounded by acres of space.
The second track is Embrace It, synth strings and pattering rhythms and samples from a film where a woman gives advice about how to handle an LSD trip. In Ibiza. 'Embrace it, don't fight', she says.
Both are available for purchase at Bandcamp along with the rest of their recent releases- the mini- album Hurry Up And Live from earlier this year, last summer's single with Rolo McGinty, Marijuana (there's a theme developing here isn't there?), last year's mini- album Everything Moves, Nothing Rests, the full length album The Mystery Light from November 2021 and much more- singles, remixes, EPs, everything.
In 2022 Peak High released a single that was one the best of the year, the magnificent Was That All It Was, a cover of a 1979 disco/ soul song by Jean Carne. Peak High (Jim McCall) then sent his version to Sean Johnston who remixed it twice, the first time pulling all the ALFOS/ Patrick Cowley levers, synths and drum machines set for the cosmic disco/ chug heart of the sun, the second going early 90s Sheffield bleep house. Now they've done it again.
The new release is a cover of Wang Chung's 1983 hit Dance Hall Days, a song for summer and late nights, the sequencers and synths throbbing and pulsing. Don Gomez's sweet vocal sends the song closer to perfection. All the labels apply- cosmic disco, Italo, Balearic, chug house. Once again Sean is on remix duties, his Hardway Bros remix toughening up the drums and sending it to a sweatier, darker place, most likely a basement.
The Peak High and Hardway Bros versions are at Bandcamp. The video for the original song was directed by Derek Jarman, with some of the footage from Jarman's father's home movies. The toddler is Derek.
Sean is back in his remix partnership with Duncan Gray as Hardway Bros Meets Monkton very shortly, the pair remixing the latest song from the Tici Taci label, a superb EP from Uj Pa Gaz, coming all the way from Tirana in Albania. The Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown remix of Roxy is a six minute dub version, bassline leading the way, very much Uptown. The original version of Roxy is a gorgeous, woozy slice of electronic music, laid back Adriatica. Also on the EP is The Cove, six slo mo minutes, percussion, chugging drums and a keening topline that pulls at the heartstrings. There's a clip of the remix of Roxy at Soundcloud and one of Roxy here. More excellence from Tici Taci- the EP comes out on 31st July.
Back in 2018 Uj Pa Gaz remixed Fujiya & Miyagi's brilliant ode to middle age and its attendant physical shortcomings, Extended Dance Mix.
While I'm here, can I remind you about Duncan Grey's full length album from earlier this year, Five Fathoms Full. It's twelve tracks of wall to wall supercharged ALFOS- style cosmic disco/ indie dance and hasn't been heard by nearly enough people. Find it here.
Another Monday, another LCD Soundsystem long song. This one is from 2010 and the third LCD Soundsystem album This Is Happening. I remember feeling a little underwhelmed by the album but looking at it now maybe that was me and not James Murphy. The songs were good but none matched the sheer emotional dance music majesty of Sound Of Silver's peaks. I payed it through recently and it sounded great, the melancholy tinged dance pop of I Can Change, the sleek NY sounds of Pow Pow and Drunk Girls, a song Murphy described as 'dumb' but also said that he liked dumb stuff. In May 2010 Drunk Girls was released as a single, the 7" coming with a Wooden Shjips cover of the song as its B- side and the 12" with a remix by Holy Ghost!
Holy Ghost! are a synthpop duo from Brooklyn. Their remix splices electro, indie rock and disco, a New Order- ish, pulsating, high energy seven and a half minutes of fun with James outlining what drunk girls (and drunk boys) are and what they do, the shallows and depths of hedonism and his belief in waking up together.
Mighty Force began life in 1990 as an Exeter based record shop and then label run by Mark Darby, created largely to put out the music on a tape passed to him by one Richard D. James. Said cassette contained Analogue Bubblebath, the first appearance on vinyl of Aphex Twin. The label ran to 1999, from '95 in London, and then closed its doors. Mark began releasing music again in summer 2019 and since then had put out album after album of outstanding electronic music- ambient, techno, dance music, acid and all points in between and around, releases by David Harrow, Boxheater Jackson, M- Paths, Golden Donna, Myoptik, Long Range Desert Group, Yorkshire Machines, WRNR, Shrieky, SubDan, M- Paths, D'FunK, Fluffy Inside, AP Organism, Paddy Thorne, KAMS, Sven Kossler, Solipsism, and dyLAB plus several compilations of MF Acid and this year has already released two further compilations to celebrate the label's thirty three years. MF33 Volume 2 can be found here. The most recent Mighty Force release appeared ten days ago, an hour long mix of music by Boxheater Jackson containing music from his Indigenous State Of Mind album and some previously unreleased Boxheater tracks. Find it here. There is nothing on Mighty Force that isn't worth listening to, Mark's quality control is ridiculously high. Today's mix is a celebration of the label, nine tracks long with eight from the reborn Mighty Force.
Analogue Bubblebath is a perfect piece of electronic music, a track Mark heard in his shop over the shop's sound system and was 'like nothing (he'd) ever heard before'. It took a while to convince Richard/ Aphex Twin to release it, Richard eventually agreeing while under the influence of LSD. Analogue Bubble bath is otherworldly, emotive, inventive, ambient dance music that keeps shifting shape, and still sounds like the future.
AP Organism released Space Docks And Moon Rocks in May 2023, a two track EP of dubby/ cosmic/ ambient electronica from Andy Pitman.
Fluffy Inside's Nylon Corners came out in July 2023, a ten track album that works as both headphone and dancefloor music. The title track is a beauty, acid melodies dancing about over rattling 303 percussion.
Website Rave is from KAMS Described Spaces album, a twelve track delight. Website Rave sounds exactly like its title suggests it should- acid basslines, thumping machine drums, squiggles, sirens, the occasional sampled vocal shout.
Long Range Desert Group's album Pro- oxidant was one of my favourites back in 2022, drawing its influences not just from electronic music but from post- punk, from ACR, 23 Skidoo and Talking Heads. Heads down, absorbing and cinematic, the whole album is an essential Mighty Force release.
Yorkshire Machines put out their Firing Up EP in late 2023. It is thumpy acid dance music. LS3 03 samples Sean Bean from the TV adaptation of David Peace's deeply unsettling Red Riding quartet of novels. No one made the construction of a vast shopping centre sound more like a threat than a promise.
M- Paths have had two albums out on Mighty Force, Hope in March 2023 and Submerge in April this year. The track here is from Hope. On the whole M- Paths make chilled out ambient and ambient techno. The one here is pretty thumpy though, dance music as a thing of optimism.
Boxheater Jackson has had two full length albums out on Mighty Force, the first We Are One in 2022 and the second this year's Indigenous State Of Mind from September last year. Both albums are superb, Big Vern creating widescreen, stripped down, consciousness raising, awestruck dance music. Boxheater Jackson is otherwise known as Big Vern Burns. He who DJed alongside Andrew Weatherall at the Double Gone Chapel and before that was an engineer at Sabresonic and then went onto Rotters Golf Club.
David Harrow's road to Mighty Force takes in a past that includes time spent with Psychic TV, writing and producing with Anne Clark, being a key member of the On U Sound crew, playing with Jah Wobble, recording with Andrew Weatherall as Blood Sugar and then on Sabres as Technova, writing Billie Ray Martin's Your Loving Arms, moving to LA and releasing music as James Hardway and more recently putting out modular synth/ ambient/ dub recordings under his own name. Jitter was the title track on a two track EP from 2023, a slice of mighty, jittery acid techno to finish things here.
Another V. A. Saturday, another Soul Jazz compilation- this one a 2001 post- punk/ punk- funk/ industrial party with the demob suits and short back and sides groups from the UK in the late 70s and early 80s. In The Beginning There Was Rhythm has action from the regional outposts of the punk funk/ industrial scenes, from Manchester (two ACR songs, Shack Up and Knife Slits Water) and Sheffield (The Human League's Being Boiled and Cabaret Voltaire's Sluggin' Fer Jesus) and also the London based bands 23 Skidoo, Throbbing Gristle and This Heat.
The title track is a song by The Slits, originally a 7" single released by Rough Trade and Y Records in 1980, The Slits on one side and Where There's A Will There's A Way by The Pop Group on the flip.
It's a spindly, scratchy and idiosyncratic five minutes, the bass and beat bumping along and Dennis Bovell's dub production at the fore, Viv's abstract guitar and bursts of piano and Ari stopping every now and then to declare, 'Silence is a rhythm too'.
The Pop Group's She Is Beyond Good And Evil is also on the CD, a 1979 single with Mark Stewart using the language of unconditional love as an act of revolution, romance and politics bound together with some dub bass, wire scratch guitars and reggae drums.
From Bristol to Leeds and Gang Of Four's thumping, atonal, driving racket, the 1981 song To Hell With Poverty, a song that dances in the face of having only a fiver in your pocket until Giro day/ pay day, 'To hell with poverty/ We'll get drunk on cheap wine'.
We finished school for the summer holiday yesterday, six weeks off working stretching out ahead of me, thirty one years of teaching completed and like Jon King and Gang Of Four, cheap wine tonight's option.
Another imaginary album. Previously I speculated about the Andrew Weatherall, Jah Wobble and Sinead O’Connor album that could have followed Andrew’s remixes of Jah Wobble’s Invaders of You in 1992 and the album that he was lined up to produce for The Fall in 1993 but which didn’t happen, as well as a re- united Joe Strummer and Mick Jones album c.1989. Today’s imaginary album is another Weatherall one, this time one that existed for a while on paper but was never followed through. In 1994 following the artistic success of Sabres Of Paradise’s Haunted Dancehall, the record company, Warp, were keen on a follow up with Sabres and some hand picked guest vocalists. The Chemical Brothers and Leftfield had both made records with guest vocalists by this point, including Beth Orton, Tim Burgess, Toni Halliday, and John Lydon and Warp felt Sabres should be getting in on the action. In an interview with NME during this period, possibly the dance music page Vibes (which Andrew’s friend Sherman edited and wrote), Andrew mentioned that he was looking forward to working with Ice T. Jagz Kooner has confirmed that Ice T/ Tracy Morrow’s name was on a list of names of people that Warp were hoping would take to the microphone on this mooted Sabres Of Paradise plus friends album.
At the Sabresonic 30th event at The Golden Lion last November Jagz and Gary Burns confirmed that a list of names was drawn up. Dot Allison and Bobby Gillespie were both on it, both singers with close connections to Andrew, Bobby via Andrew’s production on Screamadelica and Dot via Andrew’s post- Screamadelica production on One Dove’s Morning Dove White. There is a cassette that belongs to Chris from Soft Rocks, given to him by Andrew as a thank you along with a pile of records, that contains an unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track that goes by the title of Al Green (Revenge Of Dove). The track has that blissed out electronic dub sound that Andrew helped shape with One Dove, possibly even contains a One Dove sample, and although the cassette is not top quality in terms of sound, it’s a real shame it was never finished, it’s very much a lost Sabres track. I’d love to share it but I think doing so would get me into trouble.
The tantalising thing about the track’s title is the possibility that alongside guest vocals from Ice T, Bobby Gillespie and Dot Allison, the Reverend Al Green would be making an appearance. Imagine something like Sirens, above from One Dove's Morning Dove White, with Al Green singing on it.
According to Jagz the next name pencilled in by Warp was that of Tom Waits. Tentative enquiries were being made and it was at this point that Andrew got cold feet, getting the fear about working with some of his heroes, and kiboshed the whole project, not willing to put himself in a studio with someone who he regarded as highly as Tom Waits, a hero of Andrew’s since his teenage years.
Again, close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine Tom Waits' growl and gravelly tones, his gutter poetry, over the top of some mid- 90s Sabres dub. Think of the remixes that could have come from this imaginary album.
Andrew was quite vocal in interviews in the second half of the 90s about dance acts using guest vocalists, in a disapproving way, so he may have had doubts from the start but sitting here three decades later, the prospect of a Sabres Of Paradise album with Tom Waits, Ice T, Al Green, Dot Allison and Bobby Gillespie all singing on it feels like a lost opportunity, one that will have to live in our imaginations only.
Some new music to brighten up Thursday. Two weeks ago Matt Gunn released a new track, Dub Clone Rising, ten minutes of early 90s beats and distorted synth sounds, cosmic dub, like a remix of a remix of a guitar band that you bought on 12" in Our Price in 1991 after reading a review in NME or Melody Maker. You can listen and buy at Bandcamp.
Newly out on Coyote's Is It Balearic? label is a four track EP from Wrekin Havoc with super smooth vocals from Greg Bird and remixes courtesy of Wolfy and Gold Suite. There are two songs, both grounded in the 1980s but built for 2024. Vapour Trails is melancholic 80s pop sliced with Italo disco, lyrically making the suggestion that we should stop, look, and take care of things- the vibe is an episode of Top Of The Pops from 1987 you've never seen and without the shrieking presenters and all the inanity. Gold Suite's remix turns the summer feel up, a Balearic remix for long hot evenings (not that we've had any really yet so far up here).
The second track is Broken Wings and sounds tailor made for dance floor out on one of the Mediterranean islands with the hint of some acid in there too. Seductive stuff. Woolfy brings his Californian touch, stripping it back and adding a more electronic groove to proceedings. It's a vinyl release and I can't find any digital to share but there are some clips to listen to at Juno.
Back in 2021 Coyote and Woolfy collaborated on their Return To Life EP, a five track. On Save Me Coyote provided the slow mo Balearic beats and Woolfy the blue- eyed soul vocals.
I got a very late offer of a ticket to see Manic Street Preachers at Castlefield Bowl in Manchester last Friday night- not the sort of offer to turn down. I missed Suede unfortunately, arriving at the gates to the venue at the exact moment Brett was on the lip of the stage,saying, 'thank you Manchester'. The Manics took to the stage at 9.15pm, the lights and projections in stark contrast to Manchester's slate grey skies, and powered into their calling card, You Love Us (a little affected by a few sound issues for the first few songs, 60% of it being James' Les Paul guitar solos and the bottom end a dull thud). Everything Must Go and Motorcycle Emptiness followed, a strong opening 1- 2- 3, the latter with the young Manics from the song's video projected behind them. James introduces their cover of Suicide Is Painless (Theme From Mash) with the remark that 'this is one of the most depressing cover versions of all time', but the mood is jubilant, the crowd and band reflecting a celebration of the music back at each other.
The Anchoress joins them on stage on vocals for Little Baby Nothing, a song with the some of the 'best lyrics Richie wrote', Nicky Wire tells us. The sound issues have been sorted, and the set thunders along- Your Love Alone Is Not Enough, Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier and Walk Me To The Bridge all stand out. In the middle of the set they play A Design For Life, a song that never loses its power or appeal. James' voice is a roar, the projections play loops of footage from the 80s- England fans and striking miners- and the communal melancholy of the lyrics, 'We don't talk about love/ We only wanna get drunk', still glorious all these years later.
It's followed by La Tristessa Durera (Scream To A Sigh), the guitars sounding huge, a wall of mid- 90s indie- metal. Kevin Carter is as good as anything played tonight, the staccato guitar riff and harrowing subject matter of the lyrics a strange fit in some ways for an outdoor, mini- stadium gig. The Manics never wrote about fluff. When the words Culture, Alienation, Boredom and Despair appear on the screen behind them in letters ten feet high, there's another wonderful moment of dissonance- a band so loved by their audience and so warm towards their fans, playing to thousands. This isn't alienation and despair, it's community and love. They finish with If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, another outsider anthem, another heart on sleeve song, anti- fascism, Spanish bombs and A Homage To Catalonia all wrapped up in the Manic's widescreen indie- rock.
The latest release on Golden Lion Sounds is an EP by Acid Klaus, available digitally and on 10" vinyl at the GLS Bandcamp page. P.T.S.D. By Proxy is five tracks of electronic mayhem, 'dance music you can cry to', according to Klaus mainman Adrian Flanagan (who comes to Acid Klaus via The Moonlandingz and The Eccentronic Research Council). Opening track The Solution doesn't pull any punches or warm you up gently- it pumps in immediately, electronic bump and grind with a robotic voice intoning, 'The solution/ Is revolution'. Philly Piper guests on track two, Aerodromes, pulsing bass, dancing synth toplines and Philly's FXed voice talking about the death of conversation and class struggle while returning to the chorus of, 'You gotta get it/ Get get get it right', a Hi NRG/ acid house collision, arpeggiators firing off all over the place.
Pour Some Wood On The Fire brings vocals from Welsh singer/ songwriter Cat Rin. There's no let up in energy, the frenetic beats and sci fi synths blasting away. Losing Our Way has Roland 808 and the spoken word, Maxine Peake and Rosey PM despairing at the state of the world while the electronics bleep and bloop and the machine drums power ever forwards. Hell Below features Lias Saoudi from Fat White Family on vocals, a slightly slower, mellower track, some minor chord melancholy futurism.
There's a David Holmes remix of Aerodromes, exclusive to the digital package, with a video filmed in The Golden Lion (with some familiar faces in it), Homer fully on it with eight minutes of synapse twisting sounds, thumping drums, and not a little drama, the last song at the end of the night as the world burns.
On Thursday this week, 18th July, The Flightpath Estate DJs northern division (Dan, Martin and me) are playing some records at Head in Stretford, as guests of Club Solo. I've been going through my records, making piles and lists of probables and possibles, re- listening to some things and narrowing it down to something approaching a set. My recent Monday long song focus on DFA and LCD Soundsystem led me to go through my LCD records and I pulled out the 12" of Yeah.
Yeah came out in January 2004, in two mixes, the eleven minute Pretentious Version and the nine minute Crass Version. I put the Crass version on the turntable and wallowed in James Murphy's attempt to tell the story of dance music in one track, a track that Murphy says was difficult to make. The whole thing is an LCD Soundsystem tour de force, New York clubland pressed on wax- driving art- funk bass, Murphy and Nancy Whang chanting the word of the title, and then 'Everyone keeps on talking about/ Nobody's getting it done', his intonation somewhere between wired and bored. The synths flutter, the snares crack, the bass pumps like a marriage between Talking Heads and Liquid Liquid. The Crass version piles up and becomes increasingly intense, like being trapped in a washing machine with a power drill, the ultra- distorted, raw acid analogue synths buzzing at the very edge of music, noise and rhythm combined in ecstatic union. Fuck yeah!
I’m really
not a very patriotic person at all, it being as Oscar Wilde said, 'the last refuge of the scoundrel'. The markers of patriotism have always felt
like nonsense to me- the flag (either of them, the cross of St. George and the
Union flag), the national anthem, the monarchy, the Little England attitudes, the
English exceptionalism, all of it does nothing for me. It makes no sense at all
that someone who was born in Carlisle, Dover or Chester is in some way better
than someone born a few miles away in Wrexham, Calais or Dumfries. Pride in one's country and it's achievements is I suppose OK to an extent but that pride often tips over into nationalism and exceptionalism and has a habit of hiding or ignoring some parts of a nation's history too.
Supporting
the England football team has always been tainted with all of the nonsense too. It's not necessarily the team's fault, they're partly just the vehicle for it. Tabloid controversies about whether the players are singing the national anthem
with enough ‘passion’. Songs about winning two world wars, ten German bombers and no surrender to the I.R.A.
Grown men dressed as crusader knights. The England band (thankfully now missing). Car flags and cheap red cross on white background bunting sagging in the summer rain. The booing by their own fans of players taking the knee to protest against racism. The deluge of racist messages that Bukayo Saka,
Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho received after missing their penalties in the 2021
Euro final. This was almost the last straw as far as I was concerned, ‘fans’ who would
have been dancing in the streets if the penalty kicks had been a few inches one
way or the other, taking to social media to racially abuse the young men who
were taking part in a game was sickening and reflective of the wider culture-
of Reform and UKIP, of Tory Little England politics, of the immigration narrative
that Farage and Johnson and others fuelled by the tabloid press have spewed
into British politics and English culture, of the nationalist nonsense that is
only ever a sentence away from racism and the 'I'm not racist but...' brigade.
The football team have dragged
me back in over the last four weeks. I've tried to remain a bit arm's length from it, not get too invested. I boycotted the Qatar World Cup, hardly saw any of it, so it passed me by completely. But there was a sweet pleasure in watching the England penalties against
Switzerland last Saturday, as five black and mixed race young men calmly slotted
home their penalty kicks, the first and second generation descendants of immigrants putting England into a Euro
semi- final. Where, as someone asked on social media after the match, are the racists
now? Another of those children of immigrants, Ollie Watkins, scored the winner on Wednesday night, in the last second of the last minute of normal time.
Tonight, England
play Spain in the final of Euro ’24 in Berlin. This is a major achievement, the second consecutive Euros final. Those
of us who grew up watching England in the 80s and 90s have seen little but failure
from England teams. Sometimes they have been truly awful- the Euros in ’88, ’92 and 2016, the World Cup in 2014.
Sometimes they’ve been massively overinflated and departed meekly beaten by clearly
better sides- tournaments in 2002, 2006, 2010, 2012. Sometimes they’ve been engulfed by (in)glorious failure
with a sense of injustice- Mexico ’86, France ’98. Sometimes they’ve not even qualified
for tournaments- 1994, 2008. Very occasionally they’ve pulled it together and almost but
not quite got to the final- 1990 and 1996. But on the whole, even if you can ignore the nationalist bluster that surrounds them, they've been not very good.
Recently
they’ve been better and if nothing else Gareth Southgate has changed the story
around the England team, blocked out ‘the noise’ as he puts it. I’ve learned to
limit my expectations of England. Reaching Euro finals twice in three years is something
no other England manager or team has done. Hopefully, maybe, they can go one step
further tonight and put to bed the endless burden of 1966 and all that.
This is a thirty five minute mix of songs about England with a couple of England football songs. I'm sure some of you won't go anywhere near it but I like to think of it as the antithesis of Three Lions.
Shuttleworth ft. Mark E. Smith: England's Heartbeat (Brazilian Ambush)
The Vermin Poets: England's Poets
Big Audio Dynamite: Union, Jack
New Order: World In Motion (Call The Carabinieri Mix)
Billy Bragg's A New England is his 1983 calling card, a song about being twenty two and looking for a new girl, wishing on space hardware, and life in the early 80s. I probably should have included Kirsty McColl's cover which in some ways is the definitive version. In 2002 Billy addressed a load of the flag, nationalism, immigration, tabloid press, racism and England football shirts in his song Half- English- this only occurred to me while writing this part of the post.
Something About England is from The Clash's 1980 album Sandinista!, a song that opens with the more resonant than ever lines, 'They say the immigrants steal the hub caps of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ if England were for Englishmen again...' It's a truly great song, one where ick and Joe sing in character, Mick a young man leaving a bar and Joe an old man huddled in rags in a shop doorway. They then give us a history of the 20th century, war, depression, class struggle, disaster, all set to Clash punk/ music hall. 'Old England was all alone', they conclude.
A few years later, Mick and Topper both sacked, Joe recorded the final Clash album, Cut The Crap. The only song you really need from it is This Is England, the last great Clash song, Joe giving a state of the nation address, five years into Thatcher's government, economic depression and unemployment, with drum machines, guitars and chanting football crowds.
Care was Paul Simpson (who will be back at this blog soon) and Ian Broudie. In 1983 Paul formed Care after The Wild Swans split for the first time. Sad Day For England was the B-side to the 12" My Boyish Days, one of only a handful of releases by the pair before they split in 1985.
Black Grape's England's Irie was an unofficial Euro '96 song, a song that brought together Shaun Ryder, bez and Kermit with Keith Allen and Joe Strummer (and Strummer's only Top Of The Pops appearance). Shaun delivers several memorable lines, not least 'I'm spectating my wife's lactating/ It's a football thing'. I'm not sure it's aged particularly well but I thought I should include it.
Shuttleworth were a one off band of Mark E. Smith, Ed Blaney and Jenny Shuttleworth who recorded this song for England's adventures at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Apparently the FA approached him to do it (!) but then decided against having an official song so Mark put it out anyway. Mark wrote a few football related songs- Theme For Sparta FC is a classic- and on one occasion read the full time results on the BBC.
In the 2010 World Cup England were dreadful in the group stage, finishing second behind the USA. They lost the next game in the knock out round to Germany, 4- 1.
The Vermin Poets were one of Billy Childish's many, many groups. Their album, Poets Of England, came out in 2010, garage rock/ psyche pop. I don't think it's among Billy's best work but anything by Billy is worth paying at least some attention to.
Union, Jack was on Big Audio Dynamite's 1989 album Megatop Phoenix, their fourth album and the last made by the original line up. 'Make a stand/ Before you fall/ You country needs you/ To play football', Mick sings, slipping in lines the empire, pints of beer, a green and pleasant land, and all for one. A Mick Jones late 80s football song that tries to re- imagine the football song after some terrible 80s ones sung by England squads with perms, mullets and in leisure wear. Mick would find himself trumped a year later though...
World In Motion needs no introduction really- New Order, Keith Allen, John Barnes, the summer of 1990, Italia 90, a dire group stage, wins against Belgium and Cameroon and then ultimately disappointment, penalties and Germany. This version is an Andrew Weatherall and Terry Farley remix from the remix 12" that came out a week after the main one. New Order had wanted to reflect the zeitgeist of 1990 by calling the song E For England, a step too far for the FA. They had to settle for the chorus, 'love's got the world in motion'. The FA wanted it changed to 'we've got the world in motion' but New Order stood their ground and love it was.
